Page of Cups from the Revelations Tarot

What exactly is this tarot? How can a bunch of card give us advice or tell us what happened in the past or in the future? Is it magic? Is it mysterious?

I’ve been giving this a lot of thought lately. I suppose I’ve been questioning my own faith in the cards. After all they are just cards with pictures laminated onto them. There’s no doubt they work – we readers love that gasp of amazement when we hit an accurate note – but how does it happen?

I think, and this is only my opinion, that it hardly makes a difference which card/s show up. What is important is that it prompts thoughts and questions in the mind of the reader, and to some extent, the seeker. Tarot challenges assumptions and presumptions, it pulls us up short with ‘what if?’ and ‘maybe that?’.

So, it’s all about the thoughts. Tarot advises by asking us to look at situations in different ways. It sometimes means that our long-held belief is merely a thought that has gathered momentum like a snowball. What does it matter if the Seven of Wands shows up and asks if we are feeling under attack? Or if the Three of Swords asks if we have our communications with others in a terrible tangle? Each will resonate and each will prompt some deep thinking.

What is important is that we use the cards to examine how thought has brought us to this point. Your whole outlook on life, and indeed, your whole physical life, hinges on your thoughts.

Hmm… how can I explain this better? Okay, take Anna. Anna loves her life, She is stressed sometimes, but on the whole she enjoys her job, her family, her lifestyle. Josie has a very similar life to Anna but she has allowed the stressful parts to overshadow the joy. Her outlook is very different – she only focuses on the problems so that every other aspect of life is tainted. Her relationship is at breaking point, her kids can’t talk to her and she hates her job.

What’s the solution? Change her job? Leave her partner? No, she simply has to change her thoughts. She needs to stand back, take stock and understand that her stress and worry is all to do with her attention on what might happen in the future (tomorrow, next month, the next five years) instead of what’s happening right now in the moment.

Once Josie realises that worry, anxiety and stress is wasted energy, and only based on thoughts of negative future moments, she can come back into herself and learn to enjoy the now. It’s only thought. We need to train ourselves to look at the thought and then let it go.

Nearly every card in the deck can give this message. Think about it. Here’s a random selection (I’m simply turning a few cards off the top of my deck):

• Temperance says everything in moderation, balance, self awareness. Keep calm, look at your options.
• Nine of Wands says stop, regroup, be resilient and focus on the job in hand.
• The Lovers says pay attention the relationships in your life. Also to your relationship with yourself.
• The Page of Swords tells you that you have access to higher thought. Higher thoughts being ‘up’ on the happiness scale.
• The Page of Cups suggests you examine your feelings right now in this moment. How are you feeling?
• The Eight of cups says you could be turning your back on that which you love.

Okay, so look at those cards in the context of Josie’s situation. Each makes sense and all of them tell her to focus on the now moment, to really see what’s happening in her head and heart. They just prompt it in different ways. Yes, of course, as readers we can expand on their different meanings and that adds detail, colour and depth to the reading, but in almost every case, we can say that the thoughts of the seeker are what controls their outlook. And their outlook on life determines its direction.

Even the saddest thoughts can be treated like this. Long-term grief is based on repetitive thoughts. The sufferer is naturally distressed at their loss but then, they allow those thoughts of loss to determine the quality of their life – those repeating thoughts keep the grief alive and fresh. The answer is to allow the thoughts and then let them go. Constantly. Eventually the grief (negative thoughts) will dissipate leaving only good thoughts of the person they were so lucky to have in their life.

I’m reading a book on my Kindle at the moment, which prompted this post, “Somebody Should Have Told Us” by Jack Pransky, and I highly recommend it to every tarot reader. It’s enlightening.