The reasons tarot attracts writers are infinite, but I think for many writers, and definitely for me, the primary allure of tarot as a writing tool comes in three areas:

1. Human Archetypes
2. Creative Freedom
3. Pause and Reflection

1. Human Story Archetypes and Endless Stories

Tarot decks tell stories.  

From unknowing to knowing, from trauma to recovery, death to rebirth. The two arcanas have their story arcs, the suits cards have their arcs, and the cards themselves have their own visual story. 

Tarot cards represent most (every?) archetype of human experience. Add in your own intuitive readings based on your experiences of those archetypes and I believe there isn’t a single thing in life that can’t turn up in a potential reading.

The deck is a universe of stories you can hold in one hand. Shuffle it once, that story changes. Shuffle it again, the story changes. Look at a card upside down, the story changes again. In just a simple three card spread drawn from a standard 78 card deck, there are more than a half a million distinct possibilities – and that’s not even considering reversed readings.

2. Creative Freedom

With effectively infinite stories in one deck, the creative opportunities tarot allows are just as expansive. 

But it’s not just drawing a card and finding a story that I love. It’s drawing a card and finding connections in stories is that is such an allure for me. 

The cards guide us through our own creativity, prompting ideas and angles. If creativity is joining the dots between ideas in new ways, tarot offers infinite dots and the patterns to join them in.

Tarot is also a creative act in the spreads you choose. You might lay cards in a traditional spread like the Celtic Cross and creatively apply that to your story world, or you might make up a new spread specific for your specific literary problem you’re attempting to nut out.

3. Pause for Reflection

Our modern world is ceaseless, more and more confined to light and glass, bits, bytes, and likes and follows and production, and faster, and now. 

Tarot is an ancient tool, made of paper and ink. It takes time to learn and time to read, and the more time you use for both, the richer your tarot experience will be. Tarot is not a part of the modern world.

When I sit down to draw a spread, I’m always alone. It’s quiet. Screens are off (the only exception to this is that I sometimes consult the Biddy Tarot site for readings as Brigit’s interpretations of the cards align nicely with my own world views).

I draw the cards, a tactile experience, and note the spreads in my journals, pen to paper. I have different journals for different things – my general life, my fiction writing life, and then my story specific notebooks.

I write about the cards’ meanings, traditional meanings, the meanings derived from the books of whichever deck I’m reading from, and my own interpretations. I then journal about how the spread applies, what I’m thinking, what I’m learning, what I’m rejecting. 

It’s a slow and quiet process, and one I always step away from with a clear mind and a light heart. How many times can I say I’ve had that same experience stepping away from an hour scrolling Twitter (there’s a good reason I quit most social media).

The way tarot serves you and your writing life might be different to my experiences. I’d love to read your thoughts on why you’re drawn to tarot, so please share below. 

The post Why Are Writers So Drawn To Tarot appeared first on Tarot Writers.

What next?

If you’re looking to add a specific writing deck to your collection, look for two things:

1. A complementary theme

2. Art you like

The first deck I got specially for my writing was the Thoth deck. It’s deeply symbolic heavy with esoteric symbols, and his has a rather dark and serious vibe to it which comes, for me, from its creator, the infamous occultist, Alistaire Crowley. At the time I wrote darker fantasy, and it was a great match.

Now I write lighter fantasy blending romantic and some mystery elements over a variety of fantasy subgenres including contemporary fantasy, high cozy fantasy, and paranormal romance. There’s a lot of witches, a lot of goddess power. I rarely use the Thoth deck any more.

For most of my contemporary work, I use the Witches Tarot by Ellen Dugan and the Gilded Tarot by Ciro Marchetti, both modern decks, with vibrant colors and rich contemporary art styles. The Witches tarot suits particularly well for obvious reasons.

When my imagination ventures into the more mystical or mythical stories, I dabble with the Llewelyn deck, ancient welsh myths from Anna-Marie Ferguson, the same artist who created my beloved Legend deck. For medieval flavored inspiration, I use The Golden Tarot: The Visconti-Sforza Deck by Mary Packard.

At the time of writing, I’m dabbling with a Davide Corsi’s Ghost Tarot because there’s a ghost draft in the works.

I was recently gifted the Motherpeace deck by Karen Vogel and Vicki Noble. This unusual and highly stylized deck (the cards are round!) is drenched in feminine energy and goddess archetypes. I use it for finding deeper layers in my complicated women characters, and have also found it a beautiful addition to my personal readings (as a complicated woman character myself!)

These decks are thematic matches to the vibes I’m intentionally creating in my work.

You aren’t limited to tarot for this, remember. You might also consider oracle cards.

I really want to get a dragon deck, and there are many around, but I haven’t found one with art I really love yet. So for my dragon stories, I use an oracle deck – the Dragonfae Oracle by Lucy Cavendish.

If you’re writing fantasy, you might stick to a deck with these themes. There’s dark fantasy, plenty of Goth vibes, vampire tarot, and the list goes on.

For the lighter vibes of fantasy, you might look to one of the many fairy decks, or fairy tales. 

Do you write contemporary stories set in the real world?

You can get all kinds of decks to suit just about any theme of life. Knitting decks, parenting decks, housework, vehicles, alcohol, ferrets, cats, computer programing… And it goes on.

You might consider directly matching different elements from your stories to multiple decks, especially if you’re writing in a hybrid niche genre like vampire knitting, or paranormal pets for example. 

If you use multiple decks for the same stories, stick with using one deck per spread.

Like so much of tarot reading, the deck you choose for your writing all comes down to what feels good and right to you. 

Shop around for a deck that matches your art taste and your story themes.

Then spend some time examining the cards, thinking about your stories, but not asking anything of the deck yet, just enjoying the art and exploring the symbolisms at play.

This process in itself can be an excellent brainstorming session, so get ready to make notes.

When you’re ready to set the cards to work, start using some specific tarot spreads for writers and let the real creative explorations begin.

The post How to Choose A Tarot Deck – A Guide for Writers appeared first on Tarot Writers.

So, is tarot actually magical tool?

I preface this discussion by saying that I am not here to step on anyone’s beliefs, faiths, spiritual practices, or any other kinds of ways of living. The views expressed in this article are my opinions based on my experiences. Like all people, I carry contradictory labels. I am an optimistic, intuitive, skeptic and scientific rationalist, open to practically any idea, even magic, if it feels right. This article is my subjective viewpoint and I’m not trying to change anyone’s mind or anything else.

I believe…

Tarot is what you make it. Tarot is what you want it to be.

A tarot deck comprises 78 pieces of card decorated with pretty pictures. Most decks we use have been mass produced in industrial printing facilities. 

Doesn’t sound magical or mystical, does it?

Over the centuries, the cards have been ascribed meanings, and those meanings have become fixed, with different readers and deck designers adding their own nuances.

Those 78 meanings and their combinations encapsulate human experience in a general sense. Most of us have gone through or will go through something that any arrangements of cards will speak to. Sometimes that can require some interpretive thinking.

“The benefits of the Tarot as an analytical system may outweigh its oracular use, as it allows the querent to distance him or herself from a situation, make a direct evaluation, and take charge of his or her own destiny.”

Anna-Marie Ferguson A Keeper Of Words: Legend, The Arthurian Tarot.

Tarot cards have no magic powers in themselves.

It’s the meanings we ascribe to them, and how we use those meanings to prompt our thinking and explore our emotions that gives tarot cards their power.

That said, in my many years reading the tarot I’ve had countless moments when I look at the cards I’ve drawn and marvel how appropriate each card is in a read.

Sometimes I keep on pulling the same cards no matter how thoroughly I shuffled that deck. And that happens across different decks too, so it’s not like a well used deck might bring up the same cards thanks to some physical thing like a bit of sticky grime that might have accumulated in the decades of use, or a slightly creased card that might make itself more prominent.

There are some cards I rarely, if ever draw.

These coincidences just happen.

That’s when the cards feel like magic.

For example, when I was considering starting Tarot Writers, I was already had a full plate of writing and family commitments and the rest of life stuff. Another project was the last thing I needed. But I felt drawn to put my work with tarot into some kind of discussion and learning resource for others. 

I started dabbling in a few ideas and pondering how it might look. Then wondered, I love tarot and love working with tarot, but do I really want to dedicate a huge chunk of my life and work to teaching tarot for writers? I was meant to be focussing my efforts on more profitable writing niches. I’d done the data crunching on tarot – it will not make me rich! Do I want to add tarot to my brand? So I want to “come out” as a tarot reader so publicly? Note, I don’t actually keep tarot life a secret, I just don’t discuss it with the general people in my life. If it comes up as a topic – however that might be, I never run from it, but I like to keep it personal (or I did before I wrote books and blogs about it, I guess!)

So I drew three cards and called them past, present, the answer.

Past was the reversed Queen of Shields (the name for pentacles in the Legend deck I used). A card about mistrust and an unhealthy preoccupation with money, and inner conflicts about work and home balance.

Future was Queen of Spears (wands), a card that speaks of spiritual and intellectual strength, pursuing aspirations and guiding others.

And the answer was the Knight of Cups, a romantic card that speaks of courage and idealism, action towards passions, and permission to be lead by imagination, emotion, and intuition. 

This was from a fully shuffled deck and here was my life spelled out in three cards.

So you can thank that Knight of Cups for making Tarot Writers a reality. 

Maybe it’s a case of positive reinforcement. I really wanted to do this project against advice to the contrary. But why those cards? Why not an answer card that suggested focus or more pragmatic action?

Maybe because of magic?

Overall, while I keep firm to my belief that the cards are tools we use to prompt our thinking, sometimes it seems like there is an unseen hand guiding those specific cards to our spreads.

It’s up to you to decide whether that’s magic.

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Tarot cards were not totally new to this teenage me. I was a fantasy obsessed nerd with my head in Arthurian legends, Anne Rice, epic fantasy, and fairytales. I grew up in the far north of New South Wales, Australia, an area with famous (or infamous) pockets of alternative communities. I’d seen tarot readers at markets and in those secret corners behind curtains in bookstores and alternative health centers. Tarot was in my backdrop but it was still an esoteric mystery that I watched from the outside with a hungry curiosity. 

This fateful magazine article explained the history of the cards, the symbolism of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, the most famous deck and the standard for most modern decks today, and offered brief explanations for how to read each card in the Major Arcana. It was the first thing I’d ever encountered that told me tarot was something I could be a part of. I just had to study it. 

It was astounding. 

I couldn’t afford to buy a tarot deck (and my mother wasn’t rushing off to buy me one). So I made a deck.

I took large sheets of card and cut them into 78 even rectangles. I pored over images of the RWS deck from that magazine with a magnifying glass and copied them as best as my unremarkable artistic abilities allowed. I didn’t know what the minor cards looked like, except the Aces – this was before the internet, people! – so I made up my own designs for them. I secretly saved my money and bought a book on reading tarot, and set to work, again secretly, trying to see into the future. 

I still have this deck and the blue satin bag I sewed to store it in. Here’s a photo…

About a year later, my sister bought me my first “real” deck. It was Legend: The Arthurian Tarot, illustrated by Anna-Marie Ferguson. 

I still have this deck. It’s worn and soft, a few cards creased and dog-eared. It has seen me through leaving home, leaving school, going back to school, going back home, going to university, boys and break-ups, moving cities, getting jobs, quitting jobs, traveling the world, getting married, having kids, not having more kids, having more kids, writing books, and everything in between.

Tarot and Magic

When I first started reading tarot, I read for my friends, usually in the Celtic Cross spread. We would gather in dim rooms, having earnest conversations while listening to the likes of PJ Harvey, Tori Amos, Nirvana, and tarot wisdom. It felt significant. Magic.

My teenage self thought it was something mystical in the cards itself, but over the years my beliefs have changed. 

I see tarot cards as potent symbols of human archetypes, representations of, and metaphors for experiences most people go through on every plane of existence. We apply our own significances to these archetypes and look to our intuitions to tell us if these are messages we need to hear in these moments. Tarot isn’t exactly magic like the magic I write about in my books. Yet we have imbued them with the power to uncover hidden parts of our souls. And that feels like magic. 

My Decks

From that one hand made deck, I have become a deck collector and dedicate a corner of my office to more than a dozen tarot and oracle decks. I buy new decks maybe once a year now and they have to be personally relevant. 

I don’t feel particularly connected to the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. It’s important for tarot culture and I love its history and impact, and that’s the only reason I own it.

I still use the Legend deck for my personal journey, and use other decks for writing as themes or feeling suggests. 

My Not-So-Secret Secret Tarot Life

Tarot isn’t a part of me I wear on the open – oh wait, I have a tarot t-shirt and there’s that enormous RWS Major Arcana wall hanging in my bedroom… but to meet me, most people wouldn’t immediately think “tarot reader”.

My tarot life is not a secret – obviously, because I have this site and books about it. But it’s still something personal that I only share when I trust certain folk are on my vibe. Yes, I have shared my tarot journey with the entire world in publishing this, but you’re only here reading it if you’re on my vibe.

For me, tarot is a very personal thing. I don’t even really share it with my husband. He obviously sees my decks and the massive wall hanging (and those times I talk in tarot metaphors about what’s happening in our life). I talk to my kids about tarot casually. They love gazing at my wall hanging, playing their games with it. How many different animals can you see? What’s your favorite picture? I’m sure as they get older the depictions of nudity will become part of the conversation! My eldest sometimes picks through decks, looking for the most beautiful images that call to her.

Most people in my personal life don’t see what tarot means to me, and the empowerment I get from 78 pieces of card with pretty pictures on them. And that’s okay!

How Tarot Empowers Me

Tarot is a thinking prompt. It’s a writing prompt. It’s a perspective shift. It’s a message from something that feels bigger than me. The time I take to draw the cards, spread, and reflect gives me mental and spiritual space. Even if things show up in a spread that I just can’t factor into my question, it’s an opportunity to consider why they don’t fit, which is just a different path to clarifying thoughts. Reading tarot is a moment of power to step out of a word that shouts at us at every turn that magic isn’t real and logic and productivity is everything, and tune into something beautiful and slow that claims the opposite.

Obviously, tarot has its connections to the occult, to witchcraft, to paganism, to all manner of alternative spiritual paths. I love musing on the archetype of the witch and what that means in this world and those that have gone before us, and I play with these archetypes in my identity, but I don’t claim to be a witch in any completely defining sense. I am not a pagan, or an occultist, and I do not follow any particular spiritual path. 

Still, I can’t help but feel something of this magical culture whenever I pick up a deck. Now, as I’ve said, I don’t believe in literal magic like the kind I write in my fantasy novels, but I do believe in driving emotions and personal power and intuition and manifesting intention, and that’s magic. Tarot connects to all of that too.

But then there are those times when coincidences scream so loudly that I just shrug and let it happen. Who am I to say that magic isn’t real? 

Tarot Writers

Tarot Writers is another Fool’s step on my tarot journey and my writing journey.

This work is not only me becoming a tarot teacher, but it’s an opportunity to deepen my learning of tarot. Learning is an endless journey, like the major arcana itself. We start as the Fool, eager and naïve and willing to step into the unknown with blissful naivety of where the path leads. We climb through wisdoms, we crash in turmoil, and rise again with wisdom and knowledge. Always a Fool’s knowledge, and we begin again.

I look forward to sharing that journey with you.

* That magazine was the first edition of Witchcraft, a now defunct Australian periodical by Lucy Cavendish. Lucy still is productive in the spirituality circles, and I love exploring the ideas in her DragonFae deck, my first (but very much not last) Oracle deck. 

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