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7 Ways to Develop Your Tarot Language, by Nancy Antenucci

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

A wise high school teacher told us the secret to learning French was to think in French. That advice was a game-changer for me. Within time, I was speaking and even dreaming in French with an ease and flow.

Every language shapes reality. Tarot is no exception. As a language, it reflects being human in a full spectrum from the mundane to the divine. To stay curious and open to a world of elements, great natural forces and our vast potential is to own the language of a true Magician.

Following are 7 tips in creating Tarot as a second language.

1. Think in Tarot.
   Tarot is a language of images. Learn the rhythms and power of non-verbal communication. Engage with the ways images speak daily. Watch commercials or movies without sound to strengthen skills in reading body language, colors, and symbols. Pay attention to where your focus is being directed when reading a magazine or looking through social media. Gain some basic art principles such as repetition, color, and design to expand your ability to perceive patterns.In addition to surfacing meaning from imagery, become more aware of the four elements—Air, Water, Earth, and Fire. These energies literally are the backbone of tarot and are expressed fully in the Minor Arcana. We are the elements. Air is Mind (Swords), Fire is Expression (Wands), Water is Feeling and Vision (Cups), and Earth is Sensation and Matter (Pentacles). A simple exercise is to sense what each person's major elemental nature is while standing in a checkout line. See yourself and others as these energies.

   Look for tarot everywhere—in church windows, music, poetry, or even clouds. You will find what you seek. Once while babysitting a creative young girl, she pointed to the sky and told me that the Empress was smiling. I looked up, and indeed the clouds seemed to form her shape. I realized back then that tarot on the cards is only one form of the wisdom they hold.

2. Choose a Primary Deck.
   When one learns a language, it helps to stay within one system. Choose the one tarot deck that you will go to again and again as you practice and build your knowledge. A minimal amount of research into the three branches of tarot (the Rider-Waite, the Marseilles and the Thoth) would be helpful in understanding the origins of your primary tarot deck. All additional decks you might use in the future will be variations of the mastery of this primary deck, much like a musician playing other instruments after starting with the piano.
3. Trust What You Sense.
   Initially treat tarot as if it were a new friend that speaks another language. When with them, it would be disruptive to pull out the translation book on the spot to know exactly what they are saying. Receive the messages as best as you can. Don't underestimate what you can gather by the cards' energy, gesture, and tone. Allow this kind of reciprocity to grow as you study the traditional meanings.In your initial phases with tarot, read immediately and intuitively. Act as if you know the message each card holds for you. Don't wait until you have some thorough understanding of all 78 cards. Your comfort in using your sense of the cards will actually create a base to contain the centuries old classical definitions.
4. Find the Noun and Verb.
   As a novice, understanding another language requires the ability to get the jist of the message. The heart of any sentence is the noun and the verb. If you can understand who is active and what is happening, the rest will follow. There will be a lot to unpack in one card (much less a number of them together) that could be overwhelming. Stick with the basics of the main character and the action that is happening card by card. Pretend you are reading a grade school primer. Let go of trying to make sense of all the details.
5. Allow Variation.
   Languages contain a myriad of ways to express and communicate a thought. As you learn to see the cards through your own creative authority, each card will accumulate different layers—your sense or experience of the card, its traditional meaning, the meaning from your deck's little white book, etc.Choose an overall pattern to serve as a basic layer, such as numerology, the elemental influence of each of the Minor Arcana, or correlations for all the Court Cards. Once you are have progressed into using spreads, stay true to the position of the spread and how it frames the card's meaning.

   During a reading, trust the layer that comes to surface. For instance, when reading the Empress card, I could speak of the traditional meaning (Mother, life force, and unconditional love), but the layer that surfaces is my earlier reflection of Empress as a force in our daily life if we just remember to look up. Trust that you are being guided. Traditional definitions are a strong and powerful dimension of the card yet just one layer during a reading. Remain open and curious, and don't attach to outcome. Let tarot and your curiosity lead you.

6. Have a Practice Partner.
   Ideally you would speak to another person fluent in tarot language. The greatest benefit of attending tarot conferences and meet-ups is to be immersed with other tarot speakers. Outside of gatherings, however, find another tarot curious friend to go on this journey with you. Design certain time and goals with lots of readings for yourself and each other from the very beginning. Don't worry about making mistakes and share all discoveries.Listening to other readers is helpful. Many YouTube tarot readers have developed a specific tarot vernacular. For example, a card is often defined by its clarifying card. The card at the bottom is an overview. There are developed definitions given for astrological collectives such as:
   Lovers: Twin Flames
   Moon: Secrets
   High Priestess: Holding secrets from someone
   Page of Swords: Cyber stalker
   Page of Cups: An apology
   Kings and Queens of the same suit: Divine partners
   6 of Cups: Soulmate
   Knight of Pentacles: Very slow
   3 of Wands: Long distance

   Stay open to all interpretations and reading styles as you study and experiment with your own reading style. Keep in mind, though, that there is no one right way.

7. Play.
   Creativity happens when one feels safe and relaxed. Follow your curiosity as you explore and find ways to know each card. Use your cards in various states of being, such as when you are content, tired, bored or sexy to uncover different perceptions. What you bring to the card is as important as what you receive from it. Pretend that you have been taught how to divine in other incarnations, all you need to do in this one is remember. Allow tarot to shape your reality.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2022. All rights reserved.

My fourteen-year-old niece is terrified to be home alone even for a few minutes. She hears noises and is afraid someone is going to break in. The other night, she called her mother hyperventilating because her father left her, her younger sister and their small dog at home for a short time. Except for this anxiety, she is a bright, well-adjusted young girl. I told my sister that she must get to the root of the problem to understand it, and that perhaps she is haunted by a past life experience that creates intense fear of not having adult protection. What do you recommend my sister do to help her daughter overcome her intense fears?

Patricia

Susyn:

It's possible that your niece is suffering from past-life trauma. When seemingly unfounded fears paralyze people, it is often due to an unknown event that occurred in a previous incarnation. There is another reason I suspect this to be the root of her troubles: Aquarius children tend to be relatively fearless, so her anxiety is unusual.

As a psychic, I frequently examine unexplainable fears and illnesses from a past-life perspective, for the therapy involved can often alleviate the trouble in a few short sessions. Natalee's fears are similar to that of a child who is afraid of the dark. Intellectually, she can't put her finger on where the fears originated, but they are very real to her - even paralyzing.

I recommend that you start with a past-life reading to find the source of her fears. If she isn't open to that, you or her mother can investigate it. Once she understands what happened, her panic will start to subside. It would also be helpful to sit down with Natalee and make a list of affirmative actions she can take when she finds herself alone in the house.

For example, I have a client who always gets lost. In the past, it would cause her great panic and confusion, which would naturally just make the situation worse as she tried to find her way. We discovered that in a past life, she had gotten lost in the woods as a young child and perished. After a few sessions, she reported back to me that although she still gets lost on a regular basis, she doesn't panic any longer. Together, we developed a plan of orderly action for when this happens to calm her fears and help her get back on track.

Let's say that Natalee found herself in a similar situation in a past life. Because she was home alone and unable to defend herself, an intruder may have broken in and caused her harm or even killed her. Discovering that this fear comes from something that happened in a past life is the first step. Developing a plan of action to quiet those fears will be next.

You and her mom may want to sit down with her and figure out a safety plan that reads something like this: 1. Lock all the doors and windows in the house. 2. Let a neighbor know that she will be alone in the house and put the neighbor's phone number on speed dial, along with 911. 3. One or both parents will call to check in on an hourly basis, etc.

Help her to develop a list of actions she can take to ensure she is safe. This will unlock the fears she carries and teach her how to protect herself at the same time. Once you do this, her fears should gradually subside.

*****

Oceania:

Family therapy is the most helpful approach when a child is involved, as children tend to carry symptoms for the family. There is anxiety in this family, and Natalee is the carrier. Using therapy terms, she is the IP or identified patient; however, it is likely the marriage or entire system that needs intervention. Knowing his daughter suffers in this way, Dad leaves her in charge. She reaches for Mom, who confides in sister, who seeks the help.

Natalee's fear of being alone may be fear of abandonment and worry about her family breaking up. She may feel tension between her parents or hear them fighting, which threatens her sense of security. Fear of an intruder could represent her mother's real or irrational fear of Dad having an affair. She called Mom quickly enough when Dad left.

Temporary measures may prove comforting until the real issue is uncovered. Carrying a special talisman or object may help calm her. You might gift her with a big stuffed animal that will absorb her nervousness if she hugs it tightly. You might present her with a special ring or necklace with protective powers or a beautiful worry stone that she can rub when she feels anxious.

Systematic Desensitization is effective with anxiety. Using this method, she would be left alone for 10 seconds, then an adult would give her a big hug for successfully enduring that amount of time without panicking. The time would be gradually increased, and at various milestones (5, 10, 15 minutes), she would earn rewards.

It's worth noting that we have two sets of sisters in this story. Just as your niece may feel a burden of responsibility towards her younger sister, you may feel the need to protect your sister or help solve her problems. If she chronically leans on you or you have a pattern of jumping in to rescue her and her children, you may be codependent by enabling and maintaining the status quo. Genuine help may take the form of loving detachment from this family.

Focusing on your sister's life may help ease your own anxiety as you worry about her, but it may also cause you to sacrifice the time and energy you need to create what you want in your own life.

There may be other sibling issues at play: Do you need to feel needed by your sister? Do you feel left out of her life? Are you a big sister know-it-all who wants to solve this mystery? Just food for thought! Of course, the other possibility is you're simply a thoughtful sister and a caring aunt, and they are blessed to have you in their corner.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.