Card Talk
CARD TALK is a mini podcast featuring tarot basics and evergreen insights, supporting you from your very first reading to card-slinging with confidence. Whether you're a curious beginner or an experienced practitioner, CARD TALK is your new go-to tarot podcast for quick tips and practical tricks.
Hosted by 3am.tarot creator and Finding the Fool author Meg Jones Wall, a queer and non-binary tarot reader dedicated to creating accessible, inclusive tarot resources.
Card Talk
so you feel disconnected from the tarot
Today on CARD TALK, I’ll cover:
-what can spark feeling disconnected from the cards
-why it is super normal to struggle with making readings personal
-four essential reminders
-tips and prompts to help you approach this challenge with compassion
Suggested resources:
-intro to meg / deepening your tarot practice / reading tarot while stressed CARD TALK episodes
-card connections in the 3am.tarot conservatory
-good morning tarot / good night tarot mini books
-from grief to hope (and back again) workbook
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!
CARD TALK is written, edited, and produced by Meg Jones Wall of 3am.tarot. Theme music created by PaulYudin.
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. In today's episode we're going to talk about feeling disconnected from the tarot or moments when you're having trouble personally connecting with the cards in your readings. This episode is part of a larger mini-series I'm doing on issues that might crop up within your tarot practice, or desires or or hopes or ambitions that you might have within your personal practice.
Speaker 1:Now, feeling disconnected from your cards can mean a lot of things, but I'm thinking specifically about this. Have you ever gotten a reading from someone who seems to just have a really special, unique dialed in personal connection with their tarot cards? Whether they read really fast and just immediately seem to know what the cards are saying almost by instinct, or whether they have a really gentle, slow, meditative style and take their time with every single card. Some folks really have a distinctive flavor to their readings and you can see a really tangible, magical, beautiful interaction with the cards every time they read, and sometimes we want that for ourselves right Now. That's not the only way that feeling disconnected from your cards can feel, but I think that sometimes when we watch people who have really established really intimate relationships with their cards, it can make us look at our own practice and find it wanting. But being disconnected from your cards can be all kinds of things. It can mean all kinds of things, right. If you're really early in your tarot practice, if you're still fairly new to the cards, this could mean that the cards just feel sort of static or stagnant, that you don't feel a lot of life or magic breathing through them, and I just have to stress that that's super fucking normal. Not everybody feels a zap of lightning or intuitive power the second they first touch their cards. I certainly didn't. Now, if you want more of my own story, if you want to hear someone who's now a professional in this space talking more about how slow it was to get to know the cards, check out the first episode of this podcast. It's called Intro to Meg or literally pick up my book. The introduction is all about how much I struggled with the tarot when I was getting started.
Speaker 1:But I'm not going to not address the elephant in the room. You might feel disconnected from your cards because the world is really hard and scary and impossibly complicated right now. Around the globe, fascism is rising. People are being more and more disenfranchised, marginalized. People are suffering exponentially. We still have multiple genocides going on. But here in the United States we also have a literal fascist coup happening in front of our eyes. There are Nazis taking over the government with their 20-year-old bro cronies. It's fucked up and it is very hard to survive right now. Everything is expensive, things are collapsing.
Speaker 1:If you can't feel connected to your tarot cards, you're not a personal failure. You're just a person living in this world paying attention to what's going on. So first, just please cut yourself some slack. But there can also be a lot of grief in this feeling. Right, if you have an established tarot practice, if you have a long relationship with the cards, if you have felt that magic and that lightning and that intuitive wisdom and that support and that comfort and calm that comes with a really beautiful reading in your past, and now you can't access it, it really can feel like a loss and you might literally feel like you are grieving the relationship you used to have with your cards.
Speaker 1:So in talking today about both feeling disconnected from the tarot and just generally having trouble connecting with cards in your readings, I want to encompass kind of all of these experiences. I also just want to stress again how normal this is, no matter how long you've been working with the tarot. In my experience, basically, everyone goes through some kind of transitional period or rough patch with their tarot cards at some point. Again, you're not broken. You're not a bad tarot reader. Your practice isn't over. You don't have to put the cards away and never pick them up again. The world is really hard, tarot is really hard and you're doing great. Okay, we're all just doing the best we can.
Speaker 1:Now, whether you are craving a deeper connection to your cards or you're feeling disconnected from your cards, there isn't really a one size fits all prescriptive approach that I can give you. That's just going to magically make your readings click into place or feel more personal. I can't just turn you into an incredibly intuitive, gifted tarot reader with one easy trick. That's not how any of this works and, depending on who you are and where you are and how involved you are and what your relationship with the cards are and how your brain works and how your body works, there could be a whole host of different reasons for why you feel disconnected from the cards or why you're struggling to build deeper connections with the cards. So in this episode I want to talk about a few different factors and give you some different questions to think about and ask yourself and ponder as well. The first thing I want to remind you and talk about is the tarot is a relationship, and that means that sometimes communication is going to be hard.
Speaker 1:Think about how you talk to your cards on a regular basis. What is your relationship like with your cards? Do you speak to the tarot pretty formally? Do you talk to them more casually? Are you pretty intimate with your cards or do you kind of hold them at arm's length? In other words, do you talk to your cards when you're doing your reading, the way that you talk to a friend, or the way you talk to a parent, or maybe the way you talk to a deity or to a stranger, or to an acquaintance or to a teacher? What is the vibe of your conversations? What is the tone that you use with your cards, and is that what you want it to be, or is this an area where you might want there to be a shift or a change in some way? Do you have the kind of relationship with your cards that you want to have with your cards, or do you wish it was different?
Speaker 1:Personally, I'm very casual and very intimate with my cards. I talk to them like I talk to my partner or like I talk to a very good friend or like I talk to the deities that I talk to every day. It is a very free flow relationship. My cards make me laugh. I tell my cards when I think they're being mean to me. We joke around together. It's a very friendly, generous relationship and that's exactly the kind of relationship that I wanted with my cards.
Speaker 1:But it took a long time to get there because when I first started reading with them, I approached them like I would approach a priest or something. I kind of treated them in this like holy, sacred way and I was so reluctant to engage with them in an intimate way because I felt like I wasn't worthy of working with them. Now, that's just my own religious trauma. Your experience might be completely different. But just to say that your relationship with the cards will continue to evolve the more you use them.
Speaker 1:But you can also start talking to the cards the way you want to talk to the cards. You can also open up lines of communication that might feel different or more intimate or more formal. Maybe you are being really casual with your cards and you want to be more formal. You want to make it more of a ceremony. You can do that too. This is entirely up to you. But sometimes when we're feeling disconnected from our cards, it can be because we're engaging with them in a literal way that doesn't feel great for us or that doesn't reflect how we feel about the cards in that moment.
Speaker 1:The next thing I want to talk about is that magic can ebb and flow and your connection to the tarot might be spiritual or it might not be, and all of these things can contribute to how connected you feel with the cards. If tarot is spiritual for you, then your relationship with the cards could be a broader reflection of your current spiritual practice. Which is to say, if you feel really drained and disconnected and just a lack of energy or engagement in your other spiritual practice, tarot might feel the same way, whereas if you're feeling really plugged in and super connected, if you've got all these rituals going, if you feel really engaged and active and motivated and excited and connected and seen, then tarot might feel really great for you, but tarot might not be part of your spiritual practice at all. You might prefer to use tarot specifically or exclusively for creative work, or there's hundreds and hundreds of ways to work with tarot cards besides the spiritual. I have a whole episode on that as well.
Speaker 1:But I want you to think about do you turn to your tarot cards when you're craving spiritual connection and understanding, or when you want support from the universe, or from a specific God or spirit or energy, and how does that spiritual longing or perspective impact your readings? In other words, do you want the tarot to be or feel more spiritual than it currently does? And the inverse is also a great question to ask. Do you want the tarot to feel less spiritual than it currently does? How is the magic living within your cards? Where does it come from, and how might that be a reflection of your own relationship to spiritual work or spiritual practice right now? The next thing I want to say is that the cards aren't going anywhere.
Speaker 1:Okay, I want you to consider how the tarot is integrated into the rest of your life, if at all. For some people, their tarot readings feel really separate. Um, and that's completely fine. There's nothing. I don't say this with any judgment. My business happens to be tarot, so everything is tarot to me, but you might be completely different, and that's very normal and fine. But how much is your tarot integrated into the rest of your life? If you pull a card at the top of the day, are you thinking about it and looking for it and writing about it all day long? Or do you pull the card, take a note of what it's saying and then kind of set it to the side and live the rest of your day without necessarily thinking actively about it all the time?
Speaker 1:I also want you to think about do you use tarot in your relationships, in your creative practices, your creativity, in your work, in your play, in your rest, in your reflections? Do you use tarot to help you make decisions? Do you use tarot to help you predict or imagine the future? Do you turn to the tarot when you want to calm down or get fired up or clarify your perspective or leave things behind? When and why do you reach for your cards? That's really the TLDR here.
Speaker 1:When and why do you reach for your cards? What do they offer you? How do you use them to address these needs? How do the cards literally practically support you on a regular basis and do you feel like your current practices and your current relationship with the cards is actually giving you what you want, or are you really looking for something else? The cards aren't going anywhere. They don't leave unless you set them down and break up with them. But your relationship with the cards is allowed to change and how the tarot is integrated into the rest of your life also gets to change. We're all going to have periods where the tarot feels super present and super necessary, where it might be something that we're leaning on really heavily, but there are also going to be periods where things are a little bit slower. Maybe it doesn't even occur to us to reach for our cards in working through something or trying to make a decision. All of this is super normal, and just because you might be reaching for the cards in different times or the moments when it feels good to reach for your cards is different than it used to be doesn't mean that the cards are leaving you or that the cards are out of reach. Thinking about how the cards are actually feeling supportive for you and when and where the cards are actually feeling supportive for you in this moment can be helpful.
Speaker 1:Try not to compare your current practice to all of the other versions of your practice that you've had. Especially if you've been reading for years and years and have a really long established relationship with the tarot, your practice is allowed to look different. Right now, the world is on fire. Things are really fucking hard. It's okay If your tarot practice needs to evolve to meet your current needs. It doesn't mean they're going anywhere. But in the same way, acknowledging how the cards do feel good for you right now can help you adjust your practice and deepen your relationship with the cards in ways that feel really natural. If using the tarot to help you make decisions is feeling really good right now, if it's just helping you find clarity, then leaning more heavily on spreads than you perhaps have in the past could be a really useful practice and could help you deepen that relationship or reconnect with the cards in another way. But if you find that tarot really is just doing its best when it's calming you down, you're doing readings that are around you know, checking in with yourself or doing some introspection, then doing readings that allow for a lot of journaling or open up conversations with the cards could be a very different way to deepen your relationship with the cards, so it's really just about what you're using them for right now and how you can lean into that instead of judging yourself for it.
Speaker 1:Lastly, I just want to say your tarot story doesn't have to be over. I want you to think about how tarot has already transformed you, times that it has empowered you, ways that it has inspired you right. How has tarot encouraged and supported you over the course of your practice, however long that practice has been? In other words, what is your tarot story? How did you start working with the cards and how does it feel good to work with them right now? Thinking about what your tarot story is and how it has evolved over time can help you identify where you want to go next and can be really affirming as a reminder that your practice has probably already evolved at some point in the past and it's allowed to keep changing. Probably already evolved at some point in the past and it's allowed to keep changing.
Speaker 1:When I think about who I was as a person when I bought my first tarot deck back in the summer of 2016, it's almost hard for me to find things that I had in common with that person. My life has changed so drastically and so completely. Since I bought my first tarot deck, literally almost everything about my life is different from my relationship to where I live, to my community, to my job, to the ways that I show up in the world. My hair is different, I have more tattoos. I feel like a completely different person, and that's great. I think. In a lot of ways, tarot has helped me find this person that I am now and become an even more authentic version of myself. But that also means that the way I'm working with the cards now is so different than the way that I was in those first couple years of building a relationship with the tarot, and I think that's a good thing. I'm glad I'm not still doing the same things that I did back in 2016. I'm glad I've found some additional ways to show up. I've made tarot such a central piece of my life, and that's a beautiful.
Speaker 1:So take some time to tell your tarot story to yourself, and it might be really helpful in slowing down and showing yourself some grace and remembering how much you've changed since those times as well. Now, a lot of these prompts and questions, but particularly this, your store, this aspect of your tarot story these are all ideas that are borrowed from workbooks and mini books that I have written, and so I'm going to link some of those in the show notes in case you want a more guided experience through some of these ideas journal prompts, et cetera. But I wanted to offer them and talk through them here because I think that when our readings feel impersonal, or when it feels like we're not connecting as deeply to the cards as we'd like to be, it really is worthy of some reflection and consideration. I don't want you to feel like this is a silly way to feel or like this is a foolish way to feel. It's really real. But I do want you to drill down a little bit into what you mean by this. Exactly. What does it mean to feel disconnected from the tarot? What does it mean to feel like your readings are impersonal? I want you to find a way to articulate what you are craving in your tarot relationship, because once you know what that is, you can start to identify some fixes. Now there's lots of ways that you can reconnect with your cards and deepen your connection to the tarot, but I want to just shout out three really quick things in addition to like working through workbooks or taking a class or whatever.
Speaker 1:First, taking breaks from your cards is a hundred percent fine. If reaching for the tarot genuinely feels bad right now, for literally any reason, there is nothing wrong with taking a break. You can have a little goodbye ceremony for your cards. You can wrap them in something pretty or put them in a special box and literally tuck them out of sight if you want to, or you can just set them down on your bookshelf and promise that you'll come back when it feels good. You don't have to make this a big elaborate thing, but if it feels good to you to make a bit of a ceremony out of it, say goodbye to the cards whatever. That's totally fine too. Do what makes sense for you, but give yourself permission to take a break. If that's what you need, there's truly nothing wrong with it, and you can always come back to the cards when you're ready and when it feels good.
Speaker 1:Next, I do want to offer that shifting from readings into card studies or tarot journaling just might feel better right now than trying to pull cards in a reading, especially if you find yourself really anxious about the future, wanting to do predictive readings but then really regretting it after you've done the reading or just finding it hard to come up with questions to ask. Card studies and journaling and other kinds of courses could feel a lot more supportive and could still feel like a way to continue deepening your relationship with the cards or reconnecting with the cards without the stress of trying to interpret a reading. Lastly, you might find that trying out a different kind of divination or a new spiritual practice could feel more nourishing. That doesn't mean that you have to leave the cards behind, but it could mean that integrating another practice into your tarot work could feel supportive and still like stimulating or inspiring or calming or encouraging or whatever. So I'm thinking like add an Oracle card to your readings, or try using dice, or try a divination coin or a pendulum. Expand you know who you're working with or who you're talking to start an ancestor practice. Anything like that could be a helpful way to help you continue to build that relationship with your cards, but again, without necessarily doing the same things you've always done. Sometimes learning something new or trying something different can help you break out of a rut or help you reach that next level in your practice.
Speaker 1:Now, while I know I have offered some theoretical, quote unquote solutions here, I really want to encourage you to think of disconnection from the tarot less as a problem that you need to solve and more as information about where you are and what's going to support you best right now, in this moment. I really do believe that tarot can sit with us through any situation, challenge, obstacle, crossroads, decision or ambition that we hold. But just because the tarot can doesn't mean that we need to force it. If it doesn't feel good, if tarot is not the right tool for the job right now, don't make yourself use it. Find something else or find a way to use it that's going to feel a lot more supportive for where you are right now. Truly showing yourself grace and compassion with your practice right now is one of the kindest things you can do.
Speaker 1:When it comes to the tarot. I always like to end these episodes with a tip or a trick for you, and so, in addition to throwing a bunch of different resources and recommendations into the show notes, I also just want to say that, if you could use some structure for this kind of exploration specifically, I wrote a completely free downloadable resource that's exclusively for you card talk listeners and it's on this exact topic. It is a 12 page workbook and it's called building your best practice, and you can find it right now linked in the show notes of this episode and every episode. This is going to give you journal prompts and questions that you can sit with, as well as a few different tarot spreads to work through. It's going to encourage you to write your own tarot story, but it also gives you space to identify goals or ambitions that you might have for your own practice and consider the tools and resources that can help you get there.
Speaker 1:Now you're not going to find this linked anywhere else on my website, so please make sure you check the show notes. It's completely free and there's the direct link to download. It is right in those show notes. I really hope that this has been helpful, but that is all I have for you today. So, as always, thank you so much for spending this time with me, and I'll 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 donating to help with production costs. You can 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 you.
