The Tarot Challenge
All readers like a good comfort zone – establishing an intuitive connection, and finding a tool (the right deck) and the method of presentation (the right spread) to allow the link between reader and querent to be expressed in a constructive and fruitful way. And like anyone, when we find something that works, we stick with it, ensuring that our results are solid and our methods polished… But can that lead us to getting stuck in a rut, to stagnating, and not stretching our talents, our learning, our growth.
And so every now and again, I like to challenge myself, to shake things up a little…to employ a new technique, to experiment, to expand my boundaries out of that comfort zone.
A spot of spreadcrafting is great for dusting the cobwebs out, and for connecting with our querents in a personalised way, but it also allows us to visualise the issue and the question in a different way, and this can spark our intuitive fire when it comes to interpreting that unique message.
Using a different deck can jumpstart our connection with different imagery – sometimes it’s like seeing a new destination for the first time…there’s always a sense of wonder when we see a sunset over strange mountains, or a seemingly never-ending blue sea stretching away from us to the horizon, and it’s the same inspiration that can strike us from a set of images in a deck that we don’t use as often as we could.
Breaking the reading routine can feel a little jarring, if we have a standardised approach that we like to use before a reading, especially if your reading routine looks something like this: 15 minutes of meditation, a cup of jasmine tea, opening your energy centres, performing the reading, closing your energy centres, and then 30 minutes of yoga, and 10 minutes of mindful reflection; but doing so can bring some freshness to an otherwise accepted routine by stretching muscles we don’t use, or firing synapses that would otherwise be enjoying a nap. Go for a run, drink something different beforehand, skip the meditation, forgo the entire routine and just jump straight into the reading…there are so many different ways that we can make small but significant changes to our routine, and those echoes will ripple outwards from that change, causing us to be more alert, more conscious, more ‘here, now’ in our reading.
Take yourself out of the house. A lot of readers have a preferred place to do their readings – it’s quiet, it’s calm, it’s controlled, it catches the sun just right, it’s safe, it’s comfortable, it’s familiar. Tarot is a tool, and I’m certain that if a handyman can wield a caulk gun up a 12-foot ladder, then I’m sure that we can afford to take a few risks with our location too. Taking a hike, and reading on the trail, or whilst out at a picnic can bring those ‘outside’ elements to bear on our perspective, and on how we interpret the messages from the cards. I’m a fan of the ‘coffee shop office’, and love to read whilst surrounded by people, in an environment that isn’t entirely under my control, as it lends a certain frisson to the intuitive connection, and can distract ego with a hot chocolate and a spot of people watching whilst the intuition gets on with the heavy lifting involved in the reading.
Going spread-free and just drawing cards and interpreting them on the fly is a great way to get creative juices flowing, kickstarting the intuition and looking for insight provided by stepping out of our comfort zone and bringing us back to a point where we need to connect with the message the cards are giving us, and how we’re interpreting them for the benefit of our clients…not having a set of positional indicators to rely on can be challenging, but very rewarding as the flow of the information is different – less like paint by numbers and more like throwing buckets of emulsion at the walls and then interpreting the patterns!
Have a think about your Tarot routine. What are those things that you always do? Why do you do them? Could you do a reading without following that pattern? Challenge yourself this week to do something different, to shake things up and see if you can gain meaningful insight, or develop a new way of connecting with your intuition…and let me know how you get along, and what experience it brings to you – I’d love to hear your thoughts!
