Tarot Cards as a Writer’s Tool

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Elisa Shoenberger has been gathering a room since she was 13. She loves penning astir each aspects of books from writer interviews, antiquarian books, archives, and everything successful between. She besides writes regularly for Murder & Mayhem and Library Journal. She's besides written articles for Huffington Post, Boston Globe, WIRED, Slate, and galore different publications. When she's not penning astir reading, she's speechmaking and adventuring to find chill caller art. She besides plays alto saxophone and occasionally stiltwalks. Find retired much connected her website oregon travel her connected Twitter @vogontroubadour.

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During the pandemic, Carlene O’Connor, writer of the Irish Village Mystery series, got a speechmaking from her tarot teacher. He said that her adjacent publication was going to beryllium different. O’Connor didn’t recognize what helium meant, since she was readying connected penning different publication successful her cozy series.

But the adjacent time astatine a gathering discussing her adjacent work, her publicist pointed retired that her darker cozies tended to bash well, and her exertion suggested doing thing different. O’Connor said successful an interview, “My jaw deed the floor. Then I got truly excited astir it due to the fact that I had ever wanted to subdivision retired a small spot much arsenic a writer.” That publication became No Strangers Here (2022), the archetypal successful the County Terry Mysteries.

This communicative blew my mind. I person gotten overmuch much funny successful tarot cards successful the past year, due to the fact that of the imagery. Major Arcana cards showed up successful drawings and paintings successful modern creation shows; immoderate of my favourite artists had created their ain decks. But learning that tarot cards could beryllium utilized arsenic portion of the creator process, whether it’s figuring retired vocation steps oregon to assistance with quality development, was thing other entirely. I had the accidental to speech to 2 authors who usage tarot cards arsenic portion of their originative process.

A Few Definitions

Before we dive into the antithetic ways writers usage the cards successful their work, here’s a little connection connected a mates of definitions for tarot. Tarot cards are made of Major and Minor Arcana. Major Arcana tin beryllium archetypes, similar the Fool, the Devil, and the World. There are usually 22 of them. Minor Arcana impact the Wands, Cups, Pentacles, and Swords, which are numbered and person look cards similar a platform of playing cards.

People often speech astir spreads successful tarot cards. That means laying down a fig of tarot cards successful a definite mode (like successful a row, oregon successful a transverse formation). Each spot has a meaning, similar the archetypal paper represents the past, 2nd the present, 3rd the future. There’s astir apt arsenic galore spreads arsenic determination are themed tarot cards!

Creating Worlds and Characters

Simply put, tarot cards tin assistance you fig things retired astir your book, from the flaws of a quality to the plot, oregon tone. Anything nether the sun, practically. Anastasia Hastings, writer of the precocious published Of Manners and Murder, teaches these techniques to writers, explaining that it’s a brainstorming tool. Using the images of the tarot cards helps springiness ideas to assistance grow their work. (She besides noted that she is not the archetypal idiosyncratic to travel up with this idea.)

For instance, Hastings was trying to fig retired the flaws of her character. So erstwhile she pulled the Two of Swords, which successful the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot platform (one of the astir good known) shows a blindfolded woman, holding 2 swords, with her backmost to the water. Hastings explained, “traditionally successful tarot, h2o stands for emotions. So you’re saying she doesn’t see her emotions; she’s unopen herself disconnected from emotions, oregon she doesn’t admit different people’s emotions. So we conscionable usage that paper arsenic benignant of a jumping disconnected point.” But tarot won’t constitute your crippled for you, she noted.

Using Card Spreads

That’s lone 1 of the galore ways of utilizing the cards. There are galore spreads that writers tin use, similar a five-card dispersed that helps you fig retired your character’s biggest strength, top weakness, etc. Or you tin usage a communal tarot of 3 cards representing past, present, and aboriginal to assistance fig retired the crippled of a book. There’s a dispersed for immoderate need; you tin adjacent marque your own.

Of course, Hastings mentioned that 1 could usage pictures that were chopped retired of a mag for the aforesaid purpose, but it’s a batch cheaper to bargain a tarot paper and transportation them astir alternatively than buying a clump of magazines and carrying them around. The cardinal process is the same, though: “You’re bound to get thing that sparks an idea. That’s the full point,” Hasting said.

Hastings recommended that you deliberation beyond your genre with tarot cards. For instance, if you are penning a vampire book, there’s decidedly vampire themed tarot cards connected the market, but it mightiness beryllium amended to effort thing that’s wholly different, similar a Gummy Bear tarot.

“How does that marque you look astatine things differently? Because being a writer, you get 1 thought successful your caput and it’s hard to footwear that thought out,” Hastings said, “if you’re reasoning of it different way, and [you can] get it moving again, I deliberation you tin person a batch of amusive with this.” And importantly, you truly don’t person to beryllium versed successful tarot cards to usage this method.

Setting the Mind Free

Victoria Woodhull Shattering Glass Ceilings cover

While tarot cards tin assistance with the improvement of the publication itself, they tin besides assistance uncover those connections lurking successful the subconscious. Kelly Boyer Sagert, freelance writer and writer of books similar Victoria Woodhull: Shattering Glass Ceilings, uses tarot to assistance her with her probe process. “One of the things I bash is constitute astir humanities figures that were benignant of mislaid to history,” Sagert said, “I’ll laic retired 3 cards look down…I’ll prime 1 that feels similar it resonates the most. I usage it astir similar a wide trigger to my intuition astir what to bash next.”

For these kinds of stories, Sagert has to bash a batch of probe to find these radical forgotten from history. Sagert explained that she mightiness get a breached bosom paper for a 19th period bold feminist, and she’ll deliberation “I ever speech astir however bold and arguable she feels. But did she person heartbreak erstwhile this happened? I usage it to usher my intuition connected these agelong forgotten people.”

She further explained, “I usually find retired it’s backed up by research, but it’s not thing I really knew. Somehow, sometimes my intuition I deliberation helps maine to cognize what absorption to look. Obviously erstwhile I’m penning an existent nonfiction caller astir someone, I effort to get accusation to verify it.”

Similar to Hasting’s approach, it helps her get retired of ruts. “I’m stuck connected researching each of a sudden, it’ll consciousness similar I’ve got to [get a] travel of accusation again…It indispensable springiness maine support to usage my intuition to deliberation astir penning it a antithetic way,” she said.

Not Just the Writing Process

As 1 tin imagine, tarot tin beryllium utilized successful truthful galore antithetic ways successful the originative process. In Jessa Crispin’s The Creative Tarot: A Modern Guide to an Inspired Life, erstwhile she “notic[ed]the mode the cards hook into your intuition and imagination, I realized that they could easy beryllium utilized to assistance successful the originative process. When stuck connected a piece, I’ll propulsion retired immoderate cards to find clarity, oregon I’d usage them to fig retired however to operation it.”

She explained that tarot could beryllium utilized to restart projects, fig retired however champion to contiguous a task to the world; and get retired of a rut.

Crispin defines each the Major and Minor Arcana cards done a originative lens. For instance, the High Priestess paper shows a seated pistillate holding the book. Generally, the paper “presents wisdom, secrets, and ritual,” explained Crispin. For Crispin, she defines the paper arsenic a reminder that artists request to support learning; thing is made successful a vacuum. She wrote, “When the High Priestess shows up successful a reading, it tin bespeak a request for you to enactment speech the enactment for a infinitesimal and marque clip for study.”

There are different tarot books for writers and different creators retired there. That’s 1 of the champion parts of tarot cards: determination are truthful galore ways to usage the cards. If you are a writer oregon immoderate benignant of creator, see utilizing tarot cards to assistance you successful the process. You ne'er cognize what the cards volition reveal!

For a treatment of tarot cards utilized successful books, cheque retired my portion Beyond Reading the Cards: The Use of Tarot successful Fiction. For a peculiar reader’s spread, cheque retired Sarah S. Davis’s article!

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