The Importance of Nuance in Tarot and in Life

This week I took a deep dive into the word ‘nuance’. According to Merriam Webster, nuance is “sensibility to, awareness of, or ability to express delicate shadings (as of meaning, feeling, or value)”.

Tarotists like me will often use this word to describe a particularly thoughtful and accurate tarot reading. We also use this word to advocate for our specific tarot reading techniques. For example, we might say that reading reversals offers a more nuanced reading.

My dive into the concept of nuance began as I was contemplating cognitive dissonance and conspiracy theory. Of late, it has concerned me that many people find wild, highly unlikely and easily disproven conspiracy theories to be a comforting alternative to provable and studied facts.

I have decided that the reason this is happening is that people are comfortable in dichotomies. People want to divide everything into good or bad, like or dislike. We want to think that something is helpful, or it is not. Something is dangerous, or it is not. The ‘is/is not’ binary is easy for people to understand and embrace.

Yet, the world is full of things that are hurtful and helpful at the same time. There are things that can be dangerous to some people, and not to others.

If we are unable to think in nuances, we have no ability to understand our world as it is.

Nuanced thinking means we have to wrap our brain around difficult concepts. For example, pharmaceutical companies have done hurtful, dangerous, greedy things. At the same time, those same companies have provided products that are literally lifesaving.

Here is another one. Our history is filled with shameful violence. And, our history is full of bravery and idealism.

We cannot truly understand our world, and life itself, until we can move out of dichotomous thinking and into nuanced thinking. The same is true of tarot.

When we work with a tarot deck, read a tarot card, or perform a tarot reading, we are best when we stay away from anything that makes us say ‘always’ or ‘never’.

We need to take dichotomous questions and find nuanced answers.

For example, suppose the question is, “Will my new job be good?” You pull two cards and get the Sun and the Three of Swords.

The answer may be that the job will be great in some ways, and difficult in others. It is not only good, or bad. In a way, it is both.
To continue the reading, you can divide that into two questions and pull cards for each.

In what ways will this job be great?

In what ways will this job be difficult?

From there, you can foster proactivity by asking other questions of the cards.

What can I do to make sure I succeed at this job?

What do I need to know about this job in order to make it a good experience?

To bring nuanced thinking to tarot, we need to be nuanced about the questions we ask, as well as about the way we interpret the cards.

We need to understand that, in life, very few things are all one way or another.

A good exercise is to practice using tarot to describe a situation or a person in the following manner. Ask, “What is true about this job?” Pull several cards, maybe as many as five. Interpret each card as a specific aspect of the job. Then, see if the cards go together in a way that gives you an overall feel, or additional information.

This exercise will teach you to read qualities of a person or situation that can include authentic nuance and mixed messaging. You are not looking for an up or down, you are looking for the nuanced truth.

Here is an example. When performing this exercise about my job as a full-time tarot professional, I pulled the following five cards.

Justice reversed: My job is literally illegal in many places in the world. I am often judged unfairly because this is my job. I cannot get the same credit rates or other business privileges as most businesses do.
I often work with people who feel they are treated unfairly in their current situation. A huge part of my job is to help people heal from unfair treatment, and to seek out situations that are more favorable.

Page of Cups: I must always deliver messages that speak to the heart, from the heart. I must always be learning, and helping my clients learn. I must be a bearer of loving messages from spirit.

Judgement reversed: I always have projects to finish, and new projects to begin. There is never a feeling of being finished with something. I always have deadlines and due dates to consider, classes to plan, books to write, and clients to see.

Seven of Wands: Much like Judgement reversed, this card reminds me that my work requires a great deal of multi-tasking. There is also a sense of my services being in demand, and my need to maintain my schedule. The Seven of Wands can also speak of the boundaries that good ethics and good self-care require.

The Ten of Pentacles: I have built a strong and successful business over time. My business involves family members. My psychic skills are ancestral. Many of my clients and students feel like family. I am in an office that feels like home to me, my clients, and my students.

When I look at these five cards as a group, a few things strike me. The two Major Arcana cards, Justice and Judgement, both reversed, speak of the long and difficult journey to build a legal and legitimate business as a tarot reader. I am called to do it, I am doing it successfully, but it is an ongoing and sometimes difficult process.

The numerology of the Minor Arcana cards is Seven, Ten, and Page. As higher numbers, these cards speak of my lengthy journey, and how far I have come.

The Page and the Ten speak of my love for my work. The Seven speaks of how far I will go to defend my work, and to protect my ability to run my business successfully.

When we look at the nuances of this five-card reading, can you see how silly it is to try to determine if my job is good or bad? Clearly, there are significant challenges here, and, just as clearly, there is a significant commitment to do this work, and significant enjoyment and success.

When we move away from thinking in binaries such as good/bad and like/dislike, and move into nuanced thinking, we become better at tarot, and at life.

Three Ways to Learn a Tarot Card

Very often when we study tarot, we are focused on how we will interpret a card, or a group of cards, in a reading. We want to learn how to answer a question with a card. That is, in fact, the essence of tarot reading.

Yet, interpretive tarot is only a portion of how we can encounter tarot, contemplate tarot, and understand tarot. The more ways we have to work with a card, the easier tarot interpretation becomes.

When we study tarot in a broader, more contemplative way, we learn from tarot, as well as learning about tarot. In time, it begins to feel that tarot is teaching us. Tarot can teach us about life, and about ourselves. Tarot can also teach us new ways to work with, and interpret, the cards in divination.

It is never too late in our tarot journey to learn something new about a card. The more possibilities we add to our tarot vocabulary, the more our intuition will have to call upon when we see a card in action.

The more ways we learn to use tarot, the more helpful tarot will be in our lives.

Interpretation in Divination

Interpretation in divination is what most people think of when they think of tarot study. We may memorize classic interpretations and keywords. We may study astrological and Kabalistic associations.

In my practice as a reader and a teacher I have discovered that finding the stories within the numerical order of the cards can be an effective way to understand and remember the classic card meanings. Remembering the elemental and numerological associations for each card is a helpful way to enhance a divinatory practice.

It is perfectly acceptable and advisable for a student to perform even large and complex readings by consulting the book, or several books, to reference the classic interpretations and the artist’s intentions. Part of the skill of a tarot reading is in extrapolating the classic meaning into the actual life situation. One does not need to have the cards memorized in order to do this.

Spiritual Lessons

Tarot is a book of spiritual wisdom in picture form. Each card, and each section of cards, can teach us a spiritual lesson. These are lessons that we learn in our study of the cards, and that stick with us throughout our lives. Sometimes in a reading a card will remind us of its spiritual lesson, and that lesson will become part of the reading. Yet, the spiritual lesson we take from a card may not be involved at all in a particular divination.

For example, from the Wheel of Fortune we might learn to accept the ups and downs of life which are beyond our control. Yet, in a particular reading, the Wheel of Fortune might reference a trip to a casino, or reuniting with an ex lover.

It is a good practice to think of the lessons of each card and carry those lessons in your heart. It is also helpful to think about the lessons of the cards in sections. For example, what lessons do we learn from the suit of Swords, or from the Aces, or from the Sevens? Tarot divides into natural sections, and each section carries its own lessons.

Cognitive Contemplation

There are many great tarot exercises which involve choosing a tarot card, not at random, but cognitively. Whether working from the full deck or a small section thereof, to choose a card based on your knowledge, the image, or the way it makes you feel, helps you learn about the cards and about yourself.

For example, if you choose five cards at random and look at them all, you might challenge yourself to decide which one of these cards expresses something you are feeling at the moment. That process of contemplating all the cards, choosing one, and think about how that card applies to you is immensely powerful.

You might do the same sort of exercise choosing from just the Majors, or from just a particular suit.

This sort of exercise leads into the practice of tarot magick, where we choose a card, or a few cards, to bring a particular energy into our lives. We might also choose a card which expresses an energy we want to banish from our lives.

Many who do not know much about tarot, and some who do, often focus only on the process of divination when studying and practicing tarot.  The less we limit the cards, the more we learn about their power to teach us, to inform us, and to change the energy around us. Then, we are able to truly harness and use all the power of tarot in our lives.

Three Ways Tarot Helps Us

We so often think of tarot as a tool of simple fortune-telling. We want to ask questions like “Will I get the job?” or “Will he call me?”

 Sometimes when we use the cards to peer into the future, we find the process helpful. Other time, fortune-telling with tarot can be confounding and disappointing.

When we try to use the cards to predict who will win a sports match, or an election, we are often confused by the answers we get. I really do believe that the cards always speak truth. Yet, the future is not always predictable because the future is not always set. The actions of people can change the trajectory.

Very often future predictions about events in our immediate sphere of influence can help to inspire us, or caution us, or prepare us. Predictions about sports outcomes, and even political outcomes, should be relegated to entertainment. These sorts of predictions should not be the proof of the value or efficacy of cartomancy.

There are many tools of divination, and many card decks that are used for cartomancy. Tarot is, and has always been, my preferred tool. That is partially because tarot offers help even beyond divination and fortune-telling.

I see at least three ways that tarot can be helpful to us in life. The first is simply in the contemplation of each card. The study of tarot carries the same benefit as the study of any spiritual text. Each card can offer life wisdom that we can take to our heart and use at any time, much like the Bible verses I memorized as a child in Sunday school.

Divination is generally what we think about when we think about working with tarot, and it is one of the ways that tarot helps us. When we divine with tarot, we have the ability to move past predictive fortune-telling and into areas of person growth, self-understanding and strategic planning. The depth of information we can receive in tarot divination is only limited by the questions we ask, the techniques we use, and the understanding we develop. The deeper we dive into tarot as a whole, the more transformative our divination experiences can be.

The third way tarot helps us is in magic and manifestation. Over the years I have come to see the use of tarot to create our future as even more important than the use of tarot to try to see the future. Each card carries an energy. With these cards we can consciously embrace the energies we want in our lives, and consciously remove those we don’t.

These three utilizations of tarot, contemplation, divination, and manifestation, are all more effective when we take time and energy to study, learn, and deeply embrace and understand the cards. When we do this we allow tarot to be a wonderful gift, and a wonderful guide, in the journey of life.``

Tarot Mooshing

I love how quickly new expressions spring up on the internet. Such a thing happened quite spontaneously and delightfully in a recent tarot class on YouTube live.

The class was on three-card spreads. We were talking about the many ways to read three cards. I brought up that we can read them linearly, or we can ‘moosh’ their meanings together to create many messages.

At the time, I wasn’t even sure that ‘moosh’ was a word, or even if that was what I was saying. I think I was combining ‘mush’ and ‘smoosh’. Later, I looked the word up. Luckily, it doesn’t seem to have any off-color meanings in the urban dictionary. Most sources see it as an alternative spelling of ‘mush’.

I knew ‘tarot mooshing’ had become a thing because people in the class were talking about it in the comments.

‘I moosh’.

‘I’m a moosher.’

‘I love to moosh.’

‘I can’t moosh.’

‘I want to learn to moosh.’

Just like that, tarot mooshing was formalized, and will now forever be a real tarot technique.

I’ve taught this technique prior to it receiving this creative name.

Now that it has a name, I would like to share a few more thoughts about it.

Tarot mooshing can be used as an adjunct to a reading in an effort to gain more information and more clarity. Tarot mooshing can also be the predominate technique by which a reading is given.

We can moosh any group of cards. When using a positioned spread, it is best to read the cards within their positions and add whatever information you can by mooshing. Sometimes I will moosh first, and then consider the individual cards within their positions. Other times I will read the individual cards in their positions first, and then look at the ways the cards can interreact with each other.

When reading a group of cards that are not arranged in a positioned spread, the mooshing technique can become even more important. If the cards were drawn to answer a specific question, each card may be considered in the context of that question. Yet, it is even more helpful to look at the cards as a group and see how their meanings combine to answer the question.

When mooshing a positioned spread, you have to let the cards come out of their positions and see how they interact with each other in groups.

In any case, this frivolously named technique involves looking at what the cards may have in common with one another, as well as ways cards may be direct opposites to one another.

When looking for similarities, look for cards of the same suit, and of the same number or rank. Look for cards with similar images. Look for cards with similar colors.

Consider the similarities you find and consider what those similarities might tell you in the context of the question, or the matter at hand.

Think about keywords that cards may have in common. Do you see more than one card that speaks of balance, for example, or of forward motion, or of communication, or of education?

Basically, the more cards you find that strengthen each other’s meanings, the more that meaning will become a central theme in your reading.

When you find opposites, consider what that may say to you. Are there opposing forces at play, or decisions to be made?

Whether or not you want to use this funny new word for this tarot technique doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we understand that when we see how the cards connect to each other, work with each other and speak to each other, our readings become more accurate, more nuanced, and more informative.

The Major Arcana in Action

In a reading, any tarot card can be anything. In other words, any card, whether Major, Minor, or Court, can give a spiritual message to ponder, a specific answer to a mundane question, or represent aspects of yourself, or another person in your life.

Very often, readers try to relegate card meanings based on the section of the deck from which the card comes. For example, wanting Court cards to always be people, wanting Minor Arcana cards to always suggest mundane action, and wanting Major Arcana cards to always give deep spiritual meaning.

In some readings, this sort of structure will play out perfectly. Yet, if we only interpret cards from the perspective of those boxes, we often miss the deeper and more helpful directives that could be available within a reading.

Tarot only has seventy-eight images with which to tell every story of human experience. Given that obvious limitation, tarot does an amazing job with this daunting task. Yet, it does a better job when we occasionally allow the cards to come out of their boxes to give us the messages we need.

Those boxes to which we assign the cards are helpful and necessary. The book of spiritual wisdom that tarot is would not function as well without its structure. Yet, just as a university professor might moonlight as a DJ, and as the local priest might play a mean game of darts, each card can do a variety of tasks, determined by the situation in which you find them. The priest won’t play darts while celebrating Mass, but might when gathered with friends over a beer on Monday evening. When you know the priest, you might know which skills he will be using, and which responsibilities he will be tending to, in which places and on which days. Tarot is much the same.

A great exercise is to take a group of tarot cards and imagine what each card might represent in a specific situation, or in answer to a certain question. Of course, in an actual divination, sometimes a card may speak in a way that it never has before and may never again. When that happens, we need to be able to justify our interpretation, as well as simply trust our intuition.

As an example of this exercise, and as a way to demonstrate how the Major Arcana cards might work as other than spiritual lessons and insights, I have challenged myself to list for each Major Arcana card a particular directive, or action step, that the card might suggest. Of course, this list is neither comprehensive nor definitive. You might come up with a completely different list and be equally correct. Give it a try!

The Fool may tell us to take a calculated risk, or to do some activity that we enjoyed in childhood.

The Magician may tell us to go to school, take a class, or study something new.

The High Priestess may suggest we meditate, or do shadow work.

The Empress may tell us to call Mom, or to remember our mother’s wisdom.

The Emperor may tell us to run for a political office, or get involved in community leadership.

The Hierophant may tell us to see a lawyer, or a doctor.

The Lovers may tell us to integrate more than one thing into a plan or project.

The Chariot may tell us to take control of something, or to travel.

Strength might tell us to get a pet, or it might remind us to hold our tongue.

The Hermit might instruct patience, or that we should be working toward advanced education.

The Wheel of Fortune might ask us to break hurtful patterns. It might also suggest taking a gamble.

Justice reminds us to do the right thing. It also can tell us to seek legal advice.

The Hanged Man may advise against any action, and instead suggest a time of waiting. The Hanged Man can also suggest devoting to a yoga practice, or, if needed, a Twelve-Step program.

Death can ask us to consider taking a serious step or making a significant change in life.

Temperance may instruct us to create art, or to cook.

The Devil may tell us to seriously commit to something.

The Tower may ask us to radically examine our current belief system.

The Star may ask us to seek healing of body, mind, or spirit.

The Moon may tell us to do dreamwork.

The Sun may suggest a relocation to a place with year-round warm weather.

Judgment may tell us to advertise a business or to communicate more clearly.

The World may ask us to look at the larger picture. It might also suggest an international trip, or to share our skills with a worldwide demographic.

Tarot Evolution

Tarot is constantly evolving and growing.

There are those who worry that the older, foundational traditions, symbolism and meanings will get lost over time in the shuffle.

There will always need to be people who preserve the ancient, as well as people who move an art form forward, pushing it to new limits.

Yesterday I had a conversation with someone about a particular tarot card. In a very learned tone, using the works of very early tarotists to back up his point, he gave an interpretation of the card that was completely different from any tradition I had ever heard.

He presented his concept to a group as if we were all behind the times for not knowing the concept. After some probing, it turns out that the concept is his own original idea, and so far, unpublished.

I think it is great that we explore new concepts in tarot. At the same time, I think presenting our own original work as a time-honored tradition is disingenuous.

I also think it is important to keep some connection to what has come before; the practices on which our traditions are built.

Many modern tarotists have brought a great deal of evolution to tarot, even in our lifetimes.

Eden Gray brought us the concept of “The Fool’s Journey,” and the idea that anyone could learn to operate a tarot deck.

Mary Greer and Rachel Pollack, in a very real way, evolved the practice of tarot reading into what it is today.

Ffiona Morgan, Karen Vogel, and Vicki Noble gave us the concept of feminist tarot, and, with it, the idea that the tarot archetypes could work with specific cultural themes.

Kris Waldherr and Lisa Hunt were amongst the artists that first took that concept further, in developing what I call “archetypal assignment” tarot decks.

The list goes on.

In more recent years, we have seen the advent of new, creative tarot tools, such as games, and decks of cards to be used to design dynamic tarot spreads.

The internet offers us all an equal platform for sharing our ideas and innovations.

We all have the opportunity to bring something to the table.

What will you bring?