Meditating With a Tarot Card: A Ten Minute Exercise

This exercise differs from all the others on one essential point: you do not draw the card, you choose it. So there is no question asked, no answer expected, no chance being questioned.

It is a work of pure observation, and it is by far the best training for developing the central skill of any symbolic reading: seeing what is there.

The protocol

Duration: ten minutes, timed. No more, no less.

Choosing the card. Choose it deliberately, by looking for it in the deck. Two options: a card you do not know well, or a card that makes you uncomfortable. The second is more productive.

Setting up. Seated, the card in front of you at a comfortable reading distance, your phone out of reach.

The first three minutes: describe. Out loud or in writing. Only what you see, without interpreting. "A seated figure, three quarter view, head turned to the left. Three overturned objects in front of him. A clear sky behind."

The next three: detail. The dominant colors, what is in the foreground and what is in the background, what is facing what, what is missing. That last observation is often the richest: what is not represented when you would expect it to be?

The next three: associate. Only now, let what it brings to mind come. Without looking for the "right" meaning, without consulting a booklet.

The last minute: write. Three lines in your journal.

Why separate description and interpretation

This is the heart of the exercise, and it is what makes it formative.

In an ordinary reading, the two operations happen simultaneously. You see a card and already know what it "means". That reflex means you no longer look at anything: you recite.

By imposing three minutes of description without conclusions, the exercise restores observation. And observation is the only skill that truly distinguishes an experienced reader from a beginner.

Many long time practitioners continue this exercise for precisely that reason. It works just as well with a full deck, whose structure of arcana and suits offers a wide variety of images, as with an illustrated oracle.

What you discover

Two things, every time.

Details you never noticed. Even on a card you think you know by heart. An object in the background, a hand posture, a color that changes meaning depending on the light.

Your own associations. What you project onto the card says a lot about what is on your mind. Two people describing the same image will see different things, and that gap is the information.

That is exactly the mechanism of reading symbols as an inner mirror, in its purest state: with no question asked, all that remains is your projection.

Choosing the cards that disturb

This is the most useful variant of the exercise.

Take a card that makes you recoil. Observe it for ten minutes. You will almost always find that the image contains far more nuance than your reaction suggested.

This work lastingly changes the way these cards are read in a spread. How to read so called negative cards as a useful signal develops this rereading, and meditation is the best preparation for it.

Mistakes to avoid

Looking for a meaning. This is not a reading. If you catch yourself formulating a question, stop: you have switched exercises.

Consulting the booklet. It cuts the work of observation short.

Going over ten minutes. Beyond that, attention scatters and you start embroidering. The time limit is part of the method.

Always choosing the same cards. Vary them, and include the neutral cards, which are often the least well known.

How it fits with the rest of your practice

This exercise replaces nothing, it prepares.

It combines very well with a card drawn every morning and noted in three lines: the daily draw works on reactivity, meditation works on depth. Two complementary registers.

It also helps distinguish what, in your readings, comes from observation and what comes from projection. This discernment is close to the one required by telling intuition apart from fear and desire, and the two practices reinforce each other.

A variant with other tools

The principle works with any symbolic object that carries an image: an oracle card, an illustration, a carved sign.

It works less well with abstract tools, which do not offer enough visual material to describe. In that case, replace description with handling: holding the object, noticing its weight, texture, temperature.

The Wheel of Fortune is a particularly rich card for this exercise: its meaning in tarot invites you to meditate on what is changing in your life.

The Devil, often dreaded, lends itself surprisingly well to this meditation exercise. Its meaning in tarot invites you to observe what attaches you.

If you have never drawn cards before, our guide how to draw tarot cards as a beginner will help you prepare for this exercise calmly.

What the exercise really brings

Not a revelation. Sharpness.

After a few weeks, you will notice details in your ordinary spreads that you did not see before, and your readings will gain in precision without your having learned a single extra definition.

Ten minutes, one chosen card, a timer. It is one of the rare exercises whose benefit can be seen in less than a month.