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
Over the past several months that I’ve been writing this column, I’ve spent a lot of time on the whats of tarot. What is tarot? What are the major arcana; what are the minor? What are the differences between them? What does each suit represent? What does this particular card mean? What is that reading telling us? All of these are relevant questions that help to enrich our knowledge of the tarot and how to work with it effectively.
Today, however, I’d like to focus on something else: how. How is tarot best put to use? How can it be effective when life places the demands that it does on our hearts, our minds, our bodies, our souls? How can something small enough to fit in the palm of our hand have any perceivable, or more importantly, meaningful impact on our lives?
In a world where we tend to devote so much of our time to the future — what is going to happen? Am I going to get that job? Will s/he love me? Is my life going to get any better? — tarot has become so strongly identified with its ability to reveal outcomes that we have lost sight of another area where I feel it is far more useful.
Tarot tells us about the present.
“What’s the use of that?” some might ask. “After all, don’t we already know what’s going on right now? Why would I want to focus on the present when I can find out about the future?”
This reaction that I note is hypothetical, but it is inspired by my experience working with clients. It is also inspired by the experience of managing my own expectations of my life, desires and wishes. Believe you me, I know what it is like to be in a situation of painful uncertainty, with significant attachment to a particular outcome and a deck of cards lying around. Whether it is voiced aloud or inwardly, whether it is a conscious thought or an unconscious one, it is a reaction that is often there.
But let’s get back to the present. It is, after all, what we have been given. Right here, right now. It’s worth taking a closer look at it. Often, we want to look into the future because we don’t like what we see in the here and now. Often, it can seem tempting to project ourselves into ‘could be’ and ‘should be’ when life, as it is happening, is as far from pleasing as we would like it to be. And often, tarot becomes a compelling escape mechanism — a spiritual opiate — that allows us to waft on a cloud of ‘what ifs’ rather than facing what is in front of us with full consciousness.