Not because they will tell my future, but because they will point me to what needs my attention so I create the future I want.

I believe that divinatory insight is a form of wisdom guidance. A nuanced dance between conscious knowing and mystery that takes the ordinary and opens it up to the mystical. Here meaning and revelation is created. Not as some outside authority dictating what is or is not true, but as an invitation to engage the larger energies and subtle senses of who we are to find greater truth and personal answers.

Every question posed to any oracle, whether large or small, is an invocation.

A prayer of higher perception initiating relationship between the mundane and the sacred. Here space is opened to explore and discover. Veils drop. Connections are made.

Are the cards always right? Can intuition be trusted? What if the information doesn’t make sense or I don’t understand it?

While accuracy, trust, and skill are important and I can go on about that, in my opinion there is a more important process happening when engaging with the cards- whether as the reader or seeker. It is the process of coming to know what we know is true, for us. And this, being in the open exploration of what and how we know what we know is true is foundational to our ability to trust ourselves, our choices, and our beliefs. The ability to be in flux with this as the sands of new or conflicting information shifts our awareness and perspectives, is to find the sold ground of us.

Like so many, I was separated from my intuition early on. My ability to trust myself, my own felt experience of the world and gut feelings, were undermined by a family and society that discounts such things. I found myself over and over again abdicating my inner knowing to the opinions or appeasement of others, despite feeling inside something was off. Over time I lost all confidence of what was true for me and instead replaced it with what was true for others. This didn’t end up so well, as you might imagine. I said yes when I wanted to say no, did what was expected rather than what I wanted, trusted untrustworthy people and information because others did, ended up in some dangerous and harmful situations.

Enter Tarot.

I was really in a bad and dark place. Because of bad choices stemming from not listening to the danger alarms going off inside I ended up hurt, in therapy, questioning everything I knew about myself and my past, not sure I would survive it all. At the suggestion of several friends I got my first reading from an amazing woman. Despite not believing in this kind of stuff at all and the teachings of conservative religion, I was in enough turmoil to try something so unusual for me. If I got something useful who cared how it came to me? The reading itself was powerful, validating, grounding, insightful, and most importantly awakened a fire to know more.

I dove into learning about the cards, spending every free moment playing, asking questions, doing readings for myself, even sleeping with my deck under my pillow. While I was obsessed with learning everything I could, something more important and essential was happening. My intuition was waking up, my trust in listening and understanding this most intimate and individual internal language was being honed. I always say that working with cards was and is my master class in intuition cultivation and confidence. It was the way I come back home to myself. It continues to be my tool of choice when I want clarity, direction, guidance, an nudge in the right direction.

Symbolic and archetypal imagery has a way of sidestepping internal noise and communicates directly to our psyche. The art is in interpreting it through our rational faculties so it aligns with our deep sense of Truth. Truth that aligns our knowing, perceiving, sensing, feeling selves. Even when the information is unexpected, or doesn’t make logical sense, or goes against long held ways of being and beliefs. This is true as a reader and as a seeker. It is this process, this engagement with finding that aligned Truth that is the gift of reading, and being read for.

Oracles hold Trickster energy. They sometimes give smooth and elegant messages, and we go “Ah, yes! This.” Sometimes they poke and provoke us to to claim the power of “No, that is not my truth. Those words, that interpretation is not true for me. But this is…” and we get the gift of voicing what what we know is true in a different way.

A reading is not the truth but a holder of space to discover Truth.

This process, is why I read cards. Not to be right. Not to get insider information on the workings of the Universe. Not to know the future. Well, my ego can get caught in these things, and that is when I need to check myself. But really, it is the unraveling of the moment reflected in the cards, looking for the messages, seeking the resonate truth that holds so much magic. When reading for others, it is to deliver the messages as I receive them and then allow the seeker to have their relationship with it. They will go through their own process of hearing the message, letting it do its alchemy on their deeper energies and become the message that is Truth for them.

Each time I shuffle I am asking the energies-that-be to come into communion, to open a conversation of higher purpose. It doesn’t matter whether the question is grand and life shifting or humble and of little long term consequence. Mundane and epic only have relevance to our linear mind. But Truth, and getting to feel the inner spark of it as it lands in the cells of the flesh, mine and yours, this is why I read cards.

*******

Until the end of February I am offering a small, sweet written Tarot reading I’m calling Intuitive Love Notes. The world is always pulling us away form ourselves. This reading will point the way back.

If more in depth, intuitive support interests you, Lumina Guidance may be for you.