Tarot, Choices, and Motivation

I've just gotten back to reading tarot cards, having gotten a new deck for Christmas. I'm not great with it -- in fact, I still have to read the little guidebook to see what the cards are telling me, mostly because I'm not a visual person.

I don't read tarot to predict my future or anyone else's. None of this "slap, slap, slap, your dog's gonna die" card reading.  I read Tarot as a way of understanding what's going on in someone's psyche. I pick decks and methods that are suited for interrogating undercurrents and suggesting right action. The Good Tarot, my Christmas present, functions well in this way.

I don't see my tarot-reading ability as having great favor from the spirits or anything dramatic like that. Tarot, to me, is a way of unlocking intuition and perhaps giving life-affirming instruction. Frankly, my readings are closer to positive psychology than woo-woo. Given that I teach positive psychology, that's not surprising.

This morning I gave myself a very short reading. The way I do this is ask a question -- the question was "what's in store for me today?" I had already decided I would take some time putting more description in Voyageurs to make up for the material I cut by advice of my dev editor. So that was very much a part of "today", but so was going to the weight clinic to try to find out why I haven't lost this last 20 pounds. (I've lost 65 and have been on a plateau for a year).

I laid down one card -- the two of fire. Its basic meaning -- "creative planning for the future, mapping progress, trusting in the unknown. Spirit-led ambition." (Baron-Reid, 2017). I laughed, because I sensed that one card told me everything I needed to know. But when I shuffled the cards again, two cards fell out -- the aforementioned two of fire and The Fool, the card that symbolizes the beginning of a journey, a child's enthusiasm.

The way those two cards go together tells more of a story: I am at the beginning of a journey, planning the journey with enthusiasm, trusting in the unknown rather than assuming that news will always be bad. It's entirely possible I'm misinterpreting this and it's about my class planning for the semester, although that's less like a journey and more like a walk around the block. I suppose it could be about a journey I don't know about yet. It doesn't matter, because what matters is that I take that attitude to all my journeys.

Baron-Reid, C. (2017). The Good Tarot Guidebook. Hay House Publishing.