Working With A Card

After you have familiarized yourself with the new deck, it is time now to go deeper into a specific card. To summarize my approach to a new deck, I recommend first to study the Majors and Minors separately, taking note of the prevailing themes, the way the colors and the images tend to play with each other and the cadences that you are finding on your own.

Do the Majors follow a specific theme or myth? What emblems or symbols are used to designate the four Suits? How are the Court cards labeled and personified?

Once you get a general idea of the deck and its energies and feel comfortable with your findings, take a look at the book or general instructions accompanying the deck and see how your intuition and overall interpretations coincide with the author's intentions. Don't worry about "accuracies." There are no right or wrong interpretations when it comes to the way that Spirit communicates with us at an intimate, personal level.

Have paper and pen nearby.

Enter silently and with reverence your Sacred Space.

Pick one particular card that intrigues you at this particular moment.

Look at the card and write down one word that would best describe it.

Give the card a title.

Now, slowly and with intention, describe the picture in front of you. Talk to yourself, to the picture.
The idea here is to establish a dialogue that will engage you completely with the card.

Identify all the elements and figures in the card. Try to find something that you hadn't noticed before.

Now, try to describe and engage the energies of the card with all your senses: Engage smell, taste, touch; connect to other potentialities of the card, even if they might sound or feel strange to you.

Working with the specific, intuitive energies of one card is a powerful way to understand the language of Spirit. It engages your intuitive powers and leads you to communicating directly with the images, thus unleashing new meanings and interpretations. After all, it is your own personal dialogue. Find your personal language and ways to communicate with Spirit.

After you finish writing down all the sensations elicited, try to identify more specific and personal energies in the card. This is not as easy as it sounds and you will need to really go within. Jot down your feelings, your impressions, try to make this exercise as fluid and spontaneous as possible.

At this moment in time, what does this card mean to you? Why did you pick it, out of 78 possible choices?

What energies in the card should be released? Contained? Redirected or Changed? Do you feel any of these sensations in your own body?

Is there anything in particular that you strongly identify with in the card now? Why?

Is there anything or anyone you know reflected in the card?

Remember, you picked this card. Now it might be time for you to ask WHY.

If you gave the card a title at the beginning of this exercise, give it now another title.

Compare both titles.

Keep a journal, do this exercise with the same card, different deck, and compare impressions

Two of Wands from Tarot of the Crone by Ellen Lorenzi-Prince

Go to Example

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