By: Cindie Chavez ©2018 – Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.
As a tarot reader, and tarot card collector for nearly 20 years, it always amazes me how many benefits I get from a tarot deck. Here are 10 ways a tarot deck can make your life better.
Beauty/Art – I bought my first tarot deck for a number of reasons – but right at the top of the list was that every deck contained 78 little works of art! Imagine that, like a little art museum in a box that could fit in my purse or the palm of my hand! The value of art and beauty becomes obvious if we try to imagine a world without it. Enjoying beauty and art stimulates our natural creative faculties, and can lift our spirits and improve our emotional experience. And although beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, beholding beauty is one of the great joys in life. However you define beauty, with the hundreds of different tarot decks available you’re sure to find one to your liking. Owning and enjoying a tarot deck is a wonderful way to enjoy art and beauty every day.
Spiritual Practice – Tarot is a lovely addition to a spiritual practice, and a spiritual practice is essential for staying grounded and cultivating inner peace. A solid practice seems like a no-brainer with all of the chaos going on in the world today. Whether you’re more comfortable with spiritual practices that are religious and/or ritualistic in nature, such as prayer, meditation, or magic – or you’d rather stick with more secular spiritual practice such as contemplation, enjoying nature, or appreciation of the arts, tarot fits in nicely with a wide variety of personal preferences.
Mental Well-Being – Did you know that many mental health professionals, including therapists and psychologists, use the tarot as part of their counseling practice? Never mind that so many movies promote an image of tarot reader as gypsy fortune teller – usually turning over the “Death” card while creepy suspenseful music plays in the background and the querent is shaking in their boots (and no disrespect to gypsies or fortunetellers!), but tarot has been used for decades as an aid to therapists and counselors. The archetypal images speak to a deep place within us and have the potential to unlock mysteries, much in the same way that our night time dreams can if we pay attention to them.
Continuing Education – As a lifelong learner, I’m always game to learn something new. Learning new things is a great way to keep your neural networks active and it’s also a sure way to feel a sense of accomplishment which is great for your self-esteem. Learning new things is part of a great plan to stay youthful and to keep life interesting. Tarot, with its incredible depth of symbolism and wisdom is an opportunity to learn something new every day – for as long as you want to learn it. After nearly 20 years I feel like I’m just scratching the surface.
Improved Memory – Another benefit of learning something new is that it keeps your memory function sharp. Remember those flashcards you used in school to memorize answers for your upcoming exams or to learn new vocabulary and spelling words? Tarot just might be the coolest flash cards ever.
Heightened Intuition – Intuition has been called a “secret weapon” for making decisions in business and in life, helping us to uncover knowledge and truth that might not be obvious on the surface. Whether you believe that intuition is a psychic ability, or just our brain’s incredible ability to analyze information (or maybe a bit of both) most of us can acknowledge a time or two when we wish we would have “listened to our gut.” That aha moment when we do the forehead slap and say “I KNEW I should have done xyz!” The good news is that intuition is an ability that we all possess as human beings. Some of us may be gifted with an unusually strong intuition that seems to come naturally, but all of us can cultivate a stronger intuitive sense. The first step to hearing our intuitive voice is to listen, and that requires setting some time aside to get quiet and open our awareness. I can’t think of a better tool than the tarot for this activity.
Different Perspectives – Like the Hanged Man card, the tarot encourages us to look at circumstances from a new perspective (and no, this isn’t an image of a man hanged to death, but instead it’s an image of a person hanging upside down from a tree limb!) When we get into the habit of seeing things from a variety of perspectives the result is often freedom from limiting beliefs. Developing a habit of seeing many viewpoints keeps us from drawing conclusions and being too quick to make judgments. This alone is worth the effort of learning the tarot.
Dream Language – Vivid dreams are a sign of health, and what better way to spice up our dream life than to learn a new visual language. Our subconscious often speaks to us in metaphors and symbols – and this is the tarot’s forte. Tarot imagery often finds its way into my dreams, allowing me to get a new perspective on current events in my own life.
Focus for Meditation – As a longtime practitioner of meditation, I find that having a focus for meditation is useful – especially in times when I’m very busy and my mind wants to think about the million and one other things I have going on. Choosing a different tarot card each day to use as a focus for meditation is not only useful for meditation practice but it’s also a great way to learn the tarot.
Improved Health – Just about every health malady is either created by or exacerbated by stress, and meditation has been proven to reduce stress. Developing a spiritual practice reduces stress as well, so tarot seems like the perfect addition to other healthy habits.
Whether you’re looking for a way to connect with Divine, hear from your higher self, increase your intuition, decrease stress, learn something new, improve your memory, experience more vivid dreams, or just add a dose of beauty into your life, tarot is a great idea!
Cindie Chavez is known as “The Love & Magic Coach”. She is the creator of MOONLIGHT™ – A Course in Manifesting Love and she has some great free stuff for you at her website: www.cindiechavez.com
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Cindie Chavez is known as “The Love & Magic Coach”. She is the creator of MOONLIGHT™ – A Course in Manifesting Love and she has some great free stuff for you at her website: www.cindiechavez.com
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