Contemplations about Tarot: Part 4

Originally published on my blogspot 24.2.2014. I offer this series here as it was written and published then, with some minor grammatical corrections and edits in formatting and change in accompanying images. Enjoy.

The absolute freedom

When you take a deck into your hands you have to assume everything that happens after that is out of your control. And don't get me wrong, that is exactly how you want things to be. You want to loose control, to become a passenger, just tagging along for the ride.

The two ways of Tarot

There is a difference between interpreting and reading cards. When you are interpreting Tarot, you are the driver. The steering wheel is in your hands and you have the responsibility of deciding where to turn, which way to go, and which corners to cut. Interpretation of cards is exactly that analytical way of combining and subtracting, multiplying and dividing an equation consisting of only variables and then trying to insert numbers of choice to see whether they fit. Yes, it can be done under any circumstance, and yes, by sheer chance it can produce results. But they are in the long run unreliable and shifty.

When you read Tarot, you are a passenger. You sit comfortably and trust that you will be taken where you need to go. The one who drives knows the road better than you. You give up the freedom of choice and with it the freedom to screw up, by choosing the wrong road. Of course it isn't bullet proof. Shit still happens, but this time the odds are stacked the other way round.

This series, as I have been oh-so-gently suggesting, is about the art of letting go. It is about all the wonders that can happen when you are free-falling.

The prerequisite is to understand you have to be able to turn yourself off.

So, moving on.

First step

You don't have to master anything. You just have to know what and how to do it. Rest comes with practice (and when it doesn't work out you can always go back to the other method for that particular reading - just note that it doesn't work the other way around; once you do the math, the door is closed for that reading). Just do it. Close your eyes, open your third eye and concentrate on your question. Shuffle.

I sometimes repeat the question over and over and over again in my head. It is interesting, that if the question is not very well worded, I sometimes catch myself repeating something I had not quite in mind, but usually, it turns out to be the right way to ask about that particular thing (for instance: Will he love me -> Does he love me; What will happen to X in the next week -> Will it happen to X in the next week?). You never know. 

Other times I imagine the question in pictures instead. If I'm asking about a relationship, I will close my eyes and imagine the two people next to each other (doesn't matter whether you know what they look like or their name, just assign them a generic look and a nickname ("the weird haircut guy", "spiteful coworker" "the frog girl" - whatever it is that pinpoints for you who you are asking about)) and just wonder how they coexist together and most of the time a story begins developing. A backdrop appears, they start talking or fighting or a third person appears. I usually describe those visions to the sitter even while I'm shuffling.

The Art of shuffling *smirk*

Most of  times, while asking a question, I'll see the way the cards should be placed (usually not for common and simple questions, but for more generic questions or questions that turn out to have complicated answers it happens 95% of times).

What I don't do, almost never, is take cards out of the decks to complete the spread, and when I do, it's usually not a card pertinent to the question at hand, but rather the need to take a card out of the deck comes from my own subconscious giving an answer to my own unconscious question. 

I use cards that jump out of the deck during the shuffling [Editing note from 2026: today I would have worded it to convey the fact that using jumpers is a further way of reliquishing control over the reading], in the order they jump out. Lately most times, the majority or the whole number of cards I need for the foreseen spread jumps out simultaneously (and from different parts of the deck. Fancy that). Most people will attribute that to an erratic way of shuffling, generic clumsiness or sloppiness, but it's not. I am aware of how it works. When I am consciously thinking and being focused on the shuffling itself, I shuffle perfectly. Nothing happens, no cards fall out.

The state of mind I have been describing so thoroughly it takes over the body too. In this state of things, when you truly are an oracle, that is when you truly divine (etymology: from Latin divinare "to foresee, to be inspired by a god" not "interpret the meanings of RWS to fit your situation"), even your shuffling hands are not yours to control anymore. What makes the cards fall out are micro spasms of the hand muscles that I cannot control and if I did, it would be like the passenger trying to touch the steering wheel - never a good idea. And when the little trembles, contortions and spasms of the smallest muscles in the hand happen, that's when I know I'm in the right place, and that I should immerse myself deeper.

Everything that happens, everything that flies by in my head is relevant, because I'm not there in that moment to judge, opine, wish for or plainly imagine. Trust your instincts. Trust your intuition. Trust that you are taken where you need to be, even if it's not where you wanted to be in the first place. 

Don't over think the poetry, just loose yourself in its images and language. You'll understand. 

Post scriptum - fair warning

I am encouraging you to open yourself up to higher powers.

 Please, don't take any risks.

 Don't forget to cleanse your working space before and after divining. If anything feels uncomfortable, weird, painful, the cards are talking in gibberish, it is very possible that you have attracted a trickster, to put it mildly. Just banish it, ask a god, and angel or a spirit you feel comfortable with for protection and try again. 

It also helps if you ask that entity for the answer you seek. They can protect themselves from jokers and negative energies and they do know a lot. They live in the collective unconscious / astral plane, for goodness sake.