Tarot - The Divine Knowing
We will have to start with my belief in, and understanding of, Tarot. Many people dismiss Tarot because they have been inundated with the pop culture portrayal–the culture-appropriative diviner pulling an ominous card, the visage of the reaper and the word DEATH in big bold letters. Warning them of terrible omens or new people in their lives. Telling them of events and curses and shit–look. It’s not like that, and it will never be like that. Tarot neither foretells the future nor creates it, at least in such vapid, literal ways. That sort of magic is the easy, facile version of the real thing. Real magic, I’m learning, is much deeper, much less knowable, and at once much more instinctive and true to all beings.
I don’t mean to be talking like some esoteric eccentric. Maybe I am, though. I can’t pretend that Tarot is also just nothing, just a game, or even just a way to pick a random lens through which you think about the world for the day. Books and books are written about the nature of the service the deck gives us, and there’s reasons it can go on for days. Language doesn’t reasonably encompass the inner wisdom Tarot accesses. Lessons don’t impart the truth of the practice–practice does.
So I can only speak from my experience: Tarot works by getting you working.
Our minds, our souls, are powerful forces. We are powerful forces, and we wield powerful forces. Unconscious and subconscious intuition affect us all to differing amounts, we all affect each other, and our communities affect the world–and vice versa. We only consciously perceive a small portion of the information and energy at work at any given moment. This has been proven through study, science, meditation, religion, etc. Everyone believes that to some extent or another. So imagine if you could connect with the part of you that Sees and Knows.
Our bodies hold information we haven’t tapped into. Tension when we pick up problems, warmth when we’re experiencing connections. Tarot helps focus all our knowing into particular questions, particular perspectives, and particular archetypes. It is a ritual through which we unlock our inherent ability to answer our own questions. In readings involving two people, the person being read for is just as much a participant in the final answer, guiding the reader with their own insight. We are, after all, the greatest experts on ourselves.
And thus, in the end, Tarot is magic. And Tarot is not magic. Tarot is us. We sit and invest in this tool of centering and meditation, we apply the wisdom of those who came before us to the wisdom of our perfect instinct. We face challenges and, if we’re honest, we challenge ourselves. Tarot is not a place for easy answers or fixes. It provides no instant knowledge. Tarot is a pathway we walk and create in the same moment to reach the Truth.
I was introduced to magic years before I picked up Tarot, but I did not become magic until I sat with the cards. Only a month and already I’ve seen so much growth. I can’t wait to see what I have learned in a year, or how my answer to ‘what is Tarot?’ will change.
Without parroting what I’ve read from the many books I’ve studied, I will be recording my own experiences and interpretations of this journey. It may be helpful to some, or deemed Utter Bullshit by others. That’s okay. I’ve read other people’s takes on some Tarot cards and thought it was stunningly wrong. But that’s in my life, not theirs. Tarot is a tool we form our own relationship with, a practice we strengthen by allowing for interpretations as diverse as the human experience.
Addendum: The Masculine and Feminine
First, the customary disclaimer. Contention around the traditional sense and attributions of masculine and feminine to cards and aspects has led almost every book or blog on the topic to clarify their take on gendering the cards, and I understand why. Our relationships with our decks are deeply intimate and personal, and if those decks clash with our relationships with self and gender–well. I know firsthand how off-putting that can be to the understanding of a draw. I myself am genderfluid and rarely make it all the way to one end of the spectrum or the other. So it follows that I don’t mesh too well with the traditional lexicon defining certain cards or traits as ‘more boy’ or ‘more girl’.
No, they don’t say it like that. I know. But no matter the intention and meaning behind the use of the words, there will always be that nagging feeling that I am not fully encompassed by this version of the discipline. So, with respect, I will accept the wisdom those teachers have to offer and discard the gendered words. Instead, I will substitute their definitions when exploring how to interpret a card.
Masculine, for instance, is often associated with the more active and outward expressions of energy. A ‘masculine’ card might prefer to influence its surroundings rather than explore its internal power. A ‘feminine’ card may stray from abject intellectualism and nurture its intuition and spiritual knowing. In theory, they are the two halves of the whole that makes up every human, man or woman–we can and should develop both! Each tool–action and introspection, rationality and emotionality–is a critical part of our toolkit for life. In my experience, to gender a thing is to assign implicit value statements, both to the thing and to the gender it is associated with.
We don’t need more of that in the world right now. With respect to the wholeness of humanity, and without respect to the false binary, I will be avoiding gendered interpretations to the best of my ability. The court cards will be the only minor exception to this.