Welcome back to The Hermit's Journey!
In this blog post, we will discuss the significance of ritual in our lives and how tarot can aid you in engaging in ritual for psychological benefits. Ritual plays a crucial role in our human experience, allowing us to connect with the hyper-real in a controlled space, keeping us oriented to the real world. So, in this week's post, we will explore the definition of ritual, how tarot can help you establish your own rituals, and some next steps for nurturing your spiritual life.
Ritual
Rituals can be seen as a series of formalized acts and utterances that create a holistic performance. According to Dr. Matt Rossano, ritual has been instrumental in the development of our social-cognitive functions, helping us understand ourselves, others, and the world around us. Typically, rituals possess four characteristics, which serve as key indicators for creating our own tarot rituals:
Rituals are meant to be attention-grabbing to outsiders.
Rituals follow a formalized structure.
Rituals have a prescribed sequence of events.
Rituals are guided by rules specifying when and how actions should take place.
When considering your tarot rituals, it is essential to keep these criteria in mind.
Script Theory
Tarot rituals can be as simple or elaborate as you wish, as it is your personal practice, and there is no definitive "right way" to do it. However, maintaining consistency in your ritual is vital for integrating it into a cognitive script. A cognitive script is a temporally organized knowledge framework that enables us to navigate procedural processes without conscious awareness. For instance, think about going to your favorite fast-food burger chain; there are specific steps you follow for a successful experience:
Walk into the building.
Get in line at the counter.
Decide on the burger you want.
Place your order with the person at the register.
Pay for your burger.
Wait in a designated space to receive your food.
Listen for your order number.
Return to the counter and collect your food.
Find a vacant table.
Enjoy your burger.
Clear your table (if you're a responsible person).
Leave.
This process becomes automatic and unconscious when practiced enough, leaving room for other thoughts and interactions. Similarly, your tarot reading rituals should allow you to move through the reading without constant attention, granting you space to interpret more effectively. Let's explore the structure of a tarot reading and free up cognitive load.
Scripting the Tarot
At its basic level, a script for a tarot reading might look like this:
Decide on your question or topic for the reading.
Choose an appropriate spread.
Shuffle the deck.
Lay out the cards in the spread's designated order.
Interpret the cards.
Conclude the reading and return the drawn cards to the deck.
From this foundation, you can customize your ritual by considering topics, time, place, and card handling.
Topics
Determine how you select an appropriate topic for a tarot spread and how it is communicated to you as the reader. It's vital to consider the kinds of questions or topics you are willing to read about. Some tarot readers may refuse to provide readings related to health, legal matters, or finances due to their significant impact on the querent's life. However, you can also be more stringent with the topics that you find acceptable to read. In his book The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages (1947), Paul Foster Case limits readings to topics related to: work, love, conflict, or money. Some people only do love readings, while others only use tarot to channel the divine.
Lastly, with regard to topics, you must also consider to what extent you know the topic you are reading about. As I have previously stated on this blog, I do not typically request the querent to asking me their question directly; I prefer to give a cold reading. However, this is just my preference and you should make that decision for yourself. I am typically open to any topic, but I do have preferences for using tarot as a way to plan for the future. Additionally, I do not do yes/no questions when reading. But, this is mostly to get my querent out of a binary way of thinking about their circumstances.
Time
Decide how long you want your tarot readings to be, which will be influenced by the number of cards you draw. A single card reading might take around 5 to 10 minutes, while a larger spread might require up to an hour or even a couple of days for deeper contemplation.
When I am reading other people, I tend to shoot for the 15-20 minute range for a reading. This gives ample time to discuss the topic at hand, as well as give me the freedom to pull as many cards as I need to help answer the querent's questions.
However, when I am reading for myself, I will do regular 10-15 minute readings throughout the week. But occasionally, I'll do one really big spread that I leave out on my table in my office to return to over the course of 2 or 3 days.
Place
Consider the context of the reading and how it might affect the overall script of the ritual. Different contexts call for different decks and different atmospheres. Decide whether you want to use music, candles, incense, crystals, or other props to set the mood and match the intimacy of the reading.
Handling Cards
Lastly, let's consider how to handle the cards. Deciding how your cards will be handled is going to be the bread and butter of your tarot ritual. Regardless of your context or the amount of time you spend doing interpretation, you should follow a standard process to get from a deck of cards in your hand to a spread laid out on the table.
First, consider who is allowed to touch your cards and when. For some tarot readers, they like the idea of collecting energy from the person they are reading, so they will ask the querent to shuffle the deck and to think about their question while shuffling. Other readers do not like to have other people's energy mixed up in their deck and will not let the querent touch the deck at any point. For me, I prefer to do the shuffling myself, but once I am done and the querent has their question in mind, I will ask them to cut the deck.
Next, you'll need to decide how you are going to shuffle. The most common forms of shuffling are the overhand and the riffle shuffle. However, there are many ways to shuffle your deck (see here for more details on shuffling). Some readers will buck the whole system and just dump their cards out on the table and use their two hands to wax-on, wax-off the cards into each other. However, I find that a little impractical. For my own practice, I shuffle the deck until I can get three bridges in a riffle shuffle, then I let the querent cut the deck.
Third, you'll need to decide how to deal your cards out into the spread and you have a few options. You can deal them all out faced down and then turn each card over as you conduct the reading. Or you could deal them all faced up and get a sense of the big picture before you start the interpretation process. I've also seen people add a step where they first deal a small deck of the exact number of cards the spread needs, then take that deck and deal out the cards. I like to get the big picture first, so I will deal the cards out faced up into the spread.
Lastly, after your reading, you'll need to decide how you will get the cards in the spread back into the deck. You might want to pick up each card and return it to its place in the deck at the beginning of the spread by collecting each card in the reverse order you laid them down. You can also move your hand across the table to disrupt the spread and move the cards into a pile, which you reintegrate into the deck. If you want to be super extra, I suppose you could dump the whole deck out onto the table and then collect your cards. I opt for the second option here, and then I will had a final shuffle to reintegrate the cards in the spread into the deck
Concluding Thoughts
Now that you have an idea of how to create your ritual, let's quickly review and share my full ritual with you. Consistency is key in using tarot cards, allowing your cognition to have ample space for conducting a reading. Establish boundaries about when, where, and what topics you are willing to read. Don't be afraid to adapt and change your practice as needed to find what works best for you.
If you get a tarot reading from me, here is my script:
I will ask you to formulate your question in private while I shuffle the deck three times.
Once you have your question, I will ask you to cut the deck.
After you cut the deck, I will deal out the cards face up (usually in an English spread).
I will interpret the cards and engage in a conversation with you about their meanings.
Once we explore all aspects, I will ask if you have further questions or need card clarification.
I will then use my hand to disrupt the spread, collect the cards into a pile, and shuffle them back into the deck.
This process is the standard I follow when reading, with occasional adjustments for special occasions or unorthodox readings.
New Spread: Three-Tiered Decision Making
This week's spread shows how you can modify a base spread to make it more complex or simplified, depending on your needs. Sometimes, spreads may not perfectly match the situation you want to contemplate, and that's where adaptations come in. This particular spread is designed for scenarios where you have clear options and need to make a choice.
Start with the basic form: three cards. This offers a surface reading, providing the bare-bones options before you. Consider what happens if you choose option A versus option B. This part of the spread should take around five minutes to complete.
To complicate it, add four cards to the spread. This provides a perspective on the pros and cons of each path and allows you to look for patterns in suits and numbers present in the reading. Expect this part of the spread to take up to 15 minutes.
Lastly, consider adding 12 cards to the spread for a comprehensive investigation of the strategies for success with each presented choice. This part of the spread may require 30+ minutes or even a couple of days for contemplation.
As a bonus, you can add or subtract branches in the spread to represent different available options. For example, if you need to choose between three options, adjust the 3-card spread to 4.
As always, thank you for reading, and enjoy your tarot journey!
-Tomlin Basilbrook
Comments
Post a Comment