A Technique for Dream Interpretation with Tarot

I have a method I use for dream interpretation with tarot. This method has been very helpful and successful over the years. My method relies on the theory that “dream dictionary” interpretations have limited value because of the cultural and experiential differences between us. Yes, archetypes are real. However, the idea that a specific item appearing in a dream would mean the same thing to each and every person makes as much sense as believing that a tarot card would mean the same thing in each and every reading. It just doesn’t work that way.

I had been wanting to share this technique for a while. The thing is, it’s a hard technique to teach without a clear example. Luckily, I just had a request from a friend for help figuring out a weird dream she had. She has agreed to let me share the dream, and my interpretation, with you.

My friend is a Florida-based tarot reader. I have shared the dream in her words, with her permission.

I hope that the next time you have an interesting dream to interpret you might try this technique. If you do, please let me know how it goes!

The Dream

The dream takes place in a residential community that I have never seen but was my home in the dream. The dream has three parts.

In the first part, I receive a visit from an acquaintance whom I know, in real life, to have recently died. She and I were friendly acquaintances in life. She came to my tarot classes and we served together on an advisory board of a community in which with both lived. I assume the setting of the dream is inspired by that fact.

In real life, I had just seen on social media that this person (I will call her Mary) had passed away. While I had not seen or communicated with her in almost ten years, I was, in real life, saddened by the news of her death.

In the dream, Mary comes to visit me at my home. She is driving a golf cart, as I remember her doing in life. She is using oxygen, as she did toward the end of her life.

I tell her I am glad to see her but am surprised because she is dead. She tells me that she did die but is coming back for a little while. She is weak, so I have to help her up the steps. I am surprised by how little she weighs.

In the next section of the dream, she is stronger, and not using the oxygen tank any longer. We are sitting outside together, and there is a large black fuzzy spider, about the size of my hand. In real life, I don’t like spiders. This is also true in the dream. Yet, in real life and in the dream, I try to be kind to spiders and recognize their value. I tell Mary that it is a huntsman spider and is harmless to us.

Then, I see something on Mary’s face, and realize it is the body of the spider. I see that the spider has removed its own legs and tied them in a bundle. I flick the spider’s body off Mary’s face, and it begins to reattach its legs. It seems to psychically tell me that this is a normal thing for this type of spider to do. I tell Mary that, and she does not seem alarmed.

Then, a few minutes later, I realize that the spider has taken its legs off again, and its body is attached to my face. Its body is oddly metallic and square, although it didn’t look that way when its legs were attached.

I flick it off my face, it reattaches its legs and scuttles away.

Throughout this ordeal I am surprisingly calm, even though I am aware that I don’t like spiders and that this spider is behaving oddly.

In the third part of the dream I am to give tarot readings at an event at this same community. Mary seems to be fully recovered and is interacting with people in a normal way. It seems to be common knowledge that she was dead and is now alive.

I am on an open porch, setting up my tarot table. As I take my cards out of their pouch, I see the cards are all mixed up with a bunch of empty clothes hangers. This upsets me a great deal.

Once I am set up to read, some folks come to talk to me, but they don’t react to me in a normal way. No one wants a reading, and no one has much interest in what I am doing.

People are sitting at picnic tables, so I take my cards and try to strike up conversations with people at the tables. It turns out that they all have tarot decks, too. Yet, they have no interest in speaking with me about tarot. They have no interest in their own tarot decks.

That’s where the dream ended.

It seems significant to mention that Mary died of chronic lung issues, unrelated to coronavirus. Yet, I had this dream during our current quarantine, at a time that I was particularly worried about the coronavirus and the effects it might have. My sense is that this dream is related to my fears about the pandemic.

The Dream Interpretation Reading

My technique involves pulling a card, or a few cards, for each aspect of the dream in order to understand what the symbols in the dream mean to the dreamer. I also pull some cards to ascertain the importance of the dream. After all, some dreams are highly significant, others are more mundane. Some dreams are prophetic, or healing, or problem-solving, Other dreams are direct communication from those in spirit. Other dreams are simply the product of stress, or of the food we ate before bed.

Overall, what is the nature of this dream?

Six of Cups reversed.

To me, that suggests that the dream is based primarily on the dreamer’s upset at her friend’s passing. Given that her friend was a tarot student and they lived together in the same community, and the dream is based in a similar community, this makes a lot of sense. The Six of Cups can also refer to the dreamer’s concern about the coronavirus; wondering when and if things will return to normal.

Is there any deeper spiritual meaning to be derived from this dream?

Page of Pentacles

This dream is probably more a product of current anxieties and worries. Yet, there could be practical, helpful things to be learned from the dream.

What is the significance of Mary’s return from the dead, and increasing health throughout the dream?

Eight of Wands

Things are moving very quickly in the dreamer’s world, and, though times feel uncertain, good things could be coming at any moment, and more swiftly than expected.

What is the significance of the odd spider in the dream?

Ten of Swords reversed

The spider is creepy, but easily overcome. We can interpret this to say that the dreamer’s real-life anxieties can also be overcome. The spider, like the coronavirus, is unlike anything the dreamer has seen before. Yet, in the end, it goes away.

What is the significance of the spider removing its legs?

Six of Pentacles

We can do amazing things to receive and give help when we need to. We can ‘remove the legs’ of scary things to give them less power. We can remove scary things that try to attach themselves to us.

Why is the spider’s body metallic?

Queen of Swords

This may have to do with technology. The dreamer told me that she is using a lot of new technology during quarantine. She is unsure of her abilities to use it well, so this also causes a bit of anxiety.

What is the significance of the clothes hangers mixed in with the tarot cards?

Seven of Cups

Our dreamer is allowing anxiety to create confusion and dark imaginings that are clouding her spiritual focus and intuitive flow.

What is the significance of the fact that the attendees all had tarot decks?

Magician reversed

Our dreamer worries that her knowledge and skill might lose its helpfulness during this crisis.

What is the significance of the fact that the attendees had no interest in readings?

Four of Cups

Similarly, our dreamer worries that, in the face of illness and death, her spiritual skills and knowledge might not be equal to their task.

Summary

The dreamer is entirely correct in her belief that this dream is inspired by her fears regarding our current crisis. The important message comes from the return of her friend from the dead, and the departure of the spider.

It is normal to worry about the current pandemic and to wonder if one is capable of managing such a crisis and surviving it. Yet, in this dream we see life conquering death. And we see miraculous occurrences, and we see scary things going away.

Our dreamer must acknowledge her spiritual power, and her power to withstand the challenges of these difficult times. She must be strong in her knowledge of her tools and her ability to use them. Our dreamer must have faith that these scary times will go away, just as the spider did.

That the Eight of Wands presented, and that a spider has eight legs, suggests that things may be back to normal in the eighth month, which is August, or perhaps even sooner, in eight weeks.

Checking in with the Divine: Our Natural Divinatory Process

Today I spoke at a ladies’ luncheon. It was just a short half-hour presentation.

It’s a challenge to speak to a diverse group of people who are not necessarily bought in to tarot. It’s also one of my favorite types of audiences.

My primary focus was not me, nor tarot, but rather about divination in general, and that we all do it.

Divination is the practice of seeking knowledge of the unknown, through signs, symbols and intuition. I like the word because it has, at its root, the word “divine”.

Although the actually etymology of the word is about seeking information rather than actual divinity, I personally like to think about the process of divination as the process of connecting with the divine.

I really resonate with the idea that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. This suggests that we all yearn to connect with something greater than ourselves, whether we see that as communing with our higher self, our ancestors, angels, deities, or a single Higher Power.

Often, when we think of tarot, and other tools of divination, we think only of future prediction. Many people, and many professions, predict the future. Doctors predict our future health, meteorologists predict the weather, financial forecasters predict economic trends, political pundits predict electoral outcomes.

Predictions can be very helpful. They can help us prepare for something, or perhaps avoid or mitigate something.

However, prediction is perhaps not the most important reason to divine.

When we seek answers through spiritual means, we can discover insight about ourselves, about our motivations, about our own skills and abilities, and about our path to healing.

The ancient Greeks inscribed the words “Know Thyself” outside the temple of Delphi. To me, the process of divination is the process of working to know oneself.

One would think that we inherently know ourselves. We have to deal with ourselves every day.

Sadly, we all seem to spend so much time trying to be who we think we should be, or trying to please others by being who they want us to be, that we are often confused about who we actually are. Guilt and shame can play a role in our inability to look in the internal mirror. Sometimes, we fear owning our skills and talents because we don’t feel that we are good enough, or talented enough.

Through divination, we connect with our intuition, with our Higher Self, and our Higher Power. In that place of awareness, we can see our potential, our true desires, and the place where we need to heal.

Many people have a tarot deck, rune set or oracle cards gathering dust on a shelf. With or without these tools, almost all of us have participated in divination.

Do you remember “he loves me, he loves me not”, or bouncing seeds on your hands until only a few are left, to predict the number of children you would have?

As a professional tarot reader, those simple childhood games of divination make me smile now. It’s fun to prognosticate, and imagine what the future might bring.

Sometimes predictions aren’t fun at all. Sometimes we get an inkling that something undesirable is going to happen. Some people avoid tarot readings because they “don’t want to hear anything bad”.

When we receive an ill omen, a predictive dream or some other heads-up form the Universe, that information can ultimately be a comfort, and here’s why.

If Spirit bothers to let you know that something is going to happen, and it happens, you have to accept that there is nothing you could have done to change the outcome, and that there is some rightness is what has happened, even if it doesn’t feel right at the moment.

As we get older, we have more time in the past than we do in the future. That’s one reason that divination for introspection, rather than prognostication, can become so important. As we get older, we come to understand that we won’t always have the time ahead of us to do what we want to do. The energy becomes “If not now, when?” Tarot can help motivate us.

Another reason future prediction is not the best, or most significant use of divination is this. Often, the future is within our hands. What we do today impacts what the future will be. Certainly, there are some things that seem destined, fated, or unavoidable. However, in many cases, the future will be what we make it.

Divination can help us get out of our own way, so we can do the things we really want to do, and create for ourselves the future that we desire.

In this way, divination is not about simply seeing what is, it is about creating what will be.

There are many ways to divine.

Some methods, like tarot and runes, involve what I call “random token divination”. Others, like tea leaf reading, involving interpreting shapes and looking for symbols.

I believe that we all do some kind of divination every day, whether we do it consciously or not.

Perhaps in prayer, meditation or yoga class, we take a moment to check in with ourselves and ask “How do I really feel about this?”, or “What do I really want?” That process is divination.

Perhaps, as we travel through our day, we see a sign in nature – an animal or a flower – and we take that as an omen, a sign of luck, or victory, or approval from a Higher Power. That is divination, too.

Sometimes we look to the sky and see a shape in the clouds that means something to us. Sometimes a song on the radio seems to have a personal message for us.

Many of us have dreams, either sleeping or waking, that offer guidance.

A concern is that psychotic people see signs in everything, and that there is a thin line between being psychic and being psychotic.

How do you know that your process of checking in with yourself, and interpreting the signs around you, is divination rather than delusion?

Basically, if the information you receive is supportive, logical, compassionate and healing, you are in communion with Higher Power. If what you receive is didactic, illogical, or suggests that you should hurt yourself or others, it’s time to see a doctor.

Whether you work with cards, interpret your dreams, or seek insight in meditation, the key to good divinatory practice is know what truth feels like.

We often have physical reactions to truth. If we can tune in to what they feel like, we will usually know what is true for us, and when others are lying.

When we divine, not with only an eye on the future, but with an eye on what is really true for us, we make a connection with our Higher Power, and we empower ourselves to create for ourselves the life that we desire.

I was basically able to present these concepts, give a quick hand-reading lesson and take a few questions, psychic gallery style – all within my half-hour time slot.

The job of a tarot reader offers something fun and different every day.  Of course, my primary job is divination, but I also have the opportunity to be creative in a lot of ways. Of course, before I began my talk, I did a one-card divination to ground me, and give me focus. The card I received was the Queen of Pentacles. How appropriate for a ladies’ luncheon!

Interpret a Dream with Tarot

Tarot and dreams both speak to us in symbols. It makes sense that tarot would be a good tool to help us understand our dreams.

The next time you need more insight into a particular dream, design a tarot spread about the dream.

Simply make a list of the people, objects and situations in the dream, and devise questions about them. Make a position for each portion of the dream, or for each question.

You can also interpret a dream with a tarot dialogue. Simply shuffle the deck, and ask this first question.

“What does this dream mean?”

Pull a card, or a couple of cards. What insight do you get?

Now, formulate another, more specific question.

Shuffle all the cards back in, and once again pull a card, or a few cards.

Continue the process until you have the understanding you seek.

If the same card comes up more than once, pay special attention to it.

Let the symbols of tarot help you understand the symbols of your dreams.

Tarot Dreams

This past Sunday on my webcast, Christiana’s Psychic Café, one of my guests was Susan Morgan of the Mystic Dream Center. As we spoke about the power of dreams and the healing nature of dreamwork, I kept thinking about the ways in which tarot works with dreams.

In my book, “Tarot Tour Guide,” I share some stories about tarot and dreams, and some techniques for using tarot in dream interpretation.

Today I thought it would be fun to share a few ways I have seen tarot work in dreams, and with dreams. Feel free to share your own tarot dream experiences in the comments!

Many tarotists suggest that new readers sleep with their cards under their pillow, or under their bed. I think this is a good idea. One thing you will notice if you do this is that the cards will enter your dreams. As you sleep, the energy of the cards will become part of your dream journeys.

Sometimes tarot clients dream of the cards. Even if they do not know the cards at all, they report images and numbers that relate to tarot and are pertinent to their situation.

Some tarot cards seems to advise us to pay attention to our dreams. Specifically, the Moon and the Seven of Cups speak to me of dreamwork.

Some tarot readers are called to the cards in their dreams. When I first became interested in tarot the cards spoke to me in dreams even before I had my own tarot deck.

Sometimes I dream of the cards even now. Always, the cards that appear in my dreams have pertinence to my current quandaries and activities.

Clearly, both tarot and dreams are similar devices. Both can be prophetic, both can help us find solutions, both work with our unconscious minds, and both are channels for communication with Spirit.