tarot for election day 2024

Today on CARD TALK, I’ll cover:
-on the importance of self-care
-three ways to work with the cards during periods of high stress
-an election day survival spread
-resources for support and distraction

Resources to get you through:
pulling cards in an uncertain world: newsletter essay
solar returns, favorite things, and a gift for you: newsletter roundup
CARD TALK: starting with tarot spreads episode
Next Level Tarot lectures on multi-card readings
Fill Your Cup workshop with Jeanna Kadlec
Drink Some Water free email series
From Grief to Hope (and back again) journaling workbook
Archetype Medicine lecture
3am.tarot Conservatory membership, packed with resources to explore
3am.tarot on Instagram
Call Your Coven podcast: November 2024 forecast and election episode

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 Self-Care With Tarot in Stressful Times
• 10:49 Election Day Tarot Spreads and Self-Care

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. Today is election day here in the United States. It is November 5th, 2024, and we are all having a time, and so, as a special Tuesday episode offering this week for Card Talk, I want to talk through how you can use the tarot to take care of yourself. Specifically today, whether you are located in the United States or not, the election here impacts everyone. America is a superpower, it's an empire, it has its fingers and budgets in everything, and, unfortunately, everyone really is heavily impacted by what happens in the United States today and in the days to come, and so I want to just acknowledge here at the top that however you're feeling is legitimate. If you're angry that all of our options are bad, I'm with you. If you're grieving for whatever's about to happen, I'm with you. If you're sad and discouraged about the candidates that we are facing and the platforms and beliefs that they hold, I hear you. I'm there too. And also, if you are trying to wrangle your hope as best as possible, if you are already thinking about how you can organize or continue organizing. On the other side of the selection, I'm with you too. This is a complicated moment, with grief and hope, with joy and sorrow, with anger and frustration all mixed up in this big messy cocktail, and I know I'm not the only one feeling it.

Speaker 1: 1:48

So today, my intention is to offer some different resources that you can use right now in order to help yourself ground. Slow down, take a breath and care for yourself in whatever way you need. For some people, that is going to look like using the tarot as a form of self-care to help with rest, to help with recovery, to help with tenderness and compassion. For others, it might look like a distraction. I am not someone that likes to watch day of election coverage. It stresses me out and so I am generally looking for a big project I can take on, something new, I can begin or something like a class that I can really lose myself in, so that I'm not just refreshing information every 10 minutes all day long, and so I'm going to try to offer both of those things in this episode, pointing you to some different resources that you can utilize if you're looking for a distraction, but also talking you through, right now, some different resources and exercises that you can do in order to take care of yourself in whatever way is going to be most useful for you.

Speaker 1: 2:50

But before we dig in, I would love to invite you to just take a deep breath in and let it out. If you'd like, shake out your shoulders, stretch out your wrists or your ankles, loosen your jaw, relax your jaw, give yourself a little scalp massage, crack your knuckles, just do a couple of gentle movements, wherever you are, whatever that looks like, whatever that means for your body to loosen up a little bit. Right, we are all going to be carrying a lot of stress in our bodies, and stress manifests in all kinds of different ways. But while you're thinking about your mind and your heart, I don't want you to lose sight of your body. It's okay to take care of your body today too, and it might feel that taking care of your body is actually the best thing that you can do. Give yourself permission to stretch, to do some gentle yoga or breath work, to do some exercise if that feels good for you, to go for a walk or spend some time in nature, but I really want to encourage you to take care of yourself beyond the tarot in whatever ways that's going to look like.

Speaker 1: 3:56

I also just want to remind you, in case you need to hear it today, that self-care is not a dirty word. It is an expression that has absolutely gotten commoditized by capitalism, because that's what capitalism does right. But, as the brilliant Tricia Hersey of the ministry says, rest must be a lifelong meticulous love practice rooted in justice, and not a one-time retreat that costs money and requires a passport. These days, self-care is really painted as a luxury. It gets seen as booking yourself a fancy vacation or splurging on a big day at the spa or taking a month off of work, and while those things are fantastic if you can access them, for a lot of us those things simply aren't possible, and part of the reason that I love using tarot for self-care is because it is a relatively affordable, simple way to build gentle daily rituals into your daily life, your weekly life, your monthly life, whatever that looks like for you. The number of times, the consistency with which you pull cards, is less important than the having of some kind of routine that really suits you and your mind and your habits and your schedule. I wrote a big essay on this that's available to everyone to read, right at the top of this month, so I'll include a link to that in the show notes if you'd like to read it and you're not yet on my newsletter list.

Speaker 1: 5:17

But I talk a lot about how tarot and the ritual of tarot and the connection and tangible experience of using tarot can be really helpful for quite literally reducing our physical stress and just giving us something to tap into. Even having a few moments of daily magic, of reflection and introspection and perhaps, if you read with other people, of connection and community, really can make a difference in long-term periods of stress. But especially on a day like today, when you might be feeling incredibly overwhelmed, when you might be feeling helpless and frustrated, when you might be juggling really big emotions, taking a few minutes to check in on yourself with your cards and ask the cards how you can take care of yourself could be a really helpful and supportive practice. So now that I've talked about capitalism and self-care for a few minutes, cause I can't seem to help myself let's talk about three simple exercises that you can do with your cards to take care of yourself today. The first is just choosing a card with intention to talk to or to spend the day with.

Speaker 1: 6:24

This is a great place to start, if doing a reading which is like formulating a question and drawing a card to be considered an answer, if reading feels just like too much today. You know, some days we just can't focus on a reading. Some days it feels too overwhelming to imagine what the cards might offer us, and so this is a really lovely, very simple way of working with the cards that might feel a little bit more accessible and a little bit less overwhelming or emotional. All you have to do for this is pull out your tarot deck, flip it over so that the cards are face up or so that you can see what the cards actually are You're not looking at the backs of the cards and go through the deck, find a card that feels like something, an energy that you want to sink into. This could be an archetype that you want to spend the day with, or this could be a minor arcana card, like one of the numbered pips that reflects the kind of energy that you love to feel today. Once you have a card that feels like an energy you want to sink into, something you want to pursue or chase after, or just something you want to prioritize today, pull it out of your deck and take a few minutes to look at it. Now you can just spend some time talking to it or praying with it or thinking about it, or you can grab your journal and actually write down anything that comes up.

Speaker 1: 7:38

But I want you to really think about what it would feel like to intentionally spend the day with that energy and, specifically, I'd like you to think about what it looks like to be in an embodied experience with that card. In other words, I want you to think about what it would look like to live in that energy for the day and to think about that in a really practical, tangible way, not just in a theoretical sense like oh, I would love to, if I was the Empress again, go for a big spa day and then have a huge, expensive, luxurious meal prepared for me by someone else that I could just enjoy with 50 of my closest friends. If you're listening to this and you're in a position where that's possible, 50 of my closest friends. If you're listening to this and you're in a position where that's possible, literally go off queen, enjoy that. I wish you all the best, but I don't think most of you listening would necessarily have the means or the time or the opportunity to splurge on something lavish. So I want to encourage you to really think about things that are actually accessible to you, that would actually be possible today. So, while you might have a pie in the sky fantasy of what embodying this energy might look like, I also want you to think about what you could actually do today, what might feel realistic for you To keep going with that Empress example.

Speaker 1: 8:50

This could look like just finding an everyday luxury that feels really good for you, pampering your body, maybe in a way that feels really lovely and joyful, but isn't necessarily just like using all of the most expensive things you can find right. So for me, pampering my body could mean a shower. That's what it usually means. For me, pampering my body is usually associated with water, and so a shower or a bath, perhaps using a body scrub I love to make body scrubs out of olive oil and essential oils and some salt, because those are all things that I have in my house or a long bubble bath with some like some nice music, something that feels really calming and gentle. This could also look like, you know, a few minutes of yoga or gentle stretching, something that really helps you come into your body and remember the beauty and strength of your body, whatever that means for you. Or the Empress could just mean a home-cooked meal that's prepared with someone you love, right?

Speaker 1: 9:45

When I think about the Empress, I often think about community and collaboration and generosity. So thinking about preparing something. It could be really simple. This could just look like baking bread together or making cookies together, right, but something that feels collaborative and pleasurable. But the Empress can also be really service oriented, so this could look like going out and volunteering in your community today, grabbing a trash bag and some gloves and picking up any stray garbage that might be in your neighborhood. These are just a couple of examples of things that would work for me and feel good for me. But I really encourage you, after you've chosen your card, to really think about concrete, tangible ways that you can step into and enjoy this energy and then do that today. You don't have to do every single thing you think of, but try to at least do a couple of those things and really allow yourself to be consciously tapping into that card's energy, whatever it is, as a way of taking care of yourself. Think of it as a gift that you can give to yourself is doing these practices and just really showing yourself that kind of tenderness that we all deserve right now.

Speaker 1: 10:49

My second suggestion is to pull a card in a reading as advice for caring for yourself today. So, rather than the first exercise, which is about intentionally choosing a card, this is really following all of the same advice, but instead letting the deck provide you with an answer. So for this one, I would encourage you to shuffle up your cards really well and ask them what can I do to take care of myself today? And then pull a single card, then do all of the same things that I just suggested in the first exercise, which is to say, talking to the card, brainstorming around the card, writing down how it might look or feel to embody that energy, and then being really intentional about taking the deck's advice and allowing yourself to take care of yourself in whatever way the cards suggest today.

Speaker 1: 11:37

The third and final suggestion that I have for you is to do an election day tarot spread. So, if readings feel good, but you want more than just a single card, this is a three card spread that I actually wrote for the 2020 United States election, because here we are again, y'all, and so I'm going to talk through this spread quickly. I'm going to talk you this spread quickly. I'm going to talk you through the three positions and I'm also going to offer a couple of additional kind of questions or some more insights into each of these positions. Now, if you want to try this spread out, but you are not someone who typically uses spreads in your practice, I would love to direct you to a different car talk episode that I recorded called starting with tarot spreads again free to access, just like this one, but it's going to give you a little bit of insights into getting started with a tarot spread. I'm not going to explain tarot spreads to you in this moment, but that episode already does it. So I would encourage you to pause this episode and go listen to that one first before attempting the spread, just to get some extra insights and context and advice for navigating that spread.

Speaker 1: 12:41

And if you love spreads and are looking for a bigger distraction today, if you're one of the folks like me who is excited to dig into a class or lose themselves in something nice and distracting today as a form of self-care, I do have a lecture series specifically exploring longer readings and multi-card readings and spreads called Next Level Tarot. It's a lecture series that's going to walk you through telling stories with your cards, connecting the cards together, navigating, confusing readings and everything else you need to know to do longer, more robust readings. So that could be a nice distraction for you today. I will include a link to it in the show notes. All right back to the spread. I'm going to assume that you know how to read spreads, so let's talk through it.

Speaker 1: 13:23

I've shuffled the cards well and then pull three different cards and we're going to have one card for each position. So card one is going to be responding to the prompt, a way to show yourself kindness. Now, this is similar to the other kind of prompts that I've already given as potential activities or exercises for taking care of yourself today. So I want you to think about this prompt not just as a way to show yourself kindness, but also a way to slow down, a way to offer yourself compassion, just a way to be gentle and generous with yourself. Let the tarot offer you a gift you can give yourself, or just an act or an action that you can do today. That is going to make the day just a little bit softer and a little bit easier.

Speaker 1: 14:07

Card two is a suggestion for how to protect your energy, and so this is really a prompt and a card that is about boundaries, which can be really hard, especially when we're in, like moments of overwhelm or periods of really high tension or fear, or just feeling really activated. This card is really an advice card, offering you a practical suggestion for a way to protect yourself, for a way to stay focused on what is important, and just for a way to again make the day a little bit easier. This might look like delegating tasks or allowing responsibilities to be shifted to the back burner. This might look like spending time with people that you really love, who are going to let you be in those messy emotions without judging you. Whatever it is, this is going to be an advice card that's really about protecting yourself and protecting your capacity for softness.

Speaker 1: 15:00

Finally, card number three is a truth to remember, no matter what happens, and while the first two cards are really practical, advice oriented cards for ways to navigate the day and show yourself softness and protect that softness, this is really about an insight. This might be something that you can really hang on to and trust in and remember, regardless of the results of today's election, whatever happens today and in the days to come, however long it takes for this election to be called, whatever you may see or feel or hear today, this is really something that you can cling to and hang on to, something that you can allow to be a foundation and a support, regardless of what's going to happen Now, in addition to talking through this spread, I did create a graphic for it in 2020, and I am revamping it and posting it today on my Instagram. So, if you're still on Instagram, you can find me at 3amtarot and you'll be able to see an updated version of this graphic. Now you could theoretically use all three of these rituals if you like, or you can just pick and choose whichever one is going to feel best for you, but it is my sincere hope that, in allowing the tarot to offer you some insights and support in moving through this day in a way that is compassionate and kind and authentic, that you're able to tap into a little bit of sweetness and a little bit of comfort, regardless of how hard the day might be. And, as I mentioned, if you are like me and you really would love something big and juicy and distracting to dig into, today I am including some of my most popular workshops and lectures, things that are really oriented into emotion and things that are going to offer you various forms of support in the show notes, so feel free to explore those as well. I hope you're able to find something that just gives you some comfort and some pleasure and some joy and some excitement today.

Speaker 1: 16:54

Wherever you are in the world, whether you end up listening to this episode on election day or in the days to come, please know that I'm sending you so much love, so many wishes for safety and power, and I am grateful that you're here listening to these words. Please continue to invest in your own community. Please continue to show up for one another. Please continue to extend compassion and generosity with one another. Please don't be afraid of conflict or disagreements. Conflict is not abuse. Conflict is not the enemy.

Speaker 1: 17:25

There are going to be a lot of voices out there offering insights and advice and ways forward, regardless of who wins the presidential election, and so I would encourage you to just continue to stay local and to invest in the people that are around you, your neighbors, both digitally and physically. That is all I have for you today, but, as always, thank you so much for spending this time with me, sending you a lot of love and strength, and I will be back again soon with more Card Talk. Card Talk episodes are always free for everyone to enjoy, so if you love what you hear, please consider supporting the podcast by subscribing, recommending Card Talk to a friend or two or donating to help with production costs. You can find episode transcripts. Learn more about me and join my signature Tarot Conservatory membership program through my website, 3amtarotcom. Thanks for listening and see you next time.