tarot for hope

Today on CARD TALK, I’ll cover:
-ways to think about hope as a practice
-questions for thinking about what feeds your hope
-insights into my own relationship with hope
-a simple way to start exploring hope with your tarot deck
-an upcoming live course for activating hope & resources

If your sense of hope is supported by expansive imagination, envisioning new possibilities, and changing your perspective, check out Magician's Lens, beginning October 26th. This course is also available with streaming access only through the 3am.tarot conservatory.

Also recommended for exploring hope:
-this tarot spread (you can also find my whole tarot spread archive here)
-this interview on spiritual activism, an upcoming conference, and the next issue of one of my favorite tarot literary projects
-this blog post on spiritual healing & temperance
-this book on grief & climate justice; this book on tarot & creativity; this book on tarot & liberation
-our october 2024 forecast for CALL YOUR COVEN

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. And as a special thank you for CARD TALK listeners, click here to download a completely free, exclusive workbook for building your best personal tarot practice.

Love what you’re hearing? Support the pod with a one-time donation or recurring subscription, and please subscribe, review, and share with a friend or two!

Chapters

• 0:11 Cultivating Hope Through Tarot
• 14:50 Exploring the Magician's Lens

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

I'm Meg Jones-Wall and this is Card Talk, a mini podcast for tarot basics and evergreen insights. I'm here to help you build a tarot practice that works for you. Glad you're here. Glad you're here. In today's episode of Card Talk, we are going to be talking about how to use the tarot as a way of cultivating, protecting, expanding and supporting your personal sense of hope. Now, if you're thinking that this feels a little bit different than previous episodes of Card Talk, you would be absolutely right.

Speaker 1: 0:43

Over the past 25 episodes or so, I've really been focused on making sure you have all of the nuts and bolts needed to be able to develop tarot rituals, tarot routines and a tarot practice that works really well for you, whatever that might mean, whatever that might look like and don't worry, we're not done with those. I have so many more episodes planned along those lines. But given that today is October 1st 2024, and given what we are looking at as a collective for the next month and for the rest of this year and into next year and into the future, whatever that may hold, it's been really on my mind lately that I wanted to start offering some additional episodes that are a little bit more heart-focused and a little bit more intimate. I really want you to feel personally equipped and personally resourced to not just know the nuts and bolts of a tarot practice, of what it might look like externally, to be organized about your readings or to be able to think critically about how you work with the cards that you pull. I also really want to give you everything you need to build a tarot practice that's going to help you become whoever you want to be right, Whether that's your best version of self, whether that is a more creative version of self, whether that's a more compassionate version of self, whether you want to go on to read tarot professionally, whatever your tarot goals might look like, I really want you to feel like you have a strong sense of understanding around what the tarot can do for you on a deeply personal level. And again, given that today is October 1st 2024, I think there's a lot that needs to be said around using the tarot for hope. There's a lot of things that we're probably going to cover in these sorts of episodes, but I really want to start with hope because it's the thing of things that we're probably going to cover in these sorts of episodes. But I really want to start with hope, because it's the thing that I just can't stop thinking about right now.

Speaker 1: 2:29

Now, to refresh your memory, I am a queer, trans, chronically ill, self-employed person based in the United States, which means that my political lens, my personal lens, my general views are all shaped by being a person of those identities in the United States. I'm not going to get into all of the specifics of how fucked everything feels, but suffice to say I understand why you might be feeling a little bit hopeless these days because, if I'm being really brutally honest with you, I'm struggling with hope myself. There is so much to be concerned about. There's so much to be angry about. There is so much to be angry about. There's so much to be grieving between the lack of resources for hurricane victims, between the fact that our Congress continues to choose to send billions of dollars to Israel rather than investing in infrastructure and protections and services for people here at home. From COVID denialism to this goddamn election that I'm so tired of, to the economy and inflation, to police brutality, to there's just. There's so many things. There are so many things, and I just wanted to give voice to that with my actual voice. I know I write about these things a lot. I know I share a lot of resources and thoughts about these things on social media, but I wanted you to hear with my voice.

Speaker 1: 3:43

I know hope is hard right now. I know hope might feel like something that is completely out of reach and I'm not here to convince you that you have to be some gratitude, practice, love and light Pollyanna, who sees the good side of everything. Grief feels like a close personal friend to me at this point. I spend a lot of time in grief. Ask my partner how much I cry these days, like there is so much to grieve, there is so much to be angry about, there is so much to be upset about, and if your hope is faltering, I get it. I am not here to judge you and I'm not here to tell you that you have to hope in the face of things that feel hopeless. If you're mad, if you're grieving, if you're devastated, if you've lost someone you love, to COVID or to hurricanes or to Zionism or whatever, you get to grieve that and I'm never going to tell you not to grieve what you need to grieve and not to be angry when you should be fucking angry.

Speaker 1: 4:37

The reason that I want to talk about hope today and the reason that I'm probably going to be talking about it a lot for the rest of this month and for the rest of this year, and maybe for the rest of my career, I don't know. But the reason that I really want to talk about hope is not because it's some sort of easy antidote or balm or medicine or solution for the problems that are facing us. The reason that I think hope is so important is because it is a survival mechanic, and I want you to have it in your pocket, and I really truly believe that tarot is one of many tools that can help you cultivate a real and authentic sense of hope, and I want you to have that. If you can find it or I at least want you to believe that you could find it I want you to find hope for having hope. If that's where you are, that's what I want for you.

Speaker 1: 5:25

So the million dollar question really is how do we find hope? And, more specifically for this podcast episode and this moment in time, how do we use the tarot to cultivate and support and protect our sense of hope? When I think about this particular problem or this particular challenge or this particular goal right To cultivate hope. The first thing that I really think about is what does your hope need in order to grow? What does your hope need in order to survive? What things nurture and support and encourage and even expand your personal sense of hope? Now, that is going to look really different for everyone, and I want to be so clear here that I'm not judging anyone's thoughts on this. I want you to pay attention to what bubbles up for you first, and I also want you to interrogate this idea within yourself and see what comes up, whatever that thing is. What feeds your hope, what makes you feel hopeful, what lets hope bubble up within you and what helps it to take root, what sustains your hope?

Speaker 1: 6:28

Now, I asked this question on social media and I was so fascinated by some of the answers that I got, like freedom and intuition, and someone said I connected to my future self once via meditation and saw that we made it. But I also got answers like plants, how they keep growing, my friends' laughter, that the stars have kept me alive long enough to free myself halfway and they're not going anywhere. That the future doesn't need to mimic the past, that stars are being born right now, even if we can't see them and just joy, a fierce desire to continue to laugh in the face of despair. I loved every single one of these answers, including the ones that I didn't read here. I just think there's something so beautiful about thinking about what feeds our personal sense of hope and, if you want, pause this episode and think about it for yourself. Write down whatever comes up.

Speaker 1: 7:21

What makes you feel hopeful? What literal things make the sensation and emotion and reality of hope bubble up and take root within you? What gives me hope a lot of times is seeing people on the ground doing things in the face of imminent disaster or actual disaster always gives me hope. I'm thinking specifically about people that are loading up supplies and driving or riding horses or taking helicopters in to parts of the southeastern United States right now that have been absolutely destroyed by this recent hurricane. Watching people gather water, watching people gather medical supplies, watching people use drones to deliver insulin, which is a thing I saw on TikTok the other day. Watching the ways that people show up for each other in catastrophe Sorry, I'm getting emotional Always makes me feel hopeful.

Speaker 1: 8:17

Watching people physically deliver petitions and letters and gathered support to protest the execution of Marcellus Williams gave me so much hope, even though I was also crying and even though he was actually still executed. Watching the ways that people showed up to the governor's office to pass along, in a physical way, the support of millions of people who were protesting this execution gives me hope. Millions of people who are protesting this execution gives me hope. Even when the thing doesn't work, even when it feels like that collective action has failed in some way, there's also still the fact that it provides hope to people and shows us different ways to keep fighting and keep working. Those people are fucking brave. Everyone who is showing up to support other people and act in defiance of institutions that would cause harm. That always gives me so much hope.

Speaker 1: 9:13

I guess the short version of that is to say that community gives me hope. Real community, not infighting on social media, not people being shitty about someone mispronouncing a name when they're clearly upset. Shitty about someone mispronouncing a name when they're clearly upset. Not any of the bullshit that we see that gets conflated with activism somehow, but real, on the ground community. People showing up for their neighbors. People showing up for people they don't know, because something is fucked up and wrong and they want to do something to try to help. That shit always, always, always gives me hope.

Speaker 1: 9:48

But when I dig even deeper than that, when I think about where that stuff comes from, I think what really hits the root of it for me is that my hope is grounded by, and fed by, and nourished by and sustained by imagination, because someone has to think of the things that we can do to fight. Someone has to be creative to come up with solutions for getting people the medical supplies that they need. Using a drone to deliver insulin, that's brilliant, and someone had to come up with that idea in order to put it into practice. Someone had to recognize the fact that, printing out all of these petitions and delivering stacks of paper, each one representing a name or a community or a group of people who deeply believe in speaking out against injustice it takes someone to come up with that idea before it can be put into practice and before it can actually be accomplished. It starts with the idea.

Speaker 1: 10:47

So many of us are really trapped in specific perspectives. We see the institutions that have been around for such a long time, we see the rules and the laws that feel unchangeable, and it really limits our capacity to think beyond what already is. And to be clear, I'm guilty of this too. It can be really hard to look at something that feels like it is immovable and consider ways that we might be able to operate in a completely different way. Right, it is hard sometimes to imagine that something could be really different than the way that it feels like it has always been. But that's just me, right. I connect hope with imagination. My hope is fed by a sense of imagination and visioning and changing perspectives and expanding beyond what is to what could be. My hope is fed by possibility, but your hope might be fed by something completely different, and that's also beautiful and useful and powerful. And so my lesson for you today what I?

Speaker 1: 11:50

The reason we're here, the reason I wanted to record this on the fly episode, is that whatever feeds your hope probably has a tarot card or two that you can associate with that sensation, and so if you took the time to write down what feeds your hope, or if it's just something that you're starting to think about, I want you to think outside of the tarot, about what feeds your hope in general. For me, that's imagination and possibility and perspective. For you, it might be something different. It might be freedom, right, it might be intuition, it might be plants, it might be laughter, it might be starlight, it might be community. Whatever it is, I want you to name that thing, or name as many of those things as you can, identify the things that give you hope.

Speaker 1: 12:33

And once you have a little list, or once you have a single idea, whatever it is, I want you to start looking to the tarot and finding that idea within the tarot, finding the cards that represent or feel connected to that idea within the tarot. It might be a single archetype. It is for me. It's why I've been talking about the magician so much, it's why I'm probably never going to shut up about the magician, but for you it might be the priestess, it might be justice, it might be strength, or it might be a collection of cards or a sequence of cards, right, you might look at the story of ace two, three in the suit of wands and feel deeply hopeful by that message.

Speaker 1: 13:09

Whatever it is for you, I want you to start finding the cards that feel connected to the things that support your sense of hope within the tarot, and then I want you to work with them, and that could mean anything. Right, that could mean an intensive study. That could mean a resource or a class that you sign up for. That could mean looking at different versions of that card and seeing what you feel. It could mean making an altar to that card or a playlist for that card or a Pinterest board for that card or artwork for that card. It could mean finding significant colors and starting to wear them in your daily life. It could mean any number of things, but I want you to start making space for that card in your life and I want you to think about what that card looks like in your life, ways that it's already showing up and ways that you can bring it more deeply into your daily life. Now I'll also post some spreads and some other things in the show notes that you can use to connect with this card in different ways, but I really want to encourage you to see the tarot as a tool that you can use not just for readings right, but also for exploring who you are and what's going to help you be a person in this world that has hope. I want you to start connecting different tarot cards to your sense of hope and thinking about the cards that are going to support you in continuing to build your sense of hope. Now, if you happen to be like me and imagination or changes in perception or the idea of possibility feel to you like something that really nourishes and nurtures your sense of hope, I have something coming up that might feel particularly supportive for you that I would love to invite you to.

Speaker 1: 14:50

I wrote a course last year called Magician's Lens. It's a six-week series and it's really experiential, which is to say that it is grounded in everyday sensory-based activities. There are things that you can actively do, things that you can actively try, challenges and ideas, and also tarot spreads and tarot activities. But playlists and mood boards and all kinds of different things that you can choose between and try out that are really designed to help you connect with your imagination, connect with your capacity for rule-breaking and risk-taking and connect with your capacity for play.

Speaker 1: 15:28

When I think about imagination and vision work, the magician is always the archetype that I return to and it's an archetype that I have been compared to myself. It's an archetype that I love working with really closely. It's an archetype that I have been compared to myself. It's an archetype that I love working with really closely. It's just one that I always come back to and really love, not just because I am a child of Mercury and I love Mercury too and the magician and Mercury are heavily associated with one another but just because I feel like the magician offers us so much potential for seeing the world differently, and I feel like that is such a powerful thing to be able to do right now to be able to look at an obstacle or a challenge or a question and see something differently, to see possibility or a new way of approaching this thing, to tap into our own personal resources and understand what we have available to us that might help us come up with an unexpected or innovative solution to a problem. Working with the magician has truly changed how I see the world and how I approach problems, and I would love to share that magic with you and help you find it in your own daily life.

Speaker 1: 16:29

So, if this sounds appealing, I am running a live version of magician's lens that begins on October 26th and I'm including a link in the show notes. But even if you happen to listen to this episode way after October or this is out of the budget or whatever this course is also available as part of my monthly membership, the 3am tarot conservatory. However you choose to participate. You're going to get access to a ton of different activities and exercises that you can do at your own pace and on your own time, but they're going to change the way that you see this world and they're going to change your relationship with your imagination, and I think they're also really going to help you expand your perspective on what hope looks like and what hope feels like.

Speaker 1: 17:08

Feeding your imagination can feed your hope, and it's my sincere hope that, if you choose to sign up for magician's lens, that this will offer you everything you need to cultivate a broader, bigger, more beautiful imagination. Make sure you check the show notes, because I am going to be linking a ton of different resources, both mine and others, to help you explore and think more critically about hope as well as your personal relationship to hope, and it's my sincere hope that listening to this episode made you feel maybe a little bit less alone and maybe a little bit more hopeful. Listening to this episode made you feel maybe a little bit less alone and maybe a little bit more hopeful. I really do think that the tarot can be an incredible tool for doing hope work, both in making space for your grief and your anger and your feelings of helplessness, but also helping you understand what your personal resources are, what your personal strengths are and what really can give you a sense of hope, even as hard as the world is right now. That is all I have for you today.

Speaker 1: 18:05

Thank you for hanging out with me in this slightly unconventional and definitely more emotional episode of Card Talk. I will be back again soon with another episode and I'm sending you a lot of love and safety Cheers. Card Talk episodes are always free for everyone to enjoy, so if you love what you hear, thank you and join my signature Tarot Conservatory membership program through my website, 3amtarotcom. Thanks for listening and see you next time.