Say It With Tarot
Everything you want to know about Tarot--especially for contemplation, self-empowerment, personal growth and creativity--from Tarot expert, author and deck co-creator Janet Boyer.
Transmitting Intentions and Affecting Reality with the Symbols of Tarot
Did you know that 90% break their New Year's resolutions by the time February rolls around?
Totally true.
One of the reasons I feel this happens is that resolutions tend to be too rigid and specific. It’s like engraving a narrow goal into stone. There’s a feeling of dread and fear when pondering a resolution: can I do it? Will I do it? Should I tell people about it for accountability? But what if I fail?
Cheat just once on a resolution, and the floodgates of shame and guilt are thrown wide open.
To make yourself feel better—or in a fit of throwing up your hands and saying “What the hell…I can’t do this anyway”—you toss the resolution out the window, continuing to do what you’ve been doing…for the last few years. Or even decades.
But intentions? So very different, in my opinion.
Intentions are mini-maps that gently guide you towards your desired destination—specific enough to get you there, but general enough to allow for serendipity, sight-seeing and even short-cuts.
I see intentions as a form of course correction, too. Just like an airplane pilot makes dozens of course corrections during a flight, so, too, intentions help us aim the nose of our “plane” in a particular direction to get us to where we want. If we veer off-course, experience extreme turbulence or lose our way—no worries! We can just consult our intentions once again to point our nose in the desired direction.
A great way to course-correct easily and frequently is by using the symbol-rich system within Tarot, because they are 78 mini-maps that include hundreds of emotional, physical, mental, relational, spiritual and vocational states that you may want to enhance, invite, amplify, reduce or ameliorate.
You can literally affect your reality with intentions, using Tarot cards not as a receiver (as most do)...but as a transmitter.
Manly P. Hall once said, “The individual who is unable to control his mind will be its victim.”
Intentions help us harness the mind’s extraordinary capabilities to affect the field of matter and energy—what we call “reality”.
Experiments in Quantum Physics have shown that photons can behave as either a wave or a particle. When photons are consciously observed and measured, they act as particles. Myriad studies have proven over and over that the only difference between whether a photon behaves as a wave or a particle is the scientists observing, and attempting to measure, a photon.
Consciously observing, and acting upon, energy and objects changes their behavior.
There have even been studies with plants where a researcher will light a match and put it next to a leaf. Electrodes show the plant “screaming”. But that’s not all. When a group of scientists filed into a room filled with plants—including the researcher—the plant that almost got burned “screamed” when the match holder got near it.
It knew which researcher brought it discomfort and fear.
In the book The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, author Peter Wohlleben relates how trees live in families, warn others of danger and even have “friends”. (I kid you not: a tree prevents its branches from encroaching upon “friends” beside it, but will allow wild growth to interfere with a non-friend. One tree even grew differently on one side because a “friend” was next to it).
If all this is true for plant life—how much truer would it be for humans, who give off all sorts of electro-magnetic signals?
At a molecular level, everything is vibrating—even objects that appear quite solid, like a boulder or a couch or tree. In fact, most of what’s there (if you look under a microscope) is empty space.
When we vibrate at a certain level, or consciously try to affect the field of “reality”, we do, in fact, change some aspects of it.
In his book How Quantum Activism Can Save Civilization, physicist Amit Goswami, Ph.D.—featured in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know!? And author of the book God Is Not Dead—writes:
To change possibility into actuality, a new source of causation is needed: we call this downward causation. When we realize that consciousness is the ground of all being and material objects are possibilities of consciousness, then we also recognize the nature of downward causation: it consists of choosing one of the facets of the multifaceted object of the possibility wave that then becomes manifest as actuality….Do we have free will? To the extent that we can access our higher consciousness and choose from there, you bet there is free will, complete freedom to choose from the quantum possibilities offered in any give situation. Free will to choose the world as well as God and godliness, creativity as well as spiritual transformation. Quantum physics is the physics of possibilities, and its indisputable message then is that we potentially have the freedom to choose outcomes to live by from among these possibilities.
To read about more fascinating scientific studies, I highly recommend the book The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World by Lynne McTaggart (including experiments demonstrating changing the shape of bicep muscles simply by sitting on a couch and using your brain—or showing how directed thoughts produce demonstrable physical energy, even over a remote distance—perhaps altering the very molecular structure of the object of intention.)
You may have heard of the ice cube experiment: participants were blindfolded and told that their hand would come in contact with very hot water. However, the researchers—unbeknownst to the participants—touched their skin with an ice cube, instead. Surprisingly, the ice cube caused a burn on the skin. How is this possible? Expectation—and the power of the mind to change our body’s sensory experience and reactions.
I've just written a newly-published eBook titled Affect Your Reality With Tarot Cards that shows how you can become a conscious co-creator with the Universe using the 78 cards of Tarot.
If you think about it, the act of creation means to initiate, to build, to act, to produce. Creation is not passive—a subjective waiting game that unfolds. No, creativity—or, in this case, co-creation—implies acting upon something.
An artist must pick up brushes, dip them in paint and apply them to a canvas in order to create an image that will be viewed. A writer must use pen, pencil or pixels to put thoughts on paper to create something that will be read. A chef must gather pots and pans, assemble ingredients and cook them on a stove in order to create a recipe that will be eaten.
Our lives are no different.
Sure, we can live passively—assuming that destiny “just happens”, throwing our free will to the winds of fate, bracing ourselves for the next gust that will knock us on our ass.
Or, we can live proactively—seeing ourselves as co-creators with God, the Universe, Life itself (whatever you want to call daily circumstances, or the originator of those circumstances…titles don’t matter).
Here are some samples from Affect Your Reality With Tarot Cards that demonstrates how each card's archetypal pattern can aid in transmitting intention to the Universe:
The Magician – Use For: Bringing a Project to Life; Catalyzing; Unleashing Creativity; Mesmerizing; Enhancing Communication; Applying All Your Gifts and Skills; Channeling Power; Using All Tools Available to You; Influencing Others
Temperance – Use For: Encouraging Moderation; Starting and Maintaining Sobriety; Walking a Middle Path; Avoiding Extremes; Alchemy; Being the Change You Want to See; Advocating Tolerance; Celebrating Mabon; Blending; Right Use of Medicine
4 of Cups (Challenge Card) – Use For: When You’re in a Funk; Feeling a Lack of Interest; Unmotivated; Cynical; Pessimistic; Malaise; Unable to See the Good; Acting Like a Wallflower; Refusing to Participate; Experiencing an Emotional Flat Line; Battling Apathy; Blind to Goodwill. (Helpful Focus Cards: The Fool; The Sun; Ace of Cups; 6 of Cups)
Ace of Coins–Use For: Choosing a Material Gift; Attracting an Unexpected Windfall; Starting Over; First Home; A New Way of Eating; A Chance for Better Health; An Opportunity to Make Money; Invitation to Prosperity; Seeking Sanctuary; Desiring an Entry-Level Position; A Seed Fund; Scouting Available Property; Promoting Environmental Well-Being; Applying for a Grant, Scholarship or Internship; Creating a Refuge; Making the Intangible Tangible; Desiring a Bonus
3 of Wands – Use For: Securing Backers; Operating Under Your Own Power; Intuitive Foresight for Business or Art; Amalgamation of Resources; Expecting Fruition; Enlargement; Marketing Your Strengths; Creative Collaboration; Enterprise; Expanding Influence; Operating as a Free Agent; Heightening Senses; Awaiting Results; Becoming Alert to Opportunities for Advancement; Trade and Commerce; Social Media Efforts; Doing Your Own Thing; Encouraging Feedback; Promoting Humble Confidence
Queen of Swords–Use For: Promoting Critical Thought; Nurturing the Intellect; Advocating Discernment; Supporting Rationalism; Encouraging Curiosity; Valuing an Open Mind; Influencing Academics; Catalyzing Complex Ideas; Mending Disparity; Cultivating Inquiry; Preserving Principles; Teaching High Standards; Coordinating Communication; Persuading Scholasticism; Endorsing Analysis
I was just on Jim Harold's Paranormal Podcast (coincidentally, my friend Judika Illes is on in the second half of the show) talking about about how anyone can use Tarot to affect reality and set intentions--even if they know nothing about the cards.
You can listen in or download at Jim's site here.
What about you, dear readers? Have you ever used Tarot or other oracular tools/symbols to set intentions and co-create with the Universe? Please share in the comments section below!
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