Recently, my busy tarot life of readings, traveling and writing, found me teaching a class called “Anatomy of a Tarot Reading”. In this class, I posited that a tarot reading can be divided into seven distinct activities. Those steps are: Preparation, Invocation, Intuition, Operation, Interpretation, Presentation and Manifestation.

While the class was to be specifically about the art of tarot reading, I found much of my magickal theory about tarot leaking in. With sections like "Invocation" and "Manifestation", how could it not?

I struggled with this for a while. Truly, I have always taught “tarot magick” as a separate subject from tarot reading – as something else, something different you can do with your tarot cards.

Writing and presenting this tarot reading class helped me see that, in many ways, all work with tarot is magickal. Magick is woven into the images, symbols, and esoteric associations. And, the very process of divination is magickal. Beyond that, each reading offers us an opportunity to heal something, release something or create something, and that is magick, too.

This recent realization hasn’t fundamentally changed the way I do tarot readings, but it has added a new feature, or at least formalized and brought to the forefront something I have being doing behind the scenes for years.

Now, when I look at a tarot spread, beyond finding the information within it, I scan it for magickal opportunities. Perhaps there is a difficult card that needs to be inverted or have its energy consciously removed.

When I find such a thing, I invite my client to breathe with me, and visualize this energetic change in their lives. They watch as I, with a bit of drama, turn the card over, or place it in a past position.

None of these activities change the information that comes from the cards, but they can change the focus, and can help the client to feel more in control of their destiny.

Over the next few months, I will be writing more about the magickal aspects of tarot reading.  Today, if you use tarot, my challenge to you is this.

Look for the magickal opportunities in each reading you do. See your divination as a magickal act, but also see the possibilities inherent in the cards that are present.

When we do a reading, we are looking for information, ideas, advice and understanding. What if, at the very same time, we consider that all or some of the cards that the Universe gives us for edification are also the magickal tools we most need now?

Here are two things to try the next time you do a tarot spread.

The first, as I already mentioned, happens during your interpretation, as you look for energies within the cards that you want to maximize or diminish.

The second comes after you finish your interpretations. Before picking up the cards and placing them back in the deck, look at the cards in front of you. Keeping the information you gleaned from the reading in mind, consider the possible magickal uses for the cards in your spread.

Might these cards be useful now, or in the next few days or weeks, to help you do magick to support the positive outcome of your reading, avert a less-than-positive outcome, or nurture a new enterprise or facilitate needed healing?

 Interpreting your cards a second time, not for information but for magickal direction, could open up many new possibilities in your life, and in your work with the cards.

 Leave a comment and let me know how it works for you! I’ll be back soon with more ideas about the magick inherent in tarot.