Positive Cards in Painful Situations

Feb 23

This is such a universal experience for readers, and can feel so heart wrenching and discouraging when it happens. It can feel like we are not being listened to, or that Spirit or the Tarot are mocking us in the face of our pain. To understand the “why” of the cards we pull, especially in these moments, we have to go a little deeper.

Firstly, there are no positive or negative cards in the Tarot. They all bring medicine of some kind. It doesn't necessarily mean that we like, or appreciate the medicine! Medicine can be sweet, and it can be very bitter.

The first opportunity we have when we pull a sweet card for a bitter situation is to pull out the old paradigms of good and bad in the Tarot at its root. No matter what we pull, it is never bringing anything but helpful medicine our way.

The second thing is to remember that the Tarot does not always report on what is happening in our lives, nor does it always provide an accurate descriptor for our current experience. It almost always, however, offers invitations.

Perhaps, in the midst of an experience of devastation and grief, you pull Ace of Cups, or The Sun. This doesn’t mean that Ace of Cups is a representative of your grief experience, but it is something that may soothe and bring medicine to your wounds. It might help to bring tears up. It may help to gently point you in the direction of what you're needing. Ace of Cups is fierce medicine, and can bring up a lot of big and important feelings.

Sometimes, the Tarot understands our rawness so acutely that it moves past the pain and into the balm. Remembering that can profoundly transform the way we take in the medicine of the cards in these moments.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Thirdly, situations like this are a kind of magical portal, in which we have the opportunity to learn something new about a card, and an unexpected way that it might show up for someone. It might be that Ace of Cups has a completely unique teaching to offer you, but it can only come when we lean in and are willing to see what it has to say.

This is part of the reverent co-creative process of what it is to have a Tarot practice. We are here to learn from the deck, not carry our ideas of what should or shouldn’t be, or whether a card should or shouldn’t be there. If it shows up, it is bringing a gift. Our work is to open our hands and receive it — even if it wasn’t the gift we were expecting.