How and why to use Tarot even if you're not spiritual
Happy Sunday, Soothers. I often describe the Sunday Soother in part as a newsletter about "practical spirituality," meaning I like to try to explain more abstract or esoteric spiritual concepts in a grounded and practical way that can reveal to anybody their applications or usefulness. I myself am now a very spiritual person, but up until my mid to late 30s was a very committed atheist. I wasn't stringent or anything about it, I just hadn't been raised religious, and honestly had never spent much time thinking about spirituality. My belief system was pretty much, you get born, you try to do good, you go to work, you make money, you die. I guess you could say my spiritual belief system at the time was capitalism, which ... looks at society around us ... clocks.
Before I became pretty spiritual, as it often goes, I was also pretty lost. I was at a pretty low point in my early/mid-30s: I hated my job; I had just moved back in with my parents to try to save money to quit said hated job and move abroad with my foreign service officer boyfriend at the time, except I had decided to break up with the boyfriend so maybe I was going to accidentally live with my parents forever and become a spinster in my childhood bedroom?; I had had writers block for, oh, five years.
Everything was pretty bleak and it felt like there was no direction. I distinctly remember one night scrolling listlessly on my phone in my childhood bedroom, and stumbling across a Tarot deck for sale. I had been seeing mentions of Tarot here and there; it seemed kind of cool with pretty images; I didn't really get what it was, but something in me told me to buy that deck. So I did.
And proceeded to not really use it for the next two years.
It wasn't until I was about 35 or so, had gotten a new and better job, had bought my own condo, and was getting back on track with my writing, creativity and self-worth that Tarot made a leap back into my life. One day, for no particular reason, I picked up that deck, I just started pulling cards, and looking up their meanings. And that was all.
I wish I could say I had some amazing experience where Tarot just blew into my life and changed everything, but I don't even really remember much about starting to use it. I just know that I found great comfort in pulling the cards a few times a week. They offered me a container for just checking in with myself, which was something I wasn't doing a lot of at the time. And it was kind of like learning a new language; it was something I could spend a few minutes a day doing, researching, and beginning to understand, which gave me a sense of direction and accomplishment. I began to buy Tarot books, research how to use Tarot spreads, attend some workshops. Some people have, like, woodworking or cooking; I had Tarot. It was becoming a beloved hobby.
Over time, it also became clear that the cards were not at all random, which was honestly kind of freaking me out. The biggest thing was I would get repeating cards... repeatedly. No matter how much I shuffled, or pulled from different decks, there would be days, weeks, month, where the same card was what I would draw, or would be the card that literally flew out of the deck as I was shuffling.
And as I began to understand the cards more, insights would click. I would see narrative through lines in the cards I pulled: this Knight of Cups was this person, and I was the Queen of Pentacles, and what blocking us was the Seven of Cups... my natural and innate storytelling and writing talents saw tales in every spread. I started practicing reading for friends, and what I saw was, even if I was unsure of what the cards meant for them or how they applied, friends found value in the container of having a space to reflect. The cards prompted ideas, thoughts, new ways of thinking, whether or not either of us "believed" in what the cards were trying to tell us.
I think for every spiritually curious but skeptical person who begins to use Tarot (or any other metaphysical tool) there is probably one moment that really freaks you out where you're like... "Oh, crap: This is real."
For me, that was several years ago when I was pulling cards around the situations of my now-boyfriend and me. I knew I had feelings for him and I was trying to gin up the courage to actually do something about it, so I was looking for a lot of guidance. At that time, I was definitely starting to think, okay... there is something to all of this spirituality stuff... but probably it's mostly coincidence and maybe I am making it up mostly? Like it's just in my head. I was tottering the line between spiritually intrigued and still holding on to 30+ years of ingrained atheism. Not to mention a deep lack of self-trust as well as terror of fear of judgment from others who in my life were stringently atheist and also incredibly dismissive towards anything spiritual as silly or lightweight or even harmful.
But when I pulled this spread — a past, present, and future one — I gasped.
Three Major Arcana (aka the Big Fuckin Deal cards in Tarot):
Past, The Fool: Leaping off cliffs, not necessarily always sensing to see if something is practical, but leaping on a hope and a wish. This resonated so deeply with me in the way I had always treated my relationships, leaping into them with a wide open, non-discerning heart (which sometimes is a great thing) but wasn't at all serving me in my relationships.
The Present, The Hermit: Alone time, reflection, the inner journey. Yup. Felt I had been in that space for about, oh, three years.
The Future: The Lovers. Pretty self-explanatory (though, The Lovers has much more to do than just being about romantic love, but at that time I was like, wow, this is a GREAT SIGN!)
"Oh crap," I thought. "This shit is real."
And thus, Tarot became the bridge across which I walked towards my spirituality.
Now I view Tarot simply as a trusted advisor, using the imagery and the meaning of the cards to give me counsel. I really think of it like the language of the universe. Someone or something who knows the actual big picture of things, and is gently, lovingly, wisely, giving me insight through the cards about my limiting beliefs, my potential, my struggles, roadblocks, opportunities, or general energy at hand around a situation.
But here's the thing about Tarot:
You in no way have to be a spiritual person who believes in the forces of the universe in order to benefit from using it.
Maybe you can think of it a bit like meditation or yoga. At this point, the scientific and material benefits of both those practices are well-documented. Though their origins are deeply steeped in spirituality, it doesn't really matter if you are spiritual to use them: you'll still reap the benefits of mindfulness, peace, flexibility, a connection to your intuition and your body.
I find it to be the same with Tarot.
Skeptical? Here are five reasons why you should explore Tarot even if you're not a spiritual person:
The number one reason I think anybody can benefit from Tarot, spiritual or no, is to create a container for self-reflection and self-inquiry. Let me explain how this can happen. When I started Tarot, I was simply drawing one card a day in the morning. Then I would look up the meaning of the card, and check in: did this have any applications to anything going on in my life? Yes? No? If yes, how? If not, why not? And then I would keep that card in mind throughout the day and see if any of its meanings played out. This gave me an anchor of self-reflection to tune into throughout a day. Previously I had been floating around, not checking in with myself. Drawing a Tarot card a day gave me a fixed point to return to to listen to myself, to see what I was thinking, seeing, to bring mindfulness into my sense of self each day.
Self trust is another huge reason I think Tarot is a great practice. I know many of us struggle with trusting ourselves, but in my experience, when you draw cards, of course you look up meanings, especially when you're beginning, but eventually you start being like... "I think the card actually means this," or, "My Tarot book thinks this card means this, and yes, I totally agree," or "I get that traditional interpretation, but my spin on it is..." It's like how you might trust yourself in becoming a creative person. You start out with some mimicry, right? (I know I have as a writer in my earlier creative days) but eventually you are finding your own thoughts, your own styles, your own rhythms, which has massive effect on your self-trust. I can't overstate how much learning to read Tarot has improved my ability to trust my decisions, my thoughts, my belief, and stop second-guessing myself.
Tarot helps you access your subconscious because it works in imagery and collective archetype interpretation, and the subconscious is where all true change happens, in my opinion. The subconscious, in simplified terms, is the part of the mind of which we are not fully aware of but which influences our actions and feelings. In my experience, you can't really access, shift or influence the subconscious through traditional methods of learning or change like language or more linear or academic or intellectual approaches. Tarot helps you get at this deeper part of yourself because it's image-based; the subconscious utilizes symbolism and imagery to express itself and something very potent happens when you draw a card that has, say, a knight on a horse charging forward with a wand of fire around a work situation. You innately begin to understand through that imagery perhaps how you had been forced to suppress your unique creative energy at work, which unlocks that part of yourself and gives you a different insight or understanding in now to move forward.
It's flipping fun! I simply don't believe you if you tell me you didn't, in some way, at some level, believe in magic when you were a kid. I'll always remember an interview I heard with Julia Cameron of The Artist's Way, where she talked about a speech she was giving. She had told the audience something like, "Okay, we're going to have to work really hard" and everybody leaned forward, eager, with their notebooks and pens, at the ready. And then she said, "And what I actually want you to work hard at is playing" and everybody groaned and rolled their eyes and sat back and looked bored. Lol. Says a lot, doesn't it? Where do you intentionally put fun or play into your life? I'm guessing it's not much of a priority, or, as I wrote about recently, you may even find some cringe in the idea of trying to intentionally incorporate play into your life. Creating a Tarot practice is a beautiful way to be more playful, to have a little bit of fun, and who knows: you might even start believing in magic again.
It gives you support and access to your intuition, whether you end up believing that support is something larger than you, or simply your own intuition or higher self. My friend Emily (who is an atheist and professor) sparked the idea for this newsletter when she and I were talking and she mentioned, "It's interesting that you said in your Instagram stories that Tarot is like a wise older sister. I realized my mental model of it is that it's like...a wise older YOU (not you Catherine, you as in the person doing the Tarot). Like we have this inner child, but we also have this amorphous embodied wisdom and experience that we can't always quite access (sort of like a "gut") and Tarot gives it a language and structure." I thought that was just the most brilliant way of putting it. Tarot gives you access to your own internal support system. And if it ends up growing into something larger (I was myself, as I said, an atheist before I turned to Tarot, and Tarot is absolutely what ended up sparking my spiritual unfolding), that's nice, too. Because you deserve to feel supported, no matter where it's coming from.
Intrigued? Convinced? Want to learn more? You're in luck. I'm hosting a Tarot for Beginners workshop on Saturday, November 12 at 12pmET (but I'll provide a lifetime replay so you can watch it any time you like if you can't attend live. You'll still learn all the good and juicy stuff from the recorded workshop).
In the workshop, I will break down the Tarot and give you practical tools to begin to build your understanding and practice of the cards. We'll go over the following:
So like... what is Tarot, even? And how does it "work"?
The Major and Minor Arcana and their differences
Each Tarot suit and what they mean
How to begin a daily Tarot practice
How to start understanding each card's meaning for you
How to do things like shuffle, pull cards, store your cards, and deepen a relationship
When and how to do Tarot pulls
The energy from which to use Tarot and how to phrase your question for Tarot
Best resources and books to continue to use in your Tarot journey
We'll also have plenty of time for Q&A, and I will do a few live readings with the group to help get you in the flow of practice. We will also have space for breakout rooms the last bit for anybody who wants to practice reading cards with a few other like-minded folks!
P lus, if you sign up, you'll get access to my Tarot + journal prompts workbook, which journal prompts for each and every one of the cards!
I 'll provide lifetime replay to this workshop in case you cannot attend live, or if you simply want to return to it over and over again as you continue on your Tarot journey.
Tickets are $75, and you can get them here. Whether you're deeply spiritual or fully not, Tarot is another beautiful tool to add to your toolbox of reflective, introspection and self-discovery tools. I hope I'll see you there!