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.

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.

Reading Tarot Out of Order

Reading Tarot Out of Order

One of the best ways to become a truly efficient and effective tarot reader is to learn and practice a number of techniques. In fact, the mark of a limited tarot reader is the word ‘always’. Try to avoid ‘always’ seeing and saying the same thing for a particular card, or ‘always’ using the same spread, or ‘always’ interpreting a particular spread using the same techniques.

This past Sunday we had our monthly Tarot Meetup, Cards and Conversation, at Panera Bread in Palm City. I was thrilled that over twenty people were in attendance! Our monthly meetups are a great place to meet old and new friends, share some readings, and learn something about tarot.

Since Sunday happened to be the day of Saturn and Pluto conjunct in Capricorn, an event that won’t happen again for more than five hundred years, I decided to design a series of exercises using the three Major Arcana cards associated with Saturn, Pluto and Capricorn, which are the World, Judgment and the Devil, respectively.

One of the questions I asked folks to consider was what those three cards might mean together in a reading. People came up with some great messages. Yet, I was struck by the fact that most, if not all, of our students and readers felt the need to designate an order to the cards and read the cards in that linear order.

Reading a group of non-positioned cards is a standard tarot technique. Designating an order to the cards (usually the order in which they were pulled) and reading them in that linear fashion is also, obviously, a standard technique. And, it’s an effective technique. Typically, that linear reading becomes a timeline, which turns a non-positioned group of cards into a de facto Past, Present, Future sort of reading, or, a Situation, Obstacle or Action, Outcome sort of reading.

However, there is no rule that says that tarot cards have to be read in a linear fashion, describing  a timeline, cause-and-effect, or a situation, action and outcome. While we must be able to read this way, it’s important to know that there are other ways to treat a non-positioned group of cards. The more techniques we know, the more information we can derive from the cards.

It became very clear to me that I have been in remiss in my group leadership. I have not taught my group other methods of handling groups of cards. Guess what we will be doing in our next meeting?

In the meantime, here are some ways to handle a non-positioned group of tarot cards that aren’t linear. These techniques can work with groups of cards as small as two, or as large as five or more.

Let’s use the example of the three cards from our meetup, the Devil, Judgement and the World.

When we read these cards in a linear fashion, we see a story of empowerment that comes from acknowledging and releasing our limiting behaviors.

How else might we read these cards?

We might see the state of the actual world here, where some want to end certain behaviors or traditions (Judgment) while others want to hang on to them (Devil).

We might see a reference to the World Wide Web (World) that connects us all, where we all have a chance to be heard (Judgement), yet also can become addicted and diminished by the attention we pay and the time we waste (Devil).

You can see that when you don’t attach to the order of the cards, the number of stories we can tell expands exponentially.

Other techniques for reading groups of cards include looking at what the cards have in common, to see if there is an overarching theme. If the cards have a similar message, that message can become the overriding takeaway from the reading. If the cards express opposite messages, you may be shining a light on a conflict.

Sometimes similarities in the coloring or images of the cards will give a specific message. I saw the Magician and the Nine of Cups from a version of the Waite deck recently and was struck that both cards had a yellow background, while the Magician’s cloak and the Nine of Cup’s hat were both red. I saw these cards, then, as speaking together with a message of boldness and confidence.

Sometimes cards within a group will be completely dissimilar, sharing neither messages, coloring nor themes. A good technique for blending dissimilar cards is to consider the keywords for each card and see how those keywords can work together in a sentence.

When you release your attachment to the order in which the cards are draw or laid out, or the numeric order of the card sequence, you open yourself to many additional opportunities to receive information.

Who Am I Today?

A simple-yet-profound tarot exercise is to ask this question and pull one card.

Who am I right now?

As an example, here is the card I received in answer to that question today.

Today, I am the Eight of Cups reversed.

That isn't the most romantic or encouraging card. If you do this exercise every day, some days you'll be the Star, other days you'll be the Devil, and sometimes you get a mundane card such as I drew today.

The trick is, no matter what card you pull, to take the time to deeply interpret it. For me today, the Eight of Cups reversed shows my determination to do the work I need to do, personally, professionally, and creatively, even when I feel like walking away from my tasks. Today, this card tells me I am tenacious. I am dedicated. I will not be distracted by emotions or desires.

Truthfully, this card makes a lot of sense. What I want to do right now is take a nap. What I need to do is catch up on a lot of paperwork. Here we see just how valuable this exercise is, and how much the Universe conspires with tarot on our behalf. I asked simply who I am today, but the Universe's view of me reminds me to be my best self, my non-self-indulgent-self, my non-napping self.

The value of that is far-reaching. By encouraging me to see myself as tenacious, I am encouraged to accomplish my goals. That will give me a sense of accomplishment and personal pride and satisfaction. That's a heck of a reward to reap from a single tarot card, isn't it? Grab your cards and give this exercise a try. Who are you today?

An Exercise for Finding Balance in Tarot and in Life

There are many schools of spiritual thought that focus on the need for balance.

In tarot, many of the cards speak of balance.

Many of us experience life as a balancing act as we navigate work, school, relationships, parenthood and well-being.

Our human nature wants this or that, one thing or the other.

Our spiritual nature knows that when we find balance, we find enlightenment.

To help you find balance in your life, and to help you find the ways tarot speaks about balance, try this exercise.

First, go through your tarot deck, card by card, and sort out every card that speaks to you of balance.

Some, like Justice, Temperance and the High Priestess might be obvious. Others you might choose could include Strength, or the Lovers. Don’t forget the Minor Arcana cards, like the Twos, and the Six of Pentacles. Not everyone will agree, so if you do this exercise in a class setting each person’s group of cards will be a bit different.

Once you have your group of cards that speak about balance, look at each card one at a time. Think (or even better, write in your tarot journal) about each card and how that card speaks about balance. What is unique about each card’s message of balance? How can this card help you achieve balance in your life?

Now, take your group of balance cards and shuffle them. Draw one card at random to answer each of the following questions about balance in your life. Replace each drawn card back to the group for the next shuffle. If the same card comes up more than once, pay some extra attention to why that card might be important in your life at this time.

In what aspect of my life am I doing a good job achieving balance?

Where in my life to I need to be better at achieving balance?

What can help me achieve this balance?