I use tarot as a system to see what’s going on behind the noise of the daily grind. A reading starts with what you bring to the table, and it doesn’t matter if that’s a straightforward question or absolute confusion.

People use tarot for all sorts of reasons, and at its heart, it’s a tool for dialogue with the quieter parts of yourself. Many people like the tarot because it can offer new ways of looking at old situations. It can be difficult to have an honest conversation with yourself in your head, and using the cards puts it out in front of you. It takes the internal voice and turns it into imagery you can look at more objectively, without getting stuck in a mental loop. An image can generally get to the point faster than words, and sometimes it can help to start the conversation to identify feelings that you haven’t been able to address or prioritise.

If you are dealing with uncertainty, tarot can help you to find an anchor point. The cards aren’t a magic wand that makes things disappear, but having a clearer idea of an ongoing process can often help you find small ways to retain a sense of control over the unknown.

Although more often than not, people will have a reading to confirm something they think or feel, and simply need to hear it from an external source. In these instances, tarot can be used as a means to affirm or validate a feeling, which then makes it easier to take the desired course of action.

For those of you who engage in self-reflection, using tarot offers a moment of pause between a problem and your chosen response. The act of carving out a space to explore your thoughts and feelings can make it easier to find a new perspective or a positive solution. Using tarot for self-development is a relatively new use for an old tool. You can use the card meanings to work on aspects of your character or do readings for ideas on how to heal past hurt. 

Even though the cards can describe feelings and situations with uncanny accuracy at times, they don’t have the power to fix anything into the realm of certainty. While insight and intuition can feel magical, prediction, if it comes, is often pattern recognition — and this is the place to find some genuine sense of control. You get to choose whether you stay with the pattern, or if it is time to create something new.

An Incredibly Brief History of Tarot

Tarot as a tool for divination has evolved from playing cards since the mid-fifteenth century. The modern version in use today was developed in the late 1700s, with French occultists at the forefront. The historian in me cannot, with good conscience, give any further details on the history without providing solid references to evidence. As far as I know, the claims made by the occultists were untrue, but this didn’t stop the creation of what has become a much-loved system of divination. 

Modern Tarot

Tarot has seen a bit of a revival in the last few years thanks to new formats such as YouTube and TikTok. Thousands of readers now post regular videos. One of the main topics is tarotscopes; a reader looks at the week (or day) ahead for each sign of the zodiac. Pick-a-card readings are also incredibly popular; the viewer picks from a selection of piles and takes it as a semi-personal reading. The questions tend to be pretty standard, such as ‘will I hear from this person again’ or ‘will he leave his current partner for me’.

Personal Journey

I began my study of the tarot in 1995 and turned professional around five years later. How I used tarot changed considerably in 2000 when I deepened my study into psychological astrology. I developed an aversion to the predictive element because tarot seemed to have so much more to offer than the old-school fortune telling that had been popular in the decades before. I still find it to be an invaluable tool for self-development. The imagery is a massive draw for me and one of the main reasons I love to see a new deck.  

I have two relevant blogs on this website. Tarot, Oracle, & Book Reviews: A pretty self-explanatory blog that deals exclusively with reviews of new and old tarot and oracle decks as well as any books I come across. And there’s Tarot & Other Types of Divination: This blog contains loads of information for students. There are over eighty posts that cover the tarot card meanings, and these include the card’s correspondence to astrology to help with timing and further understanding the energy of the card.