The Tarot and Me

By Comfy Mom

There was a period of time, lasting almost a decade, when I read the cards regularly, daily even. I did my 3 card draw every morning. I did a spread every new moon and every sabbat. I read for others in person and over the internet. I drew cards at random and used them as the basis for short stories. I meditated on them and I used them as elements in spells. I collected 108 different decks and used most of them at least occasionally.

Then I became pregnant and the hormones made me worry about how I would react to ‘negative’ cards. What if I drew the Tower? The 4 of cups? The 10 of swords?. Normally I am a rational person and take those cards in their stride as part of larger picture, but given that it seemed everything I encountered either made me cry or throw up, I decided to put the cards away for awhile & come back when the time felt right.

Seven years and two children later the time again felt right but I’d been away a long time. The knowledge I’d had was now buried under memories of sleepless nights, diapers, the ABC’s, the names of all the trains on Sodor, karate practice, dinosaur breeds and Laurie Berkner songs. I’d stare at the 8 of Wands and the Empress and not be able to relate them at all to what I had been asking about. I needed to go back to the beginning & relearn the tarot.

Fortunately I had not purged those books from my shelves and after some consideration pulled down a trio of books by Mary K Greer that had served me well in the past – Tarot for Yourself, Tarot Mirrors, and Tarot Constellations.

Tarot for Yourself is a workbook geared toward helping you read for yourself. It uses many different exercises such as meditations, rituals, spreads, visualizations, rituals, charts and plenty of questions to help you on your path to reading the cards. You must be willing to work at it. This is a hands on book. It isn’t just reading and remembering keywords but using the cards over and over. The effort will repay you though.

Lay out 3 cards, answer these questions about them, meditate on their relationship to one another, envision a dialogue between them. Change their positions, how does that change the dialogue?

Greer has a variety of spreads in the book including the basic Celtic Cross, a chakra spread, the Tree of Life and several 1 and 3 card spreads. Each comes with an analysis for the postions and their meanings plus leading questions to get you started on interpretation. She has you play with the cards, interact with them, get to know and enjoy them,

This book helps you get involved with the cards, realize their potential beyond the little white book and trust your instincts on the interpretations. It is an excellent and useful guide to learning to use the cards beyond their basic meanings and once you can relate the cards to yourself, you can the start to relate them to others. This book is wonderful for both beginners and experienced readers who want to connect more personally with the cards

I have the 1984 version of the book, but a second edition was released in 2002. Despite the age of the book it is still an excellent and relevant book for any tarot lover to have in their library.

Next time I will be reviewing Tarot Mirrors.