unlocking tarot with stories

Today on CARD TALK, I’ll cover:
-why interpretations for tarot can be overwhelming
-using story beats to understand tarot's structure
-how to pick apart a story
-the major and minor arcana stories
-tips for telling stories with your cards

How to Shape a Story: 6 Story Arcs Explained from The Write Practice
What is a Story Beat? from Screencraft
The Fool’s Journey as a story, from LearnTarot.com
A Beginner-Friendly Exploration of the Major Arcana’s Three Lines by Meg Jones Wall
The Journeys of Wands, Swords, Cups, and Pentacles from Maenad Tarot
A Machine for Telling Stories: Tarot and Speculative Fiction by Carrie Sessarego

Love this concept of telling a story with the cards, or using narrative beats to weave cards together in longer readings? Check out my intermediate lecture series NEXT LEVEL TAROT for more techniques like this to help you gain confidence and clarity in longer, more complex tarot readings!

For more on Meg, check out 3amtarot.com, and order your copy of Finding the Fool through Bookshop.org or your favorite local bookstore.

Find episode transcripts and more over on the CARD TALK website.

Love what you’re hearing? Support the pod with a one-time donation or recurring subscription, and get the chance to submit topics for future episodes! 

Chapters

• 0:12 Using Narrative Structure in Tarot Readings
• 10:52 Understanding Tarot Stories Through Arcana

Transcript

Meg: 0:12

My name is Meg Jones Wall and you're listening to Card Talk, a mini podcast for tarot basics and evergreen insights. I'm glad you're here. In today's episode, we are going to be talking in more depth about tarot and story, or the stories that live within the tarot. Now, tarot itself is a big topic because it's a big, complicated tool. Just because it fits in the palm of your hand doesn't mean that it doesn't have a lot of complexity, and I want to acknowledge that every single one of the 78 cards in the deck holds a lot of different meanings. I think it's really tempting when we're getting started to boil specific cards down to just one keyword or two, just all of the correspondences and keywords and traditions that go into every single card, nevermind our own personal intuition, what we might see in a specific deck or what our experience might tell us about that particular card. There are so many directions that we can go when it comes to analyzing even just one card in the deck. In our last episode, we talked through a very basic framework for approaching your first tarot reading, and I also tried to help you build out a bit of a simple routine for going through your single card readings. But the routine itself is not the only part of a reading that is significant, and for a lot of people the most overwhelming moments come after we finally flip that card over and try to start to understand how that card is answering the question that we brought to the cards right. Especially when you're getting started, that can be a really intimidating moment when it's just you and the card and now you have to try to understand what the card is trying to communicate with you. But I also want to be real and really, really honest with you. This is not just a newbie experience. Even experienced tarot readers, even professional tarot readers, sometimes ask a question, flip the card over and have to take a minute to try to figure out how this card is answering our specific question. One of the most common questions that I get from intermediate readers is help with connecting cards to one another when it seems like the cards don't answer our questions. I'm literally building out resources and lectures right now to address that problem, because this isn't just a thing that happens to beginners. It happens to readers at all levels.

Meg: 2:34

I say all of that just to affirm that if you're trying to do tarot readings and you're finding yourself getting really overwhelmed by those early card pulls you're not really sure what to do or where to go or how to interpret them. You're doing great, it's okay. This is just such a normal part of learning tarot, but it's also just a really normal part of having a relationship with the cards and being someone who pulls regularly. Now there are a lot of different ways that you can start building out your skills when it comes to finding more confidence in your interpretations and learning how to understand what the cards are communicating with you in those readings, and a lot of beginners resources really focus on memorization of a couple of keywords or digging into correspondences to help you out with this process, and that kind of framework can be really useful for certain kinds of people and certain kinds of brains. You know if, if that really appeals to you, I'm not going to tell you not to do it. Other resources recommend just trying to trust your intuition, spending time with cards, going with your gut and really just looking at the card itself to build a meaning out of that. And again, if that technique feels really good for you, if that is the kind of reader that you want to be, I'm not going to tell you not to do that.

Meg: 3:42

But this episode is really devoted to offering a technique that I have found really, really helpful, both in the start of my practice as kind of a foundational thing that I could build on, but also just for continuing to expand my relationship with the cards, and for me that is story and cycles and narrative arcs. There are so many stories baked right into the structure of the deck itself and I have found that it can be such a helpful device to use story to help understand how the deck is constructed and how the cards relate to one another. I want to emphasize again that this is not a technique that is just for beginners. Whether you're relatively new to the cards or you've been reading for a long time, digging into the story and cycles that live in the cards can offer you a lot of support, whether you're doing single card readings or you are trying to weave together larger readings that juggle a lot of different cards. So what we're really going to be talking about is cycles and patterns. We're talking about cause and effect, beginnings and endings, conflict and resolution. We're really thinking about the broader again story that is being told through the cards and the energy that lives between the cards that gets us from point A to point C. Now I'm going to be real with you.

Meg: 4:57

For me, numerology and numbers often really translate in my brain to story beats or narrative arcs. And so numerology for me, part of the reason that I like it so much is that it helps me place a card within its context, in a specific suit or cycle. For me it kind of serves as a shorthand for which story beat we're on. But this is not an episode about numerology and I don't want to link this idea of story to having to be connected to numerology, because I know that's not going to be for everyone's brain. I also want to clarify that this idea of using story or narrative structure in your readings or even just to study the cards specifically, is not just for people who want to use tarot for creative purposes or for people with, like a background in creative work.

Meg: 5:43

You do not have to be a writer or an artist or studied film or theater or the fine arts or creative writing or anything else to be able to understand narrative structure. You can pick narrative structure apart by yourself, on your own. All you have to do is think about your favorite story, your favorite fairy tale, your favorite book, your favorite comic or movie, your favorite television show, your favorite album or even individual song, depending on what kind of music you listen to, your favorite musical, your favorite video game, your favorite poem or literally any other medium you can think of. That tells a story. Really, just by looking at that story and thinking about the things that happened that moved that story forward, you can start to dig into narrative structure and really think about how the broader arc of the story is broken down into specific moments that influence what's going to come next and serve as a reaction to what came before. When we're thinking about story, we're not just thinking about a specific moment in time or one occurrence. We're thinking about a number of things that happen in sequence, about the reactions that we have to things that have happened to us. How the choices that we make or the changes that we step into or really embrace clear the way for new and different things to happen or maybe open doors for different choices or different things to occur along the way. We're really connecting different events together to serve a broader narrative. So you can ask yourself a few different questions about your favorite story and start to practice this idea for yourself. And this is just a few questions you can ask and again, you don't have to answer all of them. I just really like asking questions Y'all.

Meg: 7:23

Think about where the story starts. Think about what event happens that makes the story find its momentum or propel it forward. What events force choice in the story or force change in the story? What events grind things to a halt and force the characters to sit in stillness or process something that's happened? What discoveries are made along the way? What characters enter or exit the picture and how does that impact the story itself? Which relationships deepen or end or begin through the course of the story? How do individual characters grow or evolve as a result of what they're experiencing? Which conflicts exist, which ones are heightened and which ones are able to resolve, and where does the story end? Plus, is that actually the end of the story or is just where we leave these characters or this moment in time? Taking a few minutes to think about one of your favorite stories or fairy tales you can use a Disney movie, they're great for this. But just taking time to start practicing thinking about story and breaking it into smaller pieces can be so helpful when we're thinking about translating that idea over to the tarot Because, of course, the reason we're here tarot itself has a lot of stories too, but they're not all the same kinds of stories and they don't follow exactly the same narrative structure, and the cool thing about using this technique with the tarot is that you get to use the cards to tell your own stories.

Meg: 8:48

I'm going to give you some examples of ways to think about this and I'm going to talk you through some potential versions of stories you could tell with the cards. But really, this is something where you can bring your own unique viewpoint and your own unique perspective, paired with the specific deck that you are using to create some stories that help you understand what happens in the tarot and how you want to connect with the different story beats that serve as the cards of the deck. Now I want to remind you that the deck itself is broken up into two major categories, and today we're really going to be talking about the major arcana and the minor arcana pips. Specifically, I will talk about court cards in a later episode, because I think they are kind of unique in this way, and while we can absolutely tell stories with the court cards and I would very much encourage you to try in this one, we're really going to be focusing on the numbered cards of the deck First of all.

Meg: 9:40

I tend to think of the major arcana as our major story beats. So these are the big moments that you can point to as periods of transformation or kind of galvanizing incidents that really propel something forward or get you started or help you continue on a particular journey. We're thinking about moments or choices that you've made that have impacted your future. This could be like deciding which college you want to go to, or starting or ending a relationship, either romantic or platonic or otherwise. This could be a big move that puts you in a completely different place. This could be deciding to leave an idea behind or set out on a new journey. This could be so many different things, but when you look back at your life or you look forward to big things that you want to accomplish, these are kinds of the major pieces that created change or the potential for change. So when thinking about the major arcana as a whole, you can think about this as an epic poem or maybe a cinematic universe. This could be a really juicy book series with different arcs and different characters being focused on, or it could be like an artist series or a discography, but we're really taking a big picture. Look here at a broader story.

Meg: 10:52

In contrast, the minor arcana pips, which are those numbered minor arcana cards of one through 10, broken into four different suits these are more of our like everyday events, the story beats that are more like pearls on a string, that kind of add up to something specific. Now I want to be really clear, because I love the minor arcana. These don't have to feel like they're not still major or significant moments. The minor arcana can still have a huge impact and be really representative of major moments of flux, big decisions and different things like that. We're not minimizing the minors here.

Meg: 11:27

Everyday experiences are usually what make a life a life, and so you don't have to downplay them or pretend that they're not still important. You don't have to minimize these cards and you don't have to minimize the big feelings, changes, discoveries, choices, relationships, endings, beginnings and other things that those cards can stand for in the moments of a story. If you want to think about it through this different lens, the minor arcana pips could be like your standalone novel or an individual film or an album, or even just a single song, one piece of art that tells its own story, or one verse in a song, that's going to give a really important piece of information or represent a specific experience. If you're a TV nerd, this could be like a bottle episode or a pilot or a finale. Just because something is more everyday doesn't make it less of a big deal or less powerful or impactful.

Meg: 12:16

And while the major arcana can really speak to moments that might influence a number of aspects of our life like moving is going to impact your spiritual life as well as your physical life, as well as your relationships right, the minor arcana are a little bit more focused on certain aspects. So a card might represent your sense of inspiration around creativity, but not necessarily be speaking so much about, like your physical wellbeing. So what do we do with this information? Right, how do we start to understand the suits and cycles as stories? And really the answer comes down to writing our own. In looking at the cycles themselves, in laying out the major arcana and starting to imagine what kinds of stories might be told through those cards, in laying out the different suits of the minor arcana pips and thinking through how these could represent different stories or trajectories or narratives, you can really start to connect with the cards in a way that feels a lot more personal than just memorizing keywords, and look, if that feels really overwhelming to you, to try to write your own story.

Meg: 13:20

I am including in the show notes some different links to details on story arcs and what that means, as well as some different written versions that I've found of journeys through the major and minor arcana. These are tarot readers that are literally using the cards to tell different versions of the story, but of course I'm going to give you some myself. I usually think first and foremost of the major arcana as a story of evolution or a story of transformation. It's not necessarily just personal evolution right, that we can be talking about a community or an idea or a group of people or whatever, but when I'm thinking about cards that fall within the major arcana, I'm thinking of them as story beats on a path towards transformation. So here's one quick version of the story.

Meg: 14:05

The fool has a desire and decides to go through an initiation. They make some decisions and start a big journey, but quickly they find that they need to set boundaries, acknowledge history and also step into community. They find ways to celebrate that purpose. They put in a lot of really hard work and they start letting go of some old ideas so that they can step into new cycles and really level up their work. The fool starts to gain a deeper understanding of how their work impacts the world around them. But they also run into some different obstacles. They find that it's necessary for them to grieve and experience a kind of rebirth. After that rebirth they find themselves looking for new balance and moderation. They make some complicated choices, discover freedom, experience breakthroughs and also restore their faith, not only in themselves but in the world around them. They take some time to honor their shadows and they also dance in the sunshine. They learn to practice self-compassion and ultimately embrace this more authentic version. Practice self-compassion and ultimately embrace this more authentic version of self that has emerged and become clear through the process of this journey. Now it's the major arcana in like 30 seconds, which is just to say.

Meg: 15:11

There are so many other ways to tell that story and I really encourage you to take some time to write your own. Lay out all 22 cards and write some stories that you can see, based on all of the different story beats and, if you want, just pick a few cards and practice writing shorter stories for yourself using a handful of cards. Think about what happens in between each card to make the next one possible. Think about how each card sets up the card that follows it and also serves as a reaction to the card that comes before it, and you can tell basically any story you want using those cards. You can tell a story from your own experience. You can tell a fairy tale or that story that you spent some time picking apart. Choose different cards and see how many different stories you can create, and I think you're going to find that there is a world of possibilities just in the major arcana alone. But of course you know I love the minors, so we've got to do this with the minor arcana too.

Meg: 16:06

Every minor arcana suit tells its own tale and it's really experienced through the lens and experience of each specific element or facet of human life. I like to think about the suit of wands or fire as being about passion and desire, the fire that lives in our belly, the things that really excite us and get us out of bed in the morning, the stuff that we want to pursue, the stuff that gives us energy, the stuff that feels authentic and transformative. I think about the suit of swords as really this intellectual pursuit. This is about truth and perception, about fact and fiction, about the ways that we learn and take in information, as well as what we choose to share and how we choose to communicate what we know, or think we know, with the people around us. The suit of cups or water is really about matters of the heart, and so with this, we're thinking about emotional journeys. We're thinking about relationships with other people, as well as our relationship with ourselves and our world. We're thinking about self-love, we're thinking about empathy. We're thinking about relationships with other people, as well as our relationship with ourselves and our world. We're thinking about self-love, we're thinking about empathy, we're thinking about intuition, and sometimes this can also bring up like artistry as well as faith, how we are connected to spirit, how we are connected to ancestors, how we are connected to the world that we live in.

Meg: 17:15

Lastly, the suit of pentacles or earth is often telling a journey of our physical self, our physical safety or our physical growth. This is really tied to resources, which is not just money, but anything that we can use to build on something else, anything that we have at our disposal like time or space, safety, creativity, anything that we use to build. This is our physical health and wellbeing. This is also our relationship to pleasure and comfort. This is our sense of responsibility, our sense of boundaries, our sense of building legacy towards something that's going to outlive us. And so, within each one of those elemental lenses, we are telling a smaller but not less important story.

Meg: 17:55

You can think of the minors as stories of something new that emerges. A personal choice needs to be made about what emerges and maybe a balance is struck. Then there is an initial outpouring of passionate creation, a necessary implementation of some structure or protection, followed by an important pivot point or change that allows for an essential shift. There's a craving of stability and a reconnection with our sense of authenticity, a deep dive into who we are and why we're doing what we're doing, and then a doubling down on pursuing that goal with everything that we've got and everything that we can. There is an awareness that our journey is coming to a close and a sense of gratitude and responsibility for how far we have come. And then there is a real saying goodbye to what we've been doing and opening up the possibility of something new beginning to emerge in the future. But again, that's just one version of these stories, and there are so many different ways that we can tell them. And again, I really encourage you to practice writing your own.

Meg: 18:55

Try pulling out different cards from different suits, try writing a story for the entire suit, try connecting it to your own life or stories that you love, and see what kinds of stories come up. Think about the energy that lives in between each card. Think about what the ace is going to ignite and how that paves the way for the cards that follow. Think about cause and effect, think about conflict and resolution, think about beginnings and endings, and you're going to start to see the cards in a much more holistic way. I always like to end these episodes with a quick tip or trick, and so, while I've given you a lot of different exercises that you can use to try to dig more fully into the cards, I want to suggest that you pull like three cards that come one after another in the tarot.

Meg: 19:36

This could be the one, two, three, this could be a four, five, six. They could be from the major arcana or the minor arcana, it really doesn't matter, but practice arranging them in order, just those three cards, and create a little story based just on the images that you see, you don't have to worry about keywords or correspondences or anything else. Think about how each card sets up the next one. Think about how the cards weave together to tell a narrative, and then I want you to put the cards in a different order and write a new story. You can use those same meanings that you found, but I want you to practice considering how each card sets up the next one when they're in that different order. How does it change the narrative? Do you still get to the same place or is it a completely different story? Practice figuring out how many different stories you can tell with just a few cards. It's really going to start to strengthen those muscles around connecting cards together and also letting each card serve as a story beat.

Meg: 20:29

That's all I've got for you today, but, as always, I want to thank you for spending this time with me, and I will be back soon with more Card Talk. Card Talk is committed to staying ad-free for everyone, which is possible thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. To pledge your monthly support or make a one-time donation, click the link in the show notes. You can also find episode transcripts, more about me and additional tarot resources through my website, 3amtarotcom. See you next time.