Tarot Cards: The Emperor, The Hanged Man, Death,
Sacral Chakra
Color association: orange
Location: pelvis, sex organs
The Sacral Chakra is responsible for sexuality, sensuality, pleasure, enjoyment and passion. It is also the energy center that connects us to our mothers, so needless to say very few of us are damage-free in this area. The feeling of being in the “zone” when doing something you love is connected to the Sacral, as well as feeling comfortable and at home in your body. A disconnect from our bodies, emotions or sexuality will result in blockages in this area.
Tarot Cards: Strength, The Devil, The Moon
Solar Plexus Chakra
Color Association: yellow
Location: upper abdomen
Connected to feelings of personal autonomy, control and confidence, the Solar Plexus is the power center of the ego. People with intact Solar Plexus chakras are unicorns who are well adjusted, set healthy boundaries, and are confident without being pompous. Imbalance will look like aggression, insecurity, paralysis or indecision. Ego strength and ability to be assertive are connected to the Solar Plexus.
Tarot Cards: The Fool, The Chariot, The Sun
Heart Chakra
Color association: green
Location: heart center
Psychic Function: clairsentience
Our Heart Chakra is the gentlest, sweetest energy center of the body. Housing our desires for love, connection, community, joy, peace and vulnerability, the Heart Chakra is rarely unscathed in some way by this life of sin. An intact Heart Chakra will equate vulnerability with strength rather than weakness, open up to others and embrace its needs.
Tarot Cards: The Empress, The Star, The World
Throat Chakra
Color association: blue
Location: throat
Psychic Function: clairaudience
The Throat Chakra manages our voice in all of its manifestations. Our desire to be heard in the world, the clarity of our voice and the integrity of our communication live here. The energetic culmination of the first four chakras is expressed through this one, making any blocks to this area especially volatile. Imbalance will manifest as exploding after keeping things bottled up, or experiencing constriction as a result of self-censorship. A balanced Throat Chakra effectively articulates the person’s ideas, thoughts and beliefs.
Tarot Cards: The Magician, The Hierophant, The Lovers
Third Eye Chakra
Color association: purple
Location: between eyebrows
Psychic Function: clairvoyance
Perhaps the most discussed chakra, the Third Eye is known for being the center for our psychic abilities and intuition. An open Third Eye allows perception beyond ordinary sight. Impressions, insights and ability to visualize form here. It also facilitates clear thinking. Imbalance will cause confusion, worry and paranoia.
Tarot Cards: The High Priestess, The Hermit, Justice
Crown Chakra
Color Association: white
Location: top of the head and the few inches directly above it
Psychic Function: claircognizance
The Crown Chakra is not connected to any organs or functions in the body the way the other six are. Rather, the Crown allows us to feel a sense of awe, wonder and connectedness to “all that is.” It is where matter meets spirit and can be felt most in the moments where we are humbled by the insane perfection of the universe. It infuses in us a bone-level knowing that we are not alone. A blocked Crown Chakra will result in loneliness, victimization and alienation. If overcharged, it will be difficult to ground, identify with your body and feel at home on earth.
Tarot Cards: Temperance, The Tower, Judgment
Crystals
Crystals and gemstones have been lauded for their energetic properties since the beginning of written history. Whether as protective talismans, fertility aids or enhancements of personal power, the intuitive draw people feel with crystals is long-documented and undeniable. You don’t have to crack a history book to find evidence of this connection. At Everyday Magic, the heart of the store is a long table covered in crystals, and kids lose their shit over it. I, too, was one of those children. I just never grew out of it. It is safe to say that I am now a full-fledged crystal junkie, and my collection alarms even fellow gemstone enthusiasts.
At the store’s opening party, a little boy walked me around the crystal table, picking up stones and intuiting their properties. He was dead on for each one. Aside from reducing me to tears at my own damn party, it reinforced my belief that there is a part of us that knows this already. Of course different stones, depending on where they grew and under what conditions, have specific energetic properties. Of course there is a collective consciousness we can tap into to access this information. Of course magic is real. Duh.
Most crystals correspond to chakras based on their colors and are used for a variety of purposes. Whether holding selenite in your hand or placing it on your body for high vibe meditations, keeping a lepidolite or labradorite on your bedside table for restful sleep or lucid dreams, putting an amethyst in the bath for a little bitta bliss, placing citrine on your deck to increase concentration or carrying carnelian in your pocket for an energetic boost, crystals are a simple and beautiful way of enhancing your tarot practice and cultivating a sacred space. There are stones to soothe the nervous system, stimulate cellular repair, facilitate communication, elucidate dreams and call in spirit.
Before pulling cards for a client, I close my eyes and tune in to them. It’s a relatively simple process of taking a few deep breaths, letting your own shit fall by the wayside and focusing only on them. You’ll often notice sensations or emotions that are not connected to you personally, and it’s because, for a moment, you are allowing the other person’s energy into your own field. Depending on what I feel from them, I offer a crystal to hold or place one on the table next to them.
If I’m feeling really crazy, I’ll lead a client to my crystal shelf and tell them to pull ones they feel drawn to. Once they do, I explain the properties of the stones they chose. There is always a little awakening that occurs upon realizing their choices are completely appropriate for them and what they are going through. If you are a crystal novice, this is how I recommend starting your collection. Choose first, research later. You will not pick the wrong ones.
In the hour I spend with a person, my job is to reflect their power, competence and beauty back to them. That is light work. There are less than scrupulous readers who will edit the information they deliver to cultivate dependence. If you’ve ever gotten a reading where you heard something like, “Ah yes, you have a dark cloud blocking your third eye chakra, but I will do a ritual on the full moon that will clear it for only $500,” then you’ve experienced that. That, by the way, is bullshit. Choosing crystals intuitively, or letting the people you read for do so, is a small way of illuminating that we already know what we need in order to heal ourselves.
When choosing a crystal, hold it in your left hand and close your eyes. The left side of the body is the feminine, or receptive side. Notice how it feels in your hand, trying to not pay too much attention to aesthetic. My all-time favorite healing stones look like rough, dirt colored little balls. There are some crystals that are truly stunning—the iridescence of labradorite, the gemmy sparkliness of celestite and amethyst, the ocean-like turquoise waves of larimar—but the ugly ducklings of the crystal kingdom are not to be discounted.
Crystals by Chakra
Root: garnet, black tourmaline, smoky quartz
Sacral: carnelian, moqui marbles, shiva lingam
Solar Plexus: citrine, pyrite, golden healer
Heart: rose quartz, malachite, amazonite
Throat: kyanite, larimar, blue lace agate
Third Eye: lapis, amethyst, labradorite
Crown: clear quartz, selenite
Meditation and Intuition
I cannot overstate the importance of meditat
ion not only in reading tarot, but in reducing stress, sharpening intuition, expanding consciousness and improving quality of life in general, which could be why it’s so hard to do. Like tarot, meditation can be a daunting proposition for people who don’t really know what it is, a cool-kids club for the early-rising, kombucha-drinking yippies who I hate-follow on social media. To an outsider, meditation can feel like taking vitamins—you know you should, but then you’re standing in the health food store wondering why some are refrigerated and having a meltdown over how many types of Vitamin B exist.
My dear friend Alex practices Vedic Meditation, a mantra-based technique that leads the mind into a trance state. Similar to the soupy moments between wakefulness and sleep, this form of meditation allows thoughts and images to run through your psyche without being consciously grasped or processed. Alex compares it to a nap, a cup of coffee, a shower or an energetic release depending on her needs at any given time. It has become an essential part of her life, and she will awkwardly meditate on the subway or go into another room when hanging out with people when in need of its restorative properties. She could be cited in a scientific journal about the health benefits of a mindfulness practice because of the immediate, practical results she sees from it. The long-term, positive effects of a general meditation practice are many and can be felt mostly outside of the moments spent in stillness.
While this form of meditation is appealing to me, I lack patience, time and discipline. I am not naturally inclined to sit in stillness, the same way I contemplate breaking one of my arms on purpose when faced with the prospect of going to the gym. And just like it doesn’t make sense for someone who has never worked out before to go to a CrossFit class, it is not reasonable for an untrained mind to sit in silent meditation for an extended period of time. My mind is a stir-crazy hamster that requires direction. If I sit in silence I will start obsessing over e-mails, what I want to eat, what does my dog really think about all day, etc.
Rather, I use shorter, guided meditations tailored to an intention. A simple search will yield thousands of results for specific types of meditation—grounding, focus, clarity, restful sleep, stress reduction, body scans—ranging from two minutes to several hours. There are also meditations connected to esoteric and metaphysical practices—chakra healing, past life regression, astral travel and connecting with your spirit guides, and this is where meditation has been an invaluable tool for me. For someone who never considered themselves woo-woo or overtly spiritual, the experiences I’ve had and things I’ve seen through this practice have blown my mind over and over again. When I first started meditating, it was with the sole intention of getting to better know my cards. I randomly selected a card out of my deck and gazed at it for several minutes until memorized. I would then close my eyes and visualize myself stepping into the scene of that card and exploring it as a way to further connect with the images.
Since then, I’ve travelled to seventeenth-century Massachusetts, been taken to an underwater cave and initiated by The High Priestess, communed with ascended masters who informed me they’ve followed me throughout every lifetime, felt orbs of light enter my body and heal energetic wounds and received messages from the departed. I would not have a fraction of the faith and certainty that I do in the realness of magic if it weren’t for my experiences in meditation. Nor, I believe, would I be able to read tarot. The unexpected nature, clarity and precision of what has been revealed to me gave me the confidence to speak my intuition in a reading.
Being a successful reader is contingent upon a strong intuition, with meditation being among the most effective ways to develop it. Regardless of the outlet, meditation is a way of spending unplugged time with yourself. Anything that gets you away from your phone, computer, the constant noise and buzz and low hum of life into your interior landscape will assist in this endeavor. Running, collage, cooking, yoga and gardening can all induce meditative state. The litmus test for the efficacy of your meditation practice is if you can be away from your phone for five minutes without obsessing over whether you got any new likes without wanting to jump out of your skin. If the answer is yes, you’re on the right track. It’s worth noting that, with the development of intuition, the force of your longing does a lot of the work. To long for something is to manifest it. Again, energy follows intention, and you will find that if the genuine desire is there, the results will follow.
Building Altars
My first altar was a white IKEA shelf, then a windowsill and now a little table on my bedroom floor. An altar is simply a dedicated space for the mindful placement of meaningful objects—the visual expression of a desire. Just like the oven is for cooking (I assume, I’ve never used mine) or a couch is for nesting and binge-watching Netflix, an altar is for the ritualistic depositing of items that reflect an intention.
It doesn’t matter where in your home you put your altar, as long as it is visible to you and cleared for that specific use. One of my girlfriends has an altar on top of her bathroom mirror and it works just fine.
While teaching tarot, I have my students make weekly altars to reflect the card we were studying. I asked that the altar be a physical manifestation of their understanding of that card. For The Empress, which is lush feminine energy, their altars were full of flowers, chocolate, cosmetics, heart chakra crystals, photos of children and mothers, symbols of birth, fertility, creativity, heirlooms passed down from the women in their family. During The Devil week, which is bondage, vices, karmic blockages and addiction, they shared altars housing objects like booze, cigarettes, porn, photos of exes, cash, handcuffs, black and red candles, and symbols of where they felt the most stuck. Every item you put on your altar should hold some meaning and correspond to its theme.
Recently a good friend of mine had a job interview for a position he really wanted. I made an altar for him to support him in getting the job, including Solar Plexus stones, the company’s business card, a green candle for abundance, money, yellow flowers, essential oils and tarot cards reflecting professional success and fulfillment—The Chariot, Eight of Pentacles, Ten of Pentacles and Ten of Cups. I built the altar the day he interviewed and kept it up until he heard back about the position.
Yes, he did get the job. Abracadabra, bitches.
I change my altars frequently depending on what’s happening in my life at any given time. I recently got out of a long-term relationship and built an altar to support me in finding comfort in aloneness after spending almost a consistent decade in various relationships. It contained photos of friends, mementos of my accomplishments as an individual, books, ticket stubs from trips taken alone and fresh flowers.
If energy follows intention, then making an energetic investment in the form of building an altar is a powerful act of ritual and manifestation. In a perfect world, our whole home is our altar—with each object, whether it be a book or a throw pillow, specifically chosen to energetically support us. William Morris advised, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” Your altar is a physical representation of your spiritual house. Decorate accordingly.
Suggested Altar Items
Crystals
Herbs
Photos
Notes
Tarot cards
Trinkets
Candles
Books
Plants and flowers
Cards/keepsakes
Journaling
Is journaling magic? Why, yes it is. “Words are, in [Dumbledore’s] not so humble opinion, our most inexhaustible form of magic.” Journaling is a gift that younger us gives present-day us, an opportunity to feel our evolution beyond the capabilities of memory. Read your journal from five years ago, documenting what mattered to you most, how you were feeling, what you were going through, details that would otherwise be forgotten, and then say there is not magic in the act of recording our experiences in this way.
An initiation occurs when you agree to begin a journey with the tarot—a potent esoteric t
ool with a collective history. I cannot say enough that it is more than the intellectual study. I have been both a student and a teacher of tarot and found this to be true over and over again. Paradigm shifts, changes in consciousness, vivid dreams, profound adjustments in the way we experience and perceive the world are all common occurrences. I journaled religiously during my first year working with the tarot, and every time I read the entries I revisit an amazing, forgotten thing that took place during that time. It is hard for people to see how much they’ve changed over time, because we spend every day with ourselves and even massive changes occur gradually. It can be similar to meditation insofar as knowing it’s a good thing and resisting it anyway, but you rob yourself of clear hindsight by not documenting your initiation. You will thank younger-you later.
The tarot assists in sorting through mental clutter and reaching the heart of the matter—touching on our true motivations and desires. Writing is transference of mind clutter from head to paper, a commitment to yourself and your growth and honoring the worthiness of your experience. It is also worth recording your dreams during this time, as part of the initiation process can happen during sleep, when the veil of the ego is thinnest.
Once you have your deck, fan out the cards in front of you. Sit with each card and let words come to mind. Before you ever pick up a guidebook, (too late, suckaaa!! But seriously, put this book down and do this now) lay out each card and spend a moment with it, writing down any words or feelings that come up. Let your mind be blown when you consult a guidebook and realize you already intuited each card. This, above anything else, will serve as confirmation that we all have some gut-level recognition of these images.
Space Clearing
Similarly to building altars, space clearing is a ritualistic act that helps carve out a sacred container around using your cards. Connected to the belief that dense, residual energies can collect in an environment or object, space clearing is the mindful dispelling of these energies from your space. An energetic—and in some cases a literal—air purifier.
WTF Is Tarot Page 18