Tarot Life Lessons: Living Wisdom From the Major Arcana

One of my gifts is that I can see the best in nearly anyone. This, I think, is one of the secrets to my success because clients know there is no judgment, nor do I try to force change. It is my job simply to wit­ness them.

The High Priestess sees all, and the pillars on her card bear a J and a B, two of the three initials within my monogram. Seeing the best in everyone is also my greatest downfall, as I have been burned in my blind faith and trust. Even with my incarcerate friend named Love, to whom, over the months he was imprisoned in Tent City, I dutifully wrote twice a week on prison-approved, print-stamped postcards (drugs can be hidden under regular peel-and-stick postage stamps). And for whom I later bought a winter coat when he was freezing in San Francisco—a coat he lost or destroyed in a fight almost immediately. Love Destroys Love.

Some psychic, right? Psychics are not known for reading for them­selves too well. It takes great restraint to find the neutral, detached place between the outcome we want and the outcome we most fear. Most of us, myself included, at least dip a toe into the water of bias, so I generally do not read for myself or family members as I am too invested in the end result. That said, people do have the opportunity to change their outcomes with a heads up and so, in addition to making my clients feel validated, I can warn them if things look grisly ahead. It’s transformative, sometimes. I held out hope that it would be trans­formative even for this gang. You never know if one of them might find something or someone worth living for. Corrections can come out of remorse. Depression and anxiety demand that changes are made.

Trusting Your Intuition

Trusting intuition is a hard thing for a lot of people. Heck, what am I saying? It can be challenging for me. The tarot cards secure those first intuitive senses as a pictorial back-up, but I continue to test myself and try to strengthen my intuition in different ways.

Intuitives can learn a great deal from the arts because, of course, it’s basically the same thing. Consider reading some essays on writing by some of our greatest writers. They may not spell out the word “intuition,” but you will read things like, let your character tell you where the story is going or lis­ten to what your characters tell you about themselves, and, my favorite piece of writing advice, from Robert Frost, no sur­prise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

This wisdom is all about going inside oneself and listening to intuition. Our conscious brain is too limited, too stuck in this world. When I write, I go to the same place I go to read tarot. I believe that we are all intuitive to different degrees. To be alive is to be so. I am not sure that being intuitive is the same thing as being psychic—maybe it is. I prefer to think of intuition as heightened awareness. And we’ve all got some degree of ability, like singing. It’s just that some people sing well and we want to hear more, and others we beg to stop!

Adapted and excerpted from Tarot Life Lessons by Julia Gordon-Bramer, copyright 2023 Inner Traditions.