About My Daily Divinations

My Readings 

I'll be using this space to post daily tarot readings, so if you'd like to see those every day, go ahead and follow my blog so you don't miss them!

My regular daily reading consists of an archetype from the Major Arcana, a message from the Minor Arcana, and a single rune as the day's Rule of Right Action.

I am currently using the Tarot of the Woodland Wardens by Jessica Roux.  It is based on the standard Waite-Smith Tarot; the only major difference is that the suit of Swords is instead the suit of Arrows.  If you'd like to check out this excellent deck, visit her website.

For the runes, I'm drawing a single rune out of a bag containing all the runes of the Elder Futhark.  I'm laying them over a matching card for illustration purposes (the cards are from the Rune Magic Oracle Deck by Giulia Manzi and Lorena Assisi, which you can purchase here), but to be clear, I'm not drawing the runes from the oracle deck; I'm drawing them from a bag and putting them with the matching card from the deck.

My aspiration is to one day have time to illustrate a tarot deck of my own, but that's likely to be a challenge for a while.  If I do manage it, you guys will be the first to know!

(Just as a disclaimer, I'm not sponsored by any of the publishers I've linked to and am not involved with managing the content of their websites.)

About Divination

I really like the definition that Wikipedia has in its page on divination: "The attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of a magic ritual or practice."  It goes on further to explain, "Divination can be seen as an attempt to organize what appears to be random, so that it provides insight into a problem or issue at hand."  That's a very neat summary of my general view of divination.  

Using divination tools like tarot cards or runes or oracles doesn't require any belief in the supernatural.  You don't have to believe that any gods or literal magic are guiding the "heart of the cards."  You certainly can believe those things, but you can get just as much out of divination even if you don't.  The heart of divination is that you're using what are essentially tools of chance to order your thoughts.  Think of your own mind: how often have you been unsure how exactly to feel about something?  I'm not even talking about that so much in a "I don't know what I should do" sense - more in a "I'm not even sure how I'm supposed to feel about this" kind of way.  Your thoughts can sometimes get jumbled.

A central tenet of my beliefs is that inside you, there is a better, higher version of yourself that you aspire to become.  Divination is a way of communicating with your higher self.  Just like your thoughts are jumbled around, a deck of tarot cards is shuffled and jumbled and disordered - but then you draw a card, and, purely by chance (or perhaps by divine will or magic, depending on what you believe), you now have a particular aspect or concept or feeling that you can focus on and meditate on.  Using nothing more than a single card, you've brought some order to chaos.  You've used an external tool to direct your internal monologue.

I think one reason why so many people get burned out quickly from divination is because they expect it to do things that it can't do.  The cards and the runes don't reveal the future. They don't provide clairvoyance.  They don't tell you what to do.  What they do instead is provide guidance and counsel for where you should look inside yourself for the answers to your questions.  

For example, perhaps you are feeling overwhelmed by social media and aren't sure what you should do - then you shuffle your tarot deck and you draw The Hermit.  The keywords often associated with the Hermit are words like solitude and contemplation and inner guidance.  There's a part of your Inner Self that needs a quiet space to think and dial down the noise of everyone speaking at once.  But what is that part of the Inner Self saying to you?  You draw another card, and this time it's the Four of Wands.  The Four of Wands represents community and home and celebration.  From that, you might decide that you should not withdraw entirely from your social circles, but you may need to set aside some time to get away from the hectic public forum of your Bluesky timeline.  You need your community, and your community is worth celebrating, but you also need to protect your peace; meditating on that balance will help you find the best way for both things to coexist.  The cards didn't tell you what to do - they just helped you organize your chaotic thoughts and feelings.  (And don't worry about whether you know all the keywords or not - you'll learn them with practice, and you'll also find different ways that even the artwork of the cards speaks to you!)

How to Read the Tarot

The use of tarot cards is a relatively new practice in the grand scale of human spirituality.  Contrary to what is frequently stated by divination writers, the standard deck of 52 playing cards is not based on the tarot (in fact, the standard 52-card deck predates the tarot by nearly 300 years).  The deck that most modern people associate with tarot - the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot - did not begin publication until 1909 (though the practice of tarot had been established in various other forms since about the late 1700s).  So it's not based on some deep, ancient, esoteric knowledge - but that's okay.  That doesn't make it any less meaningful, or any less useful for structuring your thoughts.

A lot of people get very intimidated by the fact that there are 78 cards and that they can't remember the "meaning" of every card.  If you're reading the cards for yourself, don't feel like you have to know the proper meaning - start by looking at the artwork on the card and considering how the illustration makes you feel and what it makes you think about.  Each card's art tells a story of its own, especially given how many talented artists have created their unique interpretations of the tarot.  If you want to start matching cards to their "standard" interpretations, start by just understanding the five suits of the tarot deck:

• Swords (or arrows, in the deck I use) represent intellect and reason; they are associated with the element of air and the season of spring.
• Wands (sometimes rods or staves) represent passion and desire; they are associated with the element of fire and the season of summer.
• Cups (sometimes vessels or chalices) represent feelings and emotions; they are associated with the element of water and the season of autumn.
• Pentacles (sometimes coins or plates) represent resources and wealth; they are associated with the element of earth and the season of winter.
• The Major Arcana (that is, the suit of trumps - these are named cards like The Fool, The Tower, etc.) represents parts of the inner self; it is associated with the element of spirit.

And if you really want to know each card, make a keyword cheat sheet! Your deck probably even came with one. If not, there's plenty of resources online (and I'll definitely be adding some information of my own on this blog space as time goes by). There's no shame in using a reference - it's all about self-empowerment, and you do that in whatever way works best for you. The tarot is just a tool. If you want to keep every card right-side-up and not do reversals in your readings, do it! If you want to pull out just the Major Arcana and not use the whole deck, do that too. Some decks keep the same structure but have significant variations in the names of cards. All of that is good. There's no wrong way.

About the Runes

The Runes of the Elder Futhark have much older roots than the tarot, dating all the way back to early medieval Scandinavia.  There is even some evidence that runes were used for divination in the middle ages.  However, most of the present-day divinatory "standards" of rune interpretation are even newer than the tarot (largely originating from Ralph Blum's seminal commentaries on the subject throughout the 1980s and 1990s).  Despite the vastly different origins, the use of the runes is largely similar to that of the tarot.

One important elephant in the room to address about the runes is that several of the runes of the Elder Futhark - most notably Sowilo (ᛋ) and Algiz (ᛉ) - were prominently used in the symbolism and propaganda of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.  Modern-day Norse and Germanic pagans have tried (and continue to try) very hard to reclaim these symbols as part of heathen tradition and distance it from the hateful ideology of the Nazis.  Even so, if you encounter these runes as prominent symbols of any particular movement, you should proceed with extreme caution and make sure the movement you're supporting isn't part of a neo-Nazi organization or other white supremacist group.

I want to add a disclaimer here to make the important point: you will see these symbols on my blog as part of my daily divinations.  You need to understand that they are here as part of a religious practice and have absolutely nothing to do with Nazi ideology, which I disavow with extreme prejudice and want no part of.

Now, having gotten that out of the way, there are 25 different runes of the Elder Futhark (that is, the runic alphabet).  Strictly speaking, there are 24 runes and one blank rune, which we call the Rune of the All-Father (which represents the unknowable).  There are many different ways to read the runes, but on most days, I choose a single rune out of the bag, and it represents the Rule of Right Action.  In other words, the rune gives me a concept to focus on throughout the day.