Tarot cards, as we know them today, began in 15th century Italy as a card game similar to bridge. But by the late 18th century, a French artist adapted tarot cards for divination and fortune-telling. Lots of people became interested in, or finally pursued knowledge of, tarot after the lockdowns of 2020 forced many of us into slower living. Now, in the 21st century, it’s almost impressive how many folks are turning to tarot for a variety of uses, including personal therapy.
I’m a big fan of slow living – slow food, analog activities, good old fashioned hard work and grit toward productive ends. I live deeply and firmly in my body, but I’m no stranger to exploring my mind. Since you’re a writer, I suspect you’re no stranger to exploring the darkest and most hidden corners of your mind, either.
While tarot can be a beneficial personal introspection tool, the cards also offer powerful ways for creative people to generate story ideas and work through storytelling issues, including character development and problem-solving challenges.
So, how can you use tarot cards to generate story ideas? Let’s cut the deck and find out.
Story Idea Generation with Tarot in 5 Questions
If you’re a short story writer and submitter, you’re likely coming up with oodles upon oodles of story ideas, and I’m sure you have a few eccentric methods for collecting those ideas. Still, inspiration dry spells happen, and when they do, those dry spells can cause many of us to go all into our creator feels:
- I’m a terrible storyteller!
- I can’t come up with anything original!
- Why would anyone want to read my literary drivel anyway?
Interestingly, we’re pretty good about keeping these questions at the peripheries when the ideas and stories are flowing.
To get the flow going again, here are five questions you can ask your tarot deck to help your gray-matter ideas machine come alive, along with the Haindl tarot cards I pulled to work through the exercise.
Use these questions and insights to form your own ideas-generation machine*:
*If you don’t have a tarot deck, you can also use oracle cards, rune tokens, even a standard Bicycle playing card deck via cartomancy.
Who is my main character?
Card: The Tower
The main character is an action-oriented person unafraid to break old patterns and habits for re-invention. The person described by The Tower welcomes disruption and the discomfort of change to usher in personal growth and evolution.
Where is my main character?
Card: The Hermit
The main character is alone, sitting in solitude. Perhaps they are recharging (introversion energy, anyone?); perhaps they’ve retreated. But at this point, the main character is, maybe for the first time in a while, all by their lonesome.
What is my main character doing?
Card: 8 of Stones
During their alone time, the main character is learning. Whether through books or the vast reaches of the internet or the school of hard knocks, the main character is nose-first in research and experimentation, seeking knowledge.
Why is my main character doing that?
Card: 2 of Stones
Through knowledge, the main character is looking for harmony. For them, something feels out of whack – unbalanced, perturbed, disrupted – and not in a good way. It may be that learning helps them settle when unsettled. It may be they’re learning how to get settled again. Regardless, they learn in pursuit of harmony.
What will my main character ultimately learn?
Card: Mother of Cups
The main character, through the course of the story, will ultimately learn how to tap into their intuition, their innate knowledge of the world to solve that which needs solving in their life. Where the character may have been seeking their answers externally, the character’s evolution will teach them that the answers they need were within them all along.
How to put together the five-card reading for story-idea generation and development:
When using the cards to call forth stories, I always begin with the main character. And for whatever reason, when The Tower came up, I saw a woman. S0, the main character, for this exercise, is a woman (I’ll call her ‘Aldena’) who is usually on a mission.
Aldena works in a fast-paced environment in an industry prone to, even borne of, constant change, which suits her fiery personality quite nicely. However, industry changes have forced her out of a role she’s embodied for years, a role so important to her that she feels a loss of self with the loss of her job. (The Tower)
When Aldena finds herself alone in a rare moment of uninterrupted quiet, snowed in by a seasonal blizzard and unable to travel (The Hermit), she finds herself a little stir crazy and turning to books for companionship.
Innovation. Pivoting. Recalibrating. None of the virtues of business she’d been sold had stopped her career from crumbling, but Aldena refuses to bend over backward and accept the loss. She wants answers. She whips through tome after tome, silently seeking the answer to why everything in her life seems to have turned to mud. (8 of Stones)
Sure, change is exciting. Change is invigorating. Change can foster growth and development in profound ways. Yet, Aldena resents this particular round of change in her life, change that has made her feel profoundly unstable and imbalanced, as if she’s teetering on the edge of the some invisible precipice. What she needs most is inner peace (2 of Stones), inner peace she’s looking for within the pages of book after book after book, none of which seems to provide a satisfactory solution to her ‘why?’ problem.
As Aldena becomes more frantic in her reading, ripping through books so quickly she tears at their thin pages, causing paper cuts that sting like the Dickens as she does, she comes to a realization: For all the changes in her industry, Aldena herself has resisted change. She’s still the same old project manager she’d always been, employing the same old tactics and strategies that worked well in the 20th century but that are no longer cutting the muster in the 21st. While books didn’t provide any answers, the act of seeking shined a bright light on her inner environment. (Mother of Cups) For Aldena learns that growing for her industry means investing her own professional growth and development. She must change to stay relevant.
Phew!
Is Aldena’s story the most exciting? I mean, there are no sword fights, dragons, space pirates, or brain-eating fungi. What is exciting, however, is how succinctly the cards provided a broad-spectrum and adaptable start of what could become very many stories.
(If you saw a clear story start in my five-card reading, share your story idea in the comments!)
But tarot can also help you fill in the blanks of a story you may already know quite well.
Story Development and Guidance with Tarot
Sometimes it happens that when writing our stories, we encounter moments at which we discover something is off. Something may be missing, became muddled, or otherwise went haywire, but there is a problem, a sticking point, a mud pit. Often, when we’re staring into the muddy abyss of a partial draft, there’s a character-development problem that needs solving.
If you find yourself stuck up to your ankles in the muddy middle of your draft, ask yourself a few questions about your main character to help them unstick first one foot, then the other, and get moving again.
Why is my main character here?
Card: The Moon
The main character is here in this place (wherever this place is in your partial draft) because their intuition led them here. They need to witness something, observe something, learn something to move forward.
What to do: Look for signs that your main character is in the right place, even if they believe they’re in a perfectly, disastrously wrong place.
What is my main character’s hidden need?
Card: 2 of Cups
The main character needs to feel real and honest love. At this point, they may be feeling lost, under- or unappreciated; they may even feel disconnected from their self, their sense of personhood, without adequate support.
What to do: Look for signs that hope still exists, that love may be possible for the dejected main character, because love is what will keep them moving, even if they don’t know it yet.
How can my main character meet their need?
Card: The Magician
It’s time for transformation. The main character has the power and fortitude necessary to take control of their situation, bring in new insights, identify new opportunities, call forth a burst of energy. All it takes is a little creativity. And creativity can look a lot like magic.
What to do: Look for something your character can use – a talisman, a favored object, the cosmos (you do you!) to pull their strength up and out of their boots so they can use it to unstick themself.
What do I not know about my character that I should know?
Card: 4 of Swords
The main character needs a moment of calm, of silence, of peace. Something is ending, something is beginning, and the main character is caught in the eye of that personal transformation storm. Allow your character to let go of the past, accept the quiet of the moment, and look ahead to their desired future.
Where can I find more about tarot for storytelling?
The internet really can be a handy tool. A quick search for “tarot cards for story development” turned up many results. Here are two articles I loved that I think you’ll find helpful as you turn to tarot for your stories.
Once you have the tarot answers to some of your story questions, it’s time to go forth and do what you do best.
Happy writing!
♥ Fal
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Fallon Clark is the book pal who helps you tell your story in your words and voice using editorial, coaching, writing, and project management expertise for revision assistance, one-on-one guidance, and ghostwriting for development. Her writing has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine. Check out her website, FallonClark.com, or connect with her on LinkedIn or Substack.