Tarot Rituals
Tarot Rituals: Ceremonies, Ideas & Experiences for the Tarot Lover by Nancy Antenucci is a long-awaited book by one of tarot’s most experienced and creative ritual creator. This work is rich in information on forming a relationship with the archetypes of tarot and using the power therein to shape your life. It will be available next month. Maybe pre-order now to get your copy right away. Deepening your practice is a great way to start the new year. In the meantime, enjoy this excerpt:
Rituals are conscious invitations for mystery and synchronicity. They are hearty road posts for life’s significant events: graduations, weddings, or an initiation. Transitions are often powerful times of vulnerability and change. Rituals can hold the power of transformation to release destructive beliefs, open perceptions to new ways of being, or enable finding one’s way through a tumultuous time. They are containers for the fragility inherent in the beginning and end of a relationship and other crossroads of life. Ritual can bond people through creating a sense of belonging and connection. Tarot is a strong, visual language that speaks to the imagination through a specific structure of symbols, titles and numbers. As a graphic storyteller, tarot acts as a reflection for the individual as well as the culture. While the stories of tarot originated in the Italian Renaissance, they continue to gather power for our hearts and minds even today. Tarot is a blueprint for being fully human.
Whether one believes the deck to be an effective synchronistic tool without a supernatural edge, a powerful way to predict patterns, or a mirror into one’s unconscious, tarot has held its ground in terms of shifting perceptions and practice through the centuries. Not bad for a set of picture cards, eh?
Ritual’s symbolic action and tarot’s symbolic language form a unique kind of theater. The stage audience member suspends disbelief as the initial curtain rises. The ritual participant does much the same by declaring sacred space. A ritual is often enhanced much like any stage show with lighting, music, text, and people taking on certain roles. The script is the ritual’s outline of a sequence of actions and/or tarot’s narrative. Costumes enhance the players’ significance. There may be choreography or stylized movement in both forms such as the lighting of candles, the trancelike sound of shuffling cards, or the placing of cards in formation. The goal is to fully engage in the process of this pretend time and place. If done well, the perceptions that result from experiencing a created reality whether onstage or in ceremony can produce magical results. The ability to allow new perceptions is the height of magic.
Tarot can act in a number of ways in combination with ritual. It helps one focus on the true intention for the ritual, as well as designing the structure. It can capture the mystery during the ritual by delivering the message or action needed. It can clarify the messages received during the process.
