Understanding Your Past With Tarot

Reading the past position honestly

Many spreads give the past its own slot. The three-card draw has it on the left, and the Celtic Cross has a position for what lies behind you. When a card lands there, the temptation is to let it tell you what happened. Turn that around: first write down the real event in one plain sentence, then ask what the picture draws attention to. The Six of Cups in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck shows a child handing a flower-filled cup to a smaller child in a walled garden, and it usually prompts a memory of being cared for, or of a time that looks sweeter from here than it felt then. The Five of Cups shows a cloaked figure fixed on three spilled cups while two stand upright behind, a traditional image of regret that does not notice what survived. The Eight of Cups shows someone walking away from a stacked row of cups toward the hills, and the Ten of Pentacles, with its three generations and family crest, raises the question of what you inherited rather than chose.

• Name the event before you read the card. “I left home at nineteen after a long argument” gives the image something true to work on; “my difficult childhood” does not.
• Separate what happened from what you told yourself about it. Write two columns. The card belongs in the second one, next to your interpretations, not in the first.
• Watch for hindsight. A card will seem to fit any memory once you look for the fit; this is confirmation bias, and it is why the card should prompt questions rather than supply answers.
• Ask what you would say to someone else in that story. The Five of Cups is easier to read kindly when the cloaked figure is a friend.
• Stop at what you can remember. The deck has no access to anything before your own life, so leave past lives, ancestors’ karma and similar claims out of the notebook.