Pulse Check: What is Tarot Turning Into Next?

What are some of the trends and evolutions in tarot that we are witnessing right now?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much tarot has changed over the last decade.

Social media has really opened up how people use tarot. It has changed priorities and conversations around how we use the cards.

And while online communities aren’t always perfect (as I’ve been talking here in recent newsletters), there have been noticeable changes towards embracing more flexible, fluid, intuitive approaches to tarot card reading.

While tarot has always been positioned publicly as an intuitive tool, when I started studying it, I encountered a lot of complex information. Some sources insisted that tarot had to be used in correspondence to astrology, numerology, and Kabbalah.

But layering those systems over top of the card meanings and symbols felt forced, and I was challenged in finding practical guidance about how to translate some of those heady, esoteric connections into real-world interpretations.

Other sources pushed Jungian theory and psychology speak, which felt a bit more accessible, but also didn’t always feel like a perfect fit. I remember one book I was studying from kept writing about tarot’s aces as representing “something coming into your consciousness.”

When I pulled an ace during a reading for a friend and repeated that line, she gave me a funny look:

“What does that mean, exactly?” she asked.

And she was right to wonder, because I wasn’t sure myself. I thought I was doing right by tarot by repeating what I’d learned, but in reality, some of the ideas I was encountering as a tarot student weren’t really helping me to understand how to give a good, relatable reading.

When I broke away from those correspondences and started working from the cards as they are – purely relying on tarot itself, rather than layering other systems on top of it – my readings started to improve.

As I allowed myself to relax into my readings, my intuition started to kick in. I developed an instinct about what to pay attention to in my cards, and when, and why.

But to get there, I had to let go of a lot of the early “rules” I’d learned about tarot.

When I started to teach tarot, I was worried about some of my approaches, because the assumed “right” ways to do tarot were still seen as including astrology, Kabbalah, and numerology through and through.

And even though there were people like me who wanted to break away from that, too, there were also readers who wanted to learn those things – and sometimes they were disappointed to hear that I wasn’t teaching those concepts.

I realized recently that it’s been a long time since anyone has asked me about those esoteric approaches, though. And in looking around at how people are talking about tarot online, and the techniques they are encouraging and focusing on, I see that there has been a shift towards more intuitive, practical, and personal approaches to tarot reading.

Correspondences in tarot are an interesting part of tarot’s history, but they are only one part of a longer tradition. Tarot started out as a card game and became a divinatory tool later on. Everything we know about tarot from a divinatory standpoint came from someone’s imagination.

That’s what I’ve always tried to embrace in tarot: That it is a fluid, ever-changing tool that has always adapted to the context of the times.

In another fifty years, we might be talking about tarot in completely new ways. Everyone who working with tarot now is contributing to its future shape, whether we know it or not.

I encourage you to find your way in tarot: Use the techniques that work for you. Pay attention to what clicks, and what doesn’t.

I am glad to see that more space has been made for intuitive, creative approaches to tarot. There is room for all ways of working with the cards. Even though sometimes it feels like there are strong debates and arguments in the tarot world, when I zoom out, I see a lot of readers finding their own ways forward.

~ Liz

Curious about learning more about tarot? Check out my online courses here.

Categories: : spiritual industry