Finding The Pattern: The Major Arcana & the Tarot Court

The tarot is a fascinating tool of communication and clarity, where we build trust in our own stories through the mythic archetypes presented to and invented by us in the cards.

When I held my first tarot deck and saw all the patterns spread out before me in the images of the cards, I was completely enchanted and continue to be enchanted by the cards all these decades later. While there is plenty of esoteric mystery to explore with the cards, the tarot, at its roots, is simply pointing out patterns of common experiences. From the pain of a broken heart, the pride of a skill well-developed, the boredom we all experience from time to time, the way grief changes us, and how we feel open and brave we can feel when we are able to be who we really are in the world - all these stories and so many more are told in the tarot. Storytelling is one of the ways we develop empathy and curiosity about ourselves and others, and the tarot is a storytelling tool.

One of the structures of story found in the tarot is the delineation between the Major Arcana, which are cards signifying major life events and patterns, and the Minor Arcana or cards that represent day-to-day experiences. Within the Minor Arcana is the tarot Court which are a set of sixteen characters that have an interesting relationship to the Major Arcana, helping us to find big patterns in small moments.

Knowing that the tarot court cards are ones that readers struggling with again and again (myself included!), from their hierarchical structure to sparse traditional meanings and more, I wanted to share the ways that I have come to understand the tarot court in a way that brings meaning to my own, and hopefully your, healing practice. I started earlier this year by exploring the often difficult to decipher tarot Court through the lens of healing ritual (check out part one and part two).

Now, I want to explore the tarot court in a way that's a bit more experimental and intuitive.

One of the fascinating aspects of the tarot Court cards are the way that they act like a more subtle expression of the energy and archetypes of the Major Arcana cards. Major Arcana cards often represent big energy and patterns in our life that are showing up over an extended period of time, whereas the Minor Arcana, including the Court, represent smaller energetic patterns and day-to-day insights. Yet, the deep patterns of the Major Arcana are reflected in the everyday experiences of the Minor Arcana, especially in the Court.

The Neutral Vibes Tarot

When I see the Page of Swords show up in a reading, for example, I am reminded of the energy of the Magician. While the Page of Swords has achieved some level of skill and self-control, they are are still developing their confidence and knowledge. Their body, however, has already begun to mimic that of he Magician, directing them to the wisdom of “As Above, So Below.” For me, the Page of Swords hints at the energy of the Magician, but in a more subdued and developing way. We are not meant to be gazing at the mysteries with intensity everyday (the Magician), but we are still living in a world of those mysteries (Page of Swords). In other words, the mysteries as profound are represented by the Magician while the mysteries as profane are represented by the Page of Swords.

While not every day is a profoundly meaningful sort of Major Arcana day, the energy of the Major Arcana and profundity is always at play. Through the Court cards we are a way to spot some of those deep currents of mystery represented by the Major Arcana. One of the ways these correspondences work in readings is by helping us understand our relationships with other folks in the grander scheme of our personal Major Arcana journey.

Let’s say that you pull the Page of Pentacles for a card representing a new significant other in your life. I connect the gentle energy of the Page of Pentacles with the Strength card, which would tell me that this new significant other in your life may illuminate the dynamic of Strength in your life, whether by testing it, affirming it or in some other way connect with how you embody and connect to Strength in your life. The Court cards are not meant to identify a deep valley or high peak of a pattern of energy - that’s the work of the Major Arcana - but help us to notice where that pattern is occurring in a more diffused way in our everyday life.

The Natural Ink Tarot

If you're intrigued by this idea of the Major Arcana’s connection with the Court, I’ve gone ahead and listed my very loose correspondences between the Major Arcana and the Minor Arcana. For my personal correspondences, there are a few Major Arcana cards that don’t have direct links to the Court: the Fool, the Lovers, the Wheel of Fortune, the Star, the Moon, and the Sun. The lack of correspondence for these Major Arcana cards are for the following reasons: 

• The Fool always represents who is being read for so doesn’t need a corresponding Court card

• With The Lovers, no Court card seemed to represent that particular energy to me but instead any Court card could represent oneself or others in a Lovers relationship (which is a traditional meaning for the Court card, the current, past or prospective romantic partner).

• The Wheel of Fortune is an abstracted, impersonal energy and does not easily correspond to any of the inherently personal Court cards.

• The celestial cards (The Star, The Moon, and The Sun) are similar to the current of the Fool, being deeply personal to those being read for. 

I created my Major Arcana and Court card correspondences when working with my Smith Waite Tarot and the imagery of this particular deck of cards definitely contributed to my correspondence choices. Keep that in mind if you’re interested in creating your own correspondences for your favorite deck (which I hope you do!). There are more traditional ways of connecting one card to another, mostly through astrological correspondences, but that was not my focus for my own list. I hope you feel inspired by tradition but not burdened or beholden to it whenever you read the cards, create correspondences, and use tarot as a tool of healing.

The Weiser Tarot

The Major Arcana & Court Card Correspondences

• 0. The Fool: See Note Above

• I. The Magician: Page of Swords

• II. The High Priestess: Page of Cups

• III. The Empress: Queen of Wands

• IV. The Emperor: King of Wands

• V. The Hierophant: King of Cups

• VI. The Lovers: See Note Above

• VII. The Chariot: Knight of Pentacles

• VIII. Strength: Page of Pentacles

• IX. The Hermit: Queen of Pentacles

• X. Wheel of Fortune: See Note Above

• XI. Justice: King of Swords

• XII. The Hanged Man: Knight of Cups

• XIII. Death: Page of Wands

• XIV. Temperance: Queen of Cups

• XV. The Devil: King of Pentacles

• XVI. The Tower: Knight of Wands

• XVII. The Star: See Note Above

• XVIII. The Moon: See Note Above

• XIX. The Sun: See Note Above

• XX. Judgement: Knight of Swords

• XXI. The World: Queen of Swords

Finding the Pattern Tarot Spread

If you are trying to better understand how the pattern of a Major Arcana card is playing out in your personal relationships and development of your own identity in these relationships, the following spread is meant to help.

Begin by choosing the Major Arcana card whose energy you want to explore, setting that at the top of your spread. Next, separate out the Court cards from your deck - you'll be pulling only from the Court cards for this spread.

Card 1. How I am Manifesting the Pattern

This card represents how you currently understand and are manifesting the energy of the pattern of the Major Arcana card you are exploring. For our example, let's say you are exploring the energetic patterns of the Hierophant in your life and you pull the King of Cups to represent you. The King of Cups shows that you are deeply engaged in the work of examining the hierarchical structures, restrictions, and allegiance to authority in your life, that this is a front and center focus for you. If you are seeking more clarity, you can pull two more cards from the Minor Arcana to represent how you can ease the strain of this pattern in your life (i.e. the Hierophant energy can be very serious, here are some ways to lighten up) as well as support your explorations (i.e. talk about what you're exploring with friends instead of trying to untangle it all on your own).

Card 2. The Person Helping My Understanding of the Pattern

This card, as the position title suggests, helps you identify a person in your life who is beneficially assisting your ability to explore and understand the energy of the Major Arcana card you are working with. Everything from personal and familial relationships, social and work relationships, as well as para-social relationships can show up here. For our example let's say that you pull the Queen of Pentacles who represents the energy of your high school English teacher who encouraged all of their students to read banned books, helping you to understand how the energy of the Hierophant often seeks to restrict the flow of information. 

Card 3. The Person Hindering My Understanding of the Pattern

This card helps you to identify a person in your life who is challenging your ability to understand the energy of the Major Arcana card you're exploring. For our example, you might pull the Knight of Swords, who represents an online video essayist on popular culture who you used to love for their what you thought was incisive commentary, but are coming to realize are shallow in their opinions and driven more by gossip than insight. 

Card 4. The Person to Connect With

This card represents someone who may or may not be currently connected with in your life (whether they are someone you haven't connected with recently, to someone you haven't met yet) that you would benefit from knowing as you explore the energy of the Major Arcana card you've chosen. Let's say you pull the Queen of Wands - this card might represent someone who brings a fiery, creative energy to your explorations of the often cold and reserved Hierophant, helping you find playfulness and bravery on your journey.

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Explore the rest of my tarot Court series with a look at the Pages and the Knights (including an overview of the Court structure and non-hierarchical alternatives to the royalty theme) followed by the Queens and Kings. If you’re looking for more tarot spreads, I have a whole collection to inspire your practice, too. For those ready for deepening your knowledge of how herbalism intersects with tarot, come this way.

Whether or not you work with tarot, I hope that this post has inspired you to take a look at the big patterns showing up in little ways (especially in your relationships) in your life. May you be freed from those relationships that seek to keep you stuck and small. May you be drawn towards the people and places where you feel seen, where you are able to connect through collaboration and compassion. May we find each other again and again through our healing work.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

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Tarot Decks Shown

The Neutral Vibes Tarot
The Weiser Tarot
The Natural Ink Tarot

Healing Rituals of the Tarot Court: Queens & Knights

I find the tarot to be a useful tool of self-reflection and community connection, with the Court cards being some of the most intriguing archetypes to work with. But the Court cards can also be confusing to a lot of folks (myself included in my early years of reading the cards), so I thought I’d share the ways that I’ve found these cards to speak to me and offer insights on the path of healing.

Having already explored the foundational meaning of the Court, alternative ways of naming the Court cards, and the meaning and rituals of the Pages and Knights, it is now time to turn to the Queens and Kings.

Playing Cards by Master PW (c. 1500)

Connecting & Collecting: The Queens & the Kings

The Queen and the King are the two elders of the Court cards, whether this elderhood is defined by actual chronological age or lived experience and skill, depends on the reading. Like the Pages and the Knights, their energies are inexplicably linked - one is not able to do much without the other. One of the ways that I distinguish between the energies of the cards is that I see the Queen cards as either peers (i.e. working with someone who shares similar levels of knowledge and experience which allows you to work together easier) or expressions of mystical individuation (i.e. the oracle who acts as a bridge between the mundane and magickal, but have to maintain a sense of self to be able to perform such a mystical duty safely; the mediator who is working with others but must maintain an air of separateness; or the artist who is focused on their individual self-expression). The Queens are interested in the sharing of information and preserving and creating the systems by which information can be exchanged.

The Kings are mentors and teachers - they are meant to represent knowledge and experience greater than your own. The energy of the Kings focuses on how they are going to create structures to protect the legacy of wisdom not only that they are leaving behind, but the wisdom of their communities. The Kings are interested in collecting information, sorting it, and storing it for future generations. If information of the Queens is free-flowing like a river, the Kings are the ones creating quiet pools and dams for information to pool, be studied, and easily accessed. Both are working with the flow of information and how it is accessed and shared.

The Hermit from The Neutral Vibes Tarot

For a different approach to understanding what I just shared about the Queens and Kings, take a moment to imagine the traditional Smith-Waite image of The Hermit. For me, the Queens are the Hermit themselves, often accessed in the wild and fierce places of our psyche, while the Kings are the lantern which protect the light of wisdom - both of them have worked hard to nourish and make sure that others will see and be warmed by the light of wisdom for generations to come.

The Rituals

These rituals were written with the solitary practitioner in mind but can be easily adapted to group needs. Add to, adjust, and leave out whatever you need from the rituals as you are called. I try to create rituals that are simple enough for most folks to show up to but can also act as a foundation for folks to build upon. I hope you always feel inspired to make them your own.

Deck names listed below

The Queens: A Ritual of Reconciliation

Oracle · Companion · Artist · Visionary · Sybil · Mediator · Organizer
Primary Element: Water
Plant Ally: Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis)

Working with the Queens is an opportunity to reconcile different aspects of your life into a woven whole. When Queen cards show up again and again in our readings they can indicate a need to acknowledge, honor, and make space for an important aspect of your identity that has been denied, hidden away or not properly recognized for its brilliance. Another way to understand Queen energy is to imagine your energy or your sense of self as a river and to notice where that energy is blocked and stagnant versus free and flowing. The reasons why Queen cards so often act like mirrors to our own state of flow is because they are interested in the exchange of energy and knowledge which can only happen when we are able to access our own energy and knowledge and allow it to flow between ourselves and others. Queen energy helps us to recognize the parts of ourselves that we worry or believe "hinder" the more acceptable parts of ourselves (whether that is acceptable by our own standards or the standards of the people and cultures around us such as it might be seen as acceptable for us to embody the energy of the constant helper but unacceptable to be the confident leader). 

In the following ritual we'll begin by identifying one aspect of ourselves that we hope to embrace, to call home, to reconcile with.

For your ritual, you'll need all four Queen cards from your tarot deck of choice. Alternatively, you can spend time drawing, collaging, or otherwise creating your own personal Queen cards to use in ritual. Depending on the aspect of yourself you're seeking to embrace, you'll need items that you can use to build an altar for that part of yourself, including images and items which celebrate that part of yourself and make that part of yourself feel at home (i.e. a flag that corresponds with the part of your gender or sexuality you are embracing).

Take a moment to contemplate one part of yourself that may have been denied but deserves reconciliation. For some of you this will be clear, but for others this might need some extra consideration, maybe even a tarot spread to help you connect with the part of yourself that feels missing. You can also ask yourself questions along the lines of:

• What is a part of myself that I hide away from others because I worry what they'll think?

• Who would I be more of if I wasn't afraid of the perceived or real consequences?

When you're ready, begin by laying out the four Queen cards face down in front of you. Holding the image of the part of yourself that you are calling home, speak the following invocation:

Queen of wisdom
Queen of might
Wrap me in your dark and light
Guard the path that on I go
That what I call
Comes safely home

Then choose one of the Queen cards - this is the Queen that has stepped forward to guard the path between you and the part of you that you are calling home. Set the card in a central place on your altar. You can set the other Queen cards either behind your guardian Queen or on other parts of your altar as you feel called. 

Now, build your altar, speaking sweet things to the part of you that you are calling home as you set up a space of honor for them, for you. You can be silly or sincere or some space between - speak in a way that feels good to the part of you that you're calling home, maybe even using a name or title either given or chosen that feels personal and special to the part of you that you're calling home. You might say things like:

• Oh my sweet young self, with all your playfulness and silliness, come on home, I have your favorite book right here.

• Hello, art kid, it's time to pick up your pencils again. I can't wait to create art with you.

• Hey, there, tenderheart. It's ok to cry here, your sensitivity is so beautiful and I've missed you.

• Beautiful one, I'm so sorry I've had to keep you hidden away - it's safe now for us to start dressing more like who we really are. 

As you build your altar and speak your sweet spell of homecoming, whenever you start to turn to the image of the Queen on your altar and speak the invocation, calling their power in to protect you and support you as you reconcile with this part of yourself that you're calling home. 

When you feeling settled, you can speak the following charm:

Holy, holy, holy
Holy is the way
Found myself here again
And here I'm going to stay

If you want, you can end with a tarot spread that acts like a reintroduction to your reconciling self. This can be as simple as a three card energetic check-in or more complex like an Ancient Self or Future Self spread. Keep your altar up for as long as you like, either adding or subtracting from it as your reconciled self becomes more settled and more able to shape your world in a reflection of your wholeness.

Deck names listed below

The Kings: A Ritual of Legacy

Archivist · Queen · Mentor · Shadow · Architect · Sage · Teacher
Primary Element: Fire
Plant Ally: Sage (Salvia officinalis)

Working with the Kings is an opportunity to create little legacies for our future self to benefit from. The legacies that we are creating, both personal and communal, aren't just about what we leave behind when we pass on to the next life, but those that we and others are creating that are useful for us in the present and not-so-distant future. While the magick of the Queens in our lives mean that we might be identifying and tapping into currents of energy that we desire (i.e. the ecstasy of a runner's high and the pleasure of a mental and physical challenge), the magick of the Kings in our lives help us to create the structure for that energy to thrive and flow (i.e. scheduling time for runs each week and researching the best shoe for your needs). 

The following ritual helps us to create small reminders for our future self of our present wisdom to help us reach a specific goal or for our general wellbeing. 

For your ritual, you'll need all four King cards from your tarot deck of choice. Alternatively, you can spend time drawing, collaging, or otherwise creating your own personal King cards to use in ritual. You will also need at least four pieces of paper (I like to use index cards) and your favorite writing supplies.

Begin by setting out the four King cards in the cardinal directions around you. You can follow the directional correspondences of the tradition you follow, but here's the recommendations for many western esoteric traditions:

• East: King of Swords

• South (Northern Hemisphere) / North (Southern Hemisphere): King of Wands

• West: King of Cups

• North (Northern Hemisphere) / South (Southern Hemisphere): King of Pentacles 

Call in the energy of each King by turning to the appropriate direction and speaking the corresponding invocation. If you like, you can also light a candle in each direction, trace an invoking pentagram, offer incense, water, etc. Create as much structure and ceremony to the ritual as you feel inspired to. I have used the title "King" for each of the invocations, but you should feel free to substitute the title for the one you're most connected with.

King of Swords
Come you near!
Thought and skill
Gifts you bear!
Place of rising
Space of light
Bring your magick
To this rite!

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King of Wands
Come you near!
Respect and trust
Gifts you bear!
Place of action
Space of might
Bring your magick
To this rite!

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King of Cups
Come you near!
Hope and healing
Gifts you bear!
Place of feeling
Space of sight
Bring your magick
To this rite!

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King of Pentacles
Come you near!
Love and growth
Gifts you bear!
Place of courage
Space of life
Bring your magick
To this rite!

Once you have called in each of the four Kings, it's time to work with pen and paper. As each King represents a different area of your life to create the types of structures that work best for you, you'll be creating a series of cards that help you connect with a piece of wisdom and follow up steps for each area of your life. For general wellbeing affirmations and accompanying actions  inspired by the King of Swords in your life might be:

• Affirmation: I trust my powers of discernment.

• Actions: Practice five minutes of square breathing. Speak my decision or real experience of a situation out loud. Feel that discernment in my body.

If you are working towards a specific goal such as developing a sustainable running practice your affirmations and accompanying actions might be something like:

• Affirmation: I am strong and focused - I know I'm a runner.

• Actions: Choose an affirmation to say throughout your run. Paste a copy of it to your mirror. Practice a five minute run visualization (i.e. visualizing your run path and how good you'll feel afterwards).

I like to write affirmations on one side and actionable steps on the other, but you can create your cards however you like including illustrations, inspirational quotes, and more. Make at least one card for each King, but feel free to make as many as you like. Below I've listed a few correspondences for each of the Kings, but get inspired by your own intuition as well as the art specific to your tarot cards to help you write your affirmations.

When all affirmations are written, it is time to charge your deck. If you have a preferred method of charging up magickal items, proceed as you like. Otherwise, pick up the card(s) inspired by the King of Swords and turn to the appropriate direction. Hold them between your palms and begin to move your arms towards the East and back towards, tracing the path of a lemniscate or infinity symbol. As you do this, visualize gathering up the energy of the King and Swords and your own energy into an interwoven point in the palm of your hands where it charges up the card(s) you have created. Once the card(s) feel charged, you can speak the following:

By the Sword of Kings
and the magick I hold
So the path is laid
for wisdom to unfold 

Repeat this process with all of your cards and all of your Kings, again, replacing the title "King" and/or "Sword" if you like with ones that more deeply resonate with you. 

By the Wand of Kings
and the magick I hold
So the path is laid
for wisdom to unfold 

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By the Cup of Kings
and the magick I hold
So the path is laid
for wisdom to unfold 

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By the Star of Kings
and the magick I hold
So the path is laid
for wisdom to unfold 

When you've completed your circumnavigation, gather up the cards you've created. You can place them in a place of prominence where you'll remember to use them when you need extra encouragement or guidance on your path.  If you liked the King ritual and making your own set of personal affirmation and action cards, you might also like to create your own oracle of care.

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If you want to keep going with your tarot explorations, you might read my post on the Pages and Knights to complete your Court card journey or find a spread to fit your needs. Interested in a deeper dive into the correspondences of the court? Learn more about the four sacred elements from a traditional western herbalism perspective that each Court card is associated with.

Ready to read the tarot as a book of healing? Come this way.

I hope that this series has illuminated the sometime opaque tradition of the tarot Court and inspired your own practice of embodied healing.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

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Decks Shown
A Deck of Cards by PW (c. 1500)
Neutral Vibes Tarot
Tazama African Tarot
The Future Ancestor Tarot
The Shining Tribe Tarot

Healing Rituals of the Tarot Court: Pages & Knights

The Tarot Court cards (also known as face or coat cards) play an interesting role in any tarot deck. Traditionally, the Court cards depict people (whether archetypal or relational) in your life, unlike the rest of the Minor Arcana (aka as the pip cards) which explore events, activities, and situations one might come across. In some ways they represent a subdued energy of the archetypal characters you might meet in the Major Arcana - but more on that in a bit.

Many tarot readers of all experience levels find Court cards challenging to interpret, not least of which because the traditional names of the cards - Page, Knight, Queen, and King - can feel unrelatable and limiting. The hierarchical naming of the cards can seem archaic, unnecessarily gendered, and difficult to interpret in a reading when you're trying to figure out why the Page of Swords is showing up for you and who the heck the King of Wands is supposed to be in your life. Also, these cards often have less "action" in them when compared to most of the other cards in the deck (of course, this varies from deck to deck) making them more challenging to interpret when compared to the rest of the Minor Arcana.

And yet, through their both too specific or too vague energy, I love the Court cards. I think this love comes from the way that I was first introduced to reading them - which was less about actual people showing up in your life and more about the arrival of archetypes and the opportunity for embodying energy that would benefit one's development. When the Court cards are approached from the perspective of archetype and embodiment, there is greater opportunity to interact with tarot as a tool of directed development of consciousness. For me the Court cards embody the tarot's ability to greatly reduce "haphazard movement and spiritual chaos" in one's spiritual journey, as tarot scholar Pamela Eakins writes.¹ In other words, the Court cards help us to connect with purpose, untangle spiritual knots in our energetic flow, and learn how to embody the consciousness needed to develop as individuals within the collective.

So how do we connect with the Court cards through archetype and embodiment? Let's start by meeting the Court cards and exploring their structure within tarot. Then I'll share with you a series of healing rituals for the four archetypes of the Court to help you embody the wisdom they represent beginning with the Pages and Knights in this post and following with the Queens and Kings in the next post. 

Playing Cards by Master PW (c. 1500)

The Structure of the Court

One of the oldest forms of representation of people in tarot decks, proto-tarot decks, and the playing card games that influenced tarot is that of royalty or at least upper class individuals. The reason for this is varied but includes the fact that early tarot cards were luxury items produced for royal Courts and wealthy individuals, so the Court cards reflected the lives of those they were being produced for.² The images in early tarot were based on images and archetypes that would have been familiar and recognizable to players from books, plays, pageants, and frescoes.³ That said, the images of the tarot cards may have followed a familiar format, but the details of the Court cards and other cards with people in them, changed with Courtly fashion, cultural differences, and artistic license. This practice of evolving the image of tarot cards continues on today, with the expansion of Court card culture and naming, but the basic structure of the Court cards that inform most modern decks are listed below. I've also included some simple and traditional interpretations of each card.

• Page - Youth, curiosity, naivety

• Knight - Young adulthood, exuberance, brashness

• Queen - Middle age, confidence, vision

• King - Old age, authority, legacy

The traditional structure of the Court cards roughly follows a path from youth and inexperience to age and experience. If you were to only work with the Court cards from this perspective, there's a lot of use and wisdom to be found. We start with the student, whether a child or young adult, in the form of the Page as they are just starting or in the midst of their studies about life. The Knights move into the combination of awkwardness, idealism, and sometimes hubris of teenage years and young adulthood, where there is more freedom of movement to explore the world and begin to formulate and test out one's ideas about what they find. The Queens represent adulthood moving into middle age and help to understand better our vision of a life and a world that we want to be in both understanding our limitations and potential better. Finally, the Kings represent middle to old age and are as much about looking back as they are looking forward, having tested out and determined what foundations are needed to leave behind a legacy while supporting generations to come. Take out the unnecessary gendering of these cards allowing each Court card to be any gender or agendered and you have a system of interpretation and engagement with the Court cards that can be of use to most any querent.

In modern decks there has been expansion around the names, presentations, and ideas around the Court cards in tarot decks, a practice that was primarily born from the (often lesbian and queer) feminist tradition of re-imaging and reclaiming tarot that began in the 1970s.⁴ I love the ways that the language around the Court cards has continued to expand and as I share some of the alternative names below, I encourage you to work with the ones that you resonate with the most, applying them to any deck you work with. Tarot is meant to help us find our story, and our choice of language for each of the cards is one of the ways that we can do that. 

With that in mind let's explore the archetypes of the Court cards.

The Archetypes of the Court Cards

What are the archetypes of the Court cards that we are being invited to embody when they come up in a reading or when we use the cards in ritual? A great place to start to understand the archetypes of the Court cards is to explore the many ways each card has been named. As mentioned before, modern tarot culture has expanded on the traditional language of the Court cards, relying less on a hierarchical and royal Court structure, and more on trying to connect with the spiritual path and life stages of a querent (i.e. the person being read for) that is more broad and inclusive. I've gone ahead and included interpretations of the Court cards by six modern decks to help show you the many archetypal energies that the Court cards can represent. I've listed each alternative name in order of Page, Knight, Queen, and King (i.e. Child is the Page card in The Amazon Tarot and so on). 

The Amazon Tarot ~ collaboratively made by Billie Potts, et al

• Child

• Amazon

• Companion

• Queen

The Collective Tarot ~ collaboratively made in Portland, OR

• Seeker

• Apprentice

• Artist

• Mentor

Future Ancestor Tarot by Alexa Villanueva

• Student

• Explorer

• Listener

• Maker

Tarot of the Crone by Ellen Lorenzi Prince

• Beast

• Witch

• Grandmother

• Shadow

The Shining Tribe Tarot by Rachel Pollack

• Place

• Knower

• Gift

• Speaker

The Slow Holler Tarot ~ collaboratively made predominantly by queer and/or BIPOC southern US Americans 

• Student

• Traveler

• Visionary

• Architect

World Spirit Tarot by Lauren O'Leary and Jessica Godino

• Seer

• Seeker

• Sybil

• Sage

The Herbcrafter's Tarot by Joanna Powell Colbert and Latisha Guthrie

• Hijas

• Adelitas

• Madres

• Curanderas

I work with all of the decks I've listed above and all influence my practice to some degree. I would add the following names for each Court card:

• Page: Student, Scholar, Philosopher

• Knight: Messenger, Rebel (with or without a cause)

• Queen: Oracle, Mediator, Organizer

• King: Archivist, Teacher

In addition to renaming the individual cards in the Court, we can choose an alternative to the word and concept of Court itself, whether choosing traditional terms like Face or Coat Cards, or alternatives such as:

• Circle

• Family

• Witches

• Coven

• Collective

• Community

Having these alternative names for the Court cards means that when I pull a Queen card during a reading I can choose to work with the particular interpretation of Queen energy with the deck, but I also know that I have a library of Queen-type archetypes to work with. In some readings it makes more sense for me to connect with the Mediator energy of the Queen where in other readings, it is the energy of Queen as Visionary that I can connect with. As a reader and student of tarot I encourage you to focus on the archetypes of the Court cards that make the most sense for you at this time and expand on those concepts as you feel called and ready. There are no "correct" archetypes for any of the Court cards and knowing which archetypal energy is calling to you is part of the intuitive process of reading tarot from a healing perspective.

I also want to mention that I've focused on the empowering aspects of the Court cards and less on the challenging energies of these cards - there's a whole other shadow work aspect to the Court cards that is beyond the scope of this post. Shadow work and the Court cards is a post for another day, but is another useful aspect of healing work with the Court cards. If you're looking for more general recommendations about shadow work and the tarot, come this way.

Another way to help understand the Court cards is to compare them to each other and specifically the Pages and the Knights to one another and the Queens and the Kings to one another.  

Yearning & Seeking: The Pages & The Knights

For me, the Pages and the Knights are closer to each other energetically than they are to the Queens and Kings and I think that this helps to interpret the meanings of these cards. You'll find that the Knights and the Pages share a name "Seeker" in some decks and I think this is a helpful way to understand the similarities and differences between these two cards. The Pages are seeking knowledge, but are also seeking to be embraced within a (often learning-based) community. The Knights are seekers, too, but are often seeking to break out of the confines of the community spaces they've grown up in (family cultures, school systems, work spaces) and are more interested in the outward expression of what they've learned as opposed to the desire for an inward drawing of knowledge as expressed by the Pages.

Another way to understand the Pages and the Knights is to think of the Pages as trying to find their place by being in a place (they are trying to learn new things but familiarity is still comforting and being part of a community is a focus), while the Knights are trying to find their place by exploring what they perceive to be "other" spaces.

The Rituals

These rituals were written with the solitary practitioner in mind but can be easily adapted to group needs. Add to, adjust, and leave out whatever you need from the rituals as you are called. I try to create rituals that are simple enough for most folks to show up to but can also act as a foundation for folks to build upon. I hope you always feel inspired to make them your own.

Deck names listed below

The Pages: A Ritual of Stability

Student · Child · Seeker · Beast · Seer · Philosopher · Place
Primary Element: Earth
Plant Ally: Milky Oat (Avena sativa)

Working with the Pages is an opportunity to embody stability in your life. It is hard to move forward with an idea, take on a new project, connect with others, or understand our wholeness without a supportive foundation from which to work from. Imagine the life of a young child and student - the emphasis on learning is less about independent study and more about providing foundational knowledge and supporting the curiosities of a young mind. In ideal child-centered and compassionate learning environments, certain boundaries and systems are put in place to protect and nourish the world of young learners. Swimming lessons, for example, shouldn't start with throwing a child into the deep end, but by introducing children to water safety, the feel of water, the difference between shallow and deep, and lots of play with experienced swimmers around. The Pages help us to imagine and embody these feelings of stability and safety so that we can proceed with the work and play of learning and exploration.

For your ritual, you'll need all four Page cards from your tarot deck of choice. Alternatively, you can spend time drawing, collaging, or otherwise creating your own personal Page cards to use in ritual. We will be placing each of these cards in one of the four cardinal directions and if you like you can built an altar for each card in each direction that helps to call in the energy of each Page and/or simply light a candle next to each card. Again, do what you feel called, able, and inspired to do - this is your ritual to support your unique embodiment needs.

Begin by creating sacred space and perhaps a breathwork practice (such as the Tree of Life technique) to help you settle into your body. Set the Page of Swords in the East, the Page of Wands in the South (if you're in the northern hemisphere) or North (if you're in the southern hemisphere), the Page of Cups in the West, and the Page of Pentacles in the North (if you're in the northern hemisphere) or in the South (if you're in the southern hemisphere). Of course, these are the directional correspondences of the tradition I work in, so adjust them to fit the tradition you work with if needed.

Next, spend a few moments setting your intention:

• I embody stability in order to…

Examples of calling in stability might be:

• I embody stability in order to show up more deeply to my intuition.

• I embody stability in order to be more present in my relationships.

• I embody stability in order to support my creative flow.

Once your intention is set, speak it aloud or express it nine times, paying attention to the sensations that arise in your body as you recite your intention like a charm. You're not trying to analyze these feelings or connect them to anything in particular, just let them arise and flow through you as you practice awareness of them.

Turn to the East where the Page of Swords is located. Speak to them and call forth the power of the Page of Swords:

Blessings to the Page of Swords
Beyond and within me
Help me embody stability
That I may carry the sword of clarity

Spend some time visualizing and feeling the sword of the Page in your hands. Take time to move and breathe until you and the sword feel balanced together. When you are ready imagine the sword flowing into your energy, able to be summoned whenever you need it.

Turn to the South where the Page of Wands is located. Speak to them and call forth the power of the Page of Wands:

Blessings to the Page of Wands
Beyond and within me
Help me embody stability
That I may carry the wand of creativity

As with the sword, spend some time visualizing and feeling the wand of the Page in your hands. Take time to move and breathe until you and the wand feel balanced together. When you are ready imagine the wand flowing into your energy, able to be summoned whenever you need it.

Turn to the West where the Page of Cups is located. Speak to them and call forth the power of the Page of Cups:

Blessings to the Page of Cups
Beyond and within me
Help me embody stability
That I may carry the cup of sensitivity

As with the sword, spend some time visualizing and feeling the cup of the Page in your hands. Take time to move and breathe until you and the cup feel balanced together. When you are ready imagine the cup flowing into your energy, able to be summoned whenever you need it.

Turn to the West where the Page of Pentacles is located. Speak to them and call forth the power of the Page of Pentacles:

Blessings to the Page of Pentacles
Beyond and within me
Help me embody stability
That I may carry the star of tranquility

As with the sword, spend some time visualizing and feeling the pentacle or star of the Page in your hands. Take time to move and breathe until you and the pentacle feel balanced together. When you are ready imagine the pentacle flowing into your energy, able to be summoned whenever you need it.

Finally, pick up each card and place them in a stack over your heart, while saying:

Protected by the sword
Warmed by the flame
Held by the waters
Nourished by the land

Take a few moments to feel these words and energies within you. When you are ready, seal the ritual by saying:

All this and more I embody
All this and more I call to me
By love and will, so mote it be

After the ritual you can either return your Page cards to the deck or set them up on an altar or some place where you will see them regularly. In the days and weeks ahead pay attention to when similar sensations arise for you as you experienced within this ritual and know that you can call upon any or all of the tools of the Pages when you need extra grounding and stability.

Deck names listed below

The Knights: A Ritual of Discernment

Messenger · Amazon · Apprentice · Witch · Traveler · Seeker · Rebel · Knower · Explorer
Primary Element: Air
Plant Ally: Peppermint (Mentha piperita)

Working with the Knights is an opportunity to embody discernment in your life. The Knights are the messengers and seekers of the tarot Court, ready to spring beyond the classroom of the Pages and into the unknown. When the Knights show up for us in readings again and again, they are often indicating that there is an important message being delivered to us or information that we need to seek out. The key to successfully connecting with that message is the power of discernment. There is so much to see and do and experience in the world that it can be all too easy to get caught up in the movement and consumption of information, without learning how to discern and distill knowledge into wisdom. The Knights help us to trust our own inner knowing and find the resources to better develop our abilities for embodying discernment. 

For your ritual, you'll need all four Knight cards from your tarot deck of choice. Alternatively, you can spend time drawing, collaging, or otherwise creating your own personal Knight cards to use in ritual. You'll also need four coins - any type of coin is just fine and that can be all the same, all different or a mix. Coins have been used in folk magick for generations as symbols of luck and protection and they'll act as conduits for both of those energies as well as tokens to "pay the messengers" within the ritual.

Begin by creating sacred space and perhaps a breathwork practice (such as the Tree of Life technique) to help you settle into your body. Place all four Knight cards before you (on your altar or otherwise) and hold the coins in your hand. 

Wherever I travel
Wherever I go
No fear removes
My ability to know

Wherever I travel
Wherever I go
No pressure blocks
My ability to know

Wherever I travel
Wherever I go
No river drowns
My ability to know

Wherever I travel
Wherever I go
No words confuse
My ability to know

You can keep these coins on your altar, your wallet, or in a charm bag that you carry on your person. I like to keep mine in a jar that I shake when I need to dispel unwanted energy and call in some good fortune.

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You’ll notice that I listed some correspondences for the Pages and Knights, including the elements. If you’re interested in learning more about the elements from a traditional western herbalism perspective, come this way. If you’re looking for tarot spreads, I have a few.

I hope that these thoughts and rituals about the tarot Court inspire your own practice and I’ll be back next month with the Queens and Kings.

In the meantime, may your travels through the tarot arcanas be full of illumination and inspiration so that your life may be filled with more clarity and peace.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

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Decks Shown

A Deck of Cards by PW (c. 1500)
Tazama African Tarot
Amazon Tarot (1979)
The Weiser Tarot
The Herbcrafter’s Tarot
Tarot of the Spirit

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Footnotes

1. Pamela Eakins, Ph.D., Tarot of the Spirit (Boston: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1992), 4. The full quote reads: “As such, when the divine tool of tarot is correctly employed, the potential for haphazard movement and spiritual chaos is reduced.”

2. Tim Husband, 'Before Fortune-Telling: The History and Structure of Tarot Cards,' The Met, April 8, 2016, https://www.metmuseum.org/blogs/in-season/2016/tarot (accessed June 2022).

3. Sherryl E. Smith, 'Italian Tarot in the 15th Century,' Tarot Heritage, July 24 2014, https://tarot-heritage.com/history-4/italian-tarot-in-the-15th-century/ (accessed June 2022).

4. Decks like The Amazon Tarot, published in 1979, followed by a number of decks in the 1980s including the New Amazon Tarot, Daughters of the Moon and The Book of Aradia Tarot (the latter two inspired in some part by Shekinah Mountainwater's Matriarchal Tarot), Thea's Tarot (inspired by A New Women's Tarot by Billie Potts who was one of the primary editors of the Amazon Tarot and New Amazon Tarot), and The Motherpeace Tarot. Some of these decks were collectively made, others by individuals or in partnerships, but all were part of the growing intersections of lesbian organizing, Goddess spirituality, and feminist rebellion.

Creating Your Own Oracle of Care

I love the complexity that tarot offers us and the many ways that it can be used as a tool of self-inquiry and healing.

Tarot cards like many tools of divination are multi-layered. The initial image you see on a tarot card is only the first layer of meaning. Below that are layers of tradition from the astrological to the numerological to the herbal, your own personal associations with an image, the artist's vision, intuitive insights, and more.

Looking at the Fool card, for example, you could read the card as someone about to embark on a new adventure based on looking at the traditional imagery of the card. The tradition of numerology associated with tarot tells us that the number 0, the number of the Fool card, represents unnamed potential.¹ Within elemental tradition, the Fool represents the element of Air, an element prone to swift action and sudden insight, while modern astrological association pairs the Fool with Uranus, the planet of innovation and limitlessness. And those are all just the initial meanings of each of those lines of interpretation. Beyond divination, tarot cards can be used for spellwork, in healing practices, for self-inquiry, meditation, art, and more. These packs of (usually) 78 cards contain a great deal of versatility in their use and meaningfulness to our modern complex lives.

So am I now going to lead you through a multidisciplinary exploration of each card? No, quite the opposite. I just wanted to highlight how a complex tool like the tarot can be used in simple ways when life feels overwhelming. While I love the tarot as a tool of self and community care, it took me a moment to figure out how to not get overwhelmed by all the ways I could interpret a card when I just wanted some to-the-point guidance. 

Some of you might be wondering why I didn't just purchase an oracle deck geared towards self-care, but I had a hard time finding a deck that spoke to me. I was also wary of buying yet another deck, especially an oracle deck with a new system that I would have to learn. What I really wanted in these moments was a tool that I know could hold all of my complexity while being familiar and friendly. Something that I could rely on to help me out of funks, reorient my compass of care, and help me reconnect with the people, creatures, and places I love. 

Did I end up trying to transform the major arcana of my tarot deck into a self and community care oracle? Yes, and it's been a lot of fun! Here's how I did it. 

I started by pulling out the Major Arcana from my tarot deck and then grabbed a pen and paper. I jotted down a list of things that helped me feel cared for and reconnected to my community from the more practical (eat some lunch! call a friend!) to the more magickal (rebuild my altar!). This list is less about aspirational goals and much more about what skills or practices you already have in your toolbox or are working on developing. Taking time off to travel sounds lovely, but we're looking at something that you'd be able to do with relative ease (i.e. something you could theoretically do even if it might take some mental-emotional effort) and little planning. 

So I've shared with you one example of a list of correspondences inspired by my own with some thoughts and variations thrown in to help inspire you. I hope you see this as a starting point, borrow what works for you, adapt what doesn't, and tailor-make your major arcana into an oracle of care that works for you. This could be a really beautiful and fun activity to do with your tarot reading group, coven, magickal collective or whoever you gather with as part of your tarot practice.

The Future Ancestor Tarot by lexa luna studios

The Major Arcana Oracle of Care

On my list below I've included both traditional and modern names for the Major Arcana because I use both in my practice. Some of these names are of my own making, but others I've marked where they have come from in with the following symbols: 

• The Slow Holler Tarot ▽

• The Gaian Tarot ◎

• The Collective Tarot ✴︎

• The Future Ancestor Tarot ❁

0. The Fool - Play a Game
Whatever type of game makes the most sense to you, go ahead and take some time to play it either on your own or with friends. If you're feeling a need to stretch beyond the mundane look up experimental travel or exploration games or maybe make a ritual out of your play to move energy.  

I. The Magician - Altar Work
Time to tidy up, clean, remake or make a new altar.

II. The High Priestess - Take Some Time to Journal
The High Priestess encourages self inquiry and the act of writing and journaling helps us do just that. 

III. The Empress, The Land, Experience, The Gardener ◎, Reception ✴︎ - Get Outside
Enough said.

IX. The Emperor, The Web, Framework, The Builder ◎, The Navigator ▽ - Take Your Herbs
This can easily include any medication you might've been neglecting as well as herbal body care like face masks and body oils if that is something you'd like to do but have been putting off. 

X. The Hierophant, The Guild ▽, Virtue ❁ - Talk To Your Ancestors
Whether the Mighty or Beloved Dead, it's time to reach out to your ancestors because they're reaching out to you.

XI. The Lovers, Connection, Interdependence - Appreciate Some Art and/or Do Art
I either pull out some art books or scroll around online art exhibits for inspiration, but art comes in many forms and shows up in all sorts of places. It's time to seek it out and find yourself reflected back at you. Other times, this is a reminder to pick up an art project that I've set aside or start a new one.

XII. The Chariot - Turn Your Heart to Holy Places
The Chariot is a card of will and having a clear sense of direction. When I pull this card I take a moment to reorient myself that which feels sacred to me and to help it feel more tangible I actually turn and face towards the direction of holy places. Old growth forests, ancestral lands, your Grandma's house, whatever and wherever it might be, spend some time orienting yourself to that sacred place to help you feel it where you're at right now.

XIII. Strength - Move Your Body and/or Eat Some Lunch
When I pull the Strength card I do a workout because working out brings me a lot of joy even if it sometimes feels hard to show up to. Move your body in a way that feels good to you and you know would be of benefit to you in the moment - from getting up and taking a shower to getting up to going for a run to dance parties with your roommates and so on. Sometimes this card comes up as a reminder to nourish my body with food, whether that's eating lunch, getting a snack or calling some friends to meet up for dinner.

IX. The Hermit - Alone Time
Time to clear your schedule and get some quality alone time. Is this one of my favorite cards to pull? Yes, yes it is.

X. The Wheel of Fortune, Chance ✴︎ - Watch a Movie or Show
Doesn't have to be complicated or deep, just watch something that you enjoy, maybe inspires you or at least cheers you up. 

XI. Justice, Reconciliation, Intersection ▽, Accountability ✴︎ - Evaluate Expectation Versus Need
Here is an opportunity to rebalance the scales in my life of where I'm putting my energy. When the Justice card comes up I pull out a piece of paper and make two columns: one is for expectations and the other is for needs. In the expectations column I write down all the things that I feel like I'm expected to do (they might be my own expectations, expressed or assumed expectations of others, cultural expectations etc.) and feel most pressing and present in my life right now. An example of an expectation might be to finish a blog post by tomorrow because that's a deadline I set for myself and I worry that I'll let down my readers if I don't. In the needs column I write down my most present needs and to do this I might need to take a moment to check in with myself, scan my energy, and settle into my body a bit. An example of a need might be needing to take the rest of the day off from work and rest because I've been pushing my limits for too long. When I'm done making my list I try and reconcile the expectations versus needs and I often find that I've put too much weight on expectations and not enough on my actual needs. Usually simple revelations and solutions arise (i.e. I can take an afternoon off and delay blog post by a day without causing any harm and instead creating a lot of benefit) after going through this process.

XII. The Hanged One, Metamorphosis ❁, the Precipice ▽ - Read a Chapter of a Book
One of my primary associations with the Hanged One is someone who is seeking wisdom and does this through inner strength and perception. Reading a book takes more effort than staring at a screen, wakes up my inner world, and is a wisdom seeking activity for me. I either read a chapter from a book that I'm already in the process of reading or pull a book at random from my shelves, open to a chapter, and read that.

The Gentle Tarot by mari in the sky and Nourishing the Nervous System by Tayla Shanaye

XIII. Death - Change Your Sheets
While I chose "change your sheets" because fresh and clean bedsheets always feels luxurious to me (I feel so old writing that sentence), you could easily substitute "change your clothes" or "change your hairstyle" or "change your location" for "sheets." The point is to choose some sort of simple but physically tangible change to your environment that can be done with relative ease.

XIV. Temperance, Balance, Homeostasis - Practice Breathwork
Sometimes it's helpful to have a time marker for your breathwork practice. "Practice 5 Minutes of Breathwork" can feel a lot more doable than an open-ended "Practice Breathwork" prompt. Or you could choose a specific breathwork practice like a Tree of Life meditation for this card. Breathwork is an act of rebalancing and tempering energies so it feels like a very Temperance card thing to do.

XV. The Devil, Oppression ✴︎ - Clear Out
When I pull the Devil card one of the simple practices I do is add something to my donation box. While the Devil has many complex interpretations, one of the ways to understand this card is how we can get tangled up in being restrained by our stuff as well as our fears and expectations around what we do and do not own and what that says about who we are. If the Devil card is coming up in the context of my self and community care oracle, I know it's time to let go of something that's been taking up too much space in my life and that I know longer need. This is not an invitation for a full downsizing of all your belongings, but rather an opportunity to clear out a drawer of items you no longer need, as you call in the space to feel more free in your life.

XVI. The Tower, the Storm ▽, Disaster ✴︎ - Clean Up
When the Tower shows up I choose something to clean up. Often this is my workspace, but sometimes it's a project that I've been putting off. Often what is challenging about Tower energy is the aftermath of things falling apart, so pulling the Tower card is an opportunity to acknowledge the mess and clean up what I have control of.

XVII. The Star - Read Some Poetry
You can easily replace this with "read from a sacred text" or similarly reflective and inspiring text.

XVIII. The Moon - Time for a Lunar Ritual
No matter the phase of the Moon I make time for a lunar ritual when I pull this card. Though originally written for the New Moon, the rituals for each sign of the zodiac in my New Moon Healer's Project can be adapted for any phase if you're looking for some inspiration.

XIX. The Sun - Indulge Your Inner Child
What cheered you up as a kid? Maybe it's time to replicate that in an appropriate adult way. Playing with dolls, making a tree fort, outlining an extensive game of mutants versus bad guys? Do it! 

XX. Judgement, Restoration, Liberation ✴︎, The Awakening ▽◎ - Sound Therapy
You don't have to have any fancy equipment for sound therapy - humming or singing does wonders for our nervous systems and even better when it's with others.

XXI. The World - Call a Friend
Your friends love you, give them a call. And if that's feeling too hard, and you're wanting to speak with a person, maybe reach out to a chat or text hotline where there are folks waiting to chat with you no matter what. But if you can, reach out to a friend or a family member, and let them help draw you back into your community.

The Weiser Tarot

How to Use Your Major Arcana Oracle of Care

You've put together your list of correspondences for self and community care so it's time to put your new deck-within-a-deck to use. While I often keep at least one tarot deck of mine with the Major Arcana and Minor Arcana always separated for times like this, more often than not I just grab whatever deck is at hand and begin pulling out the Major Arcana cards. I find this to be a meditative process that helps me calm down and focus in on asking for what I need. 

With the 22 cards of the Major Arcana in hand, I shuffle, I pull a card and often that's it! Remember, this is supposed to be an easy to implement practice, so this might be the summation of what you do. Sometimes I like to set the card up on my desk, build a mini altar of herbs and stones around it, but most of the time the card goes right back in my deck and I carry on with the suggestion. 

You can write your self and community care correspondences directly on your tarot cards (it's totally ok to write on your tarot cards!) or keep your correspondence list written in your Book of Shadows, witch's notebook, notes app, or back of a receipt that you keep in that drawer.

And because I know that there are some of you who like a bit of complexity in their practice as a way to help move you out of a state of stagnation, you can always look up the astrological correspondence of each card and then compare to where that correspondence is in your birth chart. If you pull the Moon card, for example, you might tend to the energetic needs of your Moon sign and whatever House (i.e. area of your life) it shows up on your birth chart. 

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If you're looking for some more inspiration around using tarot as a tool of healing, here are some of my favorite healing practices to use with tarot. For an in-depth journey into the world of tarot and herbalism check out The Tarot Apothecary.

However you use your Major Arcana Oracle of Care, I hope that it inspires you to use and build upon your own collection of tools, whatever they may be, that help you get out of a funk and feel more centered and content.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤ Thanks, friends. ❤

Footnotes

(1) My favorite theory about the development of numerology is that Pythagorus had ordinal linguistic personification synesthesia and his personal synesthetic number system got codified as a universal instead of a personal experience. I wonder a lot about the influence of synesthesia in the codifications of magickal correspondences beyond numerology. Many synesthetes are not aware that they have synesthesia so there is a lot of room for things like this to happen and there is also a long tradition of trying to induce synesthetic experiences within magickal and philosophical circles. All of this is to say that abstract correspondences are only as meaningful as you want them to be and it's ok to find meaning in present traditions or dream up new ones.

Tarot Decks Featured

The Future Ancestor Tarot by lexa luna studio
The Gentle Tarot by mari in the sky
The Weister Tarot published by Red Wheel/Weiser

My Favorite Daily Tarot Practice

One of my favorite tools for cultivating mindfulness and a sense of wellness day-to-day is the tarot. I use tarot not only as a tool of divination but as a tool of healing, incorporating the cards into my meditation and breathwork practice, as well as into practices of sacred inquiry. As someone who likes meditative practices that include tactile experiences - such as meditative knitting or labyrinth walking - I find the acts of setting up a space to read tarot, holding and shuffling the cards to be pleasing. For me, a daily practice needs to be one that is pleasurable, relatively effortless, and something that creates a sense of steadiness along my path. So I've created my daily healing tarot practice with these things in mind.

To be honest, it took me a while to find the "sweet spot" of a daily tarot practice. I've gone through periods of my life where the idea of pulling a tarot card each day as a divinatory reading (i.e. what might be coming my way today) was far more stressful than helpful. Or a daily tarot practice felt more like navel gazing rather than useful, ruminating over a singular issue for far too long. Other times, when things felt particularly stressful, I could slip into the all too common problem of hoping the cards would tell me explicitly what I should do next. So for a long while I only pulled out my cards to either admire their art (something which is a valuable part of tarot - the way it brings beauty into our world) or only for big occasions. Looking back I realized I needed this fallow period and when I was ready again to work with the cards on a more regular basis, I developed the following daily practice.

My daily tarot practice is not strictly divinatory (i.e. looking to foretell future events or reveal hidden ones past and present), but it does help to illuminate and hopefully provide clarity in certain areas of one's life. The purpose of my daily tarot practice is to provide clarity about and support for my current energy. It's low pressure, contemplative in nature, and meant to help me feel connected to the wider web of community. 

There's also a practical nature to a daily tarot practice. If you're new to tarot and learning the meanings of the cards, a daily tarot practice is a great way to learn the cards and practice interpretation on a regular, low-pressure basis. For healers and magickal practitioners, a daily tarot practice can be part of your spiritual practice of energy balancing and psychic hygiene. If you keep notes about the cards you draw it can be a great reference to look back at over the years to see the type of cards that came up seasonally or around certain sabbats and Moon phases.

But before you create (or re-imagine) your own daily (or daily-ish) tarot practice, it's good to ask the question: Why? Not knowing your why can lead to muddled energies, but you also don't have to have a complex why. Your why could be that you like the idea of a daily tarot practice, it's not something you've done before, and it's something you want to try. That's a good starting place. Or you're an old-timer whose been reading the cards for years, but your practice feels stagnated and a daily draw seems like a good way to reinvigorate it. So take a moment to ask yourself:

• Why do you want a daily tarot practice?

• What are you hoping to learn?

• What is the energy you're trying to cultivate?

• What are you hoping to feel with a daily tarot practice?

With our curiosity piqued, let me show you my daily tarot practice and hopefully it'll inspire your own.

Cards shown are from the Oak, Ash & Thorn Tarot by Three Trees Tarot

My Daily Healing Tarot Practice

Before any cards are laid out before me, I like to take a few moments to orient myself to the sacred. What this looks like for me is some simple breathwork to connect with my current energy as well as my own devotional practices. Breathwork, simple body movement, free dance, guided visualization, prayers or affirmations, and more are all ways that we can acknowledge and resonate with the sacredness that lives within all things including ourselves. Part of what makes tarot so magickal and healing is that it can often deliver messages to us when we are most open to hearing them. Orienting oneself to the sacred helps us to hear what needs to be heard and feel what needs to be felt.

I like to lay out a cloth that I then lay my cards on, light a candle, and maybe some sacred sounds. It's another way of signaling to myself that I'm deserving of taking time and space to reflect on my needs so that I can better show up in community spaces amidst all the needs of everyone else. As creating peace in my personal life, the communities I move through, and the Land I live with is an essential part of my wellbeing, creating a beautiful space for my daily meditation and tarot practice reminds me that it is a beautiful thing to practice peace daily. Here is where you might need to reflect on what it is you're trying to cultivate regularly by having a daily tarot (or meditation or prayer or whatever) practice.

I then begin to pull cards, pulling three in total.

The first card represents my current state of energy. It is my personal weather report on my energy and current experience of self. There is typically nothing too surprising about this card, but the images and meaning of the card can often offer another perspective or helpful language to describe my current state of energy that I may have been struggling to find. Sometimes I write in my journal about this and the following cards, but that's usually only when I'm dealing with a particularly sticky pattern of energy and healing need. Usually, I try to simply summarize and speak out loud a short description of my energy as reflected back to me from the card. The speaking out loud is part of the healing work of these daily spreads (or equivalent outward self-expression - such as signing, typing, writing - the goal is to move thoughts from our inner to outer worlds). 

Cards shown are from the Oak, Ash & Thorn Tarot by Three Trees Tarot

Here are some examples of simple card summaries:

• Queen of Pentacles: I am feeling abundant and steady in my energy after a period of growth and hard work.

• Temperance: I am seeking to find a sense of balance and peace in a world that feels chaotic.

• Page of Wands: I am reconnecting to my creative potential after a period of creative fallowness and frustration.

The next two cards are in direct relationship to the first card cast. I pull one card to help me understand what supports my energetic needs and another card to help me understand what hinders my energetic needs. I like that terms like "helps" and "hinders" are relatively neutral but describe deeply personal experiences. What is helpful to me might be cumbersome or hindering to you and vice versa. Nor are things that might hinder me one day bad (i.e. too much socializing that leaves you feeling drained) be inherently bad because on another day they might be exactly what you need energetically (i.e. a social gathering that leaves you feeling energized and happy). It is the same with the help card.

Oftentimes the help and hinder cards support work that I'm already doing around boundaries, relationships, work and rest balance, and so on. They are more often reassurances rather than revelations, though sometimes they are a bit of both, and frequently the cards relay information to me in a way that re-inspires my way of understanding a certain situation or experience of mine.

Cards shown are from the Oak, Ash & Thorn Tarot by Three Trees Tarot

So let's look at some examples of help and hinder cards in relation to the sample cards above:

For the Queen of Pentacles:

What Helps: With the help of the King of Pentacles I am reminded that thinking beyond this period of abundance and growth is a form of self-care and I should look for connections today with a trusted friend or mentor about the abundance in my life. 

What Hinders: With the Moon I am reminded that even in times of growth, rest is necessary and to make sure to make time for extra rest today.

For Temperance:

What Helps: The Ten of Cups reminds me to connect with family and friends to help find balance in my life - it is time to reach out and ask for help because there are plenty of folks in my life who are willing to help.

What Hinders: The King of Swords warns me of being too analytical in my pursuit of balance and thinking myself into a state of confusion, reminding me that balance is achieved through collaboration not through proving I can do it all on my own.

For the Page of Wands:

What Helps: The Knight of Wands encourages me to be brave in my creative pursuits after a period of self-doubt. 

What Hinders: The Ace of Cups suggests that there is a need for more self-reflection on my fear around creativity and to not avoid understanding those fears better because I'm afraid I've "lost" my creativity.

Sometimes I pull an extra help or hinder card if the message feels muddled, but that is on a rare occasion and something that I try not to do as the point of this practice is to be short and simple. Oftentimes if I'm feeling perplexed by one of the cards pulled I'll revisit them at the end of the day or make note of them in my journal to look back on later. Their meaning always becomes clear even if that clarity arrives at a later date.

After all three cards are pulled and guidance is spoken out loud, I end with a few more deep and centering breaths and then that's it! 

Cards shown are from the Oak, Ash & Thorn Tarot by Three Trees Tarot

A Few Thoughts

As you can see there is a lot of room for creating a daily healing tarot practice that fits you and your needs the best. For the help and hinder cards you might choose to pull an oracle card that has a direct message. Or you might want a more expansive energetic snapshot and pull a card each for mind, body, and spirit or for each of the energetic centers of your body. While I tend to pull the first card as a general energetic overview, you might have a specific issue or area in your life that you want to focus on - do it! You're developing a tarot practice for you and the way you think and feel, so adjust your approach as necessary.

In addition to being a lovely way of encouraging a sense of wellness in an effortless sort of way, my daily tarot practice has been a fun way to get to know new-to-me decks that come into my collection. Reading with a new deck in this gentle sort of way has been a rewarding way of getting to know the world, characters, and energy of a new-to-me deck while exploring my own energetic landscape.

Most importantly, my daily healing tarot practice has helped me to fall in love with using the tarot everyday again. I needed to take the pressure off of reading the cards as a form of divination or even intense self-reflection while still being interesting over a long period of time and this practice does just that for me. The boundary of these types of readings are meant only for the next 24 hours, I'm not trying to gaze too far into time and space in any direction, and I get to check in with myself in a way that automatically comes with much needed reassurance and guidance.

I hope you find the sweet spot that is your very own tarot practice, whether it's casting cards daily, at the change of the seasons, once a year or whenever the Moon is new.

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If you're looking for more tarot spreads to inspire your practice, here you go. For those of you interested in exploring further ways of developing more healing practices with the tarot, I have a post for you. I've also written about developing a healing practice from a lunar perspective if that is more of your style.

For me, my tarot practice is intertwined with my herbal practice and if you want to learn more about that you're invited to join me in The Tarot Apothecary.

I hope you create a daily (or sometimes or whenever) tarot practice that supports you and who you are becoming.

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