arcana

The Tarot is an extremely useful tool in terms of psychic development. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 or more different decks to choose from as well as many instructional books, a few of which are specifically written for certain decks. The Tarot consists of 78 cards, 22 of them referred to as the major Arcana cards… with the remaining 56 cards used for points of clarity. The 22 major cards contain a form of ancient esoteric [inner] knowledge that the reader may subconsciously access thereby opening the psychic pathways. The earliest pictograms of the Tarot can be originally traced from the Book of Thoth, an ancient Egyptian writing.

In our more current writings, you’ll find that instructional books that address the interpretation process of the Tarot will be reasonably consistent; they only vary slightly with regard to definitions and meanings. An exception to that rule concerns the few books that do not recognize reading cards that fall in the reversed position; however, the general consensus is that the reversed meanings are very important.

But instead of getting into a lot of details about the aspect of interpretations, I would instead like to share with you a couple of important distinctions regarding what I think are the key components in learning how to use the Tarot. In practical terms, these suggestions come directly from the mistakes I made many years ago when I was a beginner.

First, it is extremely important that you ‘connect’ with the deck you will be using as your main working deck. What I mean is that you should resonate with the cards in such a way that simply by handling and viewing the deck, it will provoke psychic information to flow through you. One of the things that most beginners do wrong (as I did) is that they pick up the most commonly sold deck [in most cases, that would be Rider-Waite] and then wonder why they aren’t perceiving “something psychic” as they begin working with the cards.

The Major Arcana Tarot cards represent the mythic journey of our soul’s transformation through the imagery and symbolism into awakened consciousness. As we study the cards we will turn our experience into wisdom. In essence the archetypal symbols of the Tarot represent the human condition as it relates to our lives. I invite you to come along on this journey with me to better understand ourselves, learn how to listen to our inner voice, and come to know that we are all spiritual beings in human form.