Mindful Tarot is based on just two premises:
• Nothing is hidden.
• Nothing is broken.
To illustrate these two premises, let’s explore the departure they signal from the traditional divinatory perspective I’ve called mantic Tarot. On the new year, many Tarot readers pull for themselves a year-ahead spread, laying out twelve cards to represent each month of the year, along with a thirteenth “theme” card that summarizes the year as a whole. Mantic Tarot is obstacle-focused, goal-oriented, and future-directed. It seeks answers and outcomes. The year-ahead spread is perfect for mantic Tarot, providing the reader with a glimpse into their future and an opportunity to transform loss into gain. Of course, this divinatory approach also reinforces a sense of division between self and world: there’s me and then there’s my world—with the challenges it poses and the potential outcomes I desire. This division itself can prevent the feeling of wholeness that so many of us seek.
Mindful Tarot, on the other hand, promotes a sense of integration and nonduality. Where mantic Tarot seeks answers, Mindful Tarot poses questions. It’s present-focused, experience-oriented, and awareness-directed. For this reason, on each new year I pull a Wheel of Life spread instead of a year-ahead spread. The Wheel of Life spread also uses thirteen cards, but it encourages me to investigate the year as an interconnected whole: a turning wheel, with interdependent ups and downs, revolving month by month, day by day, moment by moment. The Wheel of Life invites me to stay present, anchored in an awareness of my experiences and alert to the interbeing of my life (to use Nhat Hahn’s term from Chapter 1).
The Wheel of Life
Of course, there’s no wheel without its hub. The hub is the wheel’s central axis point. All the wheel’s spokes radiate to and from the hub. Without the hub, the wheel simply cannot turn. And yet, as the wheel turns, the hub itself remains perfectly still. As the center point, it enables spinning—but it itself does not spin.
As that incredible nineteenth-century poet of the abundant life, Walt Whitman, reminds us in “Song of Myself,” “There is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheel’d universe.” The still point at the center of our spinning life is just wherever we happen to be. It’s just the present moment, here and now. Mindful Tarot helps us linger in this stillness through a process of embodied reading and gentle inquiry. The still point, this hub at the center of the wheel, is nothing more nor less than the attentive standpoint of an open and nonjudgmental awareness. No matter how active or restless my body, heart, and mind become, my awareness can be at ease. I can rest and be still here, at the very hub of my wheeled universe.
To use another metaphor, my awareness can ride the waves of my experience like an anchored ship rising and falling gently on the ocean swells. Moored in place by the anchor of mindful attention, I can investigate the rising and falling tides of my life. Whether I view life as churning waves or a spinning wheel, an open and nonjudgmental awareness serves as my still point. (We’ll further explore this idea of a still point in the next chapter.)
In the Wheel of Life spread, the center card represents this still point of awareness. Serving as the hub of my year’s wheel, it becomes a contemplative home base to which I can return again and again in gentle inquiry and ongoing card practice, investigating the continuities and cycles, the ups and downs, the interbeing and interdependencies that define the wholeness of my life. The hub at the center can help me see the still and complete wholeness of my life’s wheel.
My current Wheel of Life spread
Let’s explore this year’s Wheel of Life spread.17
Nothing is hidden. This year, the hub of my wheel is the Three of Wands. As a card of exploration, opening, and new commitment, the Three of Wands seems to point pretty definitively to the future and to the workings of fortune. Positioned among the three upright wands, the central figure seems to have crossed a threshold. The figure grasps one of the wands like a staff, as if for steadiness, and apparently gazes off into the distance, eyes on the ocean. Their ships are literally out at sea. In the imagery of the 1909 Waite-Smith deck, we even see three small ships out on the horizon. Are they leaving or returning? Either way, our figure awaits their fate. And, like this figure at the threshold of life, so do we typically address the Tarot from a mantic standpoint of expectancy. The future is hidden from us. The die has been cast. Our ships are out at sea. What will be revealed?
But through the Wheel of Life spread, I’m entering into a process of inquiry. I’m turning toward the Tarot to refine my central life questions, not to nail down the answers. The Three of Wands is the perfect hub for this spinning wheel. The card invites me to steady myself in the open threshold, in the openness of inquiry; to stand at the threshold between solid ground and flowing waters; to be curious and attentive. The vastness of life—the entirety of the horizon—is wide open to me. Nothing is hidden, because from this position I’m open to whatever arises.
The Three of Wands further invites me to notice how I’m steadying myself; to investigate what feels solid and planted for my body, my experience, right now; to sense into the pull of gravity on bones and muscles, and the supportive pressure of the ground beneath my feet. In what ways do I feel grounded right now? (As we move into Mindful Tarot practice, we’ll explore grounding practices—mindfulness exercises and meditations—that can help us anchor our body, heart, and mind in the present moment.) In this manner, this card both invites openness and prompts me to notice the very specific ways in which I feel grounded and supported in this moment.
Of course, I may also feel really shaky right now. The Three of Wands invites me to notice those feelings as well.
It is from the perspective of this open stance, supported and steadied in whatever ways I might be, that the twelve stations of the wheel represent not only individual months but also individual moments in the unfolding and dynamic movement that is my life. In a traditional year-ahead spread, the twelve cards highlight the crucial events and learnings of each month. The cards may warn of internal and external dangers, encouraging me each month to gear up as needed to meet the challenges or opportunities ahead. In contrast, instead of helping me fortify myself against threats or position myself for advantage, the twelve cards of my Wheel of Life spread help me meet each moment loosely and expansively. Each card helps me lean moment by moment into difficulties and loosen my attachment to desired outcomes. Instead of encouraging me to look ahead and focus on the future, the Wheel of Life spread helps me settle down—with presence of mind—in this moment, here and now.
This mindful approach is not so interested in the occult or the esoteric. I’m not concerned with psychic or intuitive revelation. I’m not turning to deity, channeled guides, ascended masters, or any other veiled or hidden authorities. I’m also not striving to “translate” the meaning of a particular card in isolation, plugging in an interpretation from some expert source elsewhere. In truth, I’m simply not concerned with what is elsewhere. I’m hoping instead to hunker down right here.
To be sure, studying card meanings is an essential part of the process along the journey, in the same way that studying vocabulary words is critical to learning a new language. Indeed, Mindful Tarot requires our willingness to dive into the language of the cards as a whole. Part Two of this book is there for your diving pleasure. There I offer interpretations of each of the 78 cards that will help you develop a strong, holistic overview of the language of Tarot.
Alongside that overview of the cards, learning to “speak Tarot” is also simply about immersion—plunging right into the flow of meaning, like a child or a tourist hearing words and sentences for the first time. That’s why, even if you know nothing about Tarot, you’re probably able to follow my discussion of various cards in this chapter. It’s like getting your passport stamped and heading straight into the hustle and bustle of a new country. When we practice Tarot mindfully, we begin to recognize the cards as a language, like Spanish or Greek: a continually evolving and nonetheless unified, interconnected system of meaning. And just like learning the words of a language, my true understanding of any one Tarot card depends on my exposure over time to the cards working together in context. The cards, as Nhat Hanh might say, inter-are. I needn’t worry about occult or esoteric meanings, because the meanings of the cards are defined by their context and interplay over time. Nothing is hidden.
In fact, context is essential for comprehending any kind of meaning, whether we’re dealing with word-based languages like Spanish, or with gestures and body language, or with the lexicon of images, numbers, and concepts that make up a Tarot deck. To be fair, each word, gesture, or image may have a conventional correspondence. Each may have its basic “dictionary meaning.” We may understand that the word naipe means “playing card” in Spanish, just as we may know that an expression like smiling usually means “I’m happy.” But when the sensitive hero in a crime flick smiles while pointing a gun at the villain and says, “Go ahead, make my day,” he’s not smiling because he’s happy, exactly. The meaning of that moment is richer and more complex. For us to truly understand the hero’s smile, we need to grasp the full set of circumstances in the film, and we need to access everything we know about crime flicks and bad guys and sensitive heroes. The meaning is textured, layered, and full of moving parts. If you’ve never heard of Clint Eastwood, if you’ve never seen a gun, if you’ve never watched a crime flick, then you might not get the meaning of that hero’s smile. But that doesn’t mean that the smile is esoteric or mysterious.
Meaning functions the same way with the Tarot. When I practice Mindful Tarot, I’m using everything I know about dictionary meanings as well as context. I’m using the keywords and associations and conventional meanings of the cards as these have evolved over the history of Tarot. I’m using everything I know about art, art history, and the language of gesture. I’m accessing my own experience with each card, recalling how cards have appeared in different readings for different people over the course of my Tarot practice. And I’m thinking about the “interbeing” of the cards: about the structure of the deck as a whole. I’m thinking, for instance, about the connotations of each suit (there are four numbered suits in the Tarot deck, and one “suit” of allegorical images) and about the sequences of image, number, and rank. I’m thinking about overarching narratives that correspond to the sequence of cards—like what Jungian readers have called the fool’s journey. I’m thinking about the terrain mapped out by each of the four numbered suits.18 And I’m also reading the positioning of the cards as they’re laid out on the table in front of me. That pattern is what Tarot readers call a spread, and it’s what turns a Tarot reading into something that can feel a bit like a sentence with subject, object, and verb.
Most of all, of course, I’m reading the cards in the context of my own body, heart, and mind in this moment. When I read the Tarot, I’m not reading what’s hidden at all. I’m reading what’s right in front of me: context, relationship, and history.
Nothing is broken. In mantic Tarot, the fundamental assumption is that something is broken, that something needs to be fixed. And so, from that stance, we turn to the cards for advice. The cards, of course, will serve such a purpose handily. Traditional Tarot card meanings run the gamut from the overwhelmingly positive (the Ten of Cups is a great example in my Wheel of Life spread) to the conclusively awful (e.g., the Five and Eight of Swords in my Wheel). In a mantic reading, the “charge” of these meanings, whether positive or negative, typically triggers either alarm or celebration. We project forward and read backward, measuring our experiences against the balance sheet of our spread and discerning advice along the way. A certain calculating spirit guides this work. With a divinatory approach, the cards point toward what can be fixed or improved. Our task then becomes figuring out how to press our advantage or stave off potential loss.
Unfortunately, such readings only tend to make it harder for us to meet our lives squarely—harder for us to encounter deeply the rising and falling tides of our own embodied existence. Instead, as any of us who have spiraled into obsessive and repeated card pulls on the same question know, the “wrong” flip of a card can spin us into endless ruminations. It can confirm our fears or dash our hopes. We may, in the end, find ourselves more worried than ever, and still lacking the advice we imagined would fix our broken world.
In a mindful reading, in contrast, our starting assumption is that nothing is broken—nothing needs to be fixed. Loss and gain are not our ultimate concern. Like the spinning of the year’s Wheel—and not unlike the Wheel of Fortune (Trump X) in this respect—Mindful Tarot reminds us that ups are inevitably followed by downs, and downs by ups. Our goal, if we can even call it a “goal” anymore, is simply to be curious: to regard, with kindness and open-ended interest, our own experience of those ups and downs.
Curiosity is, indeed, essential in this work.
By nature, we humans are creatures that calculate and plan. That’s part of our evolutionary heritage as mammals, hunters, builders, survivors. Mindfulness doesn’t abolish those calculations—they are an essential part of who and what we are. Instead, mindfulness offers an opportunity to suspend judgment and planning just long enough to become curious about ourselves and our world. In Mindful Tarot, instead of offering advice, each card becomes an invitation to explore our reactions in an open and nonjudgmental way. Each card invites inquiry, shining a light on one potential facet of our experience here and now. Like a good friend who simply listens to us, compassionately helping us explore our life without clouding the air with their advice, so too do the cards become a good friend and companion.
The cards in Mindful Tarot do not offer advice. Instead, they help us explore everything we already know, think, and feel.
As I write these words, it’s July and my Wheel spread has turned to the Eight of Swords: a perfect card to illustrate the difference between mindful and mantic Tarot. Here is what Waite says about this card in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot: “A woman, bound and hoodwinked, with the swords of the card about her. Yet it is rather a card of temporary durance than of irretrievable bondage.” From a divinatory, mantic perspective, this card heralds bad news and setbacks—although many interpreters have emphasized just how “temporary” this crisis is, pointing out that the woman’s bonds are loose and the circle of swords incomplete. If I were seeking advice from my cards, the Eight of Swords would tell me that July will be a month of sorrow and trouble, but that I should remember that the crisis will pass and that my sense of being trapped and trammeled will be temporary and to a certain degree illusory. The Eight of Swords would advise me that, in truth, I am free. The suffering is only temporary.
In fact, this month has been a month of suffering. The eighteen-year-old daughter of a close friend suddenly passed away two weeks ago. She’d been withstanding aggressive treatment for a malignant cancer, and this month her heart just literally gave out. My friend, the family, and indeed our whole community have been absolutely stricken with grief. At the same time, tensions at my workplace have also been mounting this month. There, too, I have found matter for grief and pain—moments of pettiness and betrayal that have irretrievably damaged relationships, bringing along anxieties about performance and job security. Like the woman in the card, I have, all month, felt bound and desolate. July has been bad this year. It indeed has been a very Eight-of-Swords kind of month. All the same, from a mantic perspective, I can at least take heart in knowing that this suffering is temporary. The Eight of Swords indicates that, despite appearances, I am truly free.
However, if the Eight of Swords predicts my freedom in the very midst of suffering, a divinatory approach will not of itself lead me to that freedom. At best, mantic Tarot will reassure me (Don’t worry, this pain is temporary!), but it won’t help me find my inner balance and ballast. It won’t help me cultivate the ease and liberty that can weather any storm. It can reassure me, but reassurance won’t set me free.
Instead of reassurance, I need resilience. I need to find my freedom not despite but in the very midst of this “durance” (as Waite puts it). I need to hunker down more deeply into my experience itself. I need to concern myself less with external events and circumstances. I need to focus less on the future—less on what happens next. Instead, I need to investigate more deeply what is happening now. I need to become more curious about my own inner and embodied realities.
In this light, the Eight of Swords becomes a pathway to inquiry. The invitation, in the midst of my grief, is to experience the ways in which I am like this bound woman. As we’ll soon see, mindfulness exercises will help us enter this inquiry by systematically giving us the vocabulary and tools to explore the concrete facts of our experience. We’ll learn to ask where in our body, heart, and mind we are experiencing this moment, and to investigate the specific qualities, the what, of that experience. For instance, where, in my body and heart, do I feel bound up by this grief? Where do I feel trapped and hoodwinked? Perhaps I notice a tightening in my face and scalp, a mounting muscular tension that becomes a migraine or headache. Perhaps I’m clenching my stomach or my jaw, tying my insides up in knots. Perhaps I feel a dullness behind my eyes or a heaviness in my heart. Perhaps I just feel tired and more tired—nauseated and exhausted by the sense of loss.
On the other hand, perhaps even in this grief I nonetheless feel the faintest touch of hope. Like the female figure in the card, perhaps I am dimly aware of the green leaves flourishing all around my head, like a halo. In the midst of grief, there is the lush evidence of life. Or perhaps tears are flowing, and there I find comfort and release, noting the ways in which these salt rivers connect me with the whole landscape of my community, including the seas of horizon and hope from my hub card, the Three of Wands. Perhaps, as I investigate the grief that seems to tear me apart, I will notice the profound ways in which this grief also weaves my life and my world together.
If I’m seeking advice, the Eight of Swords will tell me not to worry. All grief passes.
If, on the other hand, I’m seeking freedom, the Eight of Swords invites me to explore this grief—even now. Yes, it will pass. But it can also serve, right here and now, as the gateway to a deeper, richer, and more intimate life.