Spirit Bear Dreaming Tarot

I just want to “confess” to one of my Tarot peculiarities: I haven't used a reversed card for over twenty years and have no plans to do otherwise. I guess I'm not really confessing, because I don't hide it, but it might seem strange to some and I wanted to put it out there as an option for people who are developing or changing their own relationship with Tarot.

My own relationship with tarot evolved quite a bit over time. I feel like my spiritual adulthood began when I had my first tarot reading, which allowed my buried self to emerge and throw off the darkness that had oppressed me for years. That reader didn't use reversals, but I didn't know such a thing existed until I bought my own deck and encountered them in the little white book. I thought the idea was odd, but adopted it as it seemed the way things were done.

I was mostly a terrible card reader for the first few years, my readings were sporadic and vague. It took me years to educate myself enough to know what the card images were on about. In addition, I was initiated with an Etteilla deck and only later realized how unusual that deck is. And back then you had to buy books or find them at the library. The big local public library had three tarot books, one a picture book, one was by old French occultists, and the other only talked about some of the cards.

That era was saturated with material about Eastern spiritual traditions and hardly anything else. A wise friend suggested that I study more broadly and I spent years studying and over time I learned more about Tarot and Tarot became more common.

Eventually I was good enough to stumble through a reading and get something good from it. But I had adopted a bunch of habits that I couldn't justify any longer. The first thing to go were the significators. Yes, there is something good in that idea, but it seems to me to be outweighed by the limits that are imposed. If I use the Queen of Wands as a significator, then that removes that card from appearing and adding to the story. I stopped doing that and my readings got better.

Second, I just stopped using the Celtic Cross for every reading. I'll do one every few years for fun, but I could never work out why that was being taught. It is complex and multi-layered and full of disjointed leaps of meaning to my way of thinking. I don't see why we burden people who are learning with complexity. I've adopted a few layouts that were taught to me and developed many layouts for specific situations. Simpler layouts with fewer cards let the Tarot speak more plainly, I think, and that is what most people want most of the time.

And third, and this is the point that I'm finally getting to, I just stopped doing reversals. I was doing a reading one day and I was just pissed off about the reversed cards muddying the reading, so I turned them all upright. Then I stopped putting down any reversals. Then I went through all of my decks and turned all the cards the same way and developed ways of mixing and shuffling them so that reversals rarely appeared. My readings went from being full of good details and some muddiness, to being mostly clear as a bell. Not always, but mostly very clear.

So my practice is to never put down a reversed card. Maybe once every few years I'll let it stand as a quirk, but I've never looked back. As I ponder why this works for me, it seems there are a couple of reasons. First, it just adds a special mode to card meanings that may or may not make sense. I often see people using negative words for reversals, and I'm not sure that's useful. The Tarot is already full of challenging cards, and some combinations can be a real slap in the face. I find plenty of room in upright cards for all of the complexity of life and don't need to double the meanings to do a good reading.

Next, I continuously wonder at the state of the deck. To me the best readings come when the deck is utterly unknowable. As my perception changes and evolves I find myself wanting to make the deck as chaotic and as unknowable as possible when I am about to draw from it. What percent of cards are reversed in there? How do you know you didn't turn them all upside down? How do I “reset” the deck? Do I have to swirl the cards around before I put them back in the deck, or maybe mix up the whole deck? If all of the “worst” reversals are primed to go then what? Would I be better off with 156 cards where half are reversals, that way I can get both meanings? For me, just let that all go. Read them all upright. Do I need more permutations on the existing richness of a full deck?

And the last thing is that I see reversals as turning nearly every card into another version of The Hanged Man. I find that a bit depressing to contemplate. Reading with only one of them is challenge enough.

Now I want to emphasize that I'm not saying you are wrong for using reversals, I'm saying it is not useful for me. My point here is for people developing their storytelling voice with Tarot. There are lots of traditions and habits, but you can test them all. Find what works best for you, what gives the best readings. If it isn't working, but it aside and do something simpler. Keep a journal and look through it to see what works best for you. For me, that meant no reversals, among other things.

Thanks for reading!

✢

I find the process of writing to be something that teaches me what I am thinking. I find the mass of beliefs, feelings, intuitions, and passing thoughts to be too fleeting and insubstantial to commit to any of them firmly. But the process of writing to make statements about what I'm thinking helps me nail down those things and test them against a reader, I imagine, who is coming upon them for the first time.

In addition, I have come to understand that this next part of my life is about putting some of the things I've learned in front of the public, even if that public is a small group of readers who have stumbled upon my writing in accidental or roundabout ways. I make my little paper boats, put a light on them, and set them on the lake at night to watch them move on. I watch them and wonder where they might end up. Perhaps they'll participate in adventures that I cannot see. I find the thought pleasant.

I just did two single card readings, and that prompted me to think about what I'd say to people learning Tarot or expanding their repertoire. And what could be simpler than a single card?

I tend to think of cards this way, the foundation of meaning is cultural, the common meanings and known symbols on the cards themselves. Above this I see the personal layer that you build up over time. And on top of this is the context layer that applies during a reading. I didn't think this ten years ago, and who knows what I will think in ten more years? But I've found that thinking about card meaning in these three layers is useful.

When we are starting with Tarot, we read about the cards, we study what others have said about them, and maybe we read some history. This gives us a foundation to build on. What we build then comes from our personal experience from working with the cards and probably from doing readings. A single card is a good approach for building these two layers.

If you pull a card every day, record it in a journal, put some basic meaning down (looking it up if needed), and then later add in how it showed that day, you have a daily exercise that will build your understanding of the cards. People post daily cards on social media all the time, but I usually ignore them if they don't include some writing about the card itself. I like reading the meanings, which sometimes bring out new details for me, but I don't take them as a reading for me. I can pull a card for myself, thank you, and have done so for many years.

So that's a very basic way to do single card readings. Do this every day and keep track of the card, and perhaps add some notes about how you saw the card appear that day, if you did. You will see that some cards appear more often for you, and some never show at all. If you have an extra deck, you can even pull a card every day and set it aside until you have done each card. This assures that you visit every card. I've done it both ways and depended on that daily journal for years to look up meanings and experiences when I read for myself. At this point, I've memorized all of my writing, so I don't have to look up my words very often. I think this is a good practice for many people to help them develop their Tarot skills.

But the third layer I've mentioned, the context layer, shows up best when you do readings. And I want to show the two single card readings I just did to illustrate this.

First, the actual context. I had a dream about a teacher that I used to study with. In the dream, they were having me play a tape of a lecture they had made a while ago. There was actually a lot going on in the dream, but I wanted to act on the dream and decided that I'd write to this person and express my gratitude for their teaching me, and their work in general. What they taught me had been very important in my life since then, and I felt grateful that I had those teachings and was able to apply them over and over for my own benefit, for myself and others.

And since I make it a rule to always express gratitude when I feel it, and since they are getting very old and would not likely see me again, I wrote them a letter expressing myself directly, warmly, and thankfully.

But what I haven't mentioned is that this person can be prickly sometimes and might not like this kind of missive. And so I did a one-card reading to check if this should be sent and would it be received correctly. Here it is:

This is the Page of Cups from The Tarot of the Sevenfold Mystery, where Lady is used instead of Page and Vessels are used instead of Cups. I immediately knew that I should send the message. This Page/Lady is about bringing real feelings to the situation and about being open to situations where real feelings arise. So that was clear to me. Also, in this deck, the Three of Cups/Vessels shows three women with Cups on their heads, each marked with the symbols for Fire, Air and Earth, and this card brings the Water Cup to that joyful meeting, so I knew that it would be accepted in the right way.

And it was.

So the context of our relationship and the story the deck author had created made the reading plain. I received an answer back in short order inviting me to a meeting online.

After this, I was thinking about the other thing I felt grateful for, some teaching from a friend that had helped me through a difficult time and which supports me even today. I was grateful, but we'd become estranged over some triviality. I wondered if I should try the same thing with this other teacher. Were we at the point where we could have a reunion? Was the timing right? Had the feeling evolved past the problem area? Time for a second reading:

This is the XV Satan from The Tarot of the Sevenfold Mystery, commonly called XV The Devil in many decks. I immediately knew that this was not the time. The Devil suggests that there is too much entanglement and that we are locked into very “low” sorts of behavior. And the card shows us un-awake and labeled Will and Appetite, which describes the contention, all under the aegis of Unreason.

No, this was not going to work out. I'd just spent an entire Tarot Meeting discussing The Devil, and it was very clear that the problem is mainly that I'm not sincere. I am not the Lady bringing her Water to the meeting, I'm mired in my shadow realm of feeling like I have been wronged or overlooked. That's me, the Willful one. Clearly I need to work on my stuff in this situation. I look forward to reaching a point where we can have some kind of reconciliation and get back to a nice place of friendship and learning.

That's about all I have to say at this point. I'll look at some larger readings next time. Thanks for reading!

✢

I have a blog here about dreaming and shamanism, but a lot of what I do also involves Tarot. I didn't want to mix things up too much, so I decided to create this blog just for Tarot topics.

First, some context. Despite there being a lot of tarot content on the web, many details are often left out. I want to encourage others to spend time elaborating on how they use tarot, not just on the meanings of cards. So I'm trying to post things in the hopes that others will do the same.

Second, a lot of writing on tarot on the web implies that meaning is fixed. I think that this idea is an oversimplification. My take is that the foundation is made up of meanings that have accrued over time. On top of that are the associations that we develop as personal meanings. On top of those are those that arise in the context of a reading.

So, for example, the Ten of Swords often shows a figure pierced by ten swords, often lying on the road and bleeding. The meaning is often about ending and finality, a kind of dramatic overkill, and harm. But a number of years ago, after surgery on my core, it started showing up in readings to indicate the surgery and associated issues. Another example showed while trying to develop a way of locating things using tarot, a question about where to find a certain kind of thing on a hill in the city, The Tower appeared as a marker and revealed that what I was seeking was next to the tallest building on that hilltop.

Third, a lot of tarot writing doesn't go into the choice of layouts or the details of how those layouts work. I've seen plenty of one card, card-of-the-day posts, but it is often unclear why people are doing this. At a certain point I spent 3-4 years drawing one card each day and writing a small entry in my journal, but I did this to force myself to focus on the cards in more detail. It helped me a lot. But posting a card? What is the purpose?

Today I saw the two cards I mention above posted in this way, with a single line of description, somewhat sour in both cases. I wasn't sure what the motivation was and I'd like to encourage people to give context when they post tarot cards or readings. I hope people aren't encountering these and taking them as personalized reading for all readers. I don't think tarot works quite like that. I didn't have any Ten of Swords or The Tower things today. I think drawing a card a day is a great thing to do for your own development, but explain context when posting so that others can learn from it. Just announcing “tarot says” is not that helpful, I think.

And last, I have spent a good part of the last decade focusing on layouts and how they work, and what the attributes of a useful layout might be. I've encountered many layouts that have a theme and somewhat vague descriptions of the positions. That's OK, but I really like specific and pointed purposes for each position. So, today I am going to show a recent reading of my go-to layout, a four-card layout that I think of as The Four Card Action Layout. I've used this layout probably thousands of times and it keeps showing its value, so I want to share it.

The four cards are laid out left, right, top, bottom, to form a cross. I like to put them out facedown and reveal them one by one and talk about what each card means, in the context of the layout “rules” and the question. Did I mention that I like specific questions? The more specific the better for this layout. You can be vague, or not even tell me the question and it will work, but being very specific helps focus right in on the details in a better way.

Here is the reading, I will explain each position and card, but first, the question: What is this old resentment I feel about a shared space? I share a garden space with others and in the past one of the others claimed control over how it would be managed and maintained. I protested, but they ignored me and I passive-aggressively refused to work with them at all. For years.

A foolish approach but I was stressed at the time and reverted to this childish stance. Implied in the question is the idea that I want to correct the resentment and move to a better state.

TOPIC: The first card, in the west, is the “What it IS” card and shows the real subject of the question. It defines the question and shows what it is about and the context of the question. Sometimes the concern is not what we supposed.

The card is the Six of Coins – A gift, a sharing, heart to heart gift as if from child to child. I'm using Robert M. Place's Alchemical Tarot and I like his version of the Six, which shows one child giving a huge coin to another child. They naked, unencumbered, and it feels like the kind of honest giving of a child, and it lacks the wealth versus poverty quality of many versions of this card.

When I turned this card over it was like a gentle but clear slap in the face, I became very emotional by the realization that my response was not the honest act of a child in giving or receiving, but mean and stubborn. This reading was going to be a real “dope slap” for me, as a tarot friend puts it, when tarot calls you on your BS. I really need to act more like a gift-giver if I want to correct the situation.

IS-NOT: The second card, in the east, is the “What it IS NOT” position and shows what is not is play, or something we assumed to be an issue that is not really part of what we should be concerned about. These first two cards should refine and focus the question and reveal more about the issues of the question.

This card is the Seven of Coins – Evolution, development, going through stages. It emphasizes the message of the first card, this is not a situation where things will grow and develop naturally. There is no learning to be done by the person who annoyed me originally. They are not going to evolve an understanding of my stubbornness being rooted in my sense of unfairness. I am not going to grow out of it. This is the Not position, these are Not going to happen.

Given that framework of two cards describing the situation, what is the Tarot suggesting for Action, or what is it saying about the action you have already chosen?

TO-DO: The third card, in the north, is the “What to DO” or ACTION card. This says what you should do, or where you need to place attention or energy depending on the reading.

This card is Eight of Cups – Leave the old behind and do the work of the spirit. In the Rider-Waite-Smith deck this shows a stack of eight cups while a figure seems to leave on a watery journey under a strange eclipse. Here, in the Alchemical Tarot, the card shows a potter working on a wheel to make new vessels out of the surrounding clay, while the symbol of The Quintessence hovers above his work.

I take it to mean to work at this, make some effort, do the good work and make a positive thing out of the situation instead of waiting for it to improve on its own.

OUTCOME: The final card, in the south, is the “Outcome” card, saying what the action will lead to, where things are headed.

Here, the card is the Four of Swords – Peace, stillness, meditation. Nearly every version of this card exemplifies these ideas, but what I like about this version of the card is that the four swords are grounded in the earth. I tend to think of Swords are being stories, words, ideas and thoughts, and this suggests to me that the unpleasant thoughts can be put to rest and that peace can result.

This reading has actually improved things since the time I laid it out. Things are not entirely resolved, but I've accepted that the old resentments are not workable and should not be honored any longer. Something new is being built.

I wanted to post this reading for a few reasons. First, because I think it is good to show how a reading proceeds in more detail than usual. Secondly, I think that beginners are given either overly simple or overly complex layouts to work with and that there is too much vagueness. Often, the layout shape and positional meanings seem arbitrary and not very specific.

I believe that the more specific we can be, the better the reading is for solving problems and making decisions. You don't do tarot readings for trite things, why bother doing a reading to decide if you will have coffee or tea with your lunch? But things like, should you try something in a new area or you life? I rarely get clear yes/no answers, but I almost always get a better understanding of the context and new things to consider as I work out what I want and how I feel and what I'm willing to change.

Finally, this layout came from nowhere, really. A friend showed it to me over 20 years ago, but does not recall it. Their supposed source never actually published it. It just kind of appeared mysteriously and revitalized my tarot work back then, and I've used it thousands of times since then and find that it is very accessible to others.

I especially like how the first two cards provide a strong context, THIS is, and THIS is not. There is a tendency to read cards generally instead of being specific to their position. If you get Death or the Ten of Swords in the IS NOT position, the common negative response to the card should be muted or abandoned because this is not directly in play, so maybe you need to take it out of your thinking? In the example above, the Seven of Coins in this position is saying: No, this is not going to evolve naturally, so I need to give up that idea.

After using this layout, and other layouts that have fallen into my lap, I want things to be as specific and pointed as possible and most of my layouts try to be specific and pointed.

I should not that I tend to use The Alchemical Tarot for personal readings since I spent a lot of time studying alchemical topics, so they speak to me. I've also worked with the creator, Robert M. Place in the past and love his decks. He sells them on his website.

In the future I will likely not write this much, but I do plan on posting the occasional reading where the details seem clear and helpful in the hopes that those learning tarot will benefit in some way. Thanks for reading!

✢