When you think of tarot cards, you probably think of someone telling your future in front of a crystal ball. But did you know that tarot cards are one of the most powerful and accessible storytelling tools? In this post, I’ll show you how to tell stories with tarot cards, even if you’ve never used them before.
Tarot cards use symbolism to tell stories and the meanings of tarot cards depend on the tarot reader reading them. The images in each deck hint at an emotion, a scene, or a story that is waiting to be uncovered.
I believe tarot cards are a great writing tool because they can help you understand the deeper meaning of a plot or character in your story, and it’s easy to use tarot cards as visual prompts for your next scene.
That might sound good, but what does it mean for you and your storytelling process? How do you actually use tarot cards to tell a story? There are several simple steps you can take to tell stories with tarot cards.
GET TO KNOW EACH CARD IN YOUR DECK
In order to get to know your tarot deck, you’ll need to sit with each card and do an intuitive reading. That means you look at each card for at least a few seconds and say, or think, of what it reminds you of. Your associations can be as random as possible–in fact, instant randomness will help you a lot more than memorizing definitions from a book. Every deck is different, so you’ll have to study each tarot deck, card by card. In order to get started, here are some questions that will help your tarot readings: – What does this card remind me of? – What is the character in this card feeling or thinking? – What kind of setting does this card remind me of? – What is the most bizarre possible interpretation for this card? – If this card was a scene from a movie, play, or comic book, what would the larger story be? (Skip this one if this is too intimidating or likely to send you into a hyperfocus distraction-spiral.) You don’t have to get to know all the cards at once. If you only have a few minutes, start with a few cards here and there. You can also get re-acquainted with your deck of cards more than once. Every time you do this exercise, you’ll notice something new.
SEND YOUR CARDS ON “BLIND DATES”
Tarot cards–and all storytelling cards–have the most meaning when they’re viewed in relationship to each other.
Put the Six of Swords next to the Two of Cups, and suddenly you have a story. What kind of story? That’s up to you.
Look at the pictures to the right. On the left, we have a man, a woman, and a child in a rowboat pierced with swords. They seem to be fleeing something, and all three have their heads bent.
On the right, two people exchange cups before a caduceus, a symbol of either medicine or commerce. Some kind of winged lion figure sees over all this, which could be a good or bad omen, depending on your beliefs. An idyllic pastoral scene is in the background, but the flat line between the yellow path they’re on and the hills in the distance suggests this is a stage of some kind, or perhaps an illusion.
Together, these cards might tell the story of friends fleeing from war and destruction. Or a prisoner and captors who become allies over the course of a journey. Or a man taking his family to meet his friend in a time of need, but finding betrayal instead. After all, the caduceus is a symbol of Mercury, who can be very fickle with his affections…
Try “dating” your cards like this without any intention of creating a story for a future project. Let the story ideas come and go without any anxiety or attachment. If a story really grabs you and won’t let go, of course you can use it. But storytelling is useful as play as well as work, and if you can’t do the former, you’ll have trouble doing the latter. Practice storytelling as a form of play, without any expectations.
CLARIFY YOUR QUESTIONS
If you do a tarot reading without any specific questions in mind, you’ll get a lot of results that aren’t relevant to what’s going on at the moment. You need to figure out what question you want to ask before you draw your cards. Here are some example questions:
- What is the inciting incident for my story?
- What is the root of the conflict between my protagonist and antagonist?
- What will soften her heart towards him?
- What happens in the midpoint?
- What is the turning point at the end?
- What does the villain want?
Any of these questions will work, and you can tailor them to whatever problem you’re having. Here’s an example. I’m working on a story where two characters fall in love. But there’s an issue: they are fake engaged to each other. When they start to fall for each other, they aren’t sure if the other one is still faking it or not. And they come from very different backgrounds, which only adds to the confusion. For this example, I want to know, “How can my two main characters overcome their differences?” One character is a self-made woman who built her baking company up from nothing and is now looking to expand into a new, much larger market. The other was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and had a few lucky breaks early in his career; he’s always known ease and privilege.
USE THE RIGHT TAROT SPREADS TO GET ANSWERS
Once you know your cards, and the question you want to ask, it’s time to combine them. You’ll need to arrange one or more of your cards face-down in a spread. There are dozens of tarot spreads, but you don’t have to learn all of them.
Here’s a basic tarot spread that will help you get started:
- Start by clarifying your question. What is it you want to ask? Once you have your question…
- Shuffle your cards a few times and put down three cards side-by-side like in the picture below.
- Each card represents a different answer to your question, or a different path your story could go down. Which one is most appealing to you?
For this example, I’m going to ask the question, “How can two characters, who strongly dislike each other, overcome their differences and work toward a common goal?” These cards represent three possible answers.
Let’s turn them over. Here’s the result:
There are infinite ways to interpret these results, which is why I decided ahead of time that each card represents a different answer to my question. Here’s how I interpret these results:
- Page of Wands: confidence in chaos. In this context, the two main characters might have to be the calm within the chaos. Or he sees how calm she is in a tumultuous situation, and falls in love with her.
- Justice: blind, except for her third, all-seeing eye. Perhaps they have to right a wrong together, or realize they have both been mistreated.
- Seven of Swords: a woman’s fighting, naked, with someone (or something) out of frame, with six swords in the earth in the foreground. Perhaps one of them has to face something alone after using their last reserve of strength, only to have the other one save them and give them “extra swords,” i.e. extra reserves to draw on. Or they need to ask for help when it seems most impossible. Or maybe one of them’s been wounded, and has to show the other and explain how this wound happened.
I’d like to try combining one or more of these outcomes somehow. Perhaps there’s a disaster that brings up some buried trauma. This is when I start to freewrite notes about the characters.
CONCLUSION
Writing with tarot cards is a way to embrace your creativity and playfulness. It brings tarot out of the realm of fortune telling into an art form that can be used for all types of creative expression. You’re free to create any tarot spread you want—the important thing is to have fun with it!
This article was originally published on Tarot Writing Academy.