Doing Tarot for Fun and Guidance
For fun, I’ve started drawing one tarot card a day via the app Mystic Mondays. It’s a little weird because part of the fun with tarot is the tactile experience of touching the cards, and an app can never really recreate this subtle, bodily feeling. But it’s still fun in the way that the lottery or a slot machine is fun — that pause of anticipation what did I get!?!
I owned an actual tarot deck when I was in high school. I didn’t get far in learning how to read the cards or do spreads or anything sophisticated. I liked the artwork, and their long rectangular shape. I liked reading what the cards meant. I liked the witchy New Age store I bought the deck in (it had loads of candles, cool jewelry with moon and sun motifs, and smelled of patchouli). By the time I went to college though, I had moved on to other hobbies. I have no idea where that tarot deck is now, but I’m finding my way back thanks to some friends who own some gorgeous, including the IRL Mystic Mondays.
How the app works is, you get a Card of the Day. You get a reading of sorts, a brief interpretation of the card and some advice. Sometimes the card feel so spot on it’s eerie and other times it’s not. Like the other day, I drew the Ace of Pentacles, Reversed which Mystic Mondays interprets as money mishaps, reevaluation, financial hardship.
“You may need that extra [financial] cushion that you’ve been saving up for!” the card says. That exclamation point was too much. My brain flew into panic mode: am I about to be fired? I am about to be felled by a medical emergency?!
It’s so hard sometimes to not wonder if someone out there (like god(s) or super smart aliens) do know more than me. Is it more or less comforting to think there is a being that can see how this all turns out, or that we’re plodding along with no idea of what happens next. We’re sort of just hoping things are going to work out?
Maybe this explains my fierce attachment to my planner and my routines. I want to know what’s going to happen and my planner with all its color coding is the closest I can come to predicting my own future. But I can’t stop my little kid superstition from flaring up sometimes.
When I was having a particularly rough week at work (you know one of those where everything is a million times harder than it should be, plus you have to deal with the roadblock that is the Finance department) I kept drawing Cups cards that were reversed. Twice I got the Nine of Cups Reversed: overindulgence, impatience, unrealistic expectations. “Your vision is not going according to plan,” the card taunted.
“No shit,” was my response, and I immediately wondered if this app was trying to tell me something because it knew forces outside my control were wrecking my project plan. Especially since I got it twice in the same week! But then I got something dumb that didn’t obviously fit into my life. The Six of Cups Reversed declared that my past was coming back to haunt me. I still feel decidedly unhaunted.
Really, I don’t actually think tarot is fortune-telling or out to predict the future. Mystic Mondays describe their tarot as an “intuition tool for spiritual guidance” and that — the guidance — is what rings true for me. One of my more tarot-savvy friends looks at tarot as a prompt for introspection. And sometimes it’s real real nice to have someone (or something) outside yourself give you direction or offer thoughtful suggestions. “Put in time…slowly but surely things will start happening,” Nine of Cups Reversed said. Easier said than done, but it did get me to remind myself to chill out and that everything would be fine. And it was.
One more anecdote about tarot-as-guidance: my partner had his tarot read a while back, when he was debating on whether or not to leave his job. The tarot reader flipped over Death and, after he stopped cackling, explained the card was more about rebirth. He kept a tiny version of Death in his wallet as a reminder to think on the topic. Four months later he left for a new job.
Originally published in my newsletter, Humdrum. Sign up to get more essays like this, on the random stuff we deal with everyday. Emailed monthly.
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