Lesson Four – Psychic Ability & Reading the Tarot

 Topics

• Types of Psychic Abilities
• Divining with the Tarot
• Keys to Psychic Development
• Consequences and Gifts of Developing Your Psychic Ability
• Spiritual and Soul Path of Tarot Reading
• The Spirits of the Circle Spread

Introduction

Everyone possesses “psychic ability”.  Unfortunately most people don’t actively work to develop it or rely on it (they use it but may not give it much credence).

There are 5 psychic senses just as there are 5 physical senses. And just as with physical senses, a strength in one noticeably more than the others, is believed to be genetic,

Clairvoyance – “seers” connect the inquirers problems to psychic sources and prescribe ritual actions and medicines to them – they can see auras and energy fields around a person and can see things about a person through a personal object the client has touched or used.

Telekinesis – Ability to move objects with the mind; light bulbs burning out, cracks in tables suddenly appearing, and psychic healing.

Telepathy – Knowing what is in the mind of another; empathic and deep understanding of others often what is in the unconscious mind of the client.

Mediumship – A “channeler” is a person is able to go into full trance and be inhabited by souls of the dead; these communications through the medium may be verbally relayed or through the use of automatic writing,

Precognition – The psychic receives unbidden visions and dreams of what is destined to happen.

Divining with the Tarot

The reader moves into an altered consciousness, sometimes called a “flow” state.  Attention, activity, and involvement are intensely focused without regard for a particular objective.  The self-forgetfulness concentrates skill, knowledge, and subliminal awareness at the service of the patterns that emerge in answer to the client’s question.  What results is a highly creative state that dissociates from the normal personalities involved to weave new patterns and stories through a heightened awareness. It is a game, played with symbols (“archetypal Tinkertoys”) that have a more than personal power.  The results of this game include a feeling of connection and spiritual renewal as well as astoundingly accurate predictions.  It develops your ability to see yourself as part of a great interconnected whole, an awareness of spirit moving in and through the events of your daily life.

Keys and Exercises to Developing Your Psychic Ability

Connect to Your Deck

It is your psychic connection to your cards that will constellate powerful psychic insights during a reading.  This is another reason why developing a personal relationship with your cards is so important.

Exercise:  Spend 5 minutes each day drawing a card randomly from your deck and putting yourself inside the card.  What has it told you that you needed to hear right now?  Where has this card taken you in the psychic world?  Did you “hear” anything spoken?  Did anything fly, swim, or run by at the corner of your eye?  Journal these daily insights.

Be here now.

The more you are in the present the more able you are to tap into a “broader” reality – the reality that exists in a timeless, fluid, unseen world.

Exercise: Ask yourself several times throughout the day – what is around me right now?  Look around carefully, tune your hearing up, ask yourself, “Am I fully in the present at this moment?”  Being present in the moment takes practice (believe it or not, this is especially true for highly intuitive people!)

Nurture a sense of PLAY

Laughter, joy, joking, curiosity all enhance psychic ability. Just as our dreams use make use of irony, jokes and simile to get their point across, our psychic sense makes leaps forward when we open our hearts, drop our “serious” attitude towards ourselves, and play with it.

Exercise: After you have completed the exercise above, try to determine what is the joke your daily card is making?  How is it making you laugh?  Can you conjure a cartoon in your mind of the card that’s funny?

Develop excellent listening skills.

As you listen to others more carefully, the better your ability will be able to listen to your own inner self with better acuity.

Exercise: Over the next week when in conversation with someone, repeat quietly to yourself what the person has said to you.  If you don’t think you’ve heard them correctly, ask them to repeat what they just said. Really, really listen to the nuances, the tone, emotions, and thoughts that are being conveyed by this person.  Then listen very carefully to your own thoughts in response to what this person has said to you.

Trust your intuition and the Tarot

While listening to your inner voice, look carefully at the card that has been turned up and say what you see and hear.

Exercise: Lay all your cards out in a fan shape and draw one card and say just what hits your mind no matter how nonsensical it seems.  Allow the energy of the psychic perception to zip past your ego-editor.  What message did you just convey and who do you think it’s meant for?  Journal what you learned during this exercise.

Practice going into someone else’s space.

Imagine your client being the one you are seeing in the Tarot card…Act upon your intuitive knowledge. Take an attitude of openness, and strive to be non-judgmental.

Exercise:  Draw a card and see the character as you in the card – what is the character doing?  Do whatever it is the character is doing and journal your insights while performing this action.

Surround yourself with Symbols

Pick symbols that represent your developing psychic ability. ie. Totems, spiritual icons, art – this will constellate a deeper relationship with the unseen world (The Magician)

Exercise:  Construct a presentation of a powerful dream you’ve had. A Tarot spread is very dreamlike which is no accident – dreams and Tarot connect to the collective unconscious, archetypes, and timelessness.  Put your “dream” up on a wall where you can look at it regularly.  These dream symbols are representations of your own archetypal unconscious contents.  Pick a Tarot card that best corresponds with your dream picture.   You’ve just made your first Tarot card!

Begin a Psychic Journal

Document psychic experiences both as a reader and client of the Tarot.

Exercise:  Begin a section in your Tarot journal titled, “Psychic Experiences” and get it started with one psychic experience that had a powerful impact on you.  Every time you do a reading for yourself or someone else that forecasts accurately what was going to happen in this person’s life, note it in this section of your journal.

Remember to keep your 4 Primary Elements in Balance

Fire, (intuition, passion, action) water, (love, flow, receptivity) earth, (practicality, grounding, body awareness) and air (breath, objectivity, intellectual stimulation).  When these elements are out of balance in our daily lives this will impact on your ability to perceive and act upon information from the unseen world.

Exercise:  Draw up a chart of the four elements and beside each element identify how this element manifests in your life.  In one column note where you notice it the most.  In another column note what time of day you notice which element active in your life.  And in the last column note how you can balance the times when one element is more prominent than another.

Consequences of Developing and Using Your Psychic Talent

• Gaining more information than you may want to know.
• Greater responsibility which can lead to greater worries.
• Dependency needs of others.
• May be regarded as abnormal by community.
• People expecting you to be a worker of miracles.
• More power karmic choices – “Do I share this psychic flash with client?”
• Energy surges from the unconscious to the ego which can initially weaken ego strength.
• The dark side of the Magician – the Trickster – begins to act forcefully in your life.
• Eerie feelings.
• Angry, frightened, or overly excited clients.
• Continual testing by skeptics.
• Making enemies of people who will be frightened or at least intimidated by your ability.

Gifts

• Profound knowledge related to a reality only a few access.
• Psycho/spiritual growth.
• Greater intimacy with others.
• Improved health and well being.
• Regular confirmation that there is an unseen reality.
• Being able to truly help others.
• Becoming a virtuoso Tarot reader. Not just good but very
• Popularity, and increased client base.
• Forewarned is forearmed which you’ll be able to personally apply.
• Self confidence (stronger ego).

The Alchemical Marriage of Soul and Spirit

The 14^th Dalai Lama (taken from Giles book The Tarot  Methods, Mastery and More),

“Soul is at home in the deep, shaded valleys.  Heavy torpid flowers saturated with black grow there.  The rivers flow like warm syrup.  They empty into huge oceans of soul.

Spirit is a land of high, white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers.  Life is sparse and sounds travel great distances.

People need to climb the mountain, not simply because it is there but because the soulful divinity needs to be mated with the spirit.”

Spirit seeks peaks of experience, the grand vision, the transporting moment-while soul wanders the valleys, sensitive to the small patterns of darkness and half-light, the lush envelopments of matter, the inward eddies of feeling.

Soul: irrational, feminine, moist, deep, dark, changeable, curvilinear – Minor Arcana speak about the intricacies of everyday living – personal relationships, moods, fears and wishes, problems and feelings

Spirit: rational, masculine, dry, high, bright, sure, sharp-edged

Major Arcana points to doorways to something beyond – powerful images controlled by fate, signposts on a path to “enlightenment”

Mother Earth and Father Sky – lunar Goddesses and solar Gods (Moon and Sun Cards)  Shiva and Shakti, Isis and Osiris, Apollo and Diana – Yin and Yang

Two Ways of Working with the Tarot

The “spiritual” Tarot path, which pervades the “esoteric” philosophies and mystical societies.

The “soul” Tarot path, which informs the use of Tarot for discovery, decision-making, and problem solving.

Tarot practitioners are temperamentally drawn to one approach or the other, and they will tend to see and use the Tarot in a way that is either spiritual or soulful.

Spirit is generally more approved in our society than soul.  (Thomas Moore’s work Care of the Soul is about our loss of “soul” being the “greatest malady of the twentieth century”, when soul is neglected, “it doesn’t just go away; it appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence and loss of meaning”)  When we bring “spirit” and “soul” together we alter this negative pattern.

Workbook Exercise

The Spirits of the Circle Spread

This spread is designed for exploring six influences on your life and identity, and to gain insights into how you could work with the gifts they give to you, and the challenges they sometimes offer.

This spread will answer your query, “Tell me about my psychic ability and how I might use it in reading the Tarot for others.”

The shape of the spread is the following,

Card 1 – The Self. This is how you feel at this time about your psychic ability.

Card 2 – The Spirit of the Ancestors.  This card offers insights into the psychic abilities you have inherited and been influenced by in your family.

Card 3 – Spirit of the Tribe.  This card suggests how you are being influenced by your friends, culture and community regarding the development of your psychic ability.

Card 4.  Spirit of Time.  This card offers insights into the way your psychic development is being influenced by the times you are living through, by your age, or by the life-stage you’ve reached.

Card 5.  Spirit of Place.  This card indicates how you are being influenced by your home, or by the area and country in which you live in the development of your psychic ability.

Card 6.  Spirit of the Journey.  This card tell you how your psychic ability is being influenced by your past lives.

Card 7.  Awen.  This card offers you insights into the way your psychic ability is being fed by Spirit.

Be daring and say anything that “pops” into your head – this is a time to take a risk!  Check out your psychic perceptions but STICK TO THE CARDS THAT SHOW UP IN THE READING!

Write your insights regarding your psychic ability.  Pay special attention to the advice and guidance that the Tarot has given you in this reading and apply these insights to future readings.

Lesson Four – Psychic Ability and Reading the Tarot

• Psychic Ability
• Initiate’s Journey to Magical Readership