Tarot is, if nothing else, a book of symbols. Not only is it steeped in history and archetypes and myth, it also contains visual details that help tell a bigger story - something beyond what the initial imagery may suggest. They say a picture is worth a thousand words and when it comes to tarot, I think it’s actually more.

In this post, we’ll be providing you a run down of the common symbols you will find in tarot along with some basic key words. Please note, there is far more to each symbol than what we’ve captured below. You may see some of these details differently and that’s ok. This is simply where our work has taken us, but it is not the final or only world. As well, each symbol may carry a slightly different meaning in the context of the card you can find itself on, the way it interacts, its colour, its size etc.

We’ve also included some of the cards where you can find each symbol. That part is also not conclusive in all cases. As well, if there is a symbol you’re interested in that we haven’t included, reach out and let us know!

Learning tarot is many things. It is exciting, it is inspiring, it is expansive...but it can also be daunting, overwhelming and confusing as hell. And, as you journey further into your practice, there will inevitably come times when you just hit a wall.

Before the advent of residential internet, you only had a few options - whatever books you could get your hands on, a mentor or someone else to teach you, classes if they were available in your area or a direct line to divinity itself.

Now, all of those options are still available today, but we have the added resource of the internet. This is great and this is also terrible, as with most things - it is dual. It is great because it means more information is available, but it’s terrible because it means sifting through a lot of information that isn’t useful, relevant or accurate.

I have a really old tarot quiz on this site, kicking around from maybe 2016 or so. I’ve never updated it in all that time, but I keep meaning to come back to it or maybe add another. Then, the other day I posted a tarot brain teaser on Instagram and I thought, let me make a quiz with more of that! But, alas, the platform I used to make that initial quiz, only allows you to make 1. After that, it’s $30 a month - no thanks!

So, we’re just gonna go ahead and make that quiz but do it as a fun, interactive little blog post! Want to play along?

The shadow is a tricky thing. It lives in a language-less land and so it can’t just come out and say, with words, what’s on its mind (generally speaking). Instead, it feeds us in symbols, feelings, sensations, intuitions and other such urgings that can seem vague and elusive.

I can’t say for sure, but I wonder if part of the reason it works in this way is that it simultaneously wants to be discovered while wanting to evade detection. The part of it that desires discovery, is probably the part of it that is seeking expression and ultimately acceptance. But on the other hand, it doesn’t want us to be totally aware of its schemes because then it runs the risk of eradication or further suppression. Let’s face it, we haven’t been exactly welcoming of our shadow parts - I can totally understand why it would be as afraid of us as we are of it!

The 5 elements permeate the cards in an almost unavoidable way. Each Major Arcana is associated with either a planet or a sign that carries with it an elemental nature. The Majors as a whole depict Spirit, the 5th element. Then we have the minors. Each set governs an entire element, Pentacles are Earth, Wands are Fire, Cups are Water and Swords are Air. We can take it even further. Among the suit cards you’ll find 4 court characters - Pages, Knights, Queens and Kings. Each “type” of court also has its associated element. The Pages are associated with Earth, the Knights Air, the Queens Water and the Kings Fire. So while the Page of Cups is a “Water” card by its suit, the element of Earth would also apply and add an extra layer of information about the workings of that character.

I’ve been thinking recently about the relevance of asking bigger, more impersonal questions of the tarot. I think for many of us, we have adopted this perspective that the specificity of the question dictates the quality of the response, and some questions are better left alone. But, are there any questions truly off the table? Sure, perhaps queries that contradict a personal set of ethics may be out of bounds, but assuming the question passes the “morality test”, why can’t we go there?

With that in mind, we turned to tarot and asked one of those big questions, curious to see what the response might be. That question went a little something like this - “Why do we come here? What is the purpose of incarnation here?” (stay with us ‘til the end because we’ll be answering a second big question to interesting results)

Did you know that one of the most potent ways to work with the cards, to truly understand their essence beyond the books, is to sit in contemplation/meditation with them? Not only does this open a portal or gateway into the caves of that archetype, it also takes us deeper into ourselves.

A year ago we began producing meditation music to accompany each of the Major Arcana. We publish these on a semi-regular basis on YouTube and are nearing the completion of that series. But, it occurs to me that we haven’t talked much about how one can simply and practically work with that material. Or, how to just meditate with the cards in general!

About 4 weeks ago I stopped drinking my daily brew. And it’s not just coffees and lattes I gave up, but all types of caffeine in all of its forms. I have been drinking coffee solidly for close to 20 years, so to give up my daily cup is kind of a big deal…for me.

I did this for a few reasons mostly related to health and overall wellbeing. For starters, a lot of coffee gives me heartburn. Oddly enough, a Starbucks triple latte goes down super smooth, but it’s painful for my wallet. On top of digestive reasons, I also started to become super aware of the ups and downs that come from it and how sensitive I am to those fluctuations. Leading up to this decision, and on the back of it, I’ve also had a lot of insight come to me around energy and more specifically, where I get mine from and how I use it. And with this insight, I’ve been taking steps to eliminate unhealthy forms of energy acquisition, while focusing on getting it in more sustainable ways.

Infinity is a a strange and interesting concept. It can be difficult to grasp, let alone pin down with words. Regardless, we can intuit it's meaningfulness. Whether you have an interest in the symbol, or its use in tarot, I think it's a universally noteworthy concept. And, regardless of what we know or don't know about the way it works, we sense there's something to it, worthy of exploration.

If you are a reader of the cards, then you’ve definitely noticed the symbol for infinity used a number of times throughout the deck. Far from an arbitrary artistic detail, the infinity symbol serves a purpose. But, what is it? What can the cards teach us about it and what can it teach us about the cards?

On March 17th, doors open to our SEVENTH(!) year of Pull Pen Paint - A 10-month journey of Self-Discovery using signs, symbols, and systems in your spiritual and creative practice. I just sent an email newsletter with all the details, but I know not all our readers are on that so I wanted to make sure I share in this space as well.

The program is open for registration and students are already making handmade journals; organizing binders; and gathering their oracle & tarot decks, crystals, art supplies, woo-woo tools, and other goodies for a dive into learning more about who they are and how they move through the world. They are all connecting to their intuitive voices as they prepare for the opening circle on March 17th. 

When one is identified with one’s ego and the mental narrative that has been constructed around one's experience of life – like pretty much all of us are most of the time – it can be a major challenge to approach one’s esoteric studies from an objective standpoint. Why is that? In this mode of operation, our knowledge becomes a defining part of our self-image, which we are compelled to protect when it becomes threatened. When we are in this space, our enquiries are powered by the Thinker and the Prover, as they are termed by Robert Anton Wilson*:

"I identify with this piece of knowledge, so I must prove its validity – or disprove any other piece of information that challenges its validity."

You know we love to play “link the cards” over here (see 78 Connections). The other day we were exploring a reading and we were reminded of a certain little detail that pops up in 4 of the 78 cards, 3 of which are majors. We touched on this briefly in a post we did sometime back exploring the symbolism of The Fool. The detail in question is, of course, the red feather.

The red feather can be seen on the heads of The Fool, Death and the child in The Sun. It can also be seen on the Page of Wands, and likely carries many of the same themes that we’ll be looking at, but for the purpose of this post, we’ll be sticking to just the Majors.

With Scorpio season quickly approaching, we are reminded of the importance of life, death and letting things come to pass. Associated with the tarot card Death, Scorpio alludes to transience; the need to make space for things to end, transform and move from one state to the next. We give the seasons this grace each year, and so it’s equally as important in our own life that we honour the cycles, and make peace with this powerful force.

Death, change and transformation can be scary, which is why we often see the Death card depicted so bleakly. But, it’s also natural. In fact, when we try to evade death’s inevitability, we often find out how futile it is to cling to something past expiry. In other words, we can't escape the pain of goodbyes by holding on for too long. Everything has a consequence, after all.

We don't talk a lot about shadow work in this space, though it is an important part of our practice, both personally and professionally. It can be a difficult thing to try to convey, teach on, or talk about though as it’s a very personal and inward affair. Despite that, we’ve wanted to broach it for sometime, we just hadn’t quite figured out how to do that. But, we also think it’s due time we explore it deeper, especially as we head into October; colder nights and darker days.

In light of all this, we have put something together that we hope will serve those looking to immerse themselves in a shadow work journey, with the aid of tarot. It’s formatted a bit like a tarot challenge, but we aren't actually challenging anyone to do this work in a month, or share it for that matter. We’ve structured it in this way because it allows us to offer complex topics in bite-sized packages, mixed with our own musings and brought to life with the aid of prompts for further integration.

This comprehensive overview of the concept of the shadow and shadow work, is meant to serve as a complement to the 30-day immersive we have also developed. You can keep reading this primer, if you haven’t already, and when you’re ready, you may begin your own journey into the deep.

We’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to conduct an ethical tarot business/practice. It’s a topic we’ve touched on before, and one in which many other practitioners have lent their perspective. I think it’s important to regularly come back to it though because as with all things, our ideals and principles evolve over time. This way we can reassess how those evolving values impact the work we do, and determine if our conduct is still in alignment, or if some tweaking is required.

During a recent mentoring session, we found ourselves on the topic of elements. This obviously isn’t an uncommon place to travel when discussing the cards, however, after the session ended, the conversation continued. Through that, we began to think of the elements not just as reference points to understanding the cards, but as a framework to becoming more proficient with them.

In other words, what can the elements teach us about becoming effective tarot card readers? How can we use these basic concepts to enhance our practice and ensure we’re approaching things in a balanced and whole way?

We are half way through 2022 and so we have just 6 months left with the themes of our Personal Year Numbers, which we thoroughly explored in a post late last year. Given we’re mid-year, we thought we’d revisit this topic to a) provide some reflections for you to see how your number has so far shown up in 2022 and b) highlight ways you can continue to make the most of its vibration for the remainder of 2022.

For us, the purpose of the 9 Year Cycle isn't about divining the future or knowing for sure what we can expect. It is about becoming attune to the divine nature of numbers by placing them against our own experiences and contemplations. In this way, much like with the moon, we fall into the rhythmic cycle of numbers, able to discern not only their meaning, but their patterns and the patterns underlying ourselves and nature.

Well, it’s taken half a year but we’re back with another installment of our Tarot Pillar series. If you’re new to this, you may want to check out the introductory post where we lay the groundwork for the elements we’ll be exploring.

To summarize what has previously been written, we essentially began this journey by supposing that the pillared cards in tarot have something to tell us about the unfoldment of consciousness (individually and collectively). There are 3 apparent pillared cards in the Major Arcana which are The High Priestess, The Hierophant and Justice. Each of these cards represents one of the 4 elements and contains a different background colour. Given this, we speculated a fourth (hidden) pillared card also existed to fill the gap. We figured it was The Emperor because that would account for the missing element (fire) and also supply our 4th unique background colour (red).

If you’ve been following along for awhile, you’ll know that Tim and I love to go deep into the cards, finding connections and contrast to help us better understand them individually and as a whole.

In our 78 Connections series, we take two cards and try to spot as many obvious and underlying links as we can. In doing this, we see just how interwoven this system is and how precise and intentional all the details are.

Today, in the spirit of that exploration, we thought we would begin a new series focusing on one card at a time. The purpose of this exercise will be to take a proverbial magnifying glass to the card in question, noting all the symbols we can spot, and then also considering where else in the deck they can be found. Think of it as a bit like a scavenger hunt!