Talons and Tentacles
The business of Tarot
Hello lovely Artists and Dreamers! I’m so happy you’re here. Thanks for giving this substack a shot.
Last week I launched a new enterprise, Palette & Pentacles, which if you’ve subscribed here, you’ll already know a bit about. Okay, well, launch is probably putting it too strongly. I still haven’t completely finished the website, although I’m really happy with how it looks.
But after my initial excitement and joy, I was hit by a strong feeling of wanting to hide under a rock for a bit. I found myself thinking: Am I actually allowed to do this? Am I allowed to have confidence? To say, this is something I’m good at, something which may have value for others? Monetary value, even? Am I allowed to do that even though I know there will be people in my life who don’t see the value in this, and who may think I’m weird, or even a bad person, for creating this thing?
I feel like the obvious answer is YES of course I’m allowed to do whatever the flying fuck I feel like doing, and if people don’t like it they can go and stick their head in a bucket. I know I am creating Palette & Pentacles from an energy of integrity and love and playfulness, and sending her into the world with hopefulness and the desire to make as many genuine connections with others as I can. There’s nothing wrong with any of that!
But the voices saying NO also need to be given their due. Don’t take a risk, you’ll feel so terrible if it goes wrong. You’re not ready. You’re not good enough. It’s a dumb idea. People won’t understand. They’ll think the worst of you. You’re bad. You’re dumb. You fail at everything. Your mother was right about you…
The voices are trying to protect me from getting hurt and looking stupid, or so I assure myself. I’m grateful for that (to an extent) - it’s certainly possible for me to get caught up in a mania of creativity and override any kind of sense-checking mechanism. So I see the value in being forced to confront that big, stomach-dropping NO.
But see how quickly the voices turn to cruelty and abuse! I don’t want that noise in my inner world. And the fact that the voices soon all start sounding exactly like my mother makes me think that maybe, just maybe, I shouldn’t give them too much credence.
The truth is, it’s embarrassing, starting something new. Especially something that reveals a side to your character that not all people get to see. And I’m deeply aware that there are people who think Tarot is mumbo-jumbo woo woo or that it’s exploitative and cynical — Mystic Meg with a crystal ball, spirit mediums telling people they can talk to their deceased relatives and so on — exploiting vulnerable people by pretending to have the answers they need, if only they’ll hand over enough cash.
But that’s not me. So let me explain how I see this.
There’s a testimonial for Palette & Pentacles that I put up briefly and then took down again, because although it’s lovely and kind, the writer speaks of me as ‘psychic’ and that’s not something I think about myself, or a word I identify with when I think about the Tarot and the kind of re-enchanting effect it can have on people.
While I have endless respect and awe for the way Tarot can surprise, shock, be playful, be prescient, create resonances and disruptions and so on, I don’t believe it does this through magic. Or at least not through what most people think of as ‘magic’. For me, the Tarot is a set of images that reflect archetypal energies, characters, and plots. There’s no fixed predictive meaning in any of the cards, although they all have collections of meanings and referents that Tarot readers learn about.
In a Tarot spread, the cards are in conversation with one another. The reader is trying to understand the connections between the cards and in doing so, to create a narrative that the questioner finds meaningful and resonant. It might be very direct and simple, or it might be a story that unravels like a fairytale or a dream. Every reading is different.
It ‘works’ because the Tarot draws upon the deep archetypes that exist in our collective unconscious. When we consult the Tarot about our problems, difficulties, blockages, patterns, and so on, we are really consulting our own human nature, which is of course known and understood in many dimensions: the material world, history, relationships, the unconscious, the cosmic, and dreams. Sometimes the answer is obvious to everyone, and sometimes you need an experienced reader to discern and interpret and guide.
(Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe the Tarot is the interface of an infinitely fractallising being who is trying to understand humanity. But that’s a whole other story!)
So you don’t need to believe in anything in particular for the Tarot to be meaningful to you and for it to ‘work’ for you. And I don’t need to be psychic to read the Tarot or to know that it is a brilliant tool for getting to the heart of difficult problems.
Is the Tarot itself psychic? Maybe. That’s a different question. All I know is that I personally can’t see into the future. What I can do is tell you what I see in the images on the cards, and help you to make connections and interpretations that lead to new perspectives, solutions, and life-changing insights. Maybe you can see your future, and bring it into being.
I’ll also tell you that while I know I’m a sensitive and perceptive reader, I can always improve. I’m learning more all the time. Through working with people, having others read for me, using different decks, reading books and attending courses, I’m constantly deepening my understanding of the Tarot. I’ve recently been working my way through ‘A Depth Perspective on the Major Arcana’ - a series of talks and lectures organised by the Jung Platform. It’s striking that no matter how well you think you know a card, there is always some aspect that you’ve never noticed! Tarot is truly a subject that rewards deep study.
Plus, it is a beautiful way to engage with art. One of the reasons I love Tarot so much is the fact that you get to commune with incredible works of art by all kinds of incredible artists. More on this in a future post!
In my next post, I’ll talk about some of my personal experiences with the Tarot, including my first encounters as a teenager, the deck that I thought had become slightly evil, and the decks I most often use now. In the meantime, if you’re interested in consulting Palette & Pentacles, I’m offering all my subscribers here a chunky £15 off the price of an email/voicenote reading, and £10 off a video call consultation. You can respond to this email, leave a comment or DM on Substack, or complete the contact form on the Palette & Pentacles website.
How do you think Tarot works and what are your experiences with it? I’d love to hear from you in the comments! Let me know what you’d like me to explore in future posts, too.
Great post! I read tarot and agree about its connection with art—mine is a gorgeous gothic deck by a fab artist. There is certainly misunderstanding of it, too, so this post is a good explainer.
In my experience, many people weirdly think of it as part of the 'dark arts', but I love the way you frame it in terms of storytelling and narrative, and its consequent benefits in self-exploration. That's perfect.
I must confess that I stopped reading for people who don't understand it. I got tired of trying to dissuade people of that weird association, and of explaining - again - that I wasn't going to conjure their dead granny to tell them their future or something. In other words, hats off to you for explaining it so beautifully and patiently. I'll just direct everyone here in future! :)