[Liminal Letters] Approaching Tarot as a Spirit
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Not into weekly newsletters? You can opt-out of the weekly newsletter without removing yourself from other updates HERE! Hey, Reader! Back in February, I opened up my books for Relational Rose readings - readings that zeroed in on spiritual connection & relationship with spirits. It's the first time I've offered something so explicitly animist, so explicitly rooted in my work as a spiritworker and it really clarified something for me: I don’t approach tarot as a tarot reader. I approach tarot as a spiritworker. A spiritworker is a pretty general term, but to give it some definition, a spiritwork is someone who works with spirits. They could work with these spirits for many purposes: healing, reconnecting & relearning lost spiritual or magical traditions, as an intermediary for their community, as an interpreter, as a priest or advocate. There are probably as many ways to be a spiritworker as there are ways to be in relationship. Because spiritwork (at least the way I do it) is about relationships. The focus isn't on any system or particular type of relationship. Instead, it's about knowing your own desires, connecting with the spirits you desire connection with, and slowly building a reciprocal relationship with those spirits. This approach is built in to how I approach the tarot. A tarot deck is not just a collection of cards, where the cards symbols that signify certain collections of meaning. Rather, a tarot deck is a spirit in and of itself. It is also a collection of spirits - each card is its own spirit. And within the tarot deck each card spirit has its own set of relationships to other card spirits within the deck. And each tarot deck is also its own spirit, not a shadow of some idealized form of tarot. There are layers upon layers in any one tarot deck. It is fractal and ever-growing & changing. There is also the relationship of the tarot reader with the deck. Everyone is different and brings different thoughts, ideas, and experiences into their relationship with tarot. As you change, your understanding of the cards can change. Decks that were once indispensable and deeply resonant to you can feel like they are no longer right fit. Different decks can develop they're own unique sets of symbolisms for you. Justice in one deck might carry a different meaning for you than Justice from another deck. In this context, tarot reading becomes act of narrating the complex, interwoven web of relationship between the reader, the client (if the reading is being done on someone’s behalf), the spirits the reader & the client are in relationship with (if any), and the tarot deck & cards itself, all to be interpreted with in the context of query being explored in the reading. Viewing tarot as such a complex interweaving means that it will never be simple. Tarot cards across all tarot decks might hold certain collections of common meanings, but the way they express within a given reading can vary greatly. It isn’t simply about ‘this card means this’ or ‘this illustration shows this and only this’. This means that tarot gets to honor your lived experience. Not just that it can if you do the work to re-interpret the cards, but that it should. AND you’re doing nothing wrong by re-interpreting or re-imagining the cards. Or even just saying the thing that comes to you when you see the card instead of going back to received wisdom and filtering it through that. Like if you look at The Hanged One and it gives you kink vibes it could just be about kinkiness, instead of feeling a need to filter it through the guidebook definitions first. (There’s something interesting here about personal vs. collective truths and the importance of both, but in the interest of not making this newsletter novel-length I’ll put a pin in it for now.) And the great thing about approaching tarot as a spiritworker is that tarot is a spirit that can get you in communication with other spirits or entities. In fact, in my opinion, approaching tarot in this way can make it an excellent training vehicle for learning to work with more diverse types of spirits - from land spirits to deities to stars and more! Approaching tarot in this way helps you develop key skill sets of forming relationships to spirits, like:
Tarot has several advantages for doing this kind of learning. The deeply visual & aesthetic nature of the tarot is becomes a gateway into both collective symbolism and your own personal symbolism. The fact that there is a list of common and agreed upon meanings makes it easy to double-check and cross-reference what you're feeling, what the card commonly means, and how the card actually ended up playing out for you to fine tune your understanding of the spirit of the deck & the symbolism. It's a little bit like training wheels for working directly with spirits and for working with divination methods that are less easily comprehended by human brains (like runes, charms, or bones)! Tarot is not a fixed, dead thing. Tarot is a spirit that lives and changes and grows in relationship with you. It is a powerful spirit in its own right and a powerful teaching tool for diving more deeply into spiritual exploration. That’s my theory on tarot. If you’re intrigued by that and are curious about learning more about tarot from me, you can check out the Tarot In Two Steps workshop which is a crash course in tarot that will introduce you to, and then guide you into familiarity with, the two essential tarot frameworks so that you can read tarot YOUR WAY, intuitively, without the guidebook, in no time! It is an excellent foundation for learning to approach the cards relationally so you can build your own relationship with the tarot! Get access to the workshop HERE! FREE meditation for empowered, interconnected energetic sovereignty!The muse struck this week and I was inspired to create a meditation for centering in yourself and finding your power to craft meaningful energetic relationships. If you are... Then this meditation is for you! In the free meditation, I lead you through a reflective journey to help you get acquainted with your energetic relationships and your sovereign power to interact with, grow, and influence those relationships, which is another way of saying connecting to your intuition and finding your power to make some fucking magic!
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What's bringing you joy this week? Where are you finding magic? Feel free to hit reply and let me know! Until next time! In Joy, Magic, and Solidarity, P.S. Know someone who would find magic in this newsletter? Please forward it on! Word of mouth is one way we weave connection & magic! |