31 Day Tarot Challenge: 10 Lessons I Learned
I disappeared from my blog all August because all my attention was on the 31-Day #PMpalaisipan tarot challenge on Instagram 🤪
Now that we’re on the last day of the month (time flies!), I thought it would be good to do a round up of my takeaways from the last five weeks. But before I go into it, it’ll probably be useful to define what a tarot challenge is.
A tarot challenge poses a series of questions, themes, or prompts that you’re meant to draw cards for.
It typically covers a month (so that’s 28 to 31 prompts, depending on when you’re doing the challenge) and encourages participants to build a regular, consistent, card-pulling habit. That’s the “challenge” part—I find that it isn’t always easy to incorporate daily draws into your routine; but a challenge can hold you accountable and give you a goal to work towards.
I’m familiar with these month-long challenges because it’s pretty common in the yoga world. I’m actually on day 98 (!!!) of daily yoga right now and can’t wait to hit the 100 mark. I’m a Taurus rising who thrives on routine and consistency, so doing a tarot challenge and a yoga challenge simultaneously is actually comforting for me.
If you took part in the August challenge, thanks for joining… and if you fell off the wagon, weren’t able to join in, or have no idea what it’s like to do consistent daily draws based on an actual challenge, here’s what I learned:
Challenges build community. I know I would have benefitted from doing this challenge on my own, but seeing other people sharing their pulls and readings on social media every single day was so nice. It’s been such a joy to see the same names pop up in my tags on instagram, and I feel like we’ve all become fast friends on the Internet.
TBH, I really try to stay away from direct messages on social because I find they give me anxiety, but these tags were different. They showed that a bunch of people shared the same intentions as I did—it was very heartwarming!We’re all in this together. It was so cool to see people pulling similar cards on the same day! Every time I drew the same card as someone, I couldn’t help but message that person—it felt like we were battling the same challenges together and it felt nice to have someone in my corner.
The world is so divisive now—anything that reminds us that we’re all built of the same stuff feels very reassuring.A challenge is an effective way to learn the tarot. Some people went into this challenge with their very first tarot deck, and after just a few days, they got the hang of interpreting cards for themselves. Pulling a card a day and having the same (stalker) cards show up again and again got them familiar with their decks, so much so that they didn’t need to look at their cheat sheets to read anymore.
I’m so proud of you, PM Pinoy first-timers! 🥳Not every card will make sense. And that’s okay. There are days when I felt like I had to force an interpretation or couldn’t come up with anything relevant to me. It happens! And when it does, you just have to learn to set that experience aside and start fresh the next day. Don’t sweat the small stuff.
There is no tarot police out to get you. Someone sent me a message, one day, in a panic that she couldn’t figure out what her card meant. I told her that tarot’s supposed to be of service to you—if it’s only making you anxious, then set it aside and don’t take it too seriously.
The same thing goes for the entire challenge. If the idea of pulling a card a day is only putting unnecessary pressure on you (instead of making you excited that you have an accountability checker), then drop it.
There may be parameters to every challenge, but again, do with it what you’d like. Want to turn it into an oracle challenge instead? No one’s stopping you! Want to draw three cards instead of just one? Go ahead 😜You can catch up if you miss a few days. Ideally, you pull a card a day—but we’ve all got stuff to do and things to take care of, and sometimes we forget. No biggie, it’s okay to pull three cards at a time for what would have been consecutive days. I honestly don’t think it makes a difference.
Some prompts are more appropriate to your experience than others. If you want to do a lower stakes challenge, then you can actually just cherry pick prompts from the entire month and just work on those.
This will work if you’re not really concerned about building a habit or staying consistent. If your intention for the challenge is to do deep self-reflection, then this might work better for you.Keep it short. Especially if you’re sharing on social media. A one or two-sentence reading can be just as impactful as a five-page PDF reflection on one card.
Some folks who joined the challenge didn’t even put captions and instead just shared the images they pulled—and that’s completely fine, acceptable, and great, too!
We all build our own interpretations of the cards based on our life experiences. This is one thing I stand by when it comes to approaching tarot in a #practicalmagical way. Every tarot card has a foundational meaning that everyone can relate to, but we all add our own layers depending on our personalities, what we’ve been through, and what we’re enduring at any given moment.
I really appreciated how everyone read the cards in similar and different ways. I feel like people’s points of view helped me add to my own tarot vocabulary.
Sometimes, you just want a read on a certain issue. Not everyone wants a fix or a solution to something that seems problematic or challenging. You know how in relationships, one point of contention is how one party just wants to voice out what they’re going through, but the other party immediately wants to “fix” things instead of just hearing things out?
Same goes for tarot challenges. Sometimes, you just want to share what you’re feeling and don’t necessarily want anyone to swoop in and offer suggestions—even if they come from a good place!
If you’re itching to offer a fix to someone who’s participating in the same challenge as you, maybe ask the person first if they’re open to hearing your interpretation instead of just sliding into their DMs and dropping bombs all over their issue. ✌️ Word to the wise!
I didn’t think it would be easy for me to come up with 10 lessons at first (I was seriously thinking of just sticking to five), but wow, all these bullet points just kept coming. I hope they inspire you to join or even start your own tarot challenge one of these days.
Again, thanks to everyone who joined in the fun. Happy September :)