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!

We know the Major Arcana cards often represent the bigger concepts in life; the energy that transcends the day-to-day. These greater topics often touch on spirituality, self-development, growth of consciousness, the nature of reality, and so on. Because of this, tarot can be an excellent tool not just for divination but also for exploration. Although, by that same token, sometimes in readings, we can be thrown when we draw a Major as it isn’t always easy to see how it fits into our daily lives.

At the end of April, Tim and I started a new series called 78 Connections, which I’ve been sharing on Instagram and saving to a dedicated page in this space ever since. It’s essentially an exercise that takes two cards and attempts to find as many connections between them as possible. Most of those links are of a visual nature, but inevitably we end up exploring numerical, astrological, and qabalistic similarities as well.

On the surface, this all appears rather simple and straightforward and I’m not sure that the value is immediately obvious. But what I can say is that this practice of comparing and contrasting scenes has been one of the most interesting, eye-opening, and integrative methods I’ve so far found to squeeze as much information as I can from the cards. It’s a general principle that follows us daily; if we want to really know something, to truly define it, we will benefit from examining it next to something else.

However, that wasn’t the expected outcome when this activity was born. This all began while trying to work through something that was irritating me. Inevitably if you spend enough time online, and around social media, you’re going to be exposed to a world of thought that clashes with your own. Without getting too specific, I will say that it touches a nerve when I see people putting an unnecessarily negative slant on something without having a basic understanding of its history. This is especially the case when it devolves into declarations around who can and can’t read tarot, which decks should or shouldn’t be worked with, or otherwise making dictations based on presumptions. Dogmatic attitudes, opinions presented as absolute facts, don’t settle comfortably with me regardless of the topic. But I realize that’s none of my business and partly my problem. I also don’t need to confront misinformation directly. But, what I can do is sit longer and look harder at this tool that has done so much for me and, I’m assuming if you’re here, for you as well. In doing this, I’m either going to see what they’re seeing too or reinforce what I already hold to be true, and as far as I’m concerned, either is a fair outcome.