Sometimes I look around at all my tarot decks, at my tarot books and I am fascinated by my own fascination with it. I don’t have many passions or likes, that is just the way I am, very linear in my likes and dislikes, and I am very consistent, but, somehow, the Tarot by passed this and I love it, even all these years later.

I think, for me, it is a good blend of magic, knowledge, story telling and playfulness that is just a perfect match for my own mind.

This got me thinking. What kind of people are drawn to Tarot? Do they have a certain psychological make up? Is there a type of ‘tarot person’? So a bit of research was required. Below my conclusions based on what I could find online.

• Openness to Experience

It seems that the personality trait most strongly associated with an interest in tarot is Openness to Experience, one of the Big Five personality dimensions*.

People high in openness tend to enjoy symbolism, imagination, art, philosophy, mythology, and exploring unconventional ideas. They are comfortable with abstract thinking and are naturally drawn to systems that communicate through metaphor rather than straightforward facts.

• Tarot as a Tool for Reflection

Many people do not use tarot to predict the future. Instead, they use it as a structured form of self-reflection.

A tarot spread often leads to questions like:

• Why am I reacting this way?

• What am I not seeing?

• What can I learn from this?

This way the cards function as an introspective tool, supporting us to look inside and learn about ourselves.

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• During Times of Change

It seems that the interest in tarot, and other worldly practices, often increases during periods of uncertainty or transition.

Career changes, relationship difficulties, grief, illness, moving home, or retirement all create situations where people naturally search for meaning and need support to navigate the uncertainty of it all. The Tarot helps to organize thoughts and emotions when life feels unpredictable.

• Comfort with Uncertainty

Tarot also appeals to people who tolerate ambiguity well.

Rather than insisting that every question has a single correct answer, they are comfortable considering multiple possibilities. They see uncertainty as something to explore rather than fear or ignore.

• Story Tellers

Many tarot enthusiasts are natural narrative thinkers.

Rather than seeing life solely as a sequence of causes and effects, many tarot enthusiasts naturally think in stories. They instinctively look for themes, metaphors and connections between experiences. Archetypal images such as The Fool, The Hermit, The Star and The World resonate because they represent familiar stages of human experience rather than simply depicting isolated events.

• Spiritual, Religious or Neither

Tarot users come from remarkably diverse belief systems.

Some view the cards as a spiritual practice. Others approach them from a psychological perspective inspired by Carl Jung. Some are atheists who simply enjoy the symbolism, while others are artists, writers, historians, or collectors fascinated by the imagery and history of tarot.

• A Love of Symbols

One thing many tarot enthusiasts have in common is a fascination with symbols. A single image can carry multiple meanings at once, depending on the reader, the context and even the question being asked. For people who enjoy literature, mythology, psychology or art, this symbolic richness can be deeply satisfying.

• Intelligence Has Little to Do with It

There is no evidence that tarot users are less intelligent or less educated than the general population.

The more meaningful distinction is not who uses tarot, but how they use it. Some users believe the cards predict the future, while others use them to access their own thoughts, emotions, and intuitions.

• A Healthy Relationship with Tarot

For most people, tarot is simply a reflective practice or a creative exercise.

Like any belief system or personal practice, however, it can become unhealthy if it replaces independent decision-making or creates excessive dependence. Used in moderation, many people find it encourages thoughtful reflection rather than passive prediction.

• Carl Jung and Symbolic Thinking

Although Carl Jung never promoted tarot as a method of fortune-telling, many psychologists and tarot enthusiasts have noticed parallels between tarot imagery and Jung’s concept of archetypes.

From this perspective, the cards do not predict the future. Instead, they activate symbolic thinking, encourage unconscious associations, and help people explore aspects of themselves that may otherwise remain unnoticed.

• Four Common Ways People Use Tarot

Most tarot users fall into one, or a combination, of four broad groups:

Believers - who see the cards as providing genuine guidance or insight.

Psychological users - who use tarot as a framework for self-reflection.

Creative users - who use the cards to inspire writing, art, or problem-solving.

Collectors and historians - who appreciate the artistic, historical, and cultural dimensions of tarot.

I think I have a bit of each one to be fair. Some days more of one than the other. So interesting to research this topic, quite educational for myself.

What draws you to tarot and how do you use it?

_{*The Big Five personality dimensions: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism (sometimes called Emotional Stability, reversed).}

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The other day I was worried about something and the next thought I had was I need to ask the tarot about it.

The thought flowed into my head by itself with no input from me and that surprised me. It made me wonder if I started to have an unhealthy relationship with the tarot, that I depend on it too much. More like a compulsion and not a good way of using the cards. Of course, the next thought was This deserves a post for sure! And here we are!

I am quite sensitive to things that can become ‘too much’ because I have quite an addictive personality. When something resonates with me, I tend to go all in. That is why I am particularly interested in the fine line between using the tarot as a tool and depending on it too much.

As with anything else it starts slow. You do a reading here, you learn more about the cards, you do another reading, you like the feeling of your anxiety lowering, you feel more certain and in control. You do more readings, about this, that and the other. You start to feel like you have a superpower, because for a little while it feels as though uncertainty has disappeared. And then, the time comes when you cannot deal with the uncertainty of life without consulting the tarot, and you are torn to pieces when the cards don’t give the answer you are looking for.

That is when you start doing draw after draw after draw rendering the cards meaningless. What is truly scary is that sometimes people start being afraid of making their own decisions without asking the tarot, or feel incapable because they no longer trust their own judgment.

That is when the relationship with the tarot becomes an unhealthy one and you need to step away from it because all this can lead to increased anxiety, confusion, contradictory messages, decision paralysis, strained relationships and sadness.

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Healthy tarot usage is when you use it for occasional reflection, journaling and when you accept the ambiguity of the draws and you do not interpret your cards to fit whatever answer you want them to provide. Signs that the relationship with the tarot is not going the right way can be multiple daily readings, asking the same question repeatedly or feeling unable to act without consulting the deck.

It becomes even trickier when someone else is reading the cards for you. Most readers genuinely want to help, but not all do. Some may, consciously or unconsciously, encourage their querents to come back for just one more reading, because repeat clients are good for business.

We live in a world where countless apps, businesses, compete for our attention. Social media, streaming services, games, news sites, they all use techniques designed to keep us there. If someone’s income depends on you coming back, it is good to keep that in mind. That is not a reason to distrust everyone, but it is a reason to stay aware, because, in a world full of hooks, it is important to recognize when you are being reeled in. Keep your curiosity, but do not become dinner…

The tarot is an amazing tool for self-discovery and self-knowledge, but when the relationship with it becomes unhealthy, it can actually make you know yourself less and lock you out of fully understanding your own capabilities.

If you notice you start to rely too much on the cards, just take a short break from them. Give yourself the chance to make some decisions or deal with some situations without it. Journaling before and after the tarot can also be very helpful, because if you write things down honestly, when you come back to them some time later then you can determine if you were in a good state of mind or not, if the reading was helpful or damaging.

Also, don’t ask the same question on and on and on, it can be tempting I know, especially when you deal with something really big that governs your thoughts all the time, but resist it. Do one draw and then sit with those cards, think about them, learn about them. This can be so much more useful that countless draws that merge one into the other in meaninglessness.

Tarot practice becomes unhealthy when instead of listening to your own thoughts and feelings, you slowly start checking whether the cards agree with them. Before long, you are no longer using tarot to understand yourself, but you are using it to tell you what to think. To me, that is the real shadow side of tarot.

But we are better than that, aren’t we, my lovely tarot enthusiasts!

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I did a reading using my learner tarot deck and it got me thinking.

My learner tarot deck is really good because, not only does it give you an idea of each card’s meanings, but it also details additional symbols and states clearly which apply to which card. Plus, the little booklet it comes with goes deeper in the symbols depicted on the cards themselves, like the colors of the clothes, sky, shoes, objects, thus really supporting learning.

I like that, I like learning about these intricate details, and seeing them easily mapped out like this helps me anchor them to memory.

See here below how they are laid out:

I like knowing things, even what some might call impractical things. I simply enjoy studying and understanding how the world works. Being able to do a draw and have all these additional details on the cards, plus the traditional image of the card itself, really helps me learn.

I cannot recommend this type of deck enough to anyone interested in learning the symbols of the tarot, it can really help. I love books and they are crucial in deepening knowledge, but they are different things, different avenues of learning about the tarot.

Learner cards are also good at increasing confidence in yourself as a reader. Of course you do not need to learn all of these details, being an intuitive reader can work very well also.

The cards truly are for everyone.

But I digress, I wanted to write about the symbols on the cards.

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I like symbols and I like all the meaning humanity has attached to them in the course of our existence.

I like that we all looked at the same sky, we all had the same human experiences and depending on the nature around us, on the harshness of our histories, on the advancement of our studies, we gave them all meaning and have attached symbols to them.

When I first came to Ireland, I was amused and fascinated by how two different cultures solved the same problems in different ways. I got this idea when I was in an old Georgian house and the garden door had a lock on it, a lock like none I had ever seen before.

Something like this below:

I loved it and found it fascinating. Of course we have locks in Romania, but I had never seen one quite like this, and I thought it was so interesting to see how a different culture solved the same issue, locking the door, in quite a very different way.

The lock made me realize that symbols may work the same way. Different cultures looked at the same sky, experienced the same fears, hopes, deaths, births and seasons, yet often arrived at different symbolic languages to describe them.

Now, as I write this, I think I must sound like such a child. Still, I suppose we all discover the world at our own pace, some earlier, some later.

Though, coming back to the topic at hand, perhaps that is one of the reasons tarot fascinates me. Beyond readings and predictions, it is a tiny museum of symbols. Every card carries ideas, stories and meanings gathered over centuries by people trying to understand themselves and the world around them.

And now it is our turn …

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The tarot is shrouded in this aura of mystery and mysticism, and I sometimes find certain people like it to seem inaccessible because it gives them a special quality. I do not think that is true though.

I think the tarot is accessible to everybody, and more over I think the tarot likes to be accessible to everybody, because then we all benefit from its support.

The magic of tarot comes from the people using the cards and projecting onto them their worries, their anxieties and their hopes.

The cards will not fix your problems, but they might help you find a path within yourself to deal with them, accept them or just move on.

The tarot does not belong to a select few and it cannot just be understood by the initiates.

It is picture cards that can speak to literally every one.

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Remember when you were little and you read, or somebody read to you, stories about dragons, kings and queens, peasants and landowners, fantastic creatures. Remember how you projected your young, unfiltered mind into these stories? You could actually see them, you were part of them, living with the characters.

The same with the tarot. The images on the cards are able to speak to anyone, and, depending on your state of mind, of what you need at that certain time, one detail or another will speak to you and make you think.

The tarot can help also because it is very intimate, it is between just you and the cards. With the cards you can be completely honest, you don’t need to put on a brave face, you do not need to pretend you are this way or the other, you do not need to have secrets. And from this complete honesty you can emerge and work with the cards to find a path forward or to step to the side and contemplate the situation you are faced with.

Can some picture cards do all of these?

Well, it is you that does it mainly, the tarot just helps you slow down the mind and root around for answers, good or bad.

We live in a golden age of tarot, there are out there so many talented creators that have used their skills to create different decks to speak to all types of people. With animals, with cartoons, with stories, with legends, fairytales, different cultures etc. so so many, all you need to do is find the one that most resonates with you and give yourself the space to learn to work with it.

Plus, there are so many amazing writers that write about the tarot and you can find books about intuitive reading, about different decks and their interpretations, so many things to support you, and me, to find a true counsellor in the tarot.

As always though, as it goes with AI, the same with the tarot, you be the human in the loop. If something does not make sense question it, even the tarot can have bad days.

If you would like to share tidbits of your journey with me I would love to find them out.

Till next time, Insightful Readings!

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For the first time ever I am celebrating World Tarot Day! To be fair I had no idea it existed, but it makes total sense. There are days celebrating so many weird, wonderful and not so wonderful things.

Of course, Tarot Day requires a special post, and I was thinking, what should I write about? I did not want to write a vague post that would contribute nothing or that would just be foggy and incense smelling. I decided to write something that celebrates the Tarot by speaking about its complexities.

As today is a day, my mind went to time and I thought, what better topic than Tarot’s links to time and how it expresses time.

All the information I am sharing is available in the thousands of books about the tarot, easily available online, but this brief, easy and digestible pieces of information that I am sharing is just meant to give you an idea of the topic and then, the world is your oyster, if you are interested to learn more about it.

I did mention this before, I am quite fascinated by the technicalities of the Tarot, not just its magic and mysticism, although I have to be honest, I also do strongly believe in them, in the alchemy between the tarot, the human existence and our minds, that leads to magical and unexplainably accurate readings.

So, about Tarot and Time.

One of the things that fascinated me very early about the Tarot was that the cards are not just random symbolic images floating in mystical space. There is an actual structure behind them. Layers over layers of correspondences, systems, patterns and link that connect the cards to astrology, numerology, elements, seasons, planets and, of course, time itself.

The more you study the Tarot, the more you realise that many of these old systems were trying to create a symbolic map of human existence using archetypes and the knowledge we had gathered that far.

One of the simplest examples is the connection between the days of the week and planetary energies.

Monday is traditionally associated with the Moon. Tuesday with Mars. Wednesday with Mercury. Thursday with Jupiter. Friday with Venus. Saturday with Saturn and Sunday with the Sun.

And because the Tarot also has cards associated with planets and zodiac signs, some cards naturally resonate more strongly with certain days.

For example, Monday and The Moon card make perfect sense together. Intuition, emotions, dreams, uncertainty, inner worlds, all those very lunar things. Friday connects beautifully with The Empress because of Venus, beauty, pleasure, creativity, love and abundance. Sunday and The Sun card are probably the most obvious pairing in the deck. Even somebody who never picked up a Tarot deck can almost instinctively understand that one.

Some Tarot readers actually pull cards differently depending on the day, or pay more attention to certain themes during certain planetary days. But that is for the experts, I am not that skilled yet.

And this is where Tarot slowly stops feeling like ‘pick a random card and invent a meaning’ and starts feeling much more like a symbolic language with its own internal logic. Although, intuitive readings are very accurate also, they use our internal symbolism.

Another fascinating layer is astrology.

The Major Arcana cards are also connected to zodiac signs and planets. The Emperor is associated with Aries, Strength with Leo, Death with Scorpio, The Star with Aquarius and so on.

This means that certain cards can feel stronger or more relevant during certain periods of the year.

For example, Scorpio season already carries themes of transformation, endings, emotional intensity and rebirth. So, if the Death card appears during that period, many readers would interpret it diferently than if it appeared at another time of the year. Not necessarily as a literal ending, but more as part of a natural cycle of change already happening around us.

And then we get into the really interesting territory: Tarot and timing.

This is probably one of the most debated subjects in Tarot reading because, unfortunately, the cards do not come with subtitles saying ‘this will happen next Thursday at 4:37 PM.’ Life would certainly be easier if they did.

Still, over time, different systems appeared that tried to estimate timing through the cards.

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One popular method connects the suits to different speeds of manifestation.

Wands are usually associated with days because they are fast, fiery and energetic.

Swords are often connected to weeks.

Cups to months.

Pentacles to years because they are slower, material and grounded.

So, for example, if somebody pulls the Three of Wands regarding an upcoming event, some readers may interpret that as roughly three days. The Three of Cups may suggest three months and the Three of Pentacles could point toward something developing over a much longer period.

Of course, Tarot is never mathematics. It is symbolic language. Sometimes frighteningly accurate symbolic language, but still symbolic.

Another beautiful structure hidden inside the Tarot is the connection between the suits and the seasons.

Wands are connected to Spring.

Cups to Summer.

Swords to Autumn.

Pentacles to Winter.

And once you notice this, the emotional atmosphere of the suits suddenly makes so much sense.

Wands feel energetic and full of movement, just like Spring.

Cups feel emotional, fertile and overflowing like Summer.

Swords often carry tension, reflection and difficult truths, very similar to Autumn, when things begin to die away and the world becomes sharper and colder.

Pentacles feel stable, practical and slow, like Winter itself.

Even numerology plays a role in how Tarot expresses cycles and time.

All Aces carry the energy of beginnings.

Threes usually represent growth and expansion.

Fives bring instability, conflict or disruption.

Nines often feel like the final stretch before completion.

Tens represent the end of a cycle and the transition toward another one.

This repeating structure is one of the reasons Tarot starts feeling strangely coherent once you study it long enough. The cards may look mystical and chaotic at first, but underneath them there is an almost architectural framework holding everything together.

And honestly, this is one of the things I love the most about the Tarot.

Not just the mystery.

Not just the magic.

But the strange feeling that behind all these images of towers, moons, skeletons, lovers, suns and wandering fools, there is an attempt to understand time, human nature and existence itself through symbols.

And whether one believes the Tarot is mystical, psychological, spiritual or simply a fascinating symbolic system, I think there is something undeniably beautiful about that.

Happy World Tarot Day All!

Fruitful Readings!

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As a tarot enthusiast I often find that the daily draw makes me think more about the implications of my actions, reactions and inactions. I am being cute with my language, once a writer always a writer, but the essence of it is true, despite my cuteness.

For a good while now I draw cards daily without a specific questions, just wanting to know what they cards think I should know about the day, and I have to say they are really helpful to manage my anxieties and focus my mind.

I find it quite fascinating that no matter what cards I draw I find something to learn from them. I assume this is the magic of the tarot, the power of projection through which the mind will always find something to work with in the archetypes of the cards.

Since the world was young humans have loved, have had to work, needed to do all the things that makes us human, so we are all different, yet so much alike. This means that we are all able to relate to the symbols of the cards, and they will always speak to us even if sometimes at an unconscious level.

The idea of writing this post formed in my mind when, through repeated use of the daily draw, I saw that it helped me become more grounded, more mindful about my interactions and honestly, more in tune with myself, with the good and the more challenging areas.

For example, I tend to be quite impulsive and sometimes react disproportionately to certain events in my day to day. But with the warning of the tarot I became a lot better at managing my emotions.

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Several tarot cards can carry this meaning, but the strongest and most direct are:

• Strength: not ‘suppress emotions’ but mastering them. Calm control over impulses, anger, fear, pride, ego. The classic image is someone gently taming a lion, not beating it into submission. Very ‘respond, don’t react’.

• King of Swords: think clearly before acting. Logic over emotional turbulence. Detached judgment, strategy, measured words. The ‘sleep on it before sending that message’ card.

• Justice: emotional balance plus consequences. Step back, evaluate fairly, avoid impulsive reactions. Often appears when emotions are distorting perspective.

• Temperance: moderation, emotional regulation, patience, integration. Probably the most psychologically mature answer. It says: don’t swing from one extreme to another just because feelings are loud today.

• The Hanged Man: pause. Don’t react yet. Reconsider from another angle. Sometimes the wisest move is temporary non-action.

And so on.

Sometimes, often really, I feel and think that the tarot is that truly intimate friend and supporter we all need, that gently nudges us without judgement or ulterior motives. The friend that will always keep your secret and will be there for you no matter what.

Or like a therapist but cheaper!

What cards did I draw today?

These ones:

I know! My cuteness knows no bounds!

These cards are part of a learner tarot deck by Wyspell which I love. I have three decks with cards that have the meaning on them, two RWS and one Marseille, and I recommend them as I find them really useful to learn meanings easily.

So yeah, if you ever thought about using the tarot but was overwhelmed by its complexity, get a learner tarot deck and start small, one card per day and you will be surprised of the effects!

Side note: The Hulk card! So great! AI outdid itself there! I love it and it represents my idea so well! I gave it the prompt but the execution is so great! After I created it I checked online if there is a tarot deck for the Avengers but there isn’t. There is a book weirdly called Tarot, but it seems it is not an actual deck.

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When I was writing about the tarot on my writing Substack I felt free, I rejoiced in the enthusiasm of the amateur, the freedom of the random discovery.

Ever since I created a separate Substack, just because they were getting muddled, I started to feel a bit pressured to be more serious, more professional, which my brain dislikes deeply and rejects automatically. So, in a way, the perceived responsibility pushed me away from writing whatever crosses my mind about the tarot …

But then, I realized this is a fake sense of pressure, it is something I create by myself for my own misery. I do love a bit of misery me!

Nobody has any expectations from me, and I don’t need to become yet another didactic person talking about the tarot.

My strength is in my passion and in my own personal view and experience.

I have my own voice, my own view, my own world, so, my Tarotery will be just that, my unique way of dealing with the cards, reading them, seeing them, writing about them.

I love the Tarot, I don’t know why, I just have a passion for it, and despite being a person that becomes really obsessive about something, but then suddenly loses interest, I did not lose interest in the tarot. On the contrary, my passion grew and now I have I don’t know how many tarot decks and books about the tarot.

On every trip we take, I drag my very patient better half to books shops or esoteric shops to check out what I can find.

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I want to share with you all of these wonderful things that I have found and I am lucky to have in my life.

I want to tell you about the strange and wonderful tarot decks I have, about the books I read (in full or partial), I want to share with you my own experience with the tarot.

The internet is full of resources and of guides, you can buy whatever deck you want now online, it is a great time to be a tarot enthusiast, and this is what my Tarotery is about, the enthusiasm and the passion for the Tarot.

The Tarot will not tell you the future, but it will center you, it will support you on your journey and it will keep you company.

It will give your mind space to be creative and it will give you strength by clarifying to yourself the path you want to be on.

The Tarot is not about witches and dark forces, it is about the being projected onto the cards, thus becoming infused with your own personal magic.

I hope you will join me on my travels in the world of the Tarot and that the Tarotery will be a comfortable oasis of quiet and joy.

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Reading and discovering about the Tarot is a very enjoyable pass time for me. It is like when you have to do some work around the house, but you like doing it so much that it is not really a chore, but something that relaxes you and energizes you.

The same with my reading about Tarot, with the difference that I read other people’s work and some books are easier to follow, some are more difficult, some make it more interesting, some are just stating facts and make the process a bit dry.

During this process of learning about the tarot I have started to have favorites among the writers I read from. This post is about them.

I have no interest to write about the books that make it hard to understand, mainly because I did not spend that much time on them. I usually pick my resources after a bit of research, and I have been lucky enough so far to find some really good authors.

I am 100% sure that there are many more out there and I look forward to discovering them, for now I can just speak of some of the ones that I discovered so far.

My top three favorites would be Liz Dean, Barbara Moore and Anthony Louis. Although recently I discovered a French author and deck creator that I quite like, Emanuelle Iger.

But of course I am also looking into the greats Rachel Pollack, Mary K. Greer, Paul Fenton-Smith, Liz Greene. I have browsed Eden Gray and Arthur Edward Waite, looked through Aleister Crowley, and I think I have many more years ahead of enjoying my learning process. A thing wonderful to know.

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The amount of materials and the number of tarot decks out there is absolutely mind boggling. It is a great time to be a wanna-be tarot expert, or how you prefer to title yourself. I have chosen for myself the title of tarot enthusiast.

I am not a reader as I do not do readings, I am not an expert as I have loads more to learn, but for sure I am an enthusiast as I am fascinated by the symbolism, the overlapping of archetypes and the evolution of tarot through the ages.

With a new passion comes a new collection, what else! And this is a tarot decks collection. I have read that there are people that have thousands of decks, I can totally believe that. When visiting Amsterdam I had the chance to visit an esoteric shop that, amongst other things, had an impressive collection of tarot and oracle decks.

While I am not that much into oracle decks, I am fascinated by the tarot ones, and I was overwhelmed by the sheer amount of decks there. They also have some old decks, but sadly I did not have time to make an appointment to see them. On another occasion maybe.

I have started a little collection of my own with decks that caught my eye. As I am fascinated with things being differently than one expects, I fell in love with a Giant Rider-Waite-Smith Deck I had to wait one month for to come from the States. They did not disappoint. They are indeed giant, the quality is very good and they are great for learning as you can see all the details on them.

I like the Rider-Waite-Smith ones the best and most that I have are variations on it, but I also have Liz Greene’s Mythic Tarot, which is a great match for me as I have a keen interest in mythology. I also have the Wonderland Tarot and the Classic Tarot created by Barbara Moore with art by Eugene Smith, which has the most amazing images.

I have some fancy ones, Dali’s and Sola Busca, but just for fun, as I do not see myself ever using them in a reading. It is nice to have them though, they are very special.

I have an idea of doing a ‘deck reviews’ section with the decks that I like. Just a thought.

It is a huge world of tarot out there and it is so wonderful to be part of it, to study it and to learn from it.

It is a great moment in time to be a tarot enthusiast. Yey!

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I find Tarot deeply fascinating and I enjoy greatly reading about its history, development, symbolism and current views on it. While studying Tarot I came to the conclusion that, in an unexpected way, I think it can help people that want to write be better writers. A few things drove me to this conclusion.

One of them is the details of the Tarot cards and the symbolism of those details. In Tarot cards everything means something.

The color of the clothes, the clouds on the sky, the position of the feet on the ground, in water, are they static or moving, every little thing tells you something and on top of all these we have the big, world defining archetypes.

The tarot teaches us about us as humans and about our evolution in the world.

I find it fascinating that you can find in the cards references to our myths, to our stories and to historic events, plus all those arcane (I had to!) little symbols that you can discover only when you look at a card in depth.

I was thinking this helps us become better writers not only because we learn about our mythology and symbolism, but because it teaches us the power of the detail.

I think that details matter and they can make a piece of writing outstanding, putting a bit more meat on the bones of the story, while also adding depth and dimension.

Yeah, for sure, sometimes symbols can be unnoticed and lost, but when they are noticed they can bring so much joy and additional meaning.

I was also contemplating the idea that the Tarot can be used for a creative writing exercise Draw a card from the deck and create a story for it, or another option is to choose a card that you are attracted to and do that.

I think this is great because it can engage your intuition and I think people would be surprised how much they can pick up from a card that initially seemed just a little piece of drawn carboard. It could jump start things if ever one is stuck.

If the Tarot itself is a bit overwhelming there are countless beautifully designed Oracle cards that can be used in a similar manner.

The cards give us the chance to slow down and connect to a deeper, sometimes buried, by day to day, part of ourselves, and they can bring joy just by their beauty and their stories, much like writing, no?

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In the first books I read about tarot I found instructions about how to befriend my cards, how to cleanse them, how and where to keep them. The practices reminded me of old traditions in which you had to put something under your pillow to dream about your betrothed, or to go on a bridge over a flowing water, under a full moon and throw a token in the water while saying certain words.

The creative in me loves the fantasy of it, but the rational person struggles to fit it into reality. So, although I was pleased to read about these magic prescriptions, at the same time I found it difficult to integrate them fully in my practice.

I read that if you have more than one deck they are jealous of each other, or that you need to sleep with them under your pillow when you first get them. I have never slept with my cards under my pillow and I have more than one deck, so if they are jealous of each other, there is plenty to be jealous about.

This got me thinking, that, I would like to write a post about some beliefs I read about that do not seem grounded in the reality of the tarot as a practice, but more in our need of the ritualistic and to give a mystical dimension to the practice.

Of course, this does not mean that tarot practitioners should not do what they feel is right for them and their cards.

This here is just my opinion and how I approach my tarot cards and learning. The beauty of it is that there is no prescription, no right or wrong, do what makes sense for you and your cards, and that is when true magic happens, when there is an honest connection between you and your cards.

Some people believe that the tarot is evil. Again, everybody is free to believe what makes sense to them. I do not think the tarot is evil. I think, and feel, the tarot is a collection of archetypes from our human development, which resonates with our subconscious, even when we are not aware of all its symbols.

The Tarot does not do evil things, it is a tool that can be used for personal growth and to clarify decisions when they are difficult to make.

A simple example that could explain this, it is like when you need to choose between two things, and you just cannot make up your mind. They both have advantages and disadvantages.

You ask somebody to hide them behind their back, shuffle them and then you choose. If you listen to yourself when the item you chose is revealed, then you know exactly what you want. If you are happy, then that is the right choice, if you are slightly disappointed, then you know for sure you need to go with the other one.

The same with the Tarot. It helps you clarify within yourself ideas, emotions, paths and so much more. So the tarot is not evil. Sometimes the people that use it are, but that is not a reflection on the cards.

If somebody gives exact prescriptions of what a querent should do, or if they say the cards show problems that only that reader can solve in exchange for money or favors or etc. then the querent should leave and never look back.

If anything the tarot is good, because it can provide support and guidance when the path is not clear and the world can feel lonely.

There are so many other legends attached to the tarot, they might require future posts as I do not want to make this one too heavy and difficult to read.

I do want to end on a lighthearted note though.

Some of the funnier prescriptions I found are that, you should never buy your own tarot cards or that you should keep the cards away from cats as they drain the cards’ energy.

I do not think any of them is true. Choosing a tarot deck is such a personal thing that, I think, it needs to be done by yourself, to make sure it is a deck that you resonate with and whose imagery appeals to you.

As for the cats, I know they bring great energy to people and cat owners seem quite relaxed and happy in their presence, so I would not go so far as to reject cats.

The tarot fascinates and terrifies, and I think that is where some of these legends originate. I find it quite interesting to study them and understand how this mindset was formed in the course of Tarot’s history.

As I discover more I will share it with you.

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In the work Complete Book of Tarot, Anthony Louis has a, beautifully explained and written, section on how Hippocrates’ oath, that doctors abide by, also applies to Tarot readers. It is the first book where I find this analogy and it makes so much sense.

To be clear, I am not equating doctors and tarot readers, they are very different professions, but the impact they can have on patients, respectively querents, is very powerful.

As sometimes the universe wants you to dig deeper into something, after I read that section in the book, I saw in the Irish Independent, in the QA section, a question from somebody who had had their future foretold as a young person. The reader, was in jest, the father of one of her friends and he foretold just bad things for her future.

The impact was so great, that the poor woman had been haunted all her life by those predictions and now, all grown up, with a beautiful family, she was seized by panic attacks worrying something might happen to them and she was unable to rejoice in the life she had built.

See what I mean? How it can affect your querent and they will carry that information with them when they leave the reading table.

Readings should empower the querent to choose their path in life, they should not condemn them to years of rumination and anxiety.

This is a danger often with readers just starting out and unsure of how to interpret the cards. It happened to me too and I think it was one of the reasons I walked away from tarot for such a long time.

Tarot is not easy to learn if you want to do it properly, or at least it is not for me. Around 20 years ago, when I was 20 years younger than now, I had some cards and I had 1 book I had read from. I was fascinated by the tarot, but I did not know too much about it, just that it was something I enjoyed doing.

During that time I was living in student accommodation, something like a super packed hive of young people, and I would play around with the cards doing readings for those around me. Nothing fancy. Just a bit of fun…

At some point, some of us went to a medieval festival, where people dressed up in costumes, the food was olde worlde, the activities, a lot of fun! Of course, I took my cards with me. If not there, where?

I had my long black nails, the works. I did readings to a bunch of people and most of them were good, nothing extraordinary. I was using the Marseille Major Arcana. Then, one of the girls I was with was next.

As it happened, all the ‘dark’ cards appeared for her, and no matter how much I tried I could not make a good reading. She saw the cards, she saw The Tower, Death, The Hangman. I saw how it affected her and I felt so bad that I did not know enough to guide her through the cards. I felt like a sham.

I have kept tabs on her and I am happy to report she is doing great.

Other ethical considerations when reading are related to reading for children. A reading should only be done if needed and in the presence of a significant adult, also using cards appropriate for children. Or when we read about a person that is not present, we should not disclose something that can harm that person that is not present. Also, we should not use the tarot to control or frighten somebody, or impose our own view of the world on them.

The power the cards hold is given by those that believe in them, and used wisely they can be an enriching tool that supports life and living it beautifully.

I think not just Tarot readers should follow the First, do no harm principle, but all of us as humans should internalize it and apply it in our day to day.

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‘Qué será, será’

Recently I picked up again a passion I had as a young girl. Tarot.

When I came to Ireland I packed one big bag and in it I put my small tarot decks and a tarot book. I had not touched them for years, but somehow I felt they should make the journey too.

Now, ten years later, years in which I did not touch my cards, all of a sudden, the passion came back.

We were visiting Kilkenny, my better half and me, and in a book shop I was fascinated to see they had a full section dedicated to esoteric books. I was used to see this in Spain, not Ireland.

They had quite a few books on magic, spells and potions, tarot, wicca etc. all sorts. What surprised me even more was that they had a good price, I mean within range. I looked at them, sniffed around and then picked up a book on tarot that called to me.

It made me so happy.

I started reading it and something in me sparked, and the interest was back with a vengeance. Ever since, I started reading quite a bit on the topic and a new bright and colorful world opened up to me.

The information I have access to right now is worlds apart from what I had access to more than 20 years ago when I first started reading about the tarot.

Now you can find tarot decks easily, different shapes and sizes, with different characters and nuances. The books that help you study are so varied and amazing, it is a totally different experience than the one I had as a teenager way back when in Romania.

I am still in the discovery phase, reading and learning and getting accustomed to the cards. It truly is like learning a new language or the rules of a new world.

I do not know if the cards are meant for divination, but I know that in a way they can be valuable projective tools to uncover your inner resources or blockers, and to aid in creating a better path forward.

I am still learning, and will still be learning for a long time to come and I find that comforting, as I love learning and discovering.

As tarot is one of my passions I decided to dedicate it its own section, and from time to time, to add here updates about how my journey into the world of tarot is going.

I hope you will find it interesting and any questions you have let me know.

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