A Quantum Leap In My Understanding Of Tarot

This blog post was written as my contribution to the Mabon Tarot Blog Hop 2014.  Please follow the links below to read the contributions of my fellow Tarot bloggers who are part of this wonderful Tarot Blog Hop community.

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Autumn

I like Autumn.  Although there isn't Autumn in tropical Singapore, the pictures of trees in their various hues of red, gold and brown, swaying in a wind-swept Autumn day just seem so poetic to me.   It is the changing colors of the leaves, the weather and the impending dwindling sunlight, that makes this a season of transformation.  Often, the word transformation sparks fear in many.  To me, transformation is the necessary pathway to growth.

Mabon

During this period, my Pagan friends around the world celebrate the Autumnal festival of Mabon on 23 September.  For some of my blog readers who are not familiar with Mabon, the name Mabon came from an age-old Celtic myth about the Welsh god, Mabon who was abducted when young, and found again by King Arthur so that he could be reborn into the light. For more on the story of Mabon, do read it here. 

The Quantum Leap In My Understanding Of Tarot

A festival borne from a myth about rebirth and transformation is an ideal basis for the theme for this Mabon Tarot Blog Hop, designed by the wrangler, Morgan Drake Eckstein. I swear, he comes up with such difficult topics to stress me out but I love Morgan for his wit so I took up the challenge to write this post hoping to see if the creativity could flow from my heart and mind through my pen  the way his did.  Morgan had asked us to write about the time our understanding of Tarot had taken a quantum leap.  That was when I got really stressed out with writer's block.  Doh...my understanding of Tarot took a quantum leap the day I entered that beginner's class, Morgan!

When Morgan challenged me to interpret this topic,  I started to think about the transformational aspects of Autumn, and mapped it against my life and the transformation I had gone through with Tarot.  There were actually 2 occasions when this "quantum leap" had happened.  

The Role Of My Tarot Cards Have Changed

One of these occasions was the time I had stopped being fearful and embarrassed about my gift of clairvoyance enough to use my clairvoyance as a "scenario-builder" and my Tarot cards as a "scenario -clarifier".  This allowed me to provide even more accurate and more focused advice to my clients.  In the past, my client readings were just a session of questions answered by a few shuffle of the cards.  Today, I spend a good amount of time tuning into my visions, talking my clients through them, sharing what I see in their situations, then I would spend the last 15 minutes of the session clarifying the advice with my Tarot cards.  I used to feel that my clairvoyance had "betrayed" my Tarot cards as the former had taken precedence in my readings.  I was called Sun Goddess Tarot and not Sun Goddess Clairvoyant remember?  However, as I slowly built my business and saw how satisfied my clients were, and the increasing fulfillment I felt about finally working my purpose to the fullest,  I realized that my own understanding of the role of my cards had changed.  The cards have not been less important to me.  Rather,  the process I took to do my readings have undergone a wee transformation as I had tweaked the role of each of my skills to better meet the needs of my clients.  An example of a reading that had undertaken this process can be found here, where I used channeling to navigate through my visions for my client, then validate the reading with with numerology and Tarot.  This is Ava's story which I had built through this process.

Avoiding Health Questions

The second occasion when I experienced that quantum leap with my Tarot cards had to do with my understanding of Tarot ethics.   In the past, I would never use my a Tarot cards to answer a Health question.  I often had clients who asked questions like, "Is that lump serious you think?", " Should I go for that surgery?", "How likely do you think that I can get pregnant?" and the classic, "I really feel so exhausted, and have been losing a lot of weight. Do you think there is something wrong with me?"   To each of these questions, I always responded with an encouragement to go visit a qualified medical practitioner.  These questions had no place on my Tarot table.  Even when Dad had suffered a stroke last year, Mum asked if I could do a reading to find out the outcome of his health. I refused to do it and assured her, "Pray Mum. Dad will be okay if you'd just pray."

I still stand by my code of ethics and refuse to read for a Health issue but that quantum leap happened just recently when I realized that in the least, if I had been promoting Tarot as a tool of guidance and advice, I should be able to use it for just that even when a client asks a question about his or her health.  I can't pretend to be a doctor, but I certainly could offer advice on how best to manage one's life as one journeys towards better health right? I will just have to tweak the question a little to get to a more advice -centric answer,  By doing so, I would be true to my purpose of using Tarot to guide and advice.  An example was a reading I did for myself some months ago when I felt extremely exhausted, stressed and was often down with the flu.  When my immune system seems consistently weak, I knew I had to do something about it.  I could have picked my cards to ask, "what's wrong with me?" Instead, I picked my cards to ask "how could I better take care of myself?".  It led to a "Self-Care Package" that I had designed for myself.  I have stopped flinching from health questions and have embraced these by seeing them as an opportunity to reframe the questions in a way that empower querants to do something proactive to manage their journey towards better health and well-being. 

Transformation

So I do dig the fact that Transformation is always a necessary step to growth and development.  My understanding of my Tarot cards certainly has grown leaps and bounds through the process of re-engineering my perceptions about what role Tarot should play and what questions it could be used to answer.  I don't think this learning process will ever stop.  And if one can embrace the season of Autumn as a season of harvest and beautiful colors, instead of griping about the windchill and raking a garden full of dried leaves, I embrace Tarot as a tool that evolves according to the relationship that I have built with it.

Don't forget to visit the blogs of my fellow Tarot bloggers!

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About The Writer:

The writer of this blog post is a marketeer by trade, and an intuitive reader by accident who deploys the combined modalities of a Tarot, Numerology and Astrology overlaid with her Clairvoyant and Clairsentient skills to deliver her readings with authenticity. She was awarded a Certified Professional Tarot Reader qualification from the Tarot Certification Board of America (TCBA) and is also a certified numerologist.  She is currently running a consultancy based in Singapore called Sun Goddess Tarot,  which provides confidential intuitive readings combining the metaphysical disciplines of Tarot, Numerology and Astrology via face to face and emails as well as readings at corporate and private events and workshops.  A member of the American Tarot Association (ATA) and the Tarot Association of the British Isles (TABI), she also mentors Tarot protégés on behalf of the American Tarot Association

Website: www.sungoddesstarot.com

Email:  Joanna@sungoddesstarot.com

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Photo credit:  Jason Colmer.  Photo taken at the turn of Autumn,
at the Japanese Garden,
at the Hobart Royal Botanical Gardens in Tasmania