Tarot Conversations: #ibelieveintarot

Trionfi Della Luna, daily spread.

Belief systems are usually instilled foundationally from a very young age. Mine certainly were. It took me a great deal of time and willpower to buck them, to find something I wanted to believe in, to figure out just what I believed as opposed to what I'd been told to, programmed to, and brainwashed to believe.

These days, I like to think I have a solid foundational structure to what I believe, but there's a great deal overlaying that, and it's really subject to change with little to no notice whatsoever. I like to renovate. I like to try out new ideas and concepts before I disregard them entirely. Sometimes they're too similar to the constructs I razed in my twenties for me to even be remotely interested in them.

When it comes to tarot, for me it's about exploring my precognitive tendencies, my divinatory abilities, and opening up the creative outlets and process. I keep anything akin to religious derivative out of my interpretive symbolism, especially that of any modern structured religion.

I began with a JJSwiss Marseille deck, and though my tarot journey has led me along a scenic, pleasant path through a variety of other tarot systems, I find myself coming back again and again to the origin, as I see it. It is my beginning, my point of reference, my pole star.

Even if that deck was condescending as fuck-all and hated my guts, to start with. "You're not listening to what I'm saying so I'm not gonna fucking talk to you anymore," was the general attitude-vibe I got from it. Perhaps I simply picked up on my own insecurities. I've come a long way since those early readings, which I still have somewhere.

I believe that, like most things in life, you get out what you put into tarot. I put a great deal of effort into creating a foundation of understanding and knowledge upon which to build my own personal system of interpretive beliefs. We all read differently, thank fuck. Otherwise there wouldn't be so many gorgeous, vibrant decks to choose from. And the world would be a truly lackluster and boring place, and life would suck balls.

I believe tarot is what you make of it. It can be a channel for evil, if that's what you truly believe it is, and you believe evil is actually a thing (which I don't, haha). Or it can be a channel for positive spiritual growth, if that's how you choose to perceive it. Much as self-fulfilling prophecies, and so much of what comes and goes in our lives, perception is reality. For my first twenty years, I let others dictate what that reality entailed. For the past twenty, I've taken an active role in those parameters, and I like the cottage I've built as a result. It's quite spacious inside. Lots of room for new ideas, exploration, and learning new things. Quite certain there are entire universes hiding in the pantry under the stairs, and probably behind those other doors down the hall as well.

This post is part of the Tarot Rebels Blog Hop. See the other bloggers participating in May's discussion, #ibelieveintarot, by following the link below.