Tarot: My Personal Focus Cards

 

Tarot cards have the ability to speak to us in so many different voices.  They can be emotive, spiritual, or symbolic.  They can be read in terms of numbers or colors, elements or history, or through the images themselves. Their interpretation is frequently dynamic, shifting according to the relative proximity of the cards to one another or per their placement in a predetermined spread.  For those who read reversals, even the orientation of individual cards tells a story.

Many readers have multiple interpretations for every card.  This is part of what makes reading Tarot an intuitive process and can add considerable depth to the messages we receive.  There are times however, in my own experience, that knowing too much about a card has added a layer of fuzziness to a reading.  That is why I find it helpful to look at the cards as individuals not only in terms of the nature of their associations but in regard to number.

I consider most Tarot cards expansive.  I feel that I can explain some of them at relative length.  Apply them to different situations.  Make intuitive or deliberate choices about the way I will interpret them.  Their meaning morphs according many of the factors I discussed at the beginning of this article.  While this is, in itself, an evolutionary process I think that I have a sense of the complexity of certain cards even when my knowledge base is incomplete.

There are other cards however that I consider constant.  They speak to me very directly and there is no expanding upon them, no over thinking them.  There meanings are fixed and they say the same thing over and over whatever the reading.  And while it would be limiting , in my opinion, to read the entire deck this way I find that having a few very focused cards allows me to be, if not predictive, at least a better conduit for spirit.

Here are some examples:

Two of Swords = stop, nothing else on this for now.

Three of Cups = yes or go for it.

The Ace of Swords = write on this.

The Wheel of Fortune = on your path.

Eight of Pentacles = apply yourself.

Very curious to hear what others' focus cards might be!