Tarot is a system of 78 images – symbols and archetypes that speak to the collective unconscious. We use the Tarot to illuminate our understanding of ourselves, our place in the world and the cycles of nature.
Tarot is a system of divination. Divination works well for people who are willing to believe that the Divine or God or Spirit or the Universe is inherent in all things. This makes asking and receiving guidance not only possible but relatively easy. The values of Tarot are optimism, spirituality and a belief in the value and necessity of change. Tarot works well for people who hold these same values dear.
Tarot works well for people who are interested in experiencing their own imagination as a window of perception. Instead of dismissing the imagination as unreal or unimportant, we see the imagination as a pathway to deeper knowing, happiness, growth and creativity. We all have the capacity to imagine things – with Tarot we get a guided journey through certain symbols and archetypes – so that we may be able to expand our understanding of our place in the dance of creation and destruction.
The Divine may speak directly to or through us, but she also speaks through symbols and patterns in nature, cards, dice, sticks, coins, pendulums or whatever our tool of choice. These supposedly random patterns trigger messages from deep in our psyche. What we want or want to know already exists. The answers are inside of us. Tarot is random – and when we lay out the cards, our unconscious minds build a bridge to our conscious and we can receive insights… if we are willing. Even though Tarot is random, there is still a fair amount of synchronicity that can happen with the cards. This offers us a chance to experience the transcendent, and thereby energize the psyche to have potentially deep revelations.
Tarot works because it is an amazing catalogue of a mythopoetic world and an outline of how human consciousness evolves. When you shuffle the cards, all of these elements come out to play with each other in a powerful way. An open mind sees connections, and makes associations. We are pattern hunters! Tarot speaks to something deep inside us that we already know.
Margot Darling 