Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc
By Sarah Taylor
It has been a dreamy kind of day — well, few days, really. I haven’t felt quite here; time seems to have less meaning and rigidity. And so, instead of working against the flow and trying to engage with the rational side of my nature, I thought I’d harness what’s going on and run with it. In which case, please excuse me if things are a little less concrete today… as if the margins are blurred. Is there anything worth discovering in those blurry borderlands? Let’s see.
What preceded and precipitated this article was a request I made last night before going to sleep. I asked my dreams to reveal to me something that I could use as a basis for my writing. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Last night it did, but not in the way I expected. At a point in my dream, I was having a conversation with Deepak Chopra about the aim of meditation. It was revelatory — even Deepak was impressed. So much so that a part of me reminded myself to remember what I had said when I woke up.
This morning, I can write with some confidence that the statement I made was not an original thought; the Deepak of the waking world would, in all likelihood, not be bowled over with my erudition. I don’t think I’ll be sending him a Tweet about it.
However, the phrase “not in the way I expected” is key here. When we dream (and unless we are seasoned lucid dreamers — more on that later), we enter a world that holds the potential for an encounter with the unexpected at each turn. My so-called revelation was a useful reminder of something, but it was not what I said that turned out to be the most useful aspect of it: it was the meeting with Deepak himself that seems to hold more meaning in the cold light of day. Not because of who he is, but because of what he symbolises. Many of my dreams are frenetic, familiar and anxiety-riddled, reflecting my desire and struggle to break free of some very limiting bonds that have held me in check for so long. In that moment when I was speaking to someone I consider wise and centred, I was getting in touch with something in myself that I relate to as wise and centred.
In an earlier article, I wrote that tarot has the ability to introduce the unexpected in a way that is surprisingly familiar. In this, it shares common ground with my dream, which was a welcome experience that I couldn’t have anticipated, and yet my dream self was entirely accepting of it. When I began to follow this thread of commonality, I discovered other qualities that dreams and tarot share, and I put them forward here for discussion, as well as suggesting how we can take our inspiration from dreams when using tarot as a tool for self-discovery.