The Tarot can be a fantastic way to develop your intuition or give you the confidence to trust your intuition. Ideally, you want to get to a place where your intuition automatically kicks in whenever you need it and you do not have to think about it.
You just know that something is right or wrong and you trust it completely.
Tarot can also help you safely explore potential options before you commit yourself to making a decision and can give you guidance in any area of your life.
Our minds think in pictures and the Tarot consists of images, which makes it one of the most visually powerful ways of connecting directly with your unconscious mind.
A picture literally says a 1000 words and you can get an immediate feeling reaction when you look at a picture.
Pictures are the oldest form of teaching and learning. Pictures tell stories and that is the first way our early learning took place.
Pictures tap straight into the right side of your brain, which is all about creativity, imagination, inspiration, ideas and insights.
The pictures, colours and symbols speak directly to your subconscious mind to give you the answers that are right for you. This is why different people can look at the same cards and give a different interpretation because the cards speak to everyone individually.
The more you can trigger the can trigger the right hand side of your brain, the more you can tap into your intuition or gut feeling.
It is like any muscle. The more you use it, the more it will work for you and the more it will be there for you when you need it.
Our intuition or gut feeling is there to help us all of the time. Sometimes we have so much chatter going on in our heads and so many feelings in our bodies that we cannot hear or feel or see our quiet, all knowing truth.
The Tarot is one of the quickest ways to develop your Intuition or gut feeling and have it on tap 24/7 for whenever you need to make an important decision.
Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed and sit comfortably.
Take a few deep breaths. As you breathe out, breathe out any tension and stress from your day. As you breathe in, breathe in confidence, intuition and trust.
Continue breathing gently until you feel your mind and body relax.
A useful breathing exercise is to breathe in to a count of 7, hold the breath for 7, and then slowly release to a count of 7 and then hold for 7 before taking another breath.
When you feel calm and relaxed, pick up your deck of cards and give them a quick shuffle. Pick out a card at random and notice the first impressions that come to mind.
What thoughts are in your head? Do you hear any instant words? What is the tone of the voice?
What feelings do you get from the card?
Where in your body are the feelings? – heart, head, legs, tummy area, back, other?
Where are the pictures? - inside your head, in front of you? Are they colour or black and white, still or moving?
It is important to notice those very first words, impressions and feelings because if you look at the card for too long, your logical mind will start to analyse the card and you may miss the valuable insights.
Once you learn to recognise the signals that your intuition is using to communicate with you, you can identify them more quickly in another situation.
With a bit of practice you can soon distinguish between the answers from your intuition and the logic of your analytical mind.
Both are important and the analytical mind can be very useful once you have gathered all your creative insights.
Trust those first answers as they will most likely be the right ones for you.
When you feel ready, relax, calm your mind and pick another card.
You start to develop a relationship with your cards and trust them as a tool to access your intuition whenever you want and need it.
Lay a couple of cards of cards side by side and notice the impressions that you get. Observe how the story changes when one card is next to another.
It is helpful to have a Tarot journal, so that you can keep track of any insights that come from your cards.
Over time certain cards will come to have particular meanings for you. These may be very different from any definitions you find in a book. That is brilliant. Go with what you feel is right for you for each card.
Books You Might Enjoy:
Robert Ellwood - The Encyclopedia Of World Religions
Solomonic Grimoires - Lemegeton Iii The Pauline Art
Robert Wang - The Qabalistic Tarot
Paul Foster Case - An Introduction To The Study Of The Tarot
Swetha Lodha - Your Love Life And The Tarot Cards
