Hi, internet! Welcome to my tarot blog. I’m a tarot enthusiast, an ex-academic with a background in ritual studies, and a writer, and I have a ton of stuff to say about the tarot. Maybe some of you will want to read that stuff! Let’s find out together.
I picked this first topic because the question “What is tarot?” usually tells you more about the person asking it than it does about the tarot itself. It seemed like the best subject for an intro post: a way for people to get to know me through how I engage with the cards. So what do I think tarot is?
It’s ritual: I fricking love ritual, and tarot is full of it. It feels powerful in a way that stems from a long, rich cultural history. The archetypes within the cards seem ageless and endless, and the way they’re transformed with each new deck and each new reading is so fantastically dynamic. Plus, there are all sorts of smaller rituals attached to how you store, cleanse, open, shuffle, and choose the cards. The thrum of significance as you lay them out in a pattern is utterly satisfying. It’s a way to bring meaning and order into your life, and it works.
It’s meditation: Each and every one of the 78 tarot cards means something that will resonate with basically everyone. Control? Check. Intuition? Check. Nostalgia? Check. Deceit? Check. Petty bullshit? Check and check.1 Unless you’re incredibly enlightened, all these feelings and thoughts constantly float around inside us, combining and separating and crashing along like wild-ass bumper cars. So we find ourselves upset without knowing why, anxious even though nothing’s wrong, wanting something desperately even though it’s a really bad idea. The tarot brings light and focus to it all, and the ritual around it gives us a quiet space to be aware without judgment.2
1. The Magician, the High Priestess, the Six of Cups, the Seven of Swords, and the Five of Wands, respectively. In case you were curious.
2. Though Judgement is, ironically, a very accepting card.
It’s fun: It’s incredibly fun. Watching the cards turn over one by one, creating narrative, tracking patterns – it’s a trip. Sometimes the cards are spooky accurate, which is just an absolute joy. Sometimes they’re totally incongruous, and I have to think my way into a workable interpretation, like solving a puzzle. I love doing readings to tell a story, to entertain, to have a good time. I love getting a new deck and seeing how someone else has interpreted each card’s meaning. And, because I am an enormous nerd, I love learning about the cards’ histories and meanings. Tarot is fun.
It’s art: I love art, but I never used to engage much with visual art day-to-day. Now I do. Each deck is 78 separate works of art, combined into one enormous mega-art piece, and there are hundreds of gorgeous decks out there. Plus, because of the nature of tarot, you’re not just glancing at them once and moving on. One tarot technique a friend taught me, which I love and use constantly, is to engage first with what you see in the picture on each card, and only afterward with the meanings you have memorized. It’s a fantastic opportunity to take a deep dive into something beautiful.
So for me, tarot is an opportunity for introspection, a fun time, and an exercise in beauty. It’s not an interaction with the future, or with the divine, but it is a way to engage with truth. If tarot is something else for you, I think that’s awesome and I’m curious to hear about it – please comment and let me know! I’m looking forward to keeping this blog as not just a record of my current thoughts and experiences, but a way to learn and grow in my understanding. I hope you’ll join me.
Minor Arcanas 