Memoirs of a King, the Tarot as Narrator
Channeling your writing through tarot
The sand whips at his face. A howling wind of dirt and debris pushes every step a few inches back. Even behind the linen he holds over his face, the man squints against the torrent of earth and fire. Tiny grains of sand lodge in thick eyelashes. He will be rubbing at his eyes for a week after this. But the storm will pass. He knows this, and he must sure the others know it. They give in to fear so quickly, these other men. Lesser men. But they are just as quick to rouse to anger, and so he keeps them close at hand, ready for the next battle.
There’s an exercise in esoteric tarot called pathworking that helps you find the key to unlocking the mysteries of the major arcana. From what I understand, it’s named after the paths on the Tree of Life: Qabalistic tarot readers would work their way along the 22 paths of the Tree to explore the worlds of the 22 major arcana.
Call me a heretic, but I think you can explore the worlds of the cards and uncover their mysteries for yourself without that structure (and without caring about the Tree of Life). I call that exploration “pathworking” because it already has that name. As I discovered in my own exercises on using sensory cues to invite your intuition to speak more clearly, there’s a whole world waiting for you inside each tarot card (not just the majors). And what you discover within—through sights, scents, sounds, and whatever else—may surprise you.
But you can also explore the personas of the tarot court and the majors through more intimate means. I’ve catalogued some of these activities in Awaken the Court Cards: A workbook to bring the court cards to life, but since I’m on a writing kick, let’s see how we can combine pathworking with creative desire to unlock truly magical tarot-based inspiration.
The thrum of the engines sets my feet to tapping and then to shaking. I sit before I fall, but it is hardly better on the hard wood. I bounce and jostle. A king should have a cushion at the least, and I will have more than the least. But first, we ride. It will be good to see this blasted landscape in the distance behind us.
Are you drawn to a particular court card or figure of the major arcana (or perhaps even an evocative minor arcanum’s scene)?
If you are, there could be a number of reasons for that. It might be your significator, representing who and how you are. It could be an archetype tied to your birthday, your Moon sign, your Ascendant, or your numerological destiny. It could be how you wish you felt.
But it might also be an inexplicable connection, a card that travels with you as a constant reminder of some message you have yet to understand. Whether you view it as a stalker, a haunt, or a companion, it has a story to tell.
So why not tell that story?
The crowd roars, and the Champion roars with it. In the blazing heat of a summer day, everyone is damp with sweat and on edge, but they remain fixed on the Champion at the center of the stadium. The team converges around their leader, rushing in. Nearly colliding. But they stop and give room as the crowd dies down. A hush creeps over the spectators and onto the field, moving faster and faster. Expectant. Hungry. The Champion looks up. The sun beats down. This is glory. And so the Champion begins to sing.
You could start by describing what’s in the card’s image. That’s a common exercise and it has plenty of merit. But if that’s not the thing for you, you might be ready to let the persona or archetype that the card represents tell its own story, one that isn’t necessarily bound to the tarot.
How do you get a tarot card to tell its story? You invite it to speak and you listen.
When I conduct past life and ancestral readings (Stories from Beyond), I ask the ancestor or past life (or some mediating spirit guide) to speak in their own “words,” which may include their personality, unique perspective, and potential embellishments. I listen by scrying into my tarot cards and observing the symbols and scenes that open up before me. I also allow myself to be open to other information delivered through the clairs (“psychic hits,” as they’re sometimes called). It’s a form of mediumship that allows for narrative retellings.
You can use mediumship for fictional storytelling too.
When I saw your mother at the bar for the first time, I couldn’t help but smile. She radiated ease. And she laughed. Do you know how rare that combination is? I know a fake smile. I know uneasy confidence. But your mother always was the real deal. It was just a glimpse in the mirror behind bottom-shelf bottles of Heaven-only-knows. I could see the grin that crept into the corners of her eyes and then the stray eye that peered my way. Call me a fool. But I knew then and there that I’d be telling this story to our kids someday.
In the case of using mediumship for fiction, you aren’t necessarily connecting with a particular spirit whom you believe once lived in a mortal body or acts as a divine emissary or anything along those deep mystical veins (you could!). No, in this case you need only connect with the “spirit” of the card. Whether you believe there’s a spirit tied to that card, as with Benebell Wen’s Spirit Keeper’s Tarot, or there’s an archetype that it points to, or there’s a part of you that you can access through that card, there is a connection point available. And it’s waiting for you to listen. It’s waiting for you to be a clear channel for its story.
So choose your Muse. Then sit with them. Enter their world, the world of the card, and speak to whoever appears. Listen to their story, and then let them show you it. You can even, if you feel comfortable with it, let the card’s spirit write through you as a true channel. For some, this will be automatic writing, which doesn’t usually lend itself well to cohesive narratives. But you don’t have to release all control in your channeling (I certainly would not want to). You can let the card’s spirit be your narrator in a true sense: telling and showing you what their life and world entails.
Red and white tiles stretching from my feet to the grand entrance I had first walked through a lifetime ago, that’s what I remember most clearly from that fateful day. In my child’s mind, I knew the giant chessboard must stop somewhere beyond the milling nobles and the light of the candelabras. But I had never seen an end to their design. Until then, I had never even seen the furthest walls, just slices of light marking windows, as would soon become clear to me. Once I sat upon that throne, so much became clear to me. That throne and all its power was a torch to the cobwebs of youth and innocence. I would choose the torch every time.
It will probably be a slow process at first, and you may only get dribs and drabs of information. But eventually, that voice or that vision will become clearer the more you work to actively listen and receive information from the card. There may be times when it’s hard to keep up with the thread of story, and you have to just start voice recording. Don’t worry about how it comes through as long as it comes through. You can piece it all together later and add your own editorial coherence when needed. But trust that there is a story to tell, even if it’s just for an audience of one.
If you struggle to get into the spirit of things, so to speak, you can encourage connection through correspondences. I provide convenient correspondences for the 16 personas of the tarot court in my workbook Awaken the Court Cards, and Susie Chang goes into great depth for all the cards in Tarot Correspondences. (The majors get the most love in that great reference because of their longer magical history.)
What are you inspired to write? And who shows up to narrate that journey? I’d love to know and even read some of what you write.
And if you’re looking for lots of ways to use tarot for writing, sign up for Tarot for Writers, starting May 24.
In case you’re wondering what all those random little offset bits are, those are glimpses of the King of Wands in one form or another. When you work with the energies of the cards, they can show up in different ways across different decks or even different changelings. While you connect with the spirit of the card, it is not a single person, so don’t be surprised if a different narrator or character appears from time to time. You can choose to weave the story together or keep track of separate instances.