Activation:
After the Reading
It took many years for me to get serious about my tarot studies. After fifteen or twenty years of curiosity and toe-dipping, and another ten years of occasional periods of intense study, I wanted my tarot experience to be something much more. Sometimes it felt like the energy of the moment was just left hanging with so much potential being unfulfilled. For another ten years I mulled over my readings, trying different spreads, focusing on different aspects of the cards, trying different post-reading rituals, anything to push the energy of the reading back to the universe as something like a prayer or a call to “let it be so.” Now I realize that’s like asking the water to go back up into the garden hose and return to the house. A traditional reading is a gift from the universe and it’s not in the nature of that energy to turn around and return. I cherished the gifts of insight I received when I read for myself. I was amazed by the magic of the moment when my readings for friends and family hit home and they received the gift that they needed to know or think about. But eventually I really wanted to do something about all those options and ideas and insights I’d been given.
In this chapter, I hope to describe how we can project some of our own energy back to the universe after a traditional tarot reading. It isn’t the same energy, like water flowing back into a garden hose; it is our own creation. Any time we want to make something better, the universe is made better because the universe is made up of everything. I consider this cycle of energy returning to the universe via specifically selected tarot cards to be an untapped source of universal good.
My suggestion here is to take an active step after your tarot reading but before you leave the table, with the goal of having your preferred outcome actually occur. However, I’m not suggesting this as an additional step to include as part of your standard reading process. The energy of the reading (the gift from the universe) and the energy of the querent and Reader should feel right in the moment for the cycle of energy to be completed.
After you’ve completed a reading, take a few moments to contemplate the spread, focus on the outcome you want to happen, and present it to the universe. Depending on your concept of universal energies or the Divine, you can consider this as a request or a prayer or as a metaphorical nudge on the great Wheel of Fortune. Look through the cards, both in the spread and in the deck, and select two or three that embody your ideal outcome. (The examples of card intentions in Chapter 4 and the list of card theme words in the appendix can help you with this.) Focus on the cards and how they represent your desires, then release that energy with gratitude and hope to the universe or your deity. What’s key here is that you are intentionally choosing the cards by looking at them face up and selecting them with meaning and purpose. The universe caused the cards that were important for the reading at that moment to appear. Now you can to use your energies to complete the circle and determine which cards to present to the universe as a step towards achieving your goals.
You may choose cards from the remainder of the deck as well as from those present in the reading itself. Since it’s likely that you might want to use one or more cards from the reading, it might be nice to have a separate deck to select these same cards from so that the spread can remain intact while you focus on activating your intentions.
If the cards in your reading show that there are several options before you and you really want one of them to happen, then ask for that option to manifest. If the cards indicate that something is going off track, if danger or disease is present, then picture a better path and express your will that this new path should happen instead. As you look at the cards you’ve selected, verbally or silently express your preferred answer or solution to the reading that just occurred. If the spread before you has a most likely outcome position, then confirm or refine or change that possible outcome by placing a card or cards next to it filled with your will that this is the outcome you seek. In this way you are taking agency and participating in your fate before you even leave the table. Continue using that self-empowered energy as you take other appropriate actions in the following days, based on the advice given and the help requested in the reading.
Supplication and Manifestation
There are at least two perspectives from which to approach the activation phase of a reading. These depend on your relationship to the universe, the divine, your deity, or any metaphysical layers of consciousness that you understand. The different perspectives are primarily reflected in how you choose to articulate your desires to the universe. In the example above where I used the word “ask,” you might want to use the supplication form of activating the tarot. In the example where I used the phrase “express your will,” you might prefer use the manifestation form.
The supplication form might feel more comfortable for people with a background in one of the major Western religions. Examples of these in Chapter 4 begin with the phrase “Please help.” I try to avoid phrases like “please make,” “please give,” or “please let.” Saying (or thinking) “please help” seems better because it implies that the person or people involved in the situation have their own agency and will also be taking actions toward the goal. Some examples of the supplication form are:
• Please help the workers protect the shoreline from the oil spill.
• Please help my pet recover from surgery.
Another way to phrase your intentions is to use the manifestation form as you focus on your goal. This form might be preferred by the non-religious in the manner of the law of attraction. In this wording, sentences often reflect the present tense of the verb “to be” such as “is,” “are,” and “am.” We want to avoid pushing the intention into the future such as “I will stop smoking.” The manifestation form of that thought might be “My lungs are healthy; I breathe only clean air.” For the examples on the previous page, the manifestation forms might be:
• The oil is moving away from shore and the wildlife is safe.
• My pet is healthy and has fully recovered from surgery.
I’ve included both supplication and manifestation forms for the example card intentions in Chapter 4.
At the Table
If you are the querent and someone else is reading for you, ask to spend a few minutes after the reading to send out your intentions of activating your preferred outcome. Do not touch their cards without permission but decide together on how to select a few cards that represent your intentions. Often there will be one or more cards already in the spread that will feel appropriate to the issue at hand. You could ask the reader to place them in a new position on the table for your moment of reflection. You might ask the reader to flip through the cards face up while you point out a few that you feel reflect your goals. Or you might describe your goals to the reader and ask them to look through the cards with you and help you find the cards that represent your preferred outcome.
When you are the reader and someone else is the querent, if the moment feels appropriate ask them if they wish to activate the energy of the reading they just received. Depending on the time available and your relationship with the querent, you could have an in-depth discussion of their goals in relation to the reading that just occurred, help them select a few cards that fit their intentions, then both of you send your energies out into the universe. Even without a full discussion, the querent might immediately know their preferred outcome. Depending on their knowledge of the tarot, selecting activation cards could be done in several ways. Whether the querent has a personal sense of the meanings of the cards or whether they would infer a meaning just from the images or their intuition, it’s important to let them select the cards that fit their intentions with only minor guidance from you, if any. What you don’t want to do is randomly pull a card and say, “This is your Activation card.”
If you are reading for yourself, I’ll assume you have at least a little confidence in your intuitions, interpretations, or resources for looking up the meanings of the cards before you and what they are telling you. In the same way as the two scenarios above, decide on your response to the reading, select cards that represent your desires, and direct the energy of your desires to the universe. You might wish to keep in mind the full cycle of the moment, from your original question, then to the cards and energy you received in the reading, then to the cards and energy you are projecting out with your activation. In Chapter 3, I revisit these ideas for selecting cards that will activate the tarot energies.
Bringing the energy of a tarot reading around and sending it full-circle to the universe can be a rewarding experience, even if you don’t focus your intentions on any specific goals. Many people make it a practice to close their readings with a moment of silent gratitude and contemplation. If you include an activation step in your readings, you may also wish to develop your own post-activation ritual that brings a sense of calming closure to the full energy cycle.
Practice Making Decisions
If you have difficulty in deciding where to focus your activation energies, you’re not alone. I understand many professional readers speak regularly with the same clients who bring up the same issues time after time, but who never make a move in any helpful direction. If you keep asking for the same reading repeatedly, it might be helpful to consider your relationship to the issue. Does it feel like this issue defines you and that if it were resolved you would no longer be the same person? You should consider if you are more interested in the solution or the struggle.
Sometimes it’s truly difficult to decide what to do with the information in a reading. However, it’s important to know that for any option in life—even if you can’t decide on a path—you are still on a path toward an outcome. Not making a decision is actually a decision in itself. Adding an activation phase to your tarot readings can help you practice deciding what it is you really want, as well as giving you the immediate experience of taking that first step on your own path. Decision-making is like a muscle—it can benefit from exercise. Consider the options you see in the reading and choose a direction. Don’t worry about being “right” or the road not taken; trust the universe to make course corrections for the general good.
However, and this might sound contradictory, it’s also important to approach your decisions about activation with a good understanding of your current mental and emotional energies. Try to become aware of the stories that you tell yourself that may be blocking you from making good choices. As Barbara Moore says in Modern Guide to Energy Clearing, it’s a “sad truth that sometimes things that feel so good to our wounded child are not good for us. Rather than having a root cause, mental misdirection is usually a habit developed to support behaviors that divide us from our true ideals.” In the end, even if we let our wounded child ask for something that is not helpful to us, I feel we can trust the universal energies to find a pathway to the general good. And taking the first step is often the hardest part of a journey. Once you’ve acted, taking more steps and adjusting your course become easier.
Proactive Activation
If you have a goal that you would like to put forth to the universe, you don’t have to wait to find someone to give you a reading. You can begin a reading for yourself for the express purpose of laying down the activation cards you have in mind and sending out the energies to manifest the outcomes you desire in your life.
Look at the list of common types of tarot readings that follow. You probably have hopes and dreams for many of these topics, not only for yourself but for friends and family, too. You can practice both your tarot reading and your tarot activation by doing readings on a few topics every day. This will fill your week with cycles of energy, from the universe to you and from you to the universe, as you put forth your desires for many of these topics.
• Relationships: love, romance, friendships, partnerships, family dynamics
• Finances: work or other sources of income, career, major purchases, making ends meet, clarification on major influences
• Health: specific concerns, upcoming procedures, general healing, improving habits
• Recreation: vacation plans, work life balance, finding joy
• Inner World: spirituality, self-understanding, life transitions, working through grief, looking for fresh insights, manifesting dreams
It feels to me that all traditional tarot readings are some version of a request to “help me know what to do” or “tell me what’s going on” in relation to the question at hand. Coming at a traditional reading from the perspective that you already know what outcome you desire will make an amazing difference in how you will interpret the cards, and even in the actual cards that the universal energies will cause to appear in the spread. The cycle of energies involved will be flowing full circle from the beginning, making the cards you receive and the cards you send out even more meaningful.