How To Use Tarot To Understand Your Soul Lessons

Empowering Yourself To Make Changes

Wouldn't it be nice if you had a tool that could help you get clarity on what the heck is going on in your life right now? Well, you do. It's called the tarot.

Tarot is recognized around the world as a great way to connect to the Universe, so why not use it to delve into what you're learning in this lifetime?  Information like soul lessons, life purpose, and soul contracts are all at your fingertips, waiting to be rediscovered with a flip of a card. I like to refer to this type of tarot as Soul Tarot--a style of tarot that empowers you to make decisions and discover your own personal path, by connecting with your Spirit Team using the tarot cards. This information could help you remove blocks and get you moving forward on your journey, so let’s get started.

Using Tarot to dig into your journey works on multiple levels. You get a visual to give you perspective on what you are working on, opening up the opportunity to get past your “logic” self and into a more open state. You can use the traditional meanings of each card, you can use just what pops out from the images, or you can blend both. It’s your choice.

[Image: The Fantastical Creatures Tarot]

The layout I’m sharing with you today is called the Chart Your Own Course: A Soul Tarot Layout. The idea of this reading is to facilitate soul exploration. It consists of four cards to keep it simple to navigate. If you’re going to give this a whirl, I suggest that you get centered and grounded and take some time to focus your energy for the best results (as with any reading). Call in your guides, ancestors, or angels to help you.

Once you’ve settled in, you’re going to pick four cards:

Card #1 (top): Soul Lesson that you are currently having the most challenges with

Card #2 (right): How it is currently affecting your present situation

Card #3 (bottom): Insight on how it will affect and influence you moving forward

Card #4 (left) : “Soul Advice”*

*Healing words from your Team of Guides | Further information about the lesson/“why” of it all | One more piece of critical information that will inspire you

After you have selected all four cards, look to Card #1 first and determine what Lesson you are working on. This is key to making the reading work. I’ll do a very brief version of the reading for you so you can see how it works.

In the above reading the Ace Of Pentacles Reversed is representing the Soul Lesson.

An important note about reversals: It doesn’t matter with this layout whether you do reversals or not. Every Soul Lesson is two sided. You will learn about both aspects, upright and reversed, sometime in your life. Reversals can give you a hint as to what phase you are in now, but it's not required.

‍Ace of Pentacles is about learning about taking opportunities. Now that we know that piece of information, we can delve deeper into how it is developing with Cards 2 and 3.

Card 2(The Tower) tells us they are currently seeing a breakdown of the situation because they are learning about what it means to have missed an opportunity. They may be noticing that areas of their life are in upheaval.  

We look to Card 3(The High Priestess) to see how this could possibly unfold moving forward. It appears that having missed that opportunity in the present speaks to the idea that they need to rely on their intuition more—follow their gut and not ignore the signs.

Now for the final piece of information we look to Card 4(The Fool). This card acts like a telephone line to your guides.  What could we draw from this? This person is starting all over again. They are embarking on a new journey and The Tower card facilitates this new beginning. If you look at the reading like a circle, if the person decided to follow the path and allowed the breakdown to happen, resulting in a more intuitive state and starting over, they’d be able to turn the Ace of Pentacles upright and take advantage of the prosperity that is theirs for the taking.

The example was a very brief reading, but you get the idea. These readings can go pretty deep and be very enlightening. Sometimes, I like to let these readings “sit” for a few days, coming back and visiting them again to see what insights surface, as the information settles.

Dive Deeper with Soul Tarot: Before you begin, separate the deck into two piles: Major Arcana and Minor Arcana. Draw your cards selecting Cards 1 and 4 from the Major Arcana and Cards 2 and 3 from the Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana handles the big life themes, so it may be easier for you to figure out what is going on in your reading. The Minor Arcana will provide you with the details.

Choosing my own cards makes me feel empowered. It also helps to reveal information I may not have picked up on intuitively or during meditation. I find tarot to be the perfect tool to use for myself to help me get a clear picture of the energy surround my current life situations.

The Fantastical Creatures Tarot by D.J. Conway and Lisa Hunt used with permission of U.S. Games Systems c. 2007. all rights reserved.

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