Finding The Tarot With Tom Evans

This Tarot chat is from a live session on 27/7/2022. Keziah's audio starts to encounter technical difficulties about halfway through, but you may enjoy the content of the chat enough to forgive that. Contains a 5-minute meditation inspired by the Knight of Swords. Tom Evans' Tarot workshops can be found on his Insight Timer profile; Keziah's audio course "Daily Tarot Meditation Ritual" is out now.
Track contains distortions and ambient sounds

Transcript

Hello,

Good afternoon or good morning,

Good evening,

Depending where you are.

Welcome to this very special live with myself and with Tom Evans.

Many of you will know Tom,

He's well known and well loved here on Insight Timer and he is working a lot with the Tarot at the moment.

We're having some fascinating discussions,

Which is what we wanted to bring to you today.

So welcoming everyone and welcome Tom.

Oh,

It's great to be here.

What a new experience for me as well being on the on an Insight Timer live through a Zoom call.

Amazing.

Yeah,

It's another bit of magic that that we are fortunate enough to live in the generation for.

That's for sure.

So yeah,

So for those who don't know me,

My name's Kaziah Gibbons.

My pronouns are she and her.

I teach Tarot and Reiki here on Insight Timer.

Tom,

Do you want to introduce yourself very briefly?

Yeah,

Well I'm on Insight Timer too.

I'm probably not known that much for the Tarot on Insight Timer,

But the Tarot has really been my own personal metaphysical research and drives quite a lot of what I do.

I've written a couple of books about it and currently designing a new deck,

Which we're going to talk about,

Maybe not today,

But in the next session in September.

But I found the Tarot is just an amazing,

Amazing tool.

And also I'm a student of yours,

Kaziah,

Of your two courses.

But just so you know,

When I'm writing about the Tarot,

I tend to not look at other Tarot resources,

So I don't want to be influenced by it.

But I've really loved both of your courses on Insight Timer.

And so the Tarot has just been my tool for spiritual development.

And that's kind of what we're going to share is how you can tap into it and how you can use it as a real tool.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

And Tom,

You can't see the comments that are coming up here,

But I can see them.

There are lots of people in already welcoming us in and happy to see us both.

So Tom,

You're studying the Tarot,

But like myself,

We study by teaching,

Don't we?

Or we like to share what we learn.

Yeah,

And I like to translate what I learn because I find that the language around it is quite arcane and confusing.

And also many people think of the Tarot,

We think of Live and Let Die,

Don't we,

And James Bond and Jane Seymour had to give him the death card.

Only James Bond can get the death card.

Actually,

The death card is one of the best cards in the deck.

It's about renewal and rebirth,

As you know.

And so I'm very keen.

I do do readings and I know you're fantastic at doing readings and readings are very good and they have their place,

But I'm really interested in how the Tarot models us and we model the Tarot and how we expand it and learn from it and expand our consciousness with it.

And as you know,

Just having a deck of cards on your desk and turning a card up every day,

That's enough just to tune into the magic.

So when did you first come across the Tarot?

What was your introduction to it?

Well,

I don't know if there's any one particular moment that I can name.

I kind of was aware of it growing up.

Easy Tarotism wasn't unknown in our household,

But I wasn't really interested in it for a long time.

I got given a couple of decks,

I played with it.

And I had a major life change about 10 years ago.

I,

When I came back to the Tarot and to Reiki and to all these things I previously dabbled with and became present in them.

So I had chemotherapy for about six months in 2012 to 2013.

And when I came off that,

I had been having Reiki treatments.

I came back,

I'd already done Reiki one.

I came back to Reiki.

I started studying NLP and my,

The alignment that I had in life changed completely and I became more present in what had always interested me kind of intellectually.

And as part of that process,

I was given a Tarot deck,

The Druidcraft Tarot.

So it wasn't the first Tarot deck I'd owned,

But it was the first one that I just sat down with and gave it time and understood it as energy work.

And from there,

I just began a practice as part of this sort of change that happened in my life that brought me particularly to energy work,

The Reiki and the Tarot together.

Well,

That is very bizarre because around 2010,

2011,

2012 is when I was doing NLP Reiki and I came across the Tarot as well.

So what's this,

I mean,

You wouldn't normally connect Reiki and Tarot together,

But what's the connection?

Well,

I don't always,

Well,

I have used them together in one practice,

But I tend to see them as separate practices usually,

But they are both energy work for me.

You know,

If you're working with Tarot,

You're working with Tarot archetypes,

You're working with a particular deck of cards that you handle every day and that you have a relationship with,

This is energy work.

And when you work with Reiki energy,

Whether you're yourself,

Whether you're laying hands on other people,

This is also energy work.

So you can use them together as well,

But definitely I would categorize them,

I suppose,

As energy work.

Wow,

Isn't it bizarre that we,

Around the same time,

We had that same sort of introduction and transformation.

And how did it transform you then?

Where did it take you?

Well,

It's taken me up to this moment here and I think there are many more places to go,

But for me,

It helped me to find meaning,

To access the meaning that was already there in my own life.

So I tend to use Tarot as a language almost now.

And Tom,

I know you're very interested in language and language around the Tarot.

And I also perceive Tarot itself as a language.

So if I'm having conversations with people who I know know the Tarot,

Whether that's students of mine or people that we swap readings,

Whatever,

I might name a card to express a feeling or a state or something that's happened,

Something that I don't know how to articulate otherwise.

And I also see,

I don't know if you may or may not have seen this on social media,

But I see Tarot all around me.

So today I took a picture.

I'm here in Leeds,

I'm staying in Airbnb and in the garden,

There's a pear tree next to a blackberry bush.

And of course the pears and the blackberries aren't ripe yet,

But it's a lovely place to sit and meditate.

And so I took a little picture of these and I saw them as the Seven of Pentacles.

And so I like Tarot as a language,

As an understanding of meaning and as a way to make meaning.

Wow.

So you mentioned the archetypes then.

So,

Because Jungian archetypes apparently were,

The Tarot inspired him.

And so is there a particular archetype from the Major Arcana that resonates with you that you say that sort of encapsulates your energy?

Yes,

The immediate answer is high priestess.

And the beauty of the Tarot is that we can switch between those archetypes.

It gives us agency to choose which archetype we'd like to embody.

Yeah.

Well,

Let's just,

I'm the hermit and the hangman.

So I love seeing things upside down and mixing things up,

But also taking that sort of lofty view that the hermit has got above the mountain.

I just wonder whether anybody in the chat room is familiar with the Tarot and might have an archetype as well they could share with us.

Or we could even engage with them and see if we could spot an archetype or two that might work.

Yeah,

We've got Siri who is also the high priestess.

Amy who sees staves everywhere in nature.

Amy says,

It reminds me that I am not ever stagnant because nothing and everything is always changing.

Holly says the Empress and also number three in numerology,

Which of course works very well with the Empress.

We've got another high priestess,

Opal.

Elizabeth's another hermit.

And Jocelyn is a hangman.

Joy is another hermit.

So yeah,

Lots of people relating immediately with the archetypes of the Tarot,

Which is kind of part of what's so powerful about the Tarot,

Isn't it?

Is that we can immediately relate to some of it and we have very strong reactions to it.

Yeah,

And also it's fine for a bloke to have a female archetype.

It'd be fine for me to be a high priestess and for you to be a magician or as the elves said,

She's a hangman and hermit.

And so it's lovely to see that it transcends the archetype of sex.

Yeah,

I love that.

And if we look at the Major Arcana,

You've got 22 archetypes and I see maybe four of them as being overtly gendered.

Different people have different sort of numbers,

But that leaves us with 18 that are not gendered at all.

So it just reminds us that that is not the only way to express ourselves or be ourselves.

That there are all these other archetypes that we can associate with irrespective of gender.

Well like the Lovers,

It's got all the genders in it and it also talks about the interplay between the sexes as well,

Isn't it?

The girl and the boy.

And I think is it the Star that's the opposite way around?

Yeah.

Yeah,

Yeah.

And then obviously you've also got the boy,

The girl and the man as well.

So you get lots of it and also our interaction with the angelic realms as well.

So it's got lots of stuff embedded in it.

So this is all,

We're getting quite deep with some of these things,

But where would someone just that wanted to start out,

Apart from your two obviously wonderful courses on Insight Time,

The Tarot Wisdom,

A complete guide and the daily Tarot meditation,

What's the best way for someone to get into it?

So someone actually asked this in the chat about or mentioned that they're looking for a way as well to connect with their deck.

And yeah,

We have their own materials.

So you have my courses or your books,

Tom,

And your workshop that's coming up in September.

But I would say the best way to get into it is just to start,

Dive into it.

And a card a day is a really nice way to start to get to know the Tarot.

And what I always say to people when they come into my courses as beginners is put the book away,

Put it on a high shelf,

Put it out of reach,

Out of sight,

Out of mind for 30 days.

You can always get it down again if you absolutely need it.

But when people start just by looking at the book,

Then what they're doing is learning by rote meanings,

Which may or may not apply to them.

Which may need to fit to them in a different way.

Whereas if they learn by their relationship with the cards,

Then that's what they're doing.

They're building relationship with the cards and they'll get a much richer experience from it.

So I would say pick a card today,

Journal about it,

Notice your reaction.

I really like this one.

Oh no,

This is scary or whatever it is.

Journal your reaction,

Journal what you see in the card and come back to it at the end of the day and notice if your experiences of the day have given you any more understanding of the card as well.

But that's a really nice way to build a fairly simple practice that will deepen your relationship very,

Very quickly.

Do you think you can try to date on?

And does it matter which deck you use and in particular deck you recommend?

I think people find the decks that they like.

And so for me,

I have several decks.

I know some people work with just one deck.

The experience tends to be that once you start buying tarot decks and you're going to keep buying them.

But I think it's really important to get a deck that resonates for you.

So some of the older decks are very,

They're very white,

They're very binary gendered,

They don't include everybody.

And so I think it really is important to find a deck that speaks to you,

That you can see yourself in and work with that.

So you can find decks on any sort of theme.

And so if there's something you're really into,

Google it with the word tarot and you're probably going to find a deck about that.

And then my tip for deciding if that deck's right for you is to follow the hashtag of it on social media,

Because you'll see pictures of it,

You'll see how other people are using it,

You'll know whether that's appealing to you or not.

And what do you say,

Going back to when we started,

Would you say this,

If I met you 15 years ago,

Is there an essential,

I've got a different kazaya in front of me now than the kazaya,

I didn't know about the tarot.

And if so,

What's the new version like as a result?

Yeah,

So completely,

Completely different.

Yeah,

As a result of the tarot,

As a result of the reiki,

The spiritual work.

So I spent a lot of my life,

We have this nice saying don't we in English about,

You know,

People misspending their youth.

And I really did.

And I was off track off the rails for a very long time.

And if I'd continued in that way,

I probably wouldn't be around now.

That's,

I'd say that's definite.

So for me,

You know,

The tarot,

The reiki,

The spiritual work,

Probably quite literally life saving,

And certainly have helped to deal with a lot of a lot of the,

The stuff that comes from,

You know,

Being being off the rails or being being out the way.

So So yeah,

I'd say the person I am today is completely influenced by the tarot reiki energy work,

Spiritual work.

Wow.

And how did an insight timer find you?

Or did you find them?

What was that happenstance like?

I found them there was,

I would meditate every day.

I used to live up what I call the sacred mountain monchique in the Algarve,

Beautiful place.

And I used to go out every morning.

And I would sit and I would meditate and I wanted to find a way to just to time my silent meditation.

So I searched meditation timer,

And insight timer came up.

And this was maybe six years ago.

So I think you're already on the app,

Tom.

But there weren't anywhere near as many teachers as there are now.

And there weren't anywhere near as many meditations.

And there weren't the courses and the workshops that we have now.

And I wrote to one of the publishing team who was organizing it at that time and just offered a meditation.

It was my meditation with the ancestors was the first one I uploaded.

And it just went from there.

And then the tarot I brought onto the app when the courses came out 2017,

2018.

I already knew that I was writing a tarot course and I was writing it for a digital platform,

But I didn't know which one.

And so I offered the tarot course,

Which at the time was very different from the very first few courses were all sort of mindfulness and evidence-based practices.

And I don't know of any tarot research,

Although I have lots of ideas about how that might be done.

And so I found that I had to kind of explain a bit,

You know,

What is the tarot,

How empowering it can be so that this would not be a fortune telling course,

But this would be an empowerment course.

So you mentioned fortune telling,

Because that's obviously the application that most people think of in connection with the tarot.

So what's the difference between a reading that you do and the sort of classic reading that you might think of in cinema and the like?

Yeah,

So I've learned to explain my way of reading at the beginning of doing a reading,

Just to make sure the expectations are aligned because the only bad readings I've ever had were where we haven't gone through those expectations and someone has wanted fortune telling.

And so I like to advise Querents.

Querent is a person who's asking the question for anyone who's not familiar with that word,

That this is a collaborative reading,

That this is about finding resources,

That there might not be new information in the reading,

Sometimes there is,

Often there is,

But this it might actually be a reframing or a new perspective on something they already know about,

And that this can help them to understand what is happening and to find their agency and to find their internal resources,

Sometimes external resources as well,

But really internal resources for how to proceed to get what they want.

Wow.

And so are you offering these readings through Insight Time,

Through the mentoring now?

Yes,

I do.

I don't have any slots open at the moment,

But people can join my circle to know once those slots open up,

They usually do go quite quickly.

And they're usually in the UK and Portugal time zone.

So it will be early morning in the States,

For example.

But yeah,

I offer the readings through Insight Timer as well as a few workshops,

Which there will be more information about some of those come September coming out.

And do you find,

Can you also do a reading about a business or a project or someone launching a new service or product or something like that?

Yeah,

You can read about anything.

I think for something new,

I would look at,

You know,

What are you bringing to it?

What are your expectations?

What do you need to know?

And I'm sort of,

So when I set up a reading,

I like to create a spread.

A spread is what we call how we lay out the cards.

To specific to the question that can help to get a really,

Really nice clear reading.

So I look at the elements of,

You know,

What are your hopes about this new project,

For example?

I see.

And then obviously,

We met through this meditation app.

And you've got lots of meditations on the app,

But you know,

And courses as well,

Some of them deal with Reiki,

Some that deal with Tarot and some that are pretty generic really as well.

You mentioned about the meditation and the ancestors.

How does Tarot work with meditation and meditation work with Tarot?

Well this is something I've been exploring quite deeply for the last 18 months.

So about a month ago,

I launched my daily Tarot meditation ritual course,

Which is a meditation for each Tarot card.

And so what I've done in that is take for each card,

Either the essence of the card,

Or perhaps something you might need if that's your card of the day,

And created a meditation to help you to tap into that energy.

So that's one way that you can meditate with Tarot.

But really,

The reason that it works so well is,

You know,

The reason you can work with any,

You can meditate with any card,

You can meditate with a spread in front of you,

Is that Tarot helps you to find these internal resources,

These inner resources.

And meditation helps you to access these resources.

So when you put the two together,

You have quite a profound experience that can just help to unlock things a little bit and to bring more possibilities into your life.

And do you remember when we interviewed you some years ago,

You can find that interview on Insight Timer,

I completely went off script and threw the gauntlet down on you without giving you any warning.

Can I do that right now?

Okay.

I thought whether you could pick a card,

Any card.

Yes,

Let's go for it.

So I've got here the Drucraft Tarot that I mentioned before,

Which was the first Tarot deck,

Not the first Tarot deck I own,

But the first one I went very deep with.

And I love this imagery.

It's based on the,

Sorry,

Pulling my earphones out with my Tarot deck now.

It's based on the mythology,

The Celtic mythology of the British Isles,

Which is why I love reading with this deck so much.

So what specifically shall I pull the card for?

Well,

I thought let's pull the card and then if you could just do a very short meditation on that card for everyone that's either listening or listening to the recording.

Okay.

How's that?

Let's go there.

Okay.

This is a nice one.

This is the Pull Prince of Swords.

So in some decks this will be the Knight of Swords.

And as you can see,

This is a knight in shining armour.

I think the shield is actually based on the Battersea Shield,

Which is in the British Museum.

And this is about the element of air because we have the swords of air and swiftness,

Swift action.

You can see the movement in this card,

Even though it's a still image,

You can see the movement happening there.

So for this one,

I don't recall the specifics of what other meditation I use in the course,

But I'm going to suggest that we do some breath work,

Some connecting in with the element of air and some connecting in with the movement.

Can I just stop you there before we do that?

This is really interesting.

This is how magic the tarot is.

Before we started this call,

I chose a card.

It's going to be that card.

And it's exactly that card.

Wow.

How does this work?

That is magic.

Yeah.

So we've not met physically.

We've had a similar life trajectory in terms of learning these things.

And then we happen to be in the same country at the moment we're on Zoom and we pick the same card.

Off you go.

Sorry,

Did it interrupt?

Yeah,

No,

I'm amazed that card came up.

OK,

So the knight of swords or the prince of swords,

I'll invite everyone to just be comfortable.

And start off by noticing your breath.

And noticing if there's anything you need to do to make your breath easier.

So making sure that you've got a nice supportive posture.

And then allowing yourself to make that breathing more deliberate.

So breathing in,

Breathe down as far as you can go.

Notice where that point is in your body.

Breathing out.

Just letting the rush of air come out.

And we'll continue for a few breaths.

Breathing in as far as you can go and you might find that your breath goes deeper each time.

And then breathing out,

Releasing that breath.

And as you release that breath,

Releasing any tension,

Anything that that's not helpful for you.

And you can even allow your breath to be a bit noisy if you want.

I think that the prince of swords,

The knight of swords wouldn't mind that.

Sighing out.

And then extending your awareness of this element of air,

Which is moving through you,

Through your body.

Extending your awareness to the air around you.

All the time allowing your breath to be deep,

Fluid and releasing.

And then you can just invite in the movement of air.

So you might imagine this as the wind.

Or as a great deep breath from source.

And on your next in breath,

Invite in all the air.

And allow it to move through you and allow it to loosen up anything that's stuck.

And with your next out breath.

Just releasing anything that's been stuck.

And again,

Breathing in deeply from source from the air around you from the entire element of air from the energy of the prince of swords and knight of swords.

Breathing in.

Letting that breath go as deep as you can.

Maybe it goes all the way to your toes.

Breathing out,

Just releasing.

And I'm just going to invite you to take a few more breaths there.

Explaining anything that's been stuck,

Anything that you don't need.

And then releasing it.

Because this is a card of movement,

We'll close the practice by shaking off.

So allow yourself to shake and let this movement in your breath free you up so that you're able to take action with whatever needs to happen that needs you to act decisively today.

Okay.

Well,

That was magic.

Thank you so much.

How much would you say,

What you put on the spot,

How much of this is knowledge that you already have about this card?

And how much just came through you in the spur of the moment?

I think it's a bit of both.

And in my work with intuition,

I've said,

You know,

What comes through on the spur and the moment will depend on how much knowledge that you already have,

Whether it's conscious or unconscious.

But the way that,

Because I didn't know that you were going to ask me to bring that meditation in,

There's a certain amount of spontaneity,

Which is absolutely appropriate to the Prince of Swords and Knight of Swords.

And what possible,

Because we didn't plan this at all.

We've had a little email exchange about things we wanted to talk about,

What have you.

But what caused me to choose a card before we started this call,

And then to ask you to pick out a card,

And I wasn't trying to magic up the same card or whatever you,

What mechanisms are getting involved with stirring all this magic up?

I like to be okay with the fact that we don't know everything.

So I don't know how Tarot works like that.

But I've seen many,

Many of these coincidences,

And I imagine you will have as well,

Tom.

So I don't know how it works,

But I know that it does.

I know that the right cards come out for the right person at the right time.

Yeah.

Wow.

And maybe it's just to remind us that there are other forces at work to our benefit as well,

And that our strings have been nicely pulled.

Someone's definitely pulled our strings,

So we've ended up on the same call together.

And I guess all the people that are on the Zoom as well,

On the IT live,

That's the mating staff.

And what's next for you with the Tarot?

Because obviously you run a course,

Don't you,

Every year?

You've got this course going called The Magician at the moment.

Yeah,

I have The Magician.

It's been on Insight Time for the first time this year.

Next year's not yet open to enrollment.

That's a year-long course,

And we go very deep,

And we approach lots of different themes,

Manifestation,

Creativity,

Health,

Energetic balance,

Emotional balance,

Career storytelling.

There's a lot in there.

And that has changed every year that I've run it.

So the structure's the same,

The topics are the same,

But it evolves,

It changes every year I've run it.

And I think it's going to change again for its next iteration,

And it's just in the process of doing that.

So hopefully I'll be able to share a bit more about that.

Not quite yet,

I'm afraid,

Tom,

But in a couple of months,

Perhaps when we speak again,

I'll be able to share how the next iteration of that is coming along.

And is there a tarot deck in you?

Is there a kazaya deck?

What does it go out in the world?

There's at least one,

Yeah.

See tarot everywhere.

There's one which,

Again,

I can't say anything about at the moment,

But that has been manifesting itself quietly for a little while now.

And there are probably two or three,

To be honest.

What I don't have is visual artistic talents.

Even my stick people are difficult to identify.

So I'm not the person to illustrate a deck.

Although someone in the comment series just said that they would love to illustrate a deck,

So maybe there's magic happening.

Well,

Siri and I are working on a deck.

Oh,

That's your series?

She's created a deck of cards for another client of mine,

An amazing set of cards.

Not a tarot deck,

But an amazing deck.

And there's companies now,

You know,

The same way that books are gone self-published,

You can self-publish decks now as well.

There's a company,

At least one company,

I don't know,

Called Ivory Graphics.

They're not supposed to promote things on these IT lines,

But they do an amazing service.

And there's others out there as well.

So it's almost like the time is now to allow us to do this.

And I guess that's the way that tarot evolves,

Isn't it,

By people coming out with new versions of the deck.

It is.

And what's happening at the moment with tarot,

Because you do have so many independent decks,

It's really exciting because there are lots of different themes being approached.

It's more accessible than ever.

What is the deck that you're working on with Surry then,

Tom?

Well,

It's called the Tarot of Overstanding.

And as you know,

I'm a great one for making words up.

So when I got first involved with the tarot,

I found that the study I did is just really,

Really difficult.

And I like to make things simple.

So I wrote two books,

2009,

2010,

So that's when I first got involved with it.

And I wrote this book called Flavours of Thought,

Which is my version,

A contemporization of the major arcana.

Another book called Planes of Being,

Which is my interpretation of the minor arcana.

But I always knew that there was a third book in the series.

And I knew what I wanted to do as a deck as well.

So this deck's going to come out probably in 2024,

Because I'm writing the book that goes with it at the moment.

I want the book and the deck to come out together.

And for me,

The tarot is a tool of awakening.

So it does all these things.

You can do readings and you can do this amazing magic we've done by pulling the same card when we're hundreds of miles apart.

And I love those things.

But I started to discover that the tarot awakens nascent aspects of our consciousness.

But the study,

The books I was reading about it and the study I did on it was really difficult.

Really male,

Many men making it difficult.

And I found there were two reasons for that.

One is because some of them wanted to make out that they were really,

Really clever.

So they use words that mere mortals can understand.

But also that a lot of people wanted to keep the secret safe and not to fall into the wrong hands.

There's a lovely,

Apocryphal story about how the tarot came into existence in Fez in the 1200s,

I think,

When all the world religions were rising up and wanting to quash some of this magical knowledge.

So all these sages got together in a room and said,

We'll put this deck together and it'll be a visual.

So it'll transcend the language.

And then they sent it out with the gypsies across Europe as a fortune telling deck.

So it wouldn't get quashed.

I think that's a bit of an apocryphal story,

Quite frankly.

But it's quite an interesting story.

In fact,

If you've got a deck of cards and you're not just playing deck of cards,

The standard deck of cards is based on the tarot.

It's kind of in our consciousness.

But what I like about the Major Arcana is it actually represents 22 modes of consciousness.

And the Minor Arcana describes us as spirits on this journey,

Nine dimensional spirits on the journey.

So as you know,

I like to have fun,

So I like to make up new words.

I'm a great fan of urban dictionary.

I've got loads of words on urban dictionary like timefulness and kindfulness.

I've even got winefulness on there as well.

You find a meditation on Inside Time called the Art of Winefulness.

I love playing with words because when we play with words,

We expand our consciousness.

So studying the tarot to me gave me a lot of understanding.

And I wondered what happens if we would understand our understanding,

I.

E.

Overstand it.

So that's kind of what this deck's all about.

And to do that,

We've expanded the Major Arcana to 23.

So it's got another 23rd card,

Which I've got the Osho Zen deck in front of me here.

And that's got a 23rd card in as well.

So we're not the first people to do this.

But we also added another suit for the Minor Arcana,

The suit of overstanding.

I call them different things like this.

The cups,

The pentacles will be the suit of a rival.

So that's one thing,

Landing the earth plane.

And we've got the seat of Inception,

Which is the ones.

So it's a way of ingenuity,

Which is the formation.

And the suite of dreams,

Which is where we get our dreamy sort of ideas that come from and stuff like that.

So I've got all new words even to describe some of the suits.

But the suits map into the different odd dimensions,

Third,

Fifth,

Seventh,

And ninth.

So I just thought,

Well,

When I say I thought,

The idea came to me,

What would be the 11th dimensional suit?

And so we could look down on top of us as nine dimensional beings,

As an 11th dimensional intelligence.

What new learning would that bring?

And I'm writing this book over 23 months or 23 moons,

Because I work to the moon phase.

And what happens is as I'm writing it and creating it,

New wisdom is coming in.

And this wisdom isn't coming from any study.

This is just coming out of the ether.

And it's like being brought back into the earth plane.

And I think they said we're baton carriers and channels and all this sort of stuff.

And new wisdom comes in.

Even every Dogwop,

I've got a new realization today about the fairy realms and how the elementals map into the tarot as well as loads,

As you know,

There's loads of decks that map into the fairy realms as well.

So all of this stuff keeps arriving,

Which is why I'm serializing the book at the moment and why the card deck's taken a bit of time to come together,

Because we keep sort of casting it in stone.

Then a new element opens up to us by us using this.

So there's always like picking yourself up with your bootstraps,

If you know what I mean.

Yeah,

You might almost have to have several new decks after this one as well.

It could fall back to that.

Yeah.

So what do you hear in the comments suggested as well as understanding and overstanding,

Inner standing.

I wonder what you make of that.

Oh,

Yeah,

I love,

I've used that in the past in various things.

And I've got a series of conversations I call them uber standings.

So these are,

This is us understanding above the level of overstanding.

Yes,

All these new compound words are just amazing.

And in fact,

Paul Foster Case is the person I studied most with.

I read his book,

He's the Wisdom of Ages,

And then I started studying with his school Builders of the Adietam.

He loves messing with words as well,

Which is kind of interesting.

And he expands intuition,

Intuition to being in intuition.

So inner intuition and inner standing are very,

Very similar in terms of concept is that this,

The answers come from within.

And guess what,

We use these things as the keys to unlock them to conjure up this stuff into existence.

You know,

I've got,

I'd have a spread every single day.

I know Siri does this as well.

And we,

I just use different decks.

I don't even use the same deck.

I've got spreads of spreads,

If you know what I mean,

Which is just great.

Different energies come in and you have to have,

You don't have to think about it.

If you think about it,

You put your interpretation on it.

You just let whatever comes in,

Come in.

And then you almost afterwards you overstand it or inner stand it.

Yes,

That's one of the things I love about what when you say coming back to afterwards as well,

That you,

Um,

You can get your initial reaction in the standing over standing and,

And you can build up layers on that.

Um,

I'm aware of some messages in the chat.

I know my sound slightly distorted.

I don't know how to fix that easily without going off into lots of different screens.

Um,

Does anyone who is watching have a question that you'd like to ask either me or Tom?

I know there's been a lot in the chat going on,

Um,

Already,

And I'm only catching bits of it as we're chatting,

But now's a good time to either repeat any question you've asked or to share any question you have.

So Amy says,

How do you work with a reading around health and keep the focus on the internal,

Not the outcome?

Would you recommend a particular practice for restoring health and the body's ability to heal?

Is,

Uh,

Well,

Maybe I could,

Um,

Come in two ways.

I'd tackle that in two different ways.

Um,

Cause I don't do readings in the same way.

They're,

They're,

They're,

They're not readings like fortune telling readings.

They're just collections of energy.

So when I put the book,

Flavors and thought together,

It was obviously if you mix some of the cards together,

They would be recipes.

So I call my recipes for fresh thinking.

Uh,

They're like modern day spells,

But what I do with specifically with health is one of two things.

I either do a spread,

Which was a three card spread,

A horizontal and the,

The,

The middle card would be you right now,

The card to the left would be you in the past and the card to the right would be you in the future.

But a more intriguing spread to do would be a vertical spread of seven and each card relates to one of the chakras.

Because often our chakras,

Um,

You know,

Obviously they're,

They're part of our energetic system,

But if we've got a blockage or an imbalance in them,

That can lead to dis-ease.

So you could actually use the cards in a vertical line on each of the chakra points.

And if you feel particularly brave,

You lie down on the floor and you place them on your chakra points and you lie there for half an hour meditating or whatever,

And you'll use it as a healing tool.

Why not?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I love that idea,

Tom.

And when you do a spread like this,

It can tell you where you need to make any changes or focus your energy.

And it can also tell you what to do depending on what,

What card comes up.

And another little piece of magic in a reading like that,

That I sometimes like to do is if a card comes up somewhere that it's not appropriate.

So you know,

Say someone has the devil come up in a place that's obviously causing problems.

I might ask that querent to replace that card with another card of their choosing.

So,

You know,

What would they like to put there instead?

And that in itself is a nice little piece of magic.

Yeah.

Or invert the card.

You could just invert it,

Couldn't you?

Yeah.

Goppers energy.

But bearing in mind that the devil is also one of my favourites.

When I was at school,

My mother kept reminding me of this.

One of my school reports said,

Thomas has a devil's make hair attitude.

And we must remember the devil is a man-made construct,

Specifically man-made,

Not woman-made,

To keep us under the thumb.

And if you look at the devil card in like the right-wing deck,

For example,

You'll see the chains around Adam and Eve's nets are loose.

And the devil has got a navel.

So he's not from the angelic realms.

He's been made by men to put the fear of God into people.

So I remember I was,

I used to be a good boy when I was little,

I was raised a Roman Catholic.

I was a good boy when I was little because I didn't want to go to hell,

Not because I wanted to go to heaven.

So it's the fear that was driven by,

Not by the love.

And the devil card encapsulates that as well.

So it's not necessarily,

No cards are bad,

But we might,

We might associate with something that's not so good.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Absolutely.

And,

And,

You know,

In all kinds of wellbeing,

I think where the devil starts to cause problems is when we start to believe those narratives that we might be telling ourselves or the people might be telling us.

That's where I see the problem with that card.

So I like,

I like it when it comes up in a reading because it draws attention to like what narratives are limiting you.

And what,

Let's say it landed upon your heart chakra,

For example,

What could you,

What could happen in your world if you unchained the love that's captured in your heart?

Whoa,

That's a really powerful concept,

Isn't it?

Yeah,

Absolutely.

Claire's asking,

Can it be helpful to look at the same card in another deck,

Either to get a deeper insight or a different perspective?

And I might answer that,

That I've,

I've worked with this concept quite a lot and I really like that as a way of switching perspective.

So where you need deeper insight,

You can get perhaps more nuance by looking at it in a second deck,

But also actually coming back again to the devil.

So one of my very personal stories,

Which happened around the time I came to Tarot,

Is,

As I mentioned,

When I was younger,

I worked very,

Very hard at misspending my youth.

And I had problems with addiction and all kinds of things going on.

And the devil was my card.

If I had a reading,

It would come up for me.

And when I went through this transformation and started to interact with the world in a different way,

In a more energetic way,

And was given this Druidcraft deck,

And I'm just looking through the deck now,

Try and find the devil card for you.

I was given a completely different perspective on life,

On the energy,

On the energy that was,

That had been shackling me.

And I will find the card for you to show you,

Because it,

Even now,

Years later,

Brings shivers down my spine,

Just thinking about it.

While you're looking,

Can I just share another strange coincidence with you?

Yeah,

Go on.

So I've got me Osho's End deck here,

Right?

This is the Osho,

And this is the card I got up today that I chose around.

This is a seven,

Which is the seven of wands,

That is.

And I thought,

Oh,

I'll just have a look for the devil card as well.

So I turned the deck over,

And it was right on the bottom.

So this actually shows a lion being chained there,

Some animals being chained.

This is the Osho's End deck.

So often what happens is the thing you need is right in front of you,

Like the next card you're about to turn up,

Or you shuffle and a card falls on the floor.

It's that one.

Right,

So it's the happy accident of something falling on the floor.

If that ever happens to you when you're messing around with a deck,

And I mean,

Messing around in the most jovial way,

The kindest way,

Pick that card up because it was meant for you.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

And sometimes you'll be shuffling and you'll know what card is going to come next,

Even before it's come out.

The energy is there.

So I found this devil card from the Druidcraft.

And look at this.

This is not the devil.

Sorry,

My screen's reversed.

I'm trying to hold it up so you can see it.

This is Kernunos.

And Kernunos is a god,

A nature god.

And so you see here,

You've still got this very,

Very powerful image.

You've still got this very,

Very powerful force.

You don't want to disrespect this force.

But it's not formulated as being a devil.

This is a god.

It's actually one of the gods that I believe in,

In my personal practice.

And I love that reformulating of the devil.

And this image coming to me,

Landing up in my hands at this time,

I had this transformation from living in a way that was very right-of-way at Smith Devil,

Or the traditional devil's very chained,

To actually being in touch with energy work and recognizing that,

Yes,

There is a great force of energy to work with that needs respecting,

And also that it can be done in a way that is aligned,

That is healing,

That uses that power towards something different.

Yeah,

I just remember that Lucifer is a light bringer,

So he's an angel from the sixth dimension and a bringer of change.

Yes.

Which is why some of the old world's religions don't like change.

So that's why they demonize this wonderful character who pops into our world at times of change.

Yes,

And the whole process of demonization encapsulates the meaning of the devil card.

It's these narratives that we create.

Wonderful,

Wonderful.

Amy adds,

Tom,

Your devil card says conditioning,

And asks,

What narrative have I internalized that's not serving my well-being and healing?

Which is a great question,

I think,

To come up with the devil.

Well,

If you think about our conditioning,

It's what leads us to where we are now.

So all the patterns that we believe in,

You know,

I think disease is much better understood when you put a hyphen in it and it says this ease,

And whatever issue you've got right now,

That is the symptom,

Not the cause.

You might think of it as the cause.

Therefore,

If we see it as a symptom,

What is the underlying thing that we can use to transform it?

And as I said before,

I'm a great believer in pulling yourself up with your own bootstraps.

So let's use the talent,

Let's use that card itself to release this conditioning and to maybe think that this ease is only one option and ease is the other option.

So what can take you to,

Rather than thinking about what can I do to relieve this disease,

What can you do to bring in ease?

Yeah,

Yeah,

And what do you want instead?

Very often we will move away from what we don't want without a clear idea of what we do want.

And that sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't.

But if we're clear about what we want instead,

Then it's much easier to move towards it and the tarot can help with that as well.

Sure,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Absolutely.

And sometimes,

You know,

You might need to put on,

I fell over the other day and I've sprained my wrist,

You know,

So I needed a thing just to hold it all together.

But there's probably an underlying cause,

The reason why I fell over and the realization why I did that,

I fell flat on my face and bust my nose and all sorts of things.

But what was that about?

So it can be a physical thing as well.

I know in the past when I've had a problem from my leg,

It's been to slow me down and to,

You know,

My knees always been a constant source of irritation through my life.

And it's almost like a reminder of every time I started to step forward,

The knee would inflame and I did discover it had a past life component to it.

You know,

So often when we use the tarot,

It's a temporal tool as well.

We can not only divine the future,

We can use it as a divination tool to tell us about the future.

We can also use it to release things in the past as well.

And as you know,

With spreads,

You can do clock faces,

You can do left,

Right,

Crosses and this sort of stuff.

You can do all sorts of temporal mappings in a spread as well as a sort of a flat spread that tells you about what's going on right now in your life.

And I love playing with those concepts too.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

And this is whether it's health,

Whether it's anything else,

You know,

We can start to understand,

You know,

Where has this come from before we can move on to do anything about it.

And just check that and did that answer Amy's question or did I ramble too much?

Amy says,

Absolutely.

15 years sober now.

The tarot helped me through a lot of dis-ease back then.

Fantastic.

And just before we close,

I know we're coming up to five to three,

We could probably talk all day,

But let's move towards closing.

So Waddy says,

There's an older sense of overstand,

A word that's been around for at least half a century.

It originated as Caribbean patois.

That's right.

With Rastafarian roots and signifies to have complete or intuitive comprehension of something.

And I'll press up,

That's where I found it from.

So I didn't create it then it sort of arrived,

I did look it up and yeah,

Definitely the Rastafari movement.

There's a lot of wisdom in that movement,

That's for sure.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

And all talking about wrapping up,

We've got another session haven't we?

7th of September,

Another Insight Timer Live.

This will appear on my feed and we're just going to go into more depth and all of this stuff.

So anybody that's got any questions that come up between now and then,

Either send them over to me or to Kazana and we've got no agenda for the next one at all.

Although I must share with you the magical way that tarot came into my world,

But we'll save that for the next one.

To me,

It's just been this magical immersing into this world and I didn't find the tarot,

It found me definitely.

So we'll save that till the 7th of September.

Yeah,

We'll start with that on the 7th of September then.

And if anyone does have any other questions,

Then yeah,

I have a circle here on Insight Timer called Kazaya's Circle.

What's your circle called Tom?

I'm not,

To be honest,

It's not active.

I've been pretty,

I never understood circles,

They escaped me for some reason.

So maybe I should join your circle just being there.

Can I do that?

Yeah,

You're very welcome.

I'll jump into it.

You can tell me how circles work.

So considering that a lot of the tarot,

The tarot is rotational and it's all about the cyclical nature of things,

You know,

Because you can spell the words tarot in a circle and the tea comes round again.

I should maybe get involved with circles a bit more on Insight Timer.

Maybe,

Maybe that's a little invitation for you there.

OK,

So dates for your diary,

7th of September,

We'll be doing another live where we chat tarot and we'll find out about Tom's magical immersion into the world of tarot.

21st of September,

Is that your workshop,

Tom?

Yeah,

I've done a workshop on the overstanding of the tarot.

So this is looking at the tarot from a higher dimensional perspective and overstanding it,

Innerstanding it and all of this stuff we'll be doing in that workshop and talking about and how,

When we overstand something,

We bring another level of meaning into it.

That's just the one hour long workshop,

21st of September.

I've set my stall now to do four workshops a year,

One on each of the equinoxes and one on each of the solstices as well.

And when you get into natural time,

So the tarot's got astrological connections as well,

Isn't it?

So,

You know,

There's lots buried in it,

Which you see chakras all over the tarot as well and this sort of stuff.

There's lots of symbology in it that gives us some insight into who we are and what we really are,

Which is we're not just human beings,

We're spirits having this human existence,

Experience and we're evolving.

And so when the tarot evolves,

We evolve,

Vice versa.

Yes,

That's what's so exciting about working with tarot now,

I think,

Is that we evolve,

The tarot evolves and we do that in a very magical way.

So that's 21st September,

7th of September for our live and my daily tarot meditation ritual course is out now on the courses section of my profile and I'll be doing a launch party for that on 8th of September as well.

Fantastic,

I'll put that in the diary.

So thanks very much Tom,

It's lovely to speak to you.

Thank you everyone who's been here with joining us.

Thank you Keziah for that great meeting and thank you to the Knight of Swords for turning up in our world today.

Yeah,

Just show that one again.

Take good care.

OK,

Take care,

Thank you.

Reviews

Excellent advice on how to get started with Tarot. Maybe i could give it a go. ❤️

Two of my favorite people on insight timer talking about one of my favorite subjects - wow! And thank you 🙏🏼✨

Really interesting chat about the tarot, I’m definitely going to explore it further after this 🙏

Inspirational, leaves you wanting to learn and explore more, thanks to both speakers

Thank you both! I’ve been a collector of decks, some are tarot (the Dali influenced cards are amazing!) and it’s time for me to take them off the shelf (☺️) take action (thank you prince of swords) and dive in! I like the idea of putting the guidebook on the shelf and letting my interaction and knowledge evolve. I just drew The Blade (!) card from my oracle deck. I look forward to further exploring your rich resources here on IT. I’ve been using IT since its inception, when, once upon a time, there was only a handful of meditations! Hard to believe how it’s evolved….
🙏🌊🧜🏻‍♀️🦋💫🙏

Thank you! I missed the live chat but was excited to hear you both talk. I began meditating in 2013 (around same time you two got into energy work as well) and found Insight Timer in 2016 where both of you have become my most trusted guides.

I listened to your talk while moving through a long qi-gong and tai-chi morning routine. When you began the meditation on the sword card, my entire mind shifted to understand and “see” how my movements were manipulating and dancing with the air energy around me (I was outside). I’ve never had such a powerful practice before. I am like the knight, excited to continue this journey.

Peace to you both.

Dear Keziah! Thanks for the mention and to be able to listen this talk with you ! Please do send me an email about your card ideas! As I wrote I’m very happy to illustrate for you! Much love! SÏRÏ