I’m having a difficult time focusing my energy tonight but I will try my best to keep the scattered energy out of the post.

I went through Tarot Foundations: 31 Days to Read Tarot with Confidence and focused on Days 6-15.  Even though I have a strong foundation in Tarot, I was constantly surprised with new perspectives. I decided to make the focus of the exercises applying Tarot in my novel. With that being said, here are some interesting highlights from my studies today.

The keyword chart has become an interesting tool for helping me organize and assign tarot cards to each chapter of my novel. The power of the images that convey the meanings of the cards are right in front of me and along with a text box.  I can write the quotes from the scenes that I’m matching to the cards right next to the pictures which is great for seeing if everything fits together and flows the way it should. I can even see the exact scenes from the novel as images from the Rider Waite, and I’m really happy with how it’s working out.

I’ve also began to really try to absorb the elemental meanings of the cards as well. Each character has an element that he or she corresponds with so integrating the elemental attributes of the cards to express how a particular character handles an event or how a situation unfolds is very useful. It allows me to pick cards with proper corresponding elements to the chapters and adds a deeper layer of symbolism to the plot.

Brigit suggests that we take some time to really think about what the suits mean but that will come later.

I think the most mind opening topic I studied today were the notoriously confusing court cards. I’ve studied Tarot off and on for ten years and have been reading Tarot professionally for two years. The court cards have always been the ones that stump me sometime. I know keywords for them but sometimes I really have to turn on my intuition to get what  a court card is trying to tell me.

That all changed when I started assigning court cards to characters in my novel. It worked BEAUTIFULLY. Not only was I able to get a better understanding of the court cards and figure out what chapters they may be able to represent, I was also able to get a deeper understanding into my characters.  All the exercises in chapter fourteen were good places to start thinking of how I can use the court cards to help with further character development.  (Sorry for the poor quality in advance. These cards are from the deck I colored, btw).

And now a challenge for tarot readers : Can you tell who the protagonists and antagonists are? Can you tell who may be love interests? Could some of the cards represent the same character only after he or she has gone through a change?  What kind of personality do you think each card represents and how do you think these characters will handle conflicts and dynamic changes? Who are the most mature characters and who are the least? I hope these kinds of subtle clues will really help people who know Tarot have fun with guessing at the foreshadowing when they read my book. I also hope that people who don’t know Tarot will become interested in it as they read my story. And lastly, I hope the deck I’m dreaming of based on my novel becomes a reality as a wonderful, illustrated companion to the story.

And now I leave you with a piece of artwork. I painted a picture of the High Priestess a while ago and I didn’t like it. One cold, winter day I was feeling really blue and I painted a picture of the Sun. I decided to combined the two and this is what I got. I really like all the textures and bright colors.