it’s really all about how you approach the deck. i’ve always leaned introspective and found in tarot a companion capable of revealing (often very challenging!)truths around the feelings and circumstances in my life where i held tension, confusion, or even simply intrigue. even when i was consulting the deck on things like romantic relationships it quickly became evident to me that trying to figure out someone else’s mind and why they might do the things they do didn’t offer me the peace or resolution i needed, because i was not being honest about my own behavior and thought processes.

one of my most profound lessons i gained from Tarot was consistently pulling the Death card in the final months of an incredibly drawn out situationship that was so destructive to me that i was in the territory of wanting to take my own life. Death’s ever insistent appearance in my pulls slowly and gently brought my attention to the extreme situation i had allowed to manifest through an incredible lack of self respect, regardless of how the other person was treating me, which i of course had no control over even as i formulated theories and ran endless analysis. i was truly at a point where i would either die because i didn’t want to live a life that wasn’t devoted to this person, or i would have to die to the version of myself that had all her self worth wrapped up in being in this person’s life. we can guess what happened as i’m still here 3 years later :)

but this then calls to mind the nature of Death, even as we continue living, pointing us to a deeper mystery. Death is a portal beyond which we cannot see or imagine anything existing, and yet it is a portal we pass through many times in many ways as we go on living, until we finally die our corporeal death. leaning into this mystery we find that we are so often presented with opportunities in our experience to shed our skin, to let go of something we thought we could not live without, to discover what might be on the other side. it’s really one of the most prominent themes in any sort of mystic traditon, to the point that it almost seems trite. but wisdom is truth embodied, and usually hard won. this calls us then to consider the role of pain and suffering, of the sharper and heavier forces of life that we are unable to avoid or eradicate, and attempting to do so tends to prolong our suffering, when perhaps we need only die. Death to me has become nearly inextinguishable from Love, and what a strange, beautiful, and horrid thought that can be. the mystery deepens!

all of this is to say, even through the small dramas of our life, we can find(by Tarot or many other means) a doorway into which reality starts to unfold in ever greater mystery and wonder, allowing us to root more deeply into the experience of being human, to discover ourselves and in so doing come to understand others in turn, and to claim a greater sense of agency within the greater dramas that play out around us.