Tarot as a Therapeutic Tool: Bridging Insight and Healing
Tarot is often seen as a fortune telling and mystical tool but it can be a powerful therapeutic tool. Beyond fortune telling, tarot can also be used to serve as a mirror for our unconscious beliefs and thoughts. Tarot can serve our emotion healing in many ways. For example if you look at the 78 cards in the deck and you pull the fool. The fool often represents taking a leap of faith, being spontaneous, and embracing child-like energy. If you pull this card there may be something you need to take a risk with whether it's a new relationship or a business adventure. When utilizing tarot for mental health and in therapy in general the imagery depicted in the cards can further our understanding of ourselves and our emotions. One example would be the moon card. The moon is a card about subconscious beliefs, confronting fears, and illusions. The imagery for this card is generally 2 dogs barking by a river or body water at the moon. To me this could mean a few different things. First, the moon generally represents emotions, intuition and the subconscious. Therefore if you pulled this during a therapy session, the card may be influencing you to pay attention to your intuition and your emotions.
How can tarot be used in therapy sessions?
You can utilize tarot in therapy in various ways. One way you could use tarot is by hand picking cards that represent different emotions you are going through. Let's say you are currently moving through grief. You may draw the 5 of cups or the hermit. The 5 of cups represents a sense of loss. If you look at the 5 of cups, you can see 2 cups that are spilt over. This often represents loss and sadness. However in the card 3 of the cards are still standing up. You could interpret this in many ways, one of which is that there are still things in your life worth nurturing and caring for despite moving through big emotions like grief. If you utilize the hermit card, this card generally represents someone spending time alone and someone who is intentionally trying to go inward. If you are moving through grief this might encourage you to spend more time alone or to utilize specific self care practices like meditation or journaling. Another way you can utilize tarot in therapy is by creating a specific spread. For example.. You may be struggling with general anxiety and want to utilize tarot cards to help you gain insight and understand the anxiety a bit better. A spread you could utilize could be 1. The root cause of the anxiety 2. How the anxiety is currently presenting 3. How you can heal and move forward.
Another way tarot can facilitate healing is by connecting you to your intuition. My belief is that developing a relationship with your intuition can help you create a deeper relationship to yourself and your emotional landscape. Tarot can be a reflective tool that helps you connect deeper to the intuitive side of yourself. There are even cards in tarot that represent your intuition such as the moon, the star and the high priestess. When we pull the moon card, it is often an invitation to start paying attention to our intuition. When we pull the star card it is often letting us know to honor our intuition by focusing on our personal healing. Finally the high priestess is a powerful card inviting you to find strength in your intuition and mystery.
Tarot can also be utilized in therapy by blending it with different approaches. For example you could utilize tarot with narrative therapy. Narrative therapy is generally about stories. If you are wanting to rewrite a certain story in your life you could utilize tarot cards to support you directly in that. Another therapy tarot can be utilized with is IFS. IFS also known as internal family systems is a therapy that believes we all have different parts within ourselves. Tarot can be utilized to analyze the different parts and for deeper integration.
Although tarot historically has been used for fortune telling and prediction it can also be a powerful healing resource in therapy. It can help us explore our emotions in a deeper and more creative way. Now more than ever we need creativity in the mental health space! I hope this blog gave you some ideas and inspiration to use tarot in your therapy.
