Daily Tarot Draws: A Long-Time Tarot Enthusiast's Perspective
This is Part 2 of a series I’m doing featuring folks who participated in the #PM31Days2021 challenge last January.
It’s the start of a new month tomorrow (hello, March 2021!) and there’s no time like now to start a daily tarot draw practice.
I like how the start of every month can feel like a mini-New Year. Technically, there really is no difference between one day and the next, February to March, December 31 and January 1. But, I think it helps to turn the pages of our planners and calendars, call one day different from the next, and conjure a sense of freshness for ourselves.
Starting a daily tarot draw practice can also give someone’s tarot practice the refresh or boost it’s been needing.
If tarot has been an on and off thing for you, a passing fancy you had when you were in school that you never quite fully got into, then the accountability and discipline that goes with a 31-day challenge can help you get your head back in the game.
Goodness knows I have a tenuous relationship with the word “challenge.” I’ve been known to take these things way too seriously to the point of injuring myself emotionally and physically. So, I do hesitate calling these daily draws I talk about a “challenge” knowing that this word might put undue pressure on other people and even myself. Sometimes, however, we do need an extra kick in the butt. If your intuition tells you, over and over again, that you do need to push yourself to get yourself out of a rut, then a 31-or however many day challenge may just be the thing.
Shaniqua was one of the particpants in last January’s challenge whose daily tarot draws I was easily hooked by.
Unlike Queenie, who I featured in the first post of this series, Shaniqua and I don’t know each other IRL, but I do see her pop up on my Instagram feed from time to time. Watching her posts day to day made me feel like I was getting to know her on a more personal level. And asking here questions about her own daily tarot draw experience gave me a feeling that many of you would be able to relate to her too.
Hope you enjoy the interview!
Name: Shaniqua
IG handle: @shaniquasparkles
What got you into tarot” I got into tarot when I was in college, though I can’t recall any specific reason. I think I was drawn to it because of the art and the potential for storytelling, and then got into the divination aspect later. Since then, I’ve been practicing on and off, mostly doing readings for close friends when we got together.
Photo by Viva Luna Studios on Unsplash
PRACTICAL MAGIC: What deck/s do you like to use for daily draws?
SHANIQUA: I use good old Rider-Waite for personal readings. I also have a Welcome to Night Vale deck that I use for prompts/story ideas, a starter deck (with explanations on the cards!) that I bought way back in the day to help me learn, and a Clow Card deck given to me by my sister that I use when I need a pick me up.
PM: What surprising insights did you get from doing a daily pull in January?
S: Since the challenge was specifically for January, it helped set the tone for my goals and intentions for the year. Overall, I found my pulls really affirming and comforting.
“It’s just really nice to be told that you’re on the right track. I think what surprised me was how consistent my pulls were. It really helped ground me, and remind me of the bigger picture.”
PM: Do you like routine / daily habits or was this a new thing for you?
S: During the quarantine, I actually found that month-long challenges were pretty good for me, because it made me feel like I was accomplishing something everyday. In January, I was trying to do two other habit challenges and this was the only one where I didn’t miss a day, haha. The other two were for yoga and language learning. My subconscious self probably welcomed the daily pulls as a time to relax and be reflective, rather than as a time to “work” like the other two.
PM: Did you pull your card of the day at the same time everyday or did your routine vary?
S: Since I was taking my pictures with the tree outside my window as my background, I tried to do my pulls while there was still light out, usually at around 2 PM before my afternoon work schedule starts. It would be a nice midday break since I had a clear head at that time, unlike if it was too early or too late when I’d be half-asleep. But there were days when I lost the light so I had to just use the plant on my desk as a background instead, haha (PM’s note: as someone who doesn’t enjoy taking photos for Instagram, I feel you!!!).
PM: What question/s did you have difficulty with?
S: There were definitely pulls that I didn’t understand so I would just ramble out my thoughts for that day, hoping it would lead me somewhere that made sense, but I think my hardest questions were about topics that I didn’t often think about or ones that I was probably subconsciously avoiding: “What conflict needs your attention?” “What is the ultimate betrayal for you?” “Where do you need to be more competitive?”
“Maybe a part of me wanted to keep the theme of comfort and encouragement going, so that’s why it was hard for me to reflect on difficult topics.”
I still think these pulls are valuable, and it would be interesting to revisit them if/when I do encounter conflicts or betrayals or competition.
PM: Did your personal definition of a particular card change because of this challenge?
S: Since I don’t consider myself particularly adept at tarot reading, rather than change, I think I found that my understanding of the cards just expanded. Most of my pulls from the Major Arcana or the Pentacles suit, and I got to know those cards a bit better, specifically the Page of Pentacles, which I pulled thrice during the month. But I think my personal standout card was The Hermit.
When I was younger, I was really drawn to this card and I wanted to become everything that it embodied – wisdom, detachment. But then I pulled it for the Alsa-Balutan prompt (“What do you need to kick out of your life?”) and I knew that I didn’t have to kick out wisdom and detachment, but my idealized version of it, the dreams I used to want for myself. It let me realize that I have different goals now, and that’s fine. I just have to let go of something old if I want to achieve them.
PM: Did you learn anything about the kind of questions you can explore using with tarot?
S: Definitely! Before the challenge, I mostly just reached for my deck when I had a pressing issue, or during birthdays or New Year’s—“big moments”. I didn’t really think about using it in this way, for the daily moments that led up to the bigger ones. The daily prompts played a huge part in guiding me as well.
“This challenge really helped me see how the small parts add up and, alternately, how the big parts could be broken down.”
PM: What did you learn about yourself?
S: This isn’t directly related to tarot, but I did the challenge on my personal Instagram account, where I often post long, aimless blocks of text because no one follows me except my close friends. To see those blocks of text side by side with everybody else’s reflections was an interesting experience (PM’s note: I definitely agree!).
I noticed a lot of things about the way I talk and think compared to others. It got me thinking about my relationship with tarot and the way I talked about it, as opposed to this mental image I had of a “legit” tarot reader, mystic oracle type person. Also, since a lot of my pulls related to my goals for the year, I was more aware of my general trajectory when dealing with goals. I noticed when I was still gung-ho and excited, and when I was losing steam and getting impatient. The daily pulls gave me more guidance on my mental state and helped me pull (no pun intended) through the first few hurdles of this month.
PM: Were your cards an immediate reflection of how you were feeling or did they surprise you?
S: As I said, a lot of my pulls were, by my interpretation, more directly related to my larger goals for the year, rather than whatever my brain was worried about in the moment.
“I feel like they always brought me back to my main concerns. It might not have been something I was immediately or strongly feeling that day, but it reflected where I was in my personal journey.”
PM: I think a lot about confirmation bias and reading tarot for ourselves. What do you think about this?
S: Since I talked about feeling affirmed and having trouble with questions about topics I didn’t often think about, I definitely think there’s some truth to confirmation bias in tarot. However, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I think tarot is a tool that helps you bring out things that you always knew were true. There were times during the month when I had to face some hard truths about my goals—things that I always knew I was going to have to do but I didn’t want to think about or tended to look over. Reading tarot isn’t necessarily an echo chamber of your own thoughts. You can still learn a lot from it. It only becomes unproductive if you deliberately ignore what’s literally in front of you and refuse to do the work of looking closer at the difficult or confusing parts of the reading.
I’m really not confident with tarot, even if it’s technically been years since I started learning. I always thought that tarot needed an element of intuition that I just perhaps didn’t have. But like yoga and language learning, I realized that it’s a practice, and can even be a method of self-care.