Tarot Cards as Journal Prompts

Last month I was asked to write about how to use tarot cards as journaling prompts. Five years ago, I wrote an article with some journaling basics and you can find that HERE.

I have some other great and/or fun ideas for using your cards as journal prompts for you, too.

Write a short story

You can pull the cards randomly or select them specifically. Selecting them specifically is a good option if you have a card or cards that you specifically want to explore.

You can divide your deck into Courts, Majors, and Minors, or just pull off the top of the deck until you get to the appropriate card.

•  Main character: select a Court Card
• Theme: select a Major
• Plot: select three Minors

Do a quick character sketch of your main character using the Court card as inspiration.

Brainstorm about the theme of the story drawing from the Major.

The three Minors form the plot and are the: beginning, middle, and end.

Compare and Contrast

Pull any two cards from your deck and compare and contrast them. You can do this with any two random cards. You will be surprised at what you learn doing this and how much it will help with the nuances of a card.

Learning the nuances is even more highlighted if you select cards that have similar themes, such as, say, Death, The Tower, and the 10 of Swords, which all, in some way, deal with endings. Or you can look at The Lovers, 2 of Cups, 10 of Cups, and 10 of Pentacles, to explore intimate relationships.

Compare and Contrast II

Use the same card from two different decks and explore their similarities and differences. The cards have such a range of meaning, it is unlikely that any one card in any deck is going to show the full range. This is a good thing to do if you have a deck that you normally use but have gotten a new one that you are not so familiar with. You can use your familiar deck as a baseline and then easily see how the new deck shows, possibly, a different aspect of the card.

Walking the Talk

This is a great way to explore your beliefs and bring them down to earth. Select a Major Arcana card that represents a belief that you hold. Write about it. Then select a Minor Arcana card to represent a situation. In your journal, explore how your belief would shape your response or actions in the situation represented by the Minor Arcana card. Do this several times to kind of test drive your belief and maybe refine it.

Those should keep you busy for a while! I’d love to hear some of your ideas!

If you need a new journal, Llewellyn has a nice collection HERE.