Daily Tarot Devotionals

Whether you are just learning tarot, are a professional reader, or somewhere in between, a daily tarot exercise can be insightful and rewarding. Daily tarot exercises help us learn tarot. Even more, daily tarot exercises facilitate a meaningful time of spiritual devotion and meditative introspection.

Here are three different tarot exercises to try on a daily basis. You can pick one and try it every day for a week. Or perhaps you have time to do all three every day. See how creating space in your life for introspection, focus and insight changes your life in just seven days. Over time, you will find the daily tarot devotionals that are best for you to do in an ongoing practice. You may even experiment with some that you create yourself.

Card of the Day (COTD)

A Card of the Day is first and foremost reflective, rather than predictive.

If you can find the time to pull a card every day in the morning, take that card as a focal point for the day. If you are a new student, study the card. Write about the card and how it makes you feel. Research the card and learn some basic classic meanings for it. Find a few other illustrations of the card to broaden your understanding of its energy.

Then, at the end of the day, think about the ways in which the energy of this card appeared in your day. This will help you understand in a very practical way how this card might speak in a reading.

If you do your COTD in the evening, use it to reflect on your day. How does this card fit in to things that happened throughout the day, or things you learned during the day?

If you are a more experienced reader you do not have to spend as much time on study and research unless you feel the need. Instead, simply make note of the way the card’s energy makes itself known throughout the day.

If you faithfully journal your Card of the Day, you will create a valuable personal tarot study book over time.

A Daily Tarot Affirmation and Manifestation

What do you want to tell yourself today? What do you want to bear in mind? What do you want to welcome into your life? Look through your deck and find a card by choosing it cognitively, rather than at random. Decide what you need or want, and find a card that to you, represents that energy. When you pull it from your deck, spend a few minutes with it. Breathe in the card’s energy. Visualize your life with this energy made manifest. Create an affirmation based on this card. Write your affirmation and read it to yourself when you have free moments throughout the day.

A Card of Gratitude

Pull a card at random to remind you of something for which to be grateful. The exercise of interpreting each card as a gratitude is very helpful in learning to interpret cards in context. The exercise of practicing gratitude for something specific each day is one that can foster growth and healing.

So often, people think of tarot simply as a tool of fortune telling. These daily exercises will certainly improve your skills at telling fortunes with tarot. Even better, these exercises will help you understand the deeper side of tarot. Better still, these daily exercises will help you stay focused, peaceful, and proactive in your day-to-day life.

Aces, Tens and the Court: Tarot Exercises to Find your Path

Separate from your Minor Arcana the four Aces, four Tens, and all sixteen Court cards, separated by rank. As we explore each number and rank, consider how the suit/element is expressed in each card.

Aces: Aces are a new beginning, the source or the essence of their element. The Ace is the purest form of the element.

Shuffle your four Aces, and ask this question: What is a source of strength upon which I could draw more fully?

Pull one card to give your answer. What card did you receive? What does it mean to you?

Tens: Tens represent a fullness, or the completion of a cycle or a journey.

Shuffle your four Tens, and ask this question: What am I full of right now?

Pull one card to give your answer. What card did you receive? What does it mean to you?

Now look at your Ace and your Ten together. How does your Ace give you strength to help you with your Ten?

Pages: Pages refer to youth, learning and communication.

Shuffle your four Pages, and ask this question: What am I learning right now?

Pull one card to give your answer. What card did you receive? What does it mean to you?

How does the lesson of your Page tie in to the story told in your Ace and Ten?

Knights: Knights refer to coming of age, travel and pursuit.

Shuffle your four Knights, and ask this question: What should I be pursuing right now?

Pull one card to give your answer. What card did you receive? What does it mean to you?

Queens: Queens refer to mature feminine wisdom, and nurturance.

Shuffle your four Queens, and ask this question: What is my source of wisdom right now?

Pull one card to give your answer. What card did you receive? What does it mean to you?

Kings: Kings refer to masculine leadership, and authority.

Shuffle your four Kings, and ask this question: Where should I take a leadership role right now?

Pull one card to give your answer. What card did you receive? What does it mean to you?

Now look at your Knight, your Queen and your King. How do these three energies support you in taking your next steps forward in life?

Take all six cards you have drawn today, and shuffle them. Pull one to give you a final thought. Pay special attention to it’s number/rank and it’s element. What direction does this card give you?

How the Tarot Characters Play Together

One of my favorite tarot exercises is to group cards together in twos and threes and see what they have in common.

This is especially fun with the Major Arcana. This exercise can help us understand the many facets of a particular card.

For instance, follow the High Priestess through these different groupings.

1. High Priestess and Magician
   Here we see two types of education, and two ways of dealing with the world. The Magician is learning by looking out into the world, the High Priestess is learning by looking within.

2. High Priestess, Hierophant, Hermit
   Here we have the three clergy of the Major Arcana. We could see them as nun, priest and monk.

3. High Priestess, Hermit, Moon
   Here we have three cards about hidden wisdom, secrets and deep spiritual journeying.

4. High Priestess, Moon
   Here we have two cards that speak of the feminine mysteries.

 What do you see in the High Priestess that you hadn't seen before?

What other groupings make sense to you? 

Tarot and the Search for Identity: Five Ways Tarot Can Help You Discover Yourself

Who are you? I mean, really - who are you?

Our search for personal identity is as ancient as it is illusive.

The computer age has perhaps made matters worse. Each social network asks us to profile ourselves; to describe the essence of our being in four hundred characters or less. Many of us have different profiles for each hobby, professional goal and personal achievement. We become fragmented. Who am I as a drummer, a dancer, a tarotist, a naturist, a writer and a mother? How should my Facebook profile be different from my profile on LinkedIn?

As we age, our sense of identity changes. As children, our identity is formed by family. As young adults, we strive to create an identity separate from family. We want to be unique individuals. When we partner, we become part of a "we" instead of a singular identity.

Is there something at the core of each one of us that remains constant? Is there something that makes each of us unique?

So often in professional tarot reading I see that my client is struggling to understand and express his or her identity.

As it turns out, tarot can not only identify the problem, but also help us find the solution.

Mary K. Greer's recent book, Who are You in the Tarot, offers many ways to use tarot to help understand the biggest mystery of all - your own identity. More and more, tarot is being used as a tool of self-understanding and self-development.

I teach a webinar entitled Personal Tarot -Reading for Yourself that not only teaches good self-reading practices, but also ways of finding tarot cards that are connected to the self, and therefore defining of the identity.

In a quickly changing world, it is important for us to feel strong in our own core identity. Here are some easy ways tarot can help us do that.

1. Discover your "Native Significator." Using gender, age and astrology, discover your "native" significator. This will be one of the sixteen Court Cards. Simply, if you are young you may be a Page or a Knight. If you are an adult woman you may be a Queen, adult men may be Kings. If you are born under a Water sign, your significator will be of the Cups Court. If you are born under a Fire sign, it will be of the Wands Court. Air signs are of the Swords Court. Earth signs are of the Pentacles Court. Once you have identified your native significator, look up information about this card, and find ways in which it defines and describes you. How do you feel about this card? Does it feel like a comfortable fit, or does it describe aspects of yourself you would like to change? 
    
2. Find your "Birth Card." One of the first nine numbered cards of the Major Arcana is your Birth Card. Find it by adding all of the digits in your full birthdate together. You will come up with a two digit number. Add those two digits together until you come up with a single digit. Find the Major Arcana card that corresponds with that digit. If you are unfamiliar with the card, look up information about it. How does this card describe you? What positive and negative traits does this card show you about yourself? 
    
3. Find your "Affinity Cards." No matter your level of tarot knowledge and understanding, you will always find cards that attract you. Look through the deck and pick out the cards you love the most. You may be drawn by the image, the colors or simply the feeling you get when you look at the card. Find one, two or three cards for which you feel an absolute affinity. If you need to, look up their meanings. What do these cards say about you? How do they define and describe the best aspects of your identity?
    
4. Find the Cards you Don't Like. Which cards are distasteful to you? Go through the deck and choose one, two or three cards that you don't feel good about. Perhaps you don't like the image, or the colors. Perhaps looking at the card gives you a bad feeling.  If you need to, look up the meanings of the cards you have chosen. What do these cards say about you? How do these cards depict parts of your experiences, personality and identity?
    
5. Create and Perform an Identity Tarot Reading. You may dialogue with the cards by asking questions, shuffling and pulling cards to answer the questions. Or you may create a tarot spread, with each position asking a question about your identity. Questions can be as simple as "Who am I?" or "What are my greatest strengths?" Questions can be spiritual, such as "What is my soul's purpose in this lifetime?" You can create a Past, Present, Future timeline, describe who you were, who you are now, and who you will be in the future. You can ask questions such as "What aspects of me as a child are still present in me today?"

 As you can see, tarot is a tool that can help you understand yourself. From there, you can use the cards to help you create the positive changes you desire in your life.

Once you understand who you are at core, and once you own your identity, you can go forward to live the life that is perfectly suited for you!

If you enjoyed these exercises, you will certainly enjoy my new book, Tarot Tour Guide!