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 tells you how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc
By Sarah Taylor
More often than not, when we consult the tarot (either for ourselves or on behalf of another), we are primarily driven by one desire: we want answers.
We might have a question that is weighing on our minds. We might be looking for validation. We might be seeking an experience of clarity. Whatever the reason for the reading, the idea that we are able to get the inside track on something that has been eluding us has the ability to eclipse anything else that might be taking place during a tarot reading.
So what of the possibility that we are getting something else from a tarot reading that is equally, if not more, useful to us? And what if answers, in this case, were not the priority?
Tarot connects us to something bigger than we are.
When we work with the tarot, we are getting in touch with something that transcends our fleshy borders. That ‘something’ is open to debate. We can have our ideas and our own certainties, but nothing is provable and it has a quality of fluidity. It is understood in many different forms and goes by many names, including consciousness, the collective unconscious, source, a higher power, the divine, spirit and God/dess, among others. Some people see it as lying outside themselves; others see it as coming from within. Some days I feel I have an answer, but that answer is mutable, and has changed over the years as I have changed.
Be that as it may, I’ve come to understand it as something whose presence is unwavering (as opposed to my presence, which is prone to moments of obliviousness, flightiness and distraction). Like an electric socket, once you’ve plugged yourself in and switched things on, it’s there, waiting to connect with you.
This ‘connecting’ is what happens when I do a tarot reading, I’m writing about tarot, or I’m occupied with anything that puts my mind in the present, for that matter. I do what I can to get my side of things in working order — ranging from diving right in to having to distract my way in. Once I’m connected, the energy starts flowing. It’s not a steady flow, however. It comes sporadically, and I can’t maintain the connection for long periods of time — and it might be useful to bring up this point, because I always used to equate ‘sporadic’ with ‘not doing it correctly’. I’m coming to believe that’s not the case. I take a lot of breaks: I step out to rest either physically or mentally (my laptop’s Spider Solitaire gets a good run for its money when I’m writing, for example), and then find my way back in again.