Getting Messages from Loved Ones Who Have Passed on Through Tarot Card Reading

Tarot cards and, more recently, oracle cards are outstanding tools for psychological and spiritual work.  Each year they become more and more a part of the common vernacular and readily available in mass-market venues, especially the online retailer, Amazon. The number of decks available in and out of print is mind-boggling, easily in the thousands, especially if you go do a search for decks on eBay. 

Once shrouded in mystery and a “tool of people with questionable character, dark intentions, or acolytes of heathen beliefs”, tarot and oracle cards are enjoying widespread acceptance.  This article will explore the bridge tarot cards can provide between this realm and the spirit realm.

Mediumship

Mediumship is the psychic term for the ability to communicate with or allow communication from spirits, entities, and those souls between lives in their reincarnation cycle.  A psychic medium usually performs this interaction directly, through their psychic talent, opening a connection for the flow of information between them and their client and the spirit, entity, or transitioning soul.

Like any ability, there are varying degrees of talent and skill.  Mediumship is not a simple on/off switch.  There are many degrees of awareness and attunement.  It is not too much of a stretch to suggest that everyone has access to mediumship connections, but not in the same ways or intensity.

Clairsentience

Clairsentience is the term applied to the psychic ability to sense energy in ways beyond the normal range.  Think of the way an actor might describe the “mood” of the audience or the teacher might describe the “mood” in the classroom.  Clairsentience is more common than direct mediumship because it represents awareness without the added skill or ability to directly contact the spirit, entity, or transitioning soul detected.

One way to bridge the gap of the connection is by using tarot or oracle cards.

Making the Connection

I have been reading tarot and oracle cards professionally since 1992, the year I took my first payment for a reading.  It was done in a university campus coffee shop in Greensboro, North Carolina.  I worked on my craft for years, starting out from a purely psychological, not psychic perspective.  At the time I was in my first year of graduate school, working on my PhD in English.  I was a staunch atheist at the time.

For me, the cards were a tool for my imagination and critical thinking, not a spiritual talisman.  Only much later did I open myself up to a more spiritual and psychic approach to the cards.  In the early days of my “reading for pay” (I would not call it a practice since I did it as more of a hobby than a profession), I would purposely steer away from spiritual or psychic uses of the cards and inform clients that the work was purely for critical thinking purposes.  The results were powerful and useful.

A Personal Story

But, like so many of us, I had a series of events in my life that put me in and out of the crisis, opening me up to a broader view of life.  There really is more to heaven and earth than in the philosophy of skepticism and atheism, at least for me, anyway.  Also, more of my clients wanted and valued the card reading as a spiritual experience, which is something I found myself wanting and valuing.  The cards were with me, and helpful, through my life’s ups and downs.

Many years later I was reading at an event held in a restaurant in Raleigh, speed dating of all things.  I had a table in a corner and was reading for the participants before the event as a bonus feature offered by the event host.  A woman who sat down to get a reading shared with me that her uncle and her father had passed very recently and was wondering if she could get some kind of message about or from them through the cards.

• How to Read Tarot Cards

In this kind of public setting, I would usually revert back to my psychological stance to explain the reading process in order to make the reading experience “neutral” and open to anyone, especially a skeptic (who, by the way, is one my favorite types of clients).  But instead, I felt my own curiosity rise to match her request.  I never considered myself a medium, even then, but I was comfortable acknowledging that I had clairsentience.

I told the woman that I did not normally do the type of reading she was asking for, but that I would be willing to try a process with her to see if she could get a contact or a message, and I would help facilitate.  Now, the way I do my reading process involves letting the client draw cards from the deck based on questions I ask them about the question they want to ask me, such as “what do you need to know right now about your question?” or “what is the challenge your face with your question?”.

In this situation, I simply asked the woman to think about her father and draw a card.  I asked for her father’s name and then I drew a card.  We did the same for her uncle.  The result was intense and profound.  The messages “blew” us both away.  Neither one of us expected the intense emotions that coursed through us as we turned over the cards and I began interpreting them.

• Asking for and Getting Messages from Loved Ones that Have Passed On

Messages from Loved Ones

I have written several articles that reference my mother’s mother, my Nana.  She has been a significant figure in my life, both while she was alive and now that she is between lives.  Nana did a lot in this lifetime, so I am pretty sure she will be taking a long break before she returns for another go.  In the meantime, she speaks to me through pennies I find at key times or when thoughts about money trouble me.  You, too, may have a loved one communicating with you via some message in the world.

But if you would like to attempt more direct contact on your own, then I would certainly suggest getting a tarot or oracle deck and trying to open the connection.  The cards in a tarot and oracle deck are varied enough that you will be able to discern if the message is from a loved one or something else entirely.  Over time, I have found my sensory acuity has improved, but never become something like full-on mediumship, which is why the cards are the perfect bridge for my work.