THE BENEFITS OF KEEPING A TAROT JOURNAL are well-known. Rather than trusting everything to a digital shuffle, or the turn of a friendly card (and your memory) - you can actively work with divination and navigate, rather as if you had a map (map of France, pictured) or were sending a birthday card to your future self. Greeting cards can be interesting truth-tellers in a journal.
The Diary That Does So Much More
Think of a journal as a diary that does so much more, than just record time. You reclaim time when you return to paper and pens, because computers and phones have really stolen it, in the 21st century. The Tarot created by Pamela Colman Smith and Arthur Waite (The Sun, above) was fashioned from cardboard in 1909, when the worldwide web was not even thought of.
A QUICK AND AFFORDABLE WAY to begin is just to fold recycled A-4 paper in half, and provide your own cover from wrapping paper, new or old. Then use a glue stick or sellotape, to add whatever you like. Could be, photographs or concert tickets. Maps or greeting cards.
I’ll be chatting about this in a Zoom event with The Tarot Guild of Australia on Saturday 5th February (tickets here) which may be with you on Friday 4th February, depending on your time zone.
A Tarot journal can slow down a reading, which is important, as the cards were never meant to be fast-food. I see teenage Tarot readers on Tik-Tok (that is a lot of alliteration) and it’s like McDonalds. McMysticism!
Just one card is enough, as we know. And that card can reveal itself over the longest time. In 2022 we have some prolonged astrology cycles. Ceres will be in Gemini from February 10th until May 15th, then Mars Retrograde is in Gemini from August 21st until March 25th 2023.
You could draw just one card from Pamela and Arthur’s deck, to address that unusually long cycle, and use a whole section of a journal, to explore it.
TAROT BELIEVER ANNIE HORNIMAN ALSO BELIEVED IN TEA (pictured, her family’s tea empire advertising) and putting the kettle on, then organising a pot and cup, is a good way of slowing down, the better to read the Tarot and commit to a few pages in a journal. Annie funded friends from The Golden Dawn, where Pamela Colman Smith was inducted by W.B. Yeats. She was also a very successful woman, quite independent of her rich family. She used the Tarot to help herself, throughout. She read years into the future.
Journals Run on Astrology-Tarot Time
ASTROLOGY AND TAROT RUN ON ALTERNATIVE TIME and a journal is a terrific way of capturing that. There is so much short-term thinking online. People have short memories and politicians and businessmen rely on that. What a journal can do for you, is put you in control of your own timeline. Astrological time is completely different to mainstream Muggle time. It’s circular, not linear. It is based on the lunar cycles, and the Moon repeats herself every 28-29 days. Forever.
In astrology we also use the lunar node cycle, which moves backwards through the 12 zodiac signs - not forwards. In the Tarot of Pamela Colman Smith and Arthur E. Waite, you will never find a clock or calendar, never mind a computer, but you will certainly find seasonal references. The Sun. The Moon. Bleak winter scenes in the snow. Sunny days with sparkling water. All of these are Pamela’s coded clues to the real time. Nature’s timing.
ALL TIME IS MAN-MADE. It is a construct. There are no clock hands in the sky. There is no calendar date in the ground. Astrology is also man-made. (Possibly woman-made). The Tarot is also an artificial way of measuring time. This splendid illustration (below) shows you the zodiac sign of Leo singled out for attention. We have a Full Moon in Leo at 28 degrees of the sign, on Wednesday 16th February 2022. The Full Moon will be in opposition to the Sun at 28 degrees of Aquarius.
NO MATTER IF YOU KNOW YOUR NATAL CHART or not, that is a significant moment in Tarot time as well, and worth a few pages in your journal. If you do know your birth chart and can see anything at all about 28 degrees, I’d say that’s crucial.
In the American astrological chart set for 2nd January 1776 at 12.00 noon in Cambridge, Massachusetts (we don’t have a time, but this was the first time ‘The United States of America’ was used in official correspondence) this Full Moon is crucial.
America, Russia and Great Britain on 16th February
Why? The United States of America has Juno at 28 Libra in her Seventh House of military partners but also enemies. This is The Special Relationship with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - once her enemy. As you will see on Wednesday 16th February 2022, it will be both about the old Mother Country, but quite obviously Russia.
It will also involve Prince Andrew. Why? The Full Moon is in Leo, the sign which rules the King of the Jungle. Your journal is about your life, though, not about their lives. How will these cycles - the prolonged Gemini transit - and the Full Moon in Leo - show up in your own timeline?