I often meet people who have never had a Tarot reading — or have some decided concepts of what a Tarot reading is or should be. I’d like to give my take on the Tarot and readings. Hopefully, this will help folks better understand how to feel into the Tarot as a tool rather than an object of mystery and misunderstanding.

First, I’d like to remind you of all the energy around you. Literally everything around you — including your body — is energy. It is all vibrating. The chair you are sitting on, the ground beneath your feet, the lives around you, the air, everything is energy and is full of energy. I feel like in our fast-paced, always gotta-get-there culture, we lose contact with the fact we are this energy. To make a twist an age-old cliché, we can’t feel the forest because we’re too busy navigating through the trees.

Energy ebbs and surges, it is always in flow. We, YOU, are part of that flow. You can tap into the flow, create a surge, or ebb away from the flow. You can look upstream in the flow and see where the waters are coming from and gaze downstream and intuit into the flow as it moves forward.

It is my belief that the Tarot is a tool, one of many actually, that helps you tap consciously into the flow of energy. It does this by speaking the human brain’s love language — symbolism and metaphor. The pictures and meanings associated with the cards have intricate roots woven in our shared human history and they share messages that speak to our subconscious through their vibration and frequency. What we see, feel and experience in the images, words, and meanings on the cards, reaches deep inside us and brings forth exactly what we need to know about the flow in that moment. It isn’t divination, although it’s been mistaken for it. Instead, it is the knowing of a knowing you already knew, you just didn’t know you knew it until the cards reminded you.

The Tarot is a connection tool. It connects you to yourself. It connects you to the collective. It connects you to the past and, through the past, to your future. It connects you to the divine.

When I sit in reading with myself or others, I like to center my energy in the divine flow — the one that connects me to Spirit. From this flow, I will always receive the guidance I, or the person I’m reading with, needs.

I do not believe, nor do I hold, that the Tarot is a window to the future. Because we all have free will, the future is a moving and constantly changing atmosphere. We and our decisions not made yet shape that future. What I do believe, and hold in my Tarot readings, is that I can create the best possible outcome if and when I am most connected to source and the most aware of myself and all the energy around me.

For me a Tarot reading is an opportunity to explore the options of my past, my present, and the future. It often opens me to ideas or wisdom that lives quietly under the constant noise in my mind. I believe this wisdom and creative juice comes directly from my soul — and that my soul, energy in and of itself, is divine and in league with all the other souls and energy in existence all working to shape our collective experience.

As I lay down the cards, I allow the symbolism and metaphor to mix and mingle with everything around me, including time and the other cards on the table. In a Tarot reading, each position has meaning — and the cards that fall in around that card and position support my knowing of what each placement and each card offers. When viewed as a whole, a Tarot reading gives me detailed information to think around and through whatever is on my heart, mind, or soul. The answers in me come to the surface and the cards give me a vehicle to connect with them.

I often speak with Christians about the Tarot. Many are reticent to touch or interact with a Tarot deck, or Tarot reader for that matter. I usually begin my explanation of the Tarot by reminding the individual that they often use their Bible the way I use the Tarot — as a connection to the divine. In their case, that is God. In my case, it’s the universal flow of energy. I believe these are one in the same, and I am aware not everyone agrees with my semantics.