Tarot for writing inspiration
This week I attended a small class on using tarot (or oracle) cards for getting inspiration when you are writing. Thank you Bonnie Jacoby, who taught the class. It was a fun exercise. While I’ve been reading the cards for around thirty years, I hadn’t tried using them when writing.
The teacher offered several layouts, starting with the basic 3-card past, present, future (beginning, middle, end; protagonist, antagonist, theme) to get a new story started. Today or tomorrow, I’m sitting down with my ideas notebook and pulling some cards to see if I can link them into story ideas.
Even more useful would be to pull out the cards when I feel stuck. I often hit points in writing a story that I just don’t know what happens next. I normally hop to a different part of the story to write and come back to the part that has me stuck later. Next time I get stuck, I’m going to pull a card or three and see if that can inspire me out of my rut.
I know a few people who use the cards as inspiration for poetry. They generally use a single card and take in it’s art and/or meaning. I bet I could do a three-card reading and develop a little story for a poem. It might or might not be one of the silly ones I publish on this site, we will have to see. If it is, I’ll let you know.
If you have tarot or oracle cards, I challenge you to use them this way. If you don’t, then find another source of art—perhaps an art book or online (or Magic/collectable card games) that you can use singly or line up in threes to interpret. Good luck!