Why Tarot: The Benefits of Self-Exploration
If you’ve made it this far in your spiritual journey, you’re probably asking yourself “why should I use tarot cards?” Perhaps you’re wondering “do I even need to use tarot cards”?
First of all, if you’re asking these questions, you’re on the right track. It is absolutely necessary to question whether or not a certain spiritual practice is right for you. Not everything spirituality has to offer is going to be right for you and your specific path. Naturally, some things will resonate with you more than others.
I will, however, highly encourage trial runs especially when it comes to tarot. How could you possibly come to a conclusion if you haven’t tried it first? I’m going to explain how beneficial tarot can be when you are just starting out, and how to begin figuring out where to start your own practice.
What is Tarot in Spiritual Practice?
Tarot cards, like most spiritual objects, are tools. Tools require both knowledge and instruction, and, like all tool mastery, it takes practice. Now, this isn’t meant to sound intimidating or discouraging. Forming a constant reading practice will not only help you with card interpretations, but it will also help you learn to trust yourself.
Think about a blacksmith. You can be given a hammer, but you also have to understand the right amount of strength required to use the hammer as well as practice the accuracy in which to land a hit. Once you use the hammer more often, it becomes less of a foreign object in your hands and more of an extension of your own arm.
You learn how to feel the pull of gravity and naturally fall into a rhythm of bringing it down. Then maybe you realize down the road that a specific type of hammer just doesn’t fit right—maybe you need a different size or weight. You practice with various types of hammers until you find the one that’s “just right.” Same concept with tarot. At first, it’ll feel like an overwhelming pile of pictures, but little by little, it becomes second nature.
What Tarot Doesn’t Do
From all of my teachings, lessons, and research, one thing to understand for certain is that tarot doesn’t predict the future. That’s been the gimmick but it’s not realistic.
Instead, the idea behind future divination readings is to understand the energy surrounding a potential future given the choices being made or going to be made, which is, in turn, affected by the energy surrounding your present. Very rarely will you get pinpoint accurate dates, times etc.
Tarot reading is not always a constant uplifting experience. This isn’t to say you won’t get uplifting readings. In fact, for every harsh reading there is a sweet encouraging message. Tarot acts as a spiritual mirror to get you to confront yourself: your fears, your dreams, your wounds, and even the things you’ve rejected about yourself. Everything you’ve tried to hide all comes to the surface and laid bare for you to pick apart. I’m not saying it’s pretty, but I am saying it’s rewarding.
Why Use Tarot
As a storyteller, I love thinking of tarot as a means to tell a story—your story and the story of the collective energy of the universe. The cards themselves tell the story of the human experience. It includes all of the possible ups and downs we go through, every cycle, every bump in the road. You are the main character in your own story whether you believe it or not.
If I asked you to tell me your personal story, what would you say? Would you vaguely talk about a sequence of events that led up to the now? Or would you give me an in-depth explanation of how certain experiences shaped you into the person you are?
I was at a fair when I walked past a tarot reader’s tent. Previously, I had been hesitant to put any sort of faith in tarot cards because I didn’t want to just be told what I wanted to hear. I wanted the truth. Despite my judgement, I walked into the tent and sat down for my first reading.
The reader immediately saw my hesitance and we talked about tarot as a way to get all the things you want to say out into the open without you having to say it. She explained to me that the guidance I wanted was within me all along—that I knew what to do all along—I just needed to bring it out. That’s when I bought my first tarot deck.
Tarot cards have been a saving grace for me. I have hit so many roadblocks in my life that I felt like my path had completely gone off the rails. I felt lost, depressed, and anxious for a future I wasn’t even sure was going to happen.
I felt like I couldn’t trust myself to make the right choices or know what was good for me. I was running down every rabbit trail just to imagine that I had some form of control. I started unhealthy relationships just to feel something—anything other than the blank void I woke up to every day.
Tarot breaks down ‘you’ in a digestible manner. Think of it like playing 20-questions but with yourself. It was so much easier to interpret pictures in front of me and put together the puzzle of my life when I could see it before my very eyes.
I began to realize that the only thing standing in my way was me. And at the same time, I was the only person who could get me out of that state. Tarot allowed me to explore my own consciousness and guided me on the path to self-improvement. I learned how to be my own savior and through tarot I learned how I could take the center stage of my own story and start living my life instead of just surviving it.
To begin to understand your story, the first thing to start with is a question. What are you currently questioning right now? Are you questioning your current job or career, or maybe you’re questioning the relationships you’re currently in. Perhaps you’re questioning your life’s purpose? Could you be feeling absolutely lost? Do you feel as if life has completely slipped out of your control and is seemingly falling apart around you? Do you find yourself asking, quite dissatisfied, if this mundane experience is all life has to offer? These are the questions I have asked myself in tears, screaming at the sky for some sort of guidance. The answer I received was self-exploration.
Why Do I Need Self Exploration?
Self-exploration in a nutshell is understanding yourself better. It’s thinking about yourself critically. Who are you? Do you understand why you are the way you are? Do you understand how that translates into your decision-making process and how it affects your relationships? Do you know how your energy effects your environment and vice versa?
I once heard tarot cards labeled as the holistic approach to mental health and I have to agree. For the first time, you are having an in-depth conversation with yourself. You play your own therapist and you decide how you use the advice you are given. What energies are working for you and what is working against you? Learn what sets you off or can pick you up. By understanding who you were, you can see who you are, and then you can truly become who you want to be—who you are meant to be.
Through self-exploration, you learn how to interpret your story from where you came from and how your choices and wounds effect your present-day self. It’s learning how to listen to the still voice inside of you, also known as your intuition. Most people don’t follow their intuition or “gut” because they don’t trust themselves.
This is a learned behavior that has been ingrained into us by society and throughout our early developmental stages. What secrets are you holding deep inside of your spirit? What trauma has this learned behavior stemmed from? What is blocking your intuition? By learning more about yourself—why you make certain decisions or why you act out in certain ways—helps you to learn to trust your own instincts.
Self-exploration is also self-care. Once you understand how you function and why, you learn how to take care of your specific needs. What is fulfilling for someone else may not fulfill you. This is how you learn to tailor your self-care to your specific needs.
How do you love yourself? What do you do to take care of your emotional, mental and physical needs? For example, I understood that sitting in a bath is my form of self-care—not just for my hygiene but for my spiritual self. The warm water brings a comfort to me that I am lacking in my environment. What does your spiritual self-need that you’re not giving it?
Self-exploration tumbles into to self-improvement. How can you better your life? Now your story is laid bare for you to see—what are you going to do with it? You understand what is no longer working in your life, so how are you going to improve it? What steps are you going to take to transform your life into one you actually wish to live?
Self-improvement is a challenge because while you’re doing it for yourself, by proxy you are also doing it for the people around you. Who in your life has struggled from the energy you’ve put out? Who have you hurt after someone hurt you? Self-improvement means healing wounds, confronting trauma, and taking control of your life. This means making better choices for you. Watch how you start to gain confidence as you realize your own self-worth. This type of work teaches you how to confront problems as they arrive. Tarot gives you the tools for managing those big emotions that you can’t verbalize.
Some people go to therapy, others buy tarot cards. Now, I’m not saying don’t go to therapy—in fact, please go to therapy. But for some people, and I am one of them, therapy isn’t affordable. Creating a healthy tarot practice of self-exploration can help fill in the gaps that therapy cannot.
Tarot as a Guide
Why do people go to tarot readers? 9 times out of 10 its for guidance. When you’re feeling lost, tarot is a good place to start. You already know what to do, deep down, but it’s hard to face your own answers.
Tarot presents those answers in a digestible, manner to guide your decision making. They will not, however, make decisions for you. I like to interpret tarot as one big vibe check. It’s like when you’re playing a video game and taking a peek at a map you haven’t explored yet. What should you expect from one path verses another?
The practice of reading tarot helps you regain that sense of control in your life. It alleviates the anxiety of the unknown because the potential is right there in front of you. Tarot is wonderful for beginners becomes it opens the door to take that first step. Guidance through tarot is understanding the surrounding energy. A vibe check!
Let me give you some examples:
There are two decisions you are currently facing and they each take you down a completely different path than the other. But which one is the ‘right’ one? This is a common question for tarot. Using a simple spread, you can get an energetic reading on what you could expect from each path—not a specific future, but definitely what energies you can expect depending on what’s being put into it. This way, you can analyze what energies are surrounding each choice and decide based on what you really want.
How about if you’re unsure about a relationship. You know the saying “seeing the world through rose tinted glasses?” Tarot can give you a better energetic insight on what’s going on because it removes those glasses. Let’s say your relationship has been really rocky lately and you don’t know whether it would be better to break up or keep pushing through. There are easy 3-card spreads that show you where you’re at in the relationship versus where your partner currently is. Then you can see where that energy meets together, what it’s creating, and where it’s headed. This can give you better insight and help you make your decision.
Let’s say you are unhappy with your current, safe job but are scared to leave it to take this other job that you really want but may take you down a rocky road. Tarot will guide you to a new perspective. What is it about the job that you hate? Is this job contributing to an impoverished mentality? Are you thinking in a material sense or in a martyr mindset? What is keeping you from true abundance? These are the types of self-exploration questions that tarot forces you to ask to guide you to the root of the problem so that you may determine your best course.
Tarot is just a great way for picking up on the current vibes not only around situation but your current environment. What risks are worth taking in your life? Where are you spending most of your energy? What places would be a better investment for your energy to prevent burnout? How can you open up a new perspective for the current situation?
Remember, tarot cards and tarot readers are not here to make decisions for you. They are there to channel your intuition so that you can make the best decision for you and what you truly want.
Have fun with Tarot
Intuitive Souls’ mission is to make these tools that helped us more accessible to you. Tarot can be a long journey and when it comes down to it, you want to feel good. You deserve to enjoy the life you have. Let yourself make mistakes, let yourself learn, and most importantly be kind to yourself.
Are you thinking tarot is right for you or want to give it a shot? Check out our Tarot course to begin your journey!