Simplify Your Practice of Tarot With This Technique
The tarot can be a source of illumination and direction - but it can also exploited by people who only want to charm you into handing over some of your hard-earned cash in exchange for a few congratulating words that only temporarily make you feel good. Learning how to work with tarot cards yourself can be a great asset for your self-discovery, and in this post we will share a powerful technique that can not only open the mystery of the tarot to you but also empower your path.
Tarot decks traditionally consist of seventy-eight cards, with twenty-two Major Arcana (or "trump") cards, and fifty-six Minor Arcana (or "pip") cards. Common ways to draw a spread can be to draw anywhere from one to three to ten cards, or sometimes more (after shuffling thoroughly). This type of reading invites the element of synchronicity into your understanding of a given topic or question. The meaning of the cards is interpreted depending on the individual themes of each card, the positions of the cards, and how the cards compliment or contradict one another.
However, there is one underlying theme of tarot that is more or less a universal. And if you're not working with it in your spreads, you're missing a major component of what the cards can communicate - and a big cheat code! That universal theme is the astrological archetypes of the cards. In a tarot spread, the astrological themes involved in a situation are elucidated first in the Major Arcana Planetary & Zodiac Archetypes, and secondarily by how those same archetypes are referenced or emphasized throughout the "pip" cards in the spread. But in truth, since the signs are all related to a given Planetary Ruler, the planetary themes are already plenty well-developed and cross-referenced even within only the twenty-two Major Arcana. (For an illustrated reference guide to the astrological correspondences of the Major Arcana, see our Archetype Warehouse Guidebook.)
Traditionally, when trump cards show up in a spread they are seen as a heads up that an important, major life theme is being touched on (either in your question, in the circumstances of the larger situation which you might not be aware of, or both). Whereas the pips provide more mundane details as to people, places, events, and timing related to how an event has been progressing and will unfold going forward (if things persist in their current manner at the time of the spread). But there is a lot more to get out of the trump cards!
Consider that each of the archetypes of the twenty-two major arcana can also be found in your natal astrology chart. Yup! And not all of them carry the same weight or are equally significant to everyone. For example, if your natal rising sign is Gemini, your Planetary Ruler is Mercury. So, when the Planetary Archetype for Mercury, The Magician, shows up in your spread, it means something more significant for you than someone with a different rising sign, or for whom Mercury is not a significant natal planet. In the latter case, the Magician might refer to some passing figure or theme they are experiencing - but for you, if you have Gemini rising or a strong natal Mercury, The Magician is one of your "Board of Directors," and when they show up in a spread, you need to listen! They are highlighting certain strengths or challenges and inviting you to tap into a special skillset that is already spelled out for you in your natal chart.
This leads us to an entirely different way of working with the cards: Rather than "wait around" for our primary archetypes to happen to visit us through tarot spreads (or dreams, or other synchronous events), why don't we go up to them and inquire with them directly as to what they have to teach us?
Since our natal chart already spells out our major archetypes' roles in our lives, and their relationship/s to other significant Planetary Archetypes, we can also use the tarot cards to "reverse engineer" our current life experience. This, again, is a major cheat code, folks.
We can approach our major archetypes to get a better understanding of themes we keep running into, maybe things that we're sick of or feel like we're "not getting," why we're having trouble bringing a project into being or keep hitting a block in a certain relationship - all the topics we traditionally go to the tarot cards for when we're asking for "divination." The difference is that once we start working with the Major Arcana Archetypes in relation to our natal chart, we find that far beyond a few tarot spreads we might have drawn, this is a "conversation" we've been having with these archetypes for a long time - one that we initiated long ago, in fact, by being born. And when we meet our governing archetypes directly, we can greatly enhance our understanding of the current events in our lives, and navigate them more clearly from our instinctual center. And better yet, through this same process we can issue new, fresh energy patterns throughout our life's themes. The secret to waking up all these powers is to meet our archetypes directly in active imagination.
In active imagination, or astrological meditation, instead of leaving the appearance of the archetypes in a tarot spread to chance, we pick them based on how they appear in our birth chart and engage with them consciously and directly. The tarot card becomes a portal to enter into a new dialogue with a part of our life previously perceived as fated or subject to the whims of “destiny.” And being able to improve our life experience through actively working with the archetypes that shape it is a significantly more empowered, grounded place to operate from.
This is what we do in Soul Figures archetypal meditation. Because this practice is so specific and targeted, and we're already combining the wisdom of our natal astrology chart and the twenty-two major arcana, we actually don't need the rest of the deck for every single question. The questions, and the answers, are all in our natal chart - and by extension, the progressions of our natal chart over time (transits, in other words). I'm not saying abandon 10 card, or yes/no, traditional tarot spreads altogether. But if you really want to understand the experiences of your life, and you're already using tarot cards - you're literally shuffling around the archetypes that shape your waking life. So you might as well use them, and work on the true causal realm they represent, to reverberate real change into your life! These archetypes are active, dynamic, creative clusters of Universal energy. Use them!
Please see our other post on The Inner Guide figure, who is an imperative figure for activating and navigating your chart through active imagination. Or, just see our Self-Guided Course, here.
