Brainstorming with Tarot: An Update

So, I’ve had my cards a week now.  First impressions: the cards I chose (the Vanessa Tarot) are small.  I was expecting big and… important.  But they’re small, like regular playing cards.  But once I had them out, handling them, shuffling them–I didn’t mind the size so much.

Using the tarot was both harder and easier than I expected.  At once, cards that called to me, that spoke to who my characters were and what I knew of them, made their way into the spread.  I’ll just give you some samples, since I wrote all of my cards (and impressions) down.

• Character: The three of swords.  In my deck, it looks like this:

I got, just from the image, that she’s a heartbroken woman.  There’s been betrayal or abandonment.  She’s in love with love, though it’s let her down.  She’s made a choice, and something better can’t come to her without making this choice.  It’s hard, it’s hurt her deeply, but it’s the only choice she could make.  She’s turned away from love and is still deeply affected by it.

In my character’s backstory, she has two relationships gone bad.  One with “the perfect man” who she left for the bad boy best friend she’d fallen in love with.  Except he couldn’t really settle down and commit, so she’s walked away from her bad choices to start over somewhere else. A clean slate.

• The next card, her goal? The lovers.  I’m still trying to work that out, especially since the goal was something I was struggling with before.  But, it’s definitely an evocative card.
• Basis of Goal: eight of cups.

Clearly someone who is running away (or has run away) from something.  She’s got baggage at her feet, behind her.  Baggage she’s leaving behind, perhaps?

There was more, obviously, but it gave me just a huge jumping off place, sparks to the imagination, a new way of seeing the situation.  It also took hours, although I suppose it’ll get faster when I’m not going through three different books on my Kindle, looking up meanings.

The point, for me, is that the cards give you a new way of looking at things, new ideas, and help you delve deeper into the things that you know.

Accessories I would strongly recommend are a quiet place to work (my new dog kept jumping up on my work area which was more than a little disruptive), a good sized flat surface to work on, a notebook to write, write, write everything that comes to you, and the book Tarot for Writers by Corrine Kenner.  The book is a wonder.  It’s full of information, ideas on how to use the cards, what each card can mean, what elements and astrological signs are associated–just a lot of different ways to look at this resource.