Everyday Woo Lite (Volume 4)
The curious intersection of my spiritual and mental health journeys. Plus, tips for telling the story of tarot cards.
Everyday Woo is a place for the woo curious to learn a little more about tarot and spirituality in a not-too-serious way. Here’s what I’m thinking about this week…
✨ An Uncomfortable Venn Diagram: Mental Health and Spirituality
There’s this lovely picture that my mother has tucked away in some dusty photo album that shows me, astride a carousel horse, wailing. Full blown temper tantrum. Beet-red face, mouth a perfect O of anguish...the works.
When I think about my mental health and its constantly-tipping scales, I often think of that photo. Life is, in general, pretty freakin’ good, but at times, I feel like I’m stuck on that carousel horse, looping around endlessly, repeating the same patterns and thinking the same old thoughts that I cannot control.
As an adult, I don’t call them temper tantrums anymore. I call them episodes. But they feel similar.
After I got divorced last year, I felt like I was on that carousel all. The. time. And I didn’t even get to pick my favorite horse. It was like I was always stuck on the one caught mid-snarl, its teeth bared and hooves sharp enough to cut into me. And I felt every moment of this beast, rising up within me. How could I not?
It was during this time that I started to seriously look to the metaphysical, or spiritual, side of life. I wanted an explanation for why I felt things much more intensely than others. I began to Google: empath. Intuitive. Highly-sensitive person. I purposely avoided other search terms: anxiety. Depression. Bipolar disorder.
I made connections: the reason I couldn’t stand having the overhead lights on in my classroom? I’m a highly sensitive person. The days that I carried home all of the shit dumped on me by other people and couldn’t help but take it along for the carousel ride of sadness? I’m an empath.
And then, I picked up a tarot deck and realized that, hey, I’m pretty good at reading other people’s cards. Not because I have spent my entire life understanding my emotions and those of others. It’s because I am an intuitive.
So, what I ended up doing was giving a spiritual label to the parts of me that also deal with my mental health as an avoidance tactic. Which then caused me to ignore the worsening of my symptoms. Which also lead me to believe that these newer and more unpredictable feelings were the product of my spiritual self finally waking up.
It felt so much nicer to see the carousel this way: the horses turned into spiritual guides, there to loop me around and give me answers that other folks just couldn’t understand.
And then, about a month ago, I had the kind of carousel ride that terrified me. The dizzying spin turned into a tilt-a-whirl. I didn’t recognize myself. The outside world blurred as my thoughts moved faster and faster. For an entire weekend, I isolated myself away from others, afraid of what I might say or do. I was not in control. It didn’t matter how many breathing exercises I did. How many crystals I stacked along the table at my bedside. How many tarot cards I flipped over, hoping for a sign that this would end soon.
I had let my quest for spiritual enlightenment overshadow the very real mental health struggles I was having.
Post-episode, my therapist gently suggested a diagnosis I had never considered before. And frankly, it terrified me. But it reminded me that I can be both an intuitive empath and also be a person who has a mental health disorder. They are not the same thing, but they do overlap.
And so. Now it’s about examining the uncomfortable Venn diagram of my spiritual gifts and my mental health disorder. I do believe that the brain that lets me intuitively read tarot and connect to my guides is the same one that has a chemical imbalance. I don’t like the word disorder, even though it feels quite apt when my life is chaotic. I love my brain, even when it misfires. The worst mental health moments sometimes give me my best creative ideas. Hell, I couldn’t be writing this if I hadn’t had one of those episodes.
But what I don’t want to do is to “woo away” my mental health. I don’t want to believe that these uncontrollable feelings are something that I need to live with in order to stay in touch with my guides or whatever.
To put it bluntly: a mental health episode is NOT a spiritual awakening.
I’m not sure what my next steps are. I know tough conversations are ahead. I don’t have any answers other than awareness. I know that it is easy to listen to the endless stream of posts from the spiritual community that ask us to look at our spiritual gifts as extraordinary and unique. Which they are. But responsible conversation does involve examining how these practices may cause us to ignore mental health struggles under the guise that these issues are all part of accessing our higher self.
Spirituality is not suffering. In our quest for our higher selves, we must honor the self that exists right now. And that means taking care of our mental health first.
📖Storytelling with Tarot Cards
When I was a kid, my sister and I had this computer program called Storybook Weaver, where you could dream up stories and use the preset graphics and scenes to bring your vision to life. For two little girls who spent most of their time concocting dramatic stories for their Barbie dolls (which somehow always involved wrecking Barbie’s very hip teal Jeep), this was a dream come true.
I didn’t know it then, but telling stories would weave (ha) its way into every part of my adult life. As a middle school English teacher, I’m constantly talking about stories, telling my own and examining those of others. So when I started reading tarot, it was natural for me to take a storytelling approach.
Learning to read tarot is quite similar to learning a new language. When I first started learning to speak French, I hit a point where I knew a ton of vocabulary…but I couldn’t string all of those words into sentences. The same was true with tarot: I learned the 78 cards fairly quickly, but when I drew more than one card, I was lost as to how to make them all fit together. I could spit out the canned traditional meanings one by one, but my readings felt flat: I needed a story instead of a list of bullet points.
So, here’s my quick list of story-telling techniques that you can use when reading tarot cards for others:
📖Focus on an overarching theme: All good stories have a theme, or bigger picture. Before I begin a reading, I always try to figure out what the overarching message might be for this particular reading. After I’ve laid out my cards (if you’re a newer reader, I suggest sticking to 3 cards as you build confidence), let your intuition take center stage and notice what connections immediately pop out.
Is there a repeated number or suit?
Are there more major or minor arcana cards present?
Is there a repeated symbol or color throughout the cards?
For example, let’s say I pulled this spread with the intention to do a mind, body and spirit reading:
I immediately notice that there is something above the figures in each of the cards, and in some cards, the figures are looking up for answers. This might invite me to anchor this reading around the theme of seeking the guidance of a higher power when moving through the situation of focus.
📖Bring your characters to life: When I read, I like to speak about the cards as if they are actual entities. This is especially easy if there is an actual figure on your card, like in the 8 of Cups:
I immediately notice the resigned slump of the shoulders, the turned back and the sure grip of the walking staff. Humanize the card by giving your protagonist traits, struggles and hopes. Who or what is this person walking away from…and why? Tell the story.
📖Use transitions: Stories need to flow. As you move from card to card, consider clearly making a transition and connecting the ideas you’re presenting with the previous card to the next one. For example, when moving from the Moon (in the mind position) to the 5 of Pentacles (in the body position), I might transition by saying, “the illusions of the mind that are stirred up by the Moon have begun to show up in your physical body, leaving you in need of care and support from others. The 5 of Pentacles reminds you of this.”
📖Circle back: To find cohesiveness in your tarot readings, it’s helpful to circle back to previous cards. In this reading, I wouldn’t talk about the Moon at the beginning and never mention it again. Firstly, it’s a major arcana card, which means it has a huge personal influence for the querent, and secondly, each tarot card doesn’t exist in a vacuum: they all play off of each other, highlighting different areas. The light of the Moon in this reading is laying bare the other areas of life that need attention and focus in order to move forward, and this energy influences the messages of the 5 of Pentacles and the 8 of Cups.
📖If in doubt, describe, describe, describe: Sometimes, my intuition is slow to wake up…or at least, I can’t immediately put the messages I’m receiving into words. So, sometimes, I simply start describing the cards and just trust that I will find the words that resonate. Describe what’s going on in the scene. Note important symbols. Look at the setting, the emotions of the card…all of it is important. And remember: you’re simply the messenger. Trust what’s being given to you.
Want to get a sense of how I read? Grab a complimentary one-card written reading. You’ll see all of the above in action!
Mantra for the week: I surround myself with those who lift me up.
Check out this random tarot card generator and practice your storytelling skills. I’ll see you here next week to talk about accessibility to spiritual services and the tarot spread I always come back to. 🌻
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