Living by Tarot

When I bought my first deck of tarot cards, I’d never had a reading, and had only the foggiest theory of how they might work. I’d fortunately never heard the repressive advice, which I certainly don’t support now, that your first deck of tarot cards should be a gift from someone else. I had reached the end of a twenty year marriage and a point of severe disillusionment with all my former methods of navigating my life. While I’d been very successful as a kid by following all the rules and exceeding all the standards and winning all the gold stars and certificates and ribbons and plaques of achievement, my adult life had not continued to reward the strategy of figuring out what other people wanted from me and then executing it flawlessly. To show for myself, I’d had an uninspiring career in information technology, which I’d quit to raise kids who were getting more independent by the minute, and write a novel which, after a dozen years and eight total rewrites, remained unpublished. And then the marriage. I’d been doing the best I knew how, and none of it was getting me anywhere I wanted to go. And it seemed to me that none of the rules, none of the guidance or advice or conventions I’d been relying on to guide me, were operating in my best interests. In fact, they seemed to be keeping me small, and scared, and sad, and worried about money.

The problem didn’t seem to be the one that cynicism would suggest, that everyone was out for themselves at my expense. The problem was that, when I looked around at everyone I knew and loved and trusted enough to take advice from, even the ones who seemed very successful, I could see that not one of them had any clearer or better way of finding their path than I did. If they weren’t even finding the way to where they wanted to go, why on earth would I imagine they could give me directions to where I should be going?

I thought tarot might be a way to give advice to myself. Six years later on, having read for myself almost every day and become a professional reader for others, I can say that I was completely right about that, though wrong in all my initial theories about why it might work. I learned how to read the cards from books, doing simple spreads, looking up the meanings, puzzling over the possibilities, taking photos of my readings and then going back regularly to analyze how and whether my interpretations had been supported by the events of my days. I also started using the cards to make decisions. I’d ask a question, draw a card. Upright, the card meant yes. In reverse (image upside down), it meant no. The card itself gave more information. The Ace of Pentacles in reverse is no, probably due to lack of resources. The Knight of Cups is yes, and it’s a well-meaning and generous impulse, though perhaps overly idealistic. I began always taking the advice of my cards, although at first this felt terrifying and insane. I did it as a discipline and an act of faith, and I’ve never regretted following the guidance. Even when I didn’t enjoy the results, they have invariably been useful and important experiences, and my life has been infinitely more meaningful, rewarding and expansive since I started living by tarot instead of by the rules.

In the beginning, I thought the cards would work by reflecting my own experience back to me, essentially telling me things I already knew but perhaps didn’t know that I knew. I quickly realized, however, that the cards could definitely tell me things I did not already know and had no way of knowing. Where I’d imagined the cards would draw on my subconscious knowledge, I realized they were drawing on super-conscious knowledge, which came from a higher perspective than my conscious one. Super-conscious knowledge is shared, in that we are all connected to this greater source of knowing. For this reason, I could usefully read for others, even people I didn’t know at all. I had not initially imagined reading for others at all, but as soon as I realized I could, I was strongly drawn to do it. I had stumbled on a source of guidance that was exactly what I had hoped for, a way to navigate my path, not the one that convention would suggest, or that some self-help guru recommended, or that my mother or my therapist or best friend approved of, but mine—even when I didn’t know exactly where I was trying to go. And this source of guidance was inherent in the cards themselves, not in some special quality of mine beyond the learned skill of interpreting the cards. I want to share this tool with others, since it seems to me that we all have the same problem, a sense that we could be living more meaningful and satisfying lives than we’ve managed on the course laid out for us, if only we could get a better map, exit the interstate with its soul-killing traffic jams, and locate our own personal roads less traveled. I can read this map for others by reading their cards for them, but they could do it even more effectively if they learned to read the cards themselves.

For a long time, I had no better advice for others who wanted to learn than to do what I had done, gradually commit to memory the meanings of seventy-eight rather arbitrary-seeming symbols, all of which have a range of possible different meanings in reverse. This is A LOT of memorization. It’s made harder by the fact that the symbols are contemporary to the 1500s, when the tarot deck as we know it was first developed, and by the understanding that tarot—like all esoterica—is obscure on purpose, and was even in the days when everyone knew what a hierophant was and a certain segment of society actually lived in towers.

What was needed to make tarot more learnable was a framework to hang it on —a way to describe its underlying structure. I thought cross-referencing numerology with the four elements (fire, water, air, and earth) that are represented by the suits of the Minor Arcana might provide the key. And it did. It broke down the decks into a manageable number of categories and concepts. But studying each category and the relationships among the cards in each one revealed something surprising and even more worthwhile. I’d expected an overview of the human experience. What I found instead was something more like the human mission statement. No wonder tarot is such a good source of guidance—because inherent in the cards themselves is a map of what each of us, by virtue of having incarnated as a human, seeks to accomplish in a lifetime. And whether or not we choose to use the cards as a source of guidance, the wisdom in the overview they provide is profound.

Here is the story that the cards reveal.

To incarnate as human, a living being possessing consciousness and free will and native to Earth, is to incarnate as a creator. All living beings have the capacity to create new life and to evolve and develop over time. Humans possess, to an exceptional degree, the additional ability to conceive of ideas—not just copies of ourselves—that have not existed before, and bring them into being. When these creations are successful—the wheel, government, religion, language, writing, agriculture, to name a few—they, too, replicate and spread and develop and evolve. In this way, humans participate in an important and meaningful way in the agenda of the Universe, which continually seeks to expand and develop and evolve as a matter of its basic nature.

Since to be human is to be a creator, the goal and purpose of every human is to participate in the creative process. The number and kind of creations that humans are capable of is infinite, but the process itself has a few basic steps and is subject to a few basic principles.

A creation is composed of equal parts Matter and Spirit, and these are fused together, for a finite period, into one. Matter provides stability and structure; Spirit is infinite and expansive. Matter will attempt to maintain its form but must eventually break down, becoming material for new creations. Spirit cannot cease to expand, and will, like a hermit crab, eventually outgrow its Matter shell and move on to new incarnations. All life is a creation, capable of creating more life like itself, possessing a material body infused with a spirit. But a creation is any idea (Spirit) which takes a measurable, observable, experienceable form (Matter), and which can be replicated in a similar form even after the original creation dies, ends, or breaks down. For example, at some point a human made the first chair. That chair merged the spirit or idea of a chair with the specific matter (stone, wood, pile of moss, hanging vine) that made up the chair. And millennia after that first chair was conceived, built, used, and broken down, the spirit of chair remains alive and well and expansive and creative and continues to incarnate into new individual chairs at the hands of new creators. (But a creation doesn’t have to be as solid as a chair. It can also be a concept that plays out many individual times, such as marriage.)

The steps of the creative process are: 1) desire, 2) invitation and reception, 3) gestation and birth, 4) completion and release. These steps are the same for sexual procreation and for the individual creative process. The first step is desire, the restless compass needle that points the way towards something we lack and wish to experience. That might be lust/a desire for sexual union, or a stiff knee resulting in a desire to sit on something higher than the ground. Second, we invite and receive what we desire, and the germ of an idea is infused into a seed of matter. Sexual union is invitation and reception, and perhaps an egg is fertilized. Or, in the case of the chair, the creator casts about for (invites and receives) some material that could be adapted to meet the desire for an elevated seat. Third, we gestate the new creation into being with our energy and resources. The fertilized egg must be carried, protected, and nourished for nine months in the womb to develop into a being capable of breathing and sustaining life on its own. The materials that compose the chair must be collected and assembled and placed in order for the germ of the chair to be gestated into an actual, sittable chair. Fourth, the child is birthed into the world, the umbilicus is cut, and an individual life as a new human begins. Or, the chair is completed, the creator’s task ends, the chair exists independent of its creator, and anyone who happens along can sit on it, or experience desire for a chair and begin the process all over again by building their own.

The creative process involves confronting and overcoming a series of challenges. Every power has its limitations, which both channel and concentrate that power with proper alignment, and derail it with misalignment.

The first of these challenges is mortality. Every individual creation possesses, by nature of its elements (Matter and Spirit), the expectation of immortality, and by nature of their union, a finite existence. Everything born must die. Every union of Matter and Spirit must eventually end in separation. Spirit must eventually develop and expand beyond the structure and limitation of Matter, and Matter must eventually break down, overcoming that structure and limitation in its own way. Both Matter and Spirit are immortal, but the union of the two is not, since the movement of their development is in opposite directions.

The second challenge is the conservative nature of Matter. Matter resists decomposition, which is to say that it is stable and tends to be unyielding. Once it takes a particular form, it keeps it as long as possible. This is a strength, since this conservatism is what allows any individual creation to endure. However, Matter must also yield and develop in order to make room for the infusion of Spirit and participate in the act of creation. It must be malleable enough to allow for the growth and development of Spirit but not so pliant that it can’t maintain and protect the form of the creation. To become material, to manifest, while still growing and developing as much as possible, is the goal of Spirit, and to participate in union with Spirit is also the goal of Matter. The fusion of the two is the preferred state of both. By subjecting themselves to the stress of the other, each achieves a potential greater than either could achieve alone.

The next challenge is that Spirit resists imprisonment in Matter. As soon as the two are merged, Spirit seeks movement, development, growth, release, renewal, and change, while Matter prefers to maintain stability. Every union of Matter and Spirit begins with Spirit freely choosing the form and stability that Matter offers, and Matter freely choosing to adapt to the inspiration of Spirit. And yet, of their natures, both will eventually reach a point where they feel imprisoned in their union. Matter will dig in its heels and refuse to adapt and develop. Spirit will start to leak out of an unsuitable container, leaching away vitality and purpose from the union. Matter will become sick or broken. Spirit will gradually (or swiftly) withdraw from the container.

Ideally there is a healthy give and take between Matter and Spirit, a series of small adjustments keeping the two in balance, Matter remaining stable enough to give form to Spirit but flexible enough to allow Spirit room to grow and develop. If this doesn’t happen, with Matter becoming either too weak to adapt or too overbuilt and inflexible to allow Spirit to grow, there are two possibilities. One is death, in which Spirit can’t live within the limitations imposed by Matter and leaves completely, while Matter then breaks down on its own time frame. But another possibility is a partial breakdown that is not fatal: a remodeling process. In a person, this might look like an illness, requiring physical healing, or it might look like a breakdown in the structures of their life—a move, a divorce, a career change. In the wake of the breakdown, devastating as it may feel, comes new freedom for Spirit, and the opportunity for Matter to repair in a more flexible way.

For a human to be at our optimal state, which is our peak creative capacity, we need to be strong in both body/Matter and Spirit. We have a pretty clear understanding of what it means to be strong in our material bodies—to be in good health, mature in our growth, physically capable and flexible, with excellent endurance. We are much less clear on what it means to be strong in Spirit. Perhaps the best way to understand this is to recognize that Spirit, even when it is participating in a union with Matter, is always still part of and indivisible from Source, or the divine, or universal oneness. The weakest condition of Spirit is to experience itself as isolated, alone, cut off from Source and connection and belonging. The more isolated Spirit feels, the more it withdraws from the material container and the conditions that appear to limit its connection, and if this process goes far enough, it results in death. The strongest condition of Spirit is to be fully and vitally present in the material container AND fully and vitally connected to Source, and to experience a state of flow in which the material container does not isolate, but participates in and facilitates the creative process of Source. Humans experience this condition as having a higher purpose or calling, spirituality, faith, a connection with God or a higher power. But while humans tend to view this enlightened state of experiencing a strong connection to Source as a goal and an end point, it is not that. It is simply the optimal state of Spirit—as it is united with Matter—for exercising creativity and participating in the development and ongoing expansion of the Universe. We can best walk our path of creativity, development, and expansion when we are strong in both Matter and Spirit—Matter providing the means, and Spirit providing the direction.

In addition to the challenges of merging Matter and Spirit, another set of challenges involves the transition from creation to creator, from a child dependent on parents who are engaging in the creative act of nurturing their creation, to an autonomous being responsible for our own continued creative development.

A nurturing process, in which the creator uses their own energy and resources to develop a creation to an autonomous state, is a basic and necessary phase of any creative act. However, this phase is temporary, as a creation isn’t successful until it can stand without the ongoing support of its creator. This is as true of humans as of sculptures. Humans, with our long childhoods, go through a double gestational

phase. The first occurs in the womb, and has a clear conclusion, with birth and the cutting of the umbilicus. Even if a mother wished to keep feeding her child through the umbilicus after birth, the physical structure shuts down and makes this impossible. At birth, a child becomes a separate being from its mother. However, our current culture is much less clear about the point at which childhood ends and autonomous, creative adulthood begins. At some point it does, whether that point is puberty, when humans become capable of procreation, or some other point that is culturally defined. Beyond that point, even if the parent wishes to continue to provide nurture, and even if the offspring wishes to continue to be nurtured, the umbilicus shuts down. If the offspring continues to passively seek nutrition, it’s parasitism or addiction. If the parent continues to provide, it’s a control issue. In both cases it’s a problem of the conservatism of Matter imprisoning the developing and creative nature of Spirit. What should happen instead is a flip of the switch, the change from consumer to producer.

Another issue that is not well understood in our current culture is that the nurture provided by parents, and any other creative process, is always and without exception imperfect. Its function is to bring the creation to an autonomous state. It is not to meet every possible need at every possible moment. Every human being is driven by the expansive, creative nature of Spirit to develop and grow and bring into being that which hasn’t existed before. The desiring nature of Spirit is never fully satiated, and never still. For this reason, no child will ever reach adulthood with a sense of complete satisfaction and fullness, or, for that matter, ever experience this feeling of completion and perfection in any lasting way during the experience of human life. The experience of what we lack is the very experience that powers our creativity, and inspires us to bring something new into being. Our concept of karma is the principle that Spirit will keep tackling the same problem or feeling of lack, recreating the conditions that cause the experience, until we can address it and move on. Since Spirit is immortal, it doesn’t care how many times it has to create the same problem in order to solve it. This means the lack we experience in childhood likely carries over from previous lifetimes. Of course, this concept applies throughout life. As creators, we may seek to create experiences we lacked in childhood, but all of life represents cycles of identifying lack and seeking to fill it, then releasing and moving on to a new creative cycle.

Because our culture is unclear that the nurture stage ends completely at some point and becomes destructive to both parties if attempted beyond that point, and also unclear about when that point occurs, we tend to stay focused in a very unhealthy way on trying to extract—from our parents, from romantic relationships, from therapy, from doctors—the nurture which we perceive that we needed but did not receive in childhood. What we must understand is that, beyond that cutoff point, we are autonomous creators of our own lives, and anything which we did not receive while dependent that we still desire is now the compass needle pointing us down the path of our own creative development. It is up to us to bring into being that which we desire. It is no one else’s job to provide it for us. To insist that it is leads to the Spirit-draining experiences of victimhood and addiction, and denies our creative nature.

All of the above principles and challenges are represented by the cards of the Major Arcana. Each of the twenty-two Major Arcana cards describes a stage of the creative process or one of the challenges to it. Forty of the Minor Arcana cards, Ace through ten of each suit, refer to the same principles and challenges, but are more granular, showing how each of the elements of the creative process (desire, invitation, Spirit, Matter) are experienced in each phase or challenge of the creative cycle. This experience is quite different depending on the element. For example, the tens represent completion and release. The completion of desire (wands) is exhaustion and cessation. The completion of invitation (cups) is conception, the

union of Spirit and Matter. The completion of Spirit (swords) is death, Spirit leaving Matter. The completion of Matter (pentacles) is the successful creation, birthed and celebrated.

The sixteen Court cards of the Minor Arcana, Page, Knight, Queen, and King of each suit, represent how the elements of creation are wielded by the creative being at each of the four stages of the creative process. Pages are inexperienced, still in the stage of being nurtured or taught. Knights have achieved autonomy and are acting on their creative desire. Queens are gestating the creation, and are in relationship, sharing their gifts with others. Kings are the self-actualized creator, in control of their creative power to bring that which they desire into the material.

In reverse, each card represents some difficulty with the stage it shows, an obstacle to moving through it, or the conclusion of that stage, or in some cases, the opposite condition of the stage. It can also represent the negative experience of that condition (or the positive experience, if the condition the card shows is negative). A useful acronym is WIND. W = Waning influence, I = inverse or opposite condition, N = negative influence, D = delayed or obstructed.

All told, these seventy-eight cards provide a comprehensive set of signposts for helping us understand where we are on our path of creative development and expansion—our own personal spiral path. They show us the nature of the challenges we are currently confronting, along with the projected outcome if we continue on our current course. They can serve as a decision-making tool to help us take the best trajectory along our path, in accordance with the compass needle of our desire. What they cannot do is usefully predict the future, since our purpose as human beings is to create that future.

How does tarot possess these magical abilities? Tarot is a creation, a union of Matter and Spirit, that has replicated and expanded and developed over time. Its Matter, seventy-eight symbols printed on cards, is not mysterious to understand. Its

Spirit is animated by a convergence of the desire of its creators to aid humans in their creative process through divination, and the desire of the Universe to expand and develop through human creativity. When we interact with the cards, the desire of our own Spirit to develop and expand joins and collaborates with the Spirit of the cards. Tarot works according to the principles that it illustrates. It works whether we believe in it or not. But it only works if we allow ourselves to be guided by it.