Remove tarot from all the mystical elements for a moment and consider it as a therapy tool that can mirror back to you what is happening for you in any given moment.
Tarot is the focus of everything I do and that includes therapy which leads me to the introduction of tarot in the therapies I offer.
Tarot as a therapy? Is that even a thing?
Yes, it sure is a thing. Many professional counsellors, coaches and psychotherapists utilise the art of tarot in their sessions with clients. In fact tarot therapy was first talked about by Carl Jung. Jung was the Austrian forefather of analytical psychology and he believed that tarot had a way of brining you closer to your subconscious through the expansion of his work with archetypes.
How does that even work?
Let’s look at the structure of a tarot deck for some insight as to how therapy concepts can be applied.
A typical tarot deck is made up of 78 cards which are basically separated into 2 parts – Major arcana and Minor arcana. The minor arcana is further separated into 4 suits. The suits being Pentacles, Cups, Wands and Swords. Each individual suit is represented by an element. The elements being Earth, Water, Fire and Air. Each element is then assigned a human experience– that being the physical, emotional, spiritual and mental aspects
Pentacles speak to physicality in everyday life
Cups speak to the emotional experiences
Wands speak to the spiritual experiences and actions taken
Swords speak to the mental experiences – thoughts, beliefs ideas
The major arcana can speak to and show the archetypes. Life lessons and the overall impacts that have affected the client as a whole.
Tarot can be a very healing tool. It can help us think outside of our usual strategies and it can introduce us to our shadow side and give us insight into how our shadow side might be impacting us and give us to clues as to how to work with it. The pictures on the cards can create stories, invoke emotions and lead clients to journey through their inner world facilitating a kind of self-awareness.
As a professional counsellor and professional tarot reader – I love the combination of these two. Tarot in, and of itself, is a tool for tapping into our intuitive wisdom. The cards are stacked with a lot of metaphor and symbology. These metaphors and symbolic references can be found within the art work on the cards. Metaphors can help to tap into the subconscious and even bring things up that that may have been repressed. Making them a great tool and an easier way to process an issue which can be quite a cathartic experience for the client.
From a personal healing therapeutic perspective, here are some of the benefits I have found when utilising tarot in a therapy session:
Helps people to see their issues and problems from a new perspective. a.
Help to show different angles and different possibilities.
Can widen your view as to what may be going on.
Allow clients to open up about things they may have never otherwise spoken about
Bring awareness into how the client is living in the present
Explore clients desire for meaning and purpose in life
Contemplate how the past is impacting/or informs the present moment
Help to navigate a response to a situation
Review situations in an objective way
Support and complement therapy
Working with the present moment
Assist in goal setting
You could say tarot has a way of bringing this to the surface for exploration.
Love Life Big
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Lu
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