My best trick for getting unstuck

I did something different this month... Plus, I realized I don't talk much about how I use tarot and oracle cards, and we really should do that.

Back in December, I had a moment of inspiration and sketched out posts for the entire month of January. Each post was an annotated draft— not just an outline, but whole paragraphs loosely strung together. Go me!

I wish this was virtue signaling; I wish I was this kind of virtuous. But writing forethought is rare for me. When other Substackers* talk about “content calendars,” I cringe. Why plan out a quarter’s worth of articles when I can instead have the weekly adrenalin rush that comes with trying to get a post done while having no idea what I’m going to write about?🤣

* for those of you who only read this newsletter as an email, “Substack” is the name of the blogging platform I use. There are a ton of interesting (and well known) people writing here including poets David Whyte and Maggie Smith & authors Katherine May and Liz Gilbert.

I highly recommend downloading the Substack app so you can have a smart read at your fingertips! So, so much better than Insta-scrolling.

Despite my resistance to planned writing, I discovered something fascinating by drafting my posts in December and leaving them to simmer through my long winter’s rest: my subconscious stewed on the concepts, continuing to “work” on ideas while my conscious mind wrapped holiday gifts and baked ridiculously chocolatey brownies.

And this is why I love working with tarot and oracle cards.

Some people think of tarot as a form of fortune telling, a way to see into the future. I only wish the cards could offer that kind of insight!

Instead, the cards invite us to think differently about our future (or our present or past— whatever we put before them). Most brilliantly, they break through the loud chatter of our conscious mind, engaging our subconscious and inviting it to join the conversation.

The conscious mind is like the sun. It’s bright and warm, illuminating our days, organizing our calendar, paying our bills, and remembering to pick the kids up after school. Our subconscious is more like the moon. It’s often hidden during the daytime as we go about our busyness. But it isn’t gone. No. Obscured by the brighter light of our conscious mind, it’s able to observe, unnoticed. The subconscious takes in nuance we miss as we rush through our days. It absorbs emotions we don’t have time to process. It notices when the wind whispering across our skin changes direction or the scent in a room subtly shifts.

So how do we access the expansive knowings of our subconscious? How do we learn what it’s been noodling on?

We invite it to the surface.

There are many tools for doing this. You can go to therapy or learn shamanic journey work. You can study your dreams. Or…. you can pull out a deck of oracle or tarot cards.

So you’ve pulled out your cards, you’ve focused on a question, and you’ve given the deck a shuffle. Now what?

First, note that focusing on a question is important: the question guides your subconscious, helping it to send the information most needed to the surface of your mind. There are complete instructions on crafting solid questions in my book The Night School and we’ll discuss this during our zoom session (see below).

Once I pull a card, before I reach for a guidebook, I immerse myself in the imagery. I note my first impression of the image, the colors, the shapes, and any mystical symbols. I ask myself how these things apply to my question. I ponder my personal relationship to the images on the card, so if there’s a deer in the background, I will remember getting lost in a Chesapeake Bay marsh with Andrew, the rushes— taller than my head— scraping my skin as I pushed my way through, and then, an open area, where there was a deer’s skull, full rack attached.

How do those images make me feel? On that particular day I’m remembering, I was a little scared (we had no idea where we were and couldn’t get cell service), but finding the intact rack was pure magic. The meaning I made from the moment was that everything was fine, that we had been moving toward this serendipity.

But note that someone else would not have had that same experience with deer medicine. And even if they did, they might have, upon finding the rack, taken it as a sign of death and doom. A deer in the background of a card would mean something different to them than it would to me. The guidebook can’t account for these personal touchstones, so I always study the images first.

Next, I read the guidebook slowly, letting each sentence absorb and giving a second or two to allow the words to spark relationships in my mind in the same way I did with the images.

Always, I reach back to my original question. How does what I am seeing and reading apply to what I asked? This is especially important if you pull a “scary” card. If your question is “Should I take this job?” and you pull the Death card, the card has nothing to do with a family member because your question was not about family.

When we interpret literally, there are cards in the deck that can become scary. But remember, the meanings are metaphoric. Metaphorically, Death means we are dying to an old way of being or seeing the world. From this point of view, it’s a growth card.

You might now be wondering why one might choose a tarot over an oracle deck (or vice versa).

Oracle cards are one-offs— each is a unique and singular message. Tarot cards are a system: they relate to each other.

This core difference helps me choose which to use. If I need a singular message for inspiration or direction, or if I want a key to the door of the collective unconscious (more on this on our Zoom!), I will reach for my oracle deck. If I want to compare things, or see a systemic step-by-step plan, I’m all about the tarot cards.

As an example:

We are selling our house. In thinking about moving, I wanted to compare different places. Because I was comparing things in relationship to each other, I used my tarot deck.

The results were fascinating and, for me, reassuring. For staying in our current home, I pulled The Hierophant which I interpreted as orthodoxy and traditional social structures: a sign that things would pretty much stay the same. For each other place I was considering, I pulled an Ace card from different suits. Aces are new beginnings, but each place had a slightly different flavor of new beginning.

Overall the reading said: if you move, you will have a fresh beginning… for better and for worse. If you stay, you will continue in the same traditions and social structures you’ve established here.

Well, duh! But, also, so helpful and reassuring. My subconscious clarified and simplified something that had become a Gordian knot in my conscious mind.

I couldn’t have gotten this result from an oracle deck because they don’t relate to each other: I couldn’t have seen the idea of “same thing, different flavors.”

As you begin or deepen into your work with cards, you'll notice that beyond connecting with your subconscious, you can also use the cards to key into the collective unconscious. (Tarot must be up in the collective because

Dr Sharon Blackie

just published a great article on tarot and the importance of symbolic language.) Connecting to the subconscious is doing our healing work, integrating the layers of our own being. Tapping into the collective unconscious is spiritual work, plugging us into the larger symbolic system that humanity has been steeping in since we first stood upright.

We will talk about this a bit more in our tarot and oracle card zoom. I’ll also share how I created my oracle decks (a wholly replicable process) and answer any questions (if I can!). Note that I am not a tarot expert by any stretch… but they have been a part of my inquiry practice for three decades. Think of this as a gathering, not a class. My goal is to casually share how the cards enrich my life.

The Zoom will be recorded. PLEASE SIGN UP NOW EVEN IF YOU WILL BE WATCHING THE REPLAY (this makes getting the replay an automatic thing which makes all of our lives easier!).

Saturday, January 25
from 1-1:40PM EST