Tarot Wisdom: A Complete Guide

As we set off on our journey through the tarot, we learn about the history and uses of the tarot, the specific approaches being used in this course - namely that this is all about creating your own personal relationship with the cards - explore deeply why you are drawn to the tarot, and use intention to create outcomes for your tarot journey.

Whether for healing, learning, or personal development, the process is as sacred or as mundane as you make it. Being in the right state for tarot work helps to create focus and intention. Today you will learn how you can do that, for clearer, better results from your work with the tarot. In this lesson, we prepare for the entire course, with an exercise that you can return to whenever you like in preparation for a reading or other tarot work.

Intuition is a resource we'll be both drawing on and developing through our use of the tarot. But what is intuition anyway? Today we'll explore how your mind receives and processes information – sometimes without even knowing it.

You have options, and tarot has a million uses. Perhaps the most well-known and stereotypical is fortune-telling, but actually in this course that's not going to be our focus. Today, learn about how tarot can be used as a practical intuitive tool, in coaching and self- coaching, facilitating conversations, organisations and teams, for creative inspiration and to speak directly to the unconscious mind.

Today we'll use the cards and the work we've already done to invite your desired outcomes into your life. This might be in the context of the course, or might be for the longer-term future, and uses a blend of the specific power of well-designed goals with the deeper wisdom of the tarot.

The Major Arcana are the twenty-two cards which are outside the suits, and generally represent inner states, life quests, allies, phases, and soul work. Today we'll explore the significance of the Major Arcana and the types of deep life experiences that they represent.

Each of the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana tap into specific energies and archetypes. Today we'll explore the meaning of each card, from The Fool to The World, and some of the ways in which they might manifest in a person's life.

It's possible both to meditation with the tarot, and desirable to practice tarot from a state of mindfulness. Today we explore some practical ways that you could integrate the tarot into your meditation practice.

Much like a deck of playing cards, the tarot's Minor Arcana is divided into four suits. Today we meet the energy and understand the symbolic significance of the Swords, Wands, Cups and Pentacles and their elements.

We know something about the meanings of the suits, and today it's time to invite the energies in. During this exercise you will locate yourself at the centre of the four suits, and rebalance yourself if you have been leaning too much towards one or another or missing out on any of them.

Today we think carefully about the airy, active energy of the swords, and understand some of the possible meanings from the numbered cards. Our card ally is the Queen of Swords, who oversees our journey from her lofty perspective.

The wands are fiery and creative, and today we adventure into the card meanings and celebrate the powerful resource which the wands lend us. Wands are associated with the element of fire, and with creativity and passion.

Today we explore the emotional realm of the cups, experiencing life lessons and how we respond to them through this watery suit. Cups are associated with the element of water, and with intuition and the emotions.

The pentacles are about the material – not only money and security, but also health. Today we reach deeply into the suit of earth, getting a grounded feel for the cards' meanings. The Pentacles are associated with the element of Earth, and physical and material resources.

The Aces have a special energy all of their own. They are the perfect resources for beginnings, seeding, planning and creating. Today we explore some ways to work with one or more aces and the power of your own intention to focus your own energy in the world.

The court cards are really fun to work with because they often represent people, or aspects of people. Tremendous insight can be gained by understanding the many sides of yourself, and the roles of the influential people in your life, through the eyes of the court cards.

The tarot is a structured system and functional ecosystem, but each card can also stand in its own right. Today we look at how you can choose and work with one card to support and make sense of what is happening in your life.

Today we look at a powerful healing exercise to understand the patterns that are and have been present in your life. By using the cards as a means of expression, we can bypass the conscious stories that we all tell ourselves, and understand the energies, which shape our experience and the way our actions shape the world around us.

You now have plenty of knowledge available to you as well as a developing intuitive understanding of how the cards work. Today we'll go through the process of choosing an appropriate question and meet one- and three-card spreads, so that by the end of the lesson you will have given yourself your first reading.

By now you should have a good idea of just how sacred you want your tarot practice to be. Today we'll explore different methods for caring for your cards, and some general beliefs about what you should and shouldn't do.

So we're pretty comfortable at this point with card meanings and your own interpretation of the cards, but what if it comes out upside-down? Does it matter? Does it change the meaning, and if so, how?

Because tarot work is energy work, we can not only use it to work with circumstances and conscious and unconscious processes, but it is also an ideal way to tap into and work with your own energy field. Today you'll work with the holistic wellbeing spread, to understand and influence what is happening in your energy system, with an example reading from a real client.

Now that we're working with spreads of multiple cards, we need to be able not only to understand each card in itself and in where it appears in the spread, but also how certain combinations of cards can be pointing us in a particular direction. Today we'll notice which cards are suggestive of each other, and get a feel for what this might mean.

The tarot as taught in this course is very much about working with yourself, and not predicting the future, but as humans we're natural planners. The six-month spread is a very simple way of understanding which of today's energies you are carrying into your future and how they might be held, released or transformed.

In the next three lessons, you'll be given an example spread as interpreted by three different readers with three different styles. As well as continuing with your unconscious uptake of the cards' significance, you'll get inspiration from real-life examples by professional tarot readers. Today we look at how a reading can situate and guide you on your path.

Today tarot reader Janice Russell interprets the reading that we came into contact with yesterday, adding some depth to the reading and highlighting the theme that one piece of impactful knowledge and the myriad tiny insights can be used by the querent to grow.

Tarot reader and astrologist Shelagh Carter interprets the cards we've been working with in the last days. Shelagh's mythological take brings new information to the reading, and together the three interpretations give a complete picture.

Today, you use your own creativity and understanding of your own purposes in combination with everything you have learnt in this course to create your own spread for your own readings. If you plan to read for family and friends, you can also adopt the principles in this lesson to create personalised readings for others.

This spread is slightly different because before creating any reading, you will be working with focus and intention to design a representation of what you want, not only from the reading, but in life. You will then find resources and insight from the cards that you draw which allow you to progress towards your goals with ease.

Phew! That was a heady journey through the cards, and you may return from it feeling differently than you did before, and with a lifelong passion for tarot. Today we reflect on both the learning and the process of personal transformation which have arisen from this course, celebrate your achievement, and prepare you for the rest of your life with tarot.