Mirror Work: Using Tarot as a Mirror to your Subconscious
My work focuses on personal development and I help empower folks, especially over-functioning, high-performers, to make decisions that will align them with their true selves by shining a light on any old stories, projections, or beliefs that aren’t serving us.
When I explain tarot to somebody who has very little or no familiarity with it, I like to open up our conversation by telling them that tarot is like a mirror.
Tarot as a Mirror
During a tarot reading, I will pull some cards and together we peer into them to see what’s going to be reflected at us.
The images, archetypes, symbols, colors, and characters we see all act like a mirror, reflecting at us aspects of ourselves that are ready to be seen, ready to come to the surface.
Tarot is a tool through which we can do things like reflect and grow, so when we shuffle and pull cards, we’re looking at a reflection of ourselves. Now, what we're seeing?
The Tarot Reflection
If we see a deer, or a sword, or we see the color blue — these are all triggers.
Here’s the beautiful thing about us humans; we are not very sophisticated. Our world is so complex and unfathomable that we actually make sense of the world around us through story.
We tell ourselves stories and collectively create histories that help us to understand the world better.
Consider that in other cultures that don’t have written language, they rely on storytelling. It passes from generation to generation.
Your Mind On Stories
So, why do we love stories so much? Well, a lot of it can actually be explained by science. Here’s my simplified take on what I’ve learned about how we think:
There are two different parts of our brain:
The logical thinking rational side
The emotional feeling side
Of course, this is an unscientific oversimplification but bear with me.
The emotional part of our brain is old. It’s actually 100 million years older than our logical-thinking brain. It’s also where the majority of our brain activity happens.
And, this part of the brain doesn't like language at all. It doesn't use it at all. It only understands stories. That’s how it organizes its memories and makes sense of the world around it.
And the same language of stories is what your subconscious mind speaks. Your subconscious mind doesn’t care if you speak French, English, or Mandarin. It is talking to you in stories all the time when you dream, for example.
So, when we use a pack of tarot cards, imagine each card is just a tiny piece of a story. They are triggering your mind into thinking of something in your belief system or your past.
When we pull them out and look at them, the parts of our brains that speak in stories start to fill in the rest to complete the full picture — this creates a mirror for us to see the reflection.
Using Tarot To Reflect
So, what can we get by reflecting? What does that do for us and why do we need tarot to help us reflect at all?
Here’s the thing; we’re busy. We’re often so focused on doing what we're doing that we don't give ourselves space to reflect.
It's in that reflection that you remember, grow, and learn from your experiences. I'll use this metaphor to help make my point:
For example, let's say you're on a football team and you're playing football. Now, if you only show up to games and don’t show up to practice or team meetings, how could you ever improve or get better? Because you've never had the opportunity to step off the turf to sit with your coach and go over strategy. What did you do? What worked last time? What didn't work? And improve and make plans for the future.
So taking this space, this beat for reflection is a lot like that. It's almost like putting a pause on your life and taking a wider look at things. And when we take a wider look at things, we're able to see the patterns and the connections between everything.
It all becomes very evident and simple to see those things once you give yourself that space to reflect. Tarot is just a tool that can be used to give you that space of reflection. Of course, other people find it in movement or meditation, by doing something that gets them out of their head for a little bit.
