what tarot reading taught me about my writing practice

I got my first tarot deck when I was 14 or 15.

I’d heard you had to be gifted your first tarot deck. After months of begging several friends to buy me one, eventually, I got my deck. On the edge of a long, hot northern school summer holiday fuelled by underage drinking, awkward teenage sex1 and parties I was too young for, I got the 265 bus from Brampton to Carlisle and convinced a friend to nip into one of those strange, off-kilter shops that’s always mysteriously empty and buy me my first Rider-Waite-Smith deck.

After lingering outside what used to be a Debenhams (which we aptly called Grebenhams because we were all grebs, burn outs, skaters, scene kids, emos and goths), I got my friend a thank you maccies. We sat downstairs eating our chicken mayos while I attempted to read our futures with my mayonnaise-slicked fingers and freshly-pierced ears.

It felt like I’d unlocked the key to my future. That all the answers were at my fingertips - if I could only ask the right questions or access that unreachable higher spiritual plane. I quickly learned, I do not possess ‘the gift’. While it's true I’ve had my fair share of ghostly and supernatural experiences which I still can’t find any science or logic to explain away, tarot felt beyond my grasp. When I turned 19, I quietly retired my love of the cards and disappeared into logic. That felt like the grown up thing to do.

Well. I’m thirty now. And I’ve come to understand an entirely different, less literal way of interpreting tarot cards.

I have a couple of different decks. A traditional RWS deck, a cat deck, a feminist deck, the fountain deck and this extraordinary literary witches tarot deck, which was gifted to me by one of my dearly beloved besties (Amy Twigg). On the day before getting another edit letter back on my next novel, I decided to spend a few hours drawing cards whilst listening to Olivia Rodrigo’s new album.

The first thing I asked this lovely literary witchy deck was what I needed to bring with my into my next draft as a writer and a person. I drew three cards, which I didn’t make any formal attempt to decipher since I don’t have the spiritual gift of connecting with divination. Instead, I wanted to interpret the cards the way I know best, by reading into the symbolism and trying to understand where the cards will guide me next. This very personal way of reading cards might not allow me to do accurate readings for my friends (over a sad 99p maccies), but it does tell you a lot of things you may need to address more directly with yourself.

These are the cards I drew and what my overthinking ass decided they meant. (It turns out this way of reading cards is highly efficient for chronic over thinkers).

• Tree - trees have strong roots, but they are often connected to other plants in the forest. They represent an ancientness that spans beyond a simple human life, and yet in the same breath, represent growing too. This is a card full of contradictions. It wants me to listen to my gut, whilst also staying connected to other important creative voices. I also took it to mean that I need to trust in my past experiences as a person to drive the authenticity of the story whilst knowing that I am still growing as a writer.

• Ghost - I think this card is all about the things that haunt us (and more specifically, the things that haunt me in my own life and the small facets of my past I keep private). I sat with this card for a while and thought a lot about ghosts - both what they mean personally and culturally, and had the realisation that ghosts, although often perceived as a threat, aren’t the intruders we think they are. Ghosts live here with us. I was talking to a good friend about writing whilst processing difficult things and I said it felt like trying to write a book while all the doors in my head were flapping open and shut constantly, showing me glimpses of things I maybe didn’t want to see. My own personal poltergeist (yelp). But ghosts aren’t intruders. I think they’re trying to show me something (hopefully) helpful.

• Lantern - Quite straightforward. A light guiding the way through the dark, but a light we hold for ourselves. Editing is tough and often filled with pencil-snapping levels of frustration and confusion. I think this card is trying to tell me to find my compass (or my lantern) and keep a good clear heading on where I want to go. Btw, I still don’t know what that lantern is yet, but when I find out, I’ll tell you. LANTERN TBC.

On characters:

I also pulled a few cards on my characters too. For my main character, the deck spat out three cards all at once: I got Ghost (AGAIN), Sylvia Plath and Toni Morrison. We’ve covered ghosts, but Sylvia Plath’s (The Dark) card, to me, represents the darkness of our interiority and the places we take ourselves when it’s quiet - I might not be accessing the darkness in the right way yet. Toni Morrison’s (Power) card, felt like a sign that I need to give my heroine permission to step into her power by the end of the story.

I pulled one card each for my supporting cast too. Elixir for my antagonistic force, which asks me to go further into the clinical psychology of his character and how he operates. Volcano for my main character’s best friend, which I think pushes me to give him more heat2. And last, the Shirley Jackson (Family) card for one half of the (very unconventional) love story that takes place in this novel. That card is all about the tension between domestic pleasures and terrors - which won’t make sense to you yet, reader, but is frighteningly relevant.

Sometimes, the answers are inside us all along, and we just need a little bit of prompting to grow as creative people. For me, tarot is less of a mirrored view into my future because it doesn’t reflect back to me what will happen tomorrow or next month, and it doesn’t teach me how to be a perfect person as I navigate those events either. I prefer to view them as locked windows or doors instead. They can help us needle our way through things we aren’t ready to unspool about ourselves and our creative practices.