Анна Шиман
Draft translation. This text was translated automatically and has not been proofread yet — if something reads oddly, it does.
Tarot cards as a tool for self-discovery and personal growth.
I am often asked what Tarot is, how it works, how it differs from metaphorical cards and how it relates to archetypes.
Working with Tarot involves using the system on several levels:
- developing imagination and sensitivity;
- connecting with the subconscious and understanding its signals;
- personal growth;
- creating the future (setting goals);
- getting to know the archetypes;
- spiritual transformation;
- working through psychological states;
- resolving inner conflicts;
- developing individuality, self-discovery;
- individuation, searching for one’s purpose, work with one’s family line, and more.
Unlike metaphorical cards, which rather convey the author’s personal vision, Tarot cards have a firmly fixed structure.
In C. G. Jung’s view, the Tarot can be used to describe all the archetypes, all the typical patterns of reaction and behaviour, and the personality traits that exist in the human psyche. The Tarot is a path of developing individuality, encoded in images that create the structure of an archetype we can see. Yet the key here is the “invisible” (esoteric) knowledge that forms the spiritual basis of every outward event.
In metaphorical cards we may or may not come across these structures. When we don’t, the link with the standard is lost, and the accuracy of diagnosis, prediction and then correction drops.
In other words, the structure of the Tarot is the basic set of life patterns of all humankind, overlaid with a person’s own family, gender and personal experience (traumas, complexes, beliefs).
Tarot cards are a practical tool for exploring personality, complexes, traumas and family scripts, and for finding your own purpose.
Working with the Tarot, you are sure to explore and trace the distortions that arose as you adapted to the conditions of your life, and you will see two main lines: the adaptive and the authentic.
The synthesis of these lines is what the classics call “the art of living”.
The Tarot, as they say, “lures and intoxicates” many. As so often happens, the unknown, the secret and the hard to explain both frightens and attracts us. To understand how a whole story or a living image grows out of a chosen card, you have to put in a good deal of effort and do a lot of work, above all on yourself.
But the effort pays you back a hundredfold!
As you learn the symbolism of the cards and work in practice with each arcanum, you train perseverance, structure, purposefulness, willpower and many other mental qualities needed for personal growth and development. For example, imagination, intuition, emotional flexibility and others.
Heightened psychological and sensory sensitivity, which makes the most accurate reading and interpretation of messages from the unconscious possible, is a side effect, and a very useful one, that you will apply successfully both in psychological work and in your job, relationships, career, money matters and so on.
At some point in your study, the structure of the Tarot turns from an outer one into an inner one.
This gives a huge advantage to those who, like me, work with the deep layers of the psyche (for example, the levels of family and archetypal scripts).
Not everyone can look into the depths and then describe what they saw in plain language. One way or another, difficulty with describing it creates a rather off-putting impression of the Tarot itself and of the practitioner who works with it.
The main problem in communicating with a client lies in a lack of basic knowledge of psychology, a poor understanding of how the psyche works, unresolved conflicts and traumas, heavy-handed defence mechanisms, unfulfilment and a lack of one’s own life experience.
Tarot cards are a tool whose accuracy depends on who uses it.
Today (and always) my choice in Tarot is the path of the explorer.
I invite you to come to this understanding too. However, allowing yourself to become an explorer is the work you will have to do before the cards reveal their secrets to you.
It is incredibly exciting and interesting to speak with the world around you in the language of the symbols, images and archetypes of the Tarot. And I invite you to discover the Tarot on different levels, from the psychological to the spiritual.
For example, from the numerical codes of a calendar day or a date of birth you can form a deep and accurate picture of the events through which this will show itself, of a person’s personality, their strengths and weaknesses, their talents and abilities.
This is the mantic level of the Tarot, which helps you to be in the present moment and to step into the future on the basis of objective data (and not of your fears, anxieties, grievances and interpretations learned by heart from the internet, notes and books).
Once you learn to recognise and sense the facets of an archetype in outer events, your life will never be the same and will become an explorer’s fascinating journey!
Your reality will change in line with your authentic nature, shaped by forces that existed long before you were born.
These forces act through us whether we want it or not. Our ego wants to subdue them, and the ego is hard to keep under control if a person is unfulfilled, has low self-esteem, holds on to old grievances, has family blocks and so on.
To know something greater than ourselves, we need to know ourselves!
Will this process be pleasant, or will it be tense and full of crises?
Only the soul and the body know, and they will show a person how far they have strayed from their own nature or how close to it they are.
Meeting the standard, the truth, you find yourself facing a choice: give up your ideas and free yourself for growth (often this comes with disappointment, shattered hopes, pain and aggression).
Or try to bend the truth to your ideas: buy spiritual knowledge (instead of doing deep work on yourself), take possession of the one who carries it within (subdue them, make them fall in love, buy, steal, submit to authority and so on).
If you want to know the Tarot, you need to understand that this process will become part of your life for ever.
It is impossible to be in the Tarot and not live it!
And that means there is no “I need results tomorrow or in a month” here.
Here there is a process of knowing yourself in the world and the world in yourself, and it will be exactly what it needs to be for you to grow and go through your own individual lessons. So it is worth turning to the true goals you set yourself in this context.
Tarot cards are alive and, like everything alive, they open up only to those who sincerely want to know. And this process of knowing is endless.
What do we need most of all in this endlessness?
Trust, of course. In yourself, in your Path. Trust that grows not out of sweet fantasies and daydreams (that is gullibility), but out of your own experience of overcoming obstacles on life’s path, out of mistakes and lessons: in relationships, in solving everyday problems.
So if you are looking for guarantees here, I recommend developing your personality, so that on this foundation your individuality can then blossom, and you don’t stand in your own way of fulfilling your spiritual tasks.
Give yourself these guarantees, find and build supports within yourself! With the help of a psychologist, a mentor, self-discovery and other tools.
Become someone who thirsts for the truth, who is ready to take risks, to experiment, and ready to lose everything familiar and clear on the path of exploring life!
Otherwise you risk remaining a gullible bystander who believes in a fairy-tale world of unicorns, and losing precious time waiting for someone “who knows how it should be done” to hand you ready-made answers and tell you how to live.
Today I do not sell predictions, I do not tell fortunes for money, and I see no need to promote Tarot fortune-telling as a source of income. That does not mean I am against fortune-telling, though.
Each of my clients and students who has had a deep analysis of their date of birth, or received a remarkable individual task that turned their whole life around, has in one way or another met the hints of the Tarot’s energies that opened up thanks to my deep understanding of the system.
Today I share these precious pearls of experience in the hope that they will be of interest above all to those who are searching!
For spiritual growth and development.
For those who want to get to the heart of things, to know themselves and, through themselves, the whole world.
For those looking for their own path, their own individual meanings.
For those who are keen to explore the depths of the unconscious and to solve life’s tasks drawing on spiritual knowledge.
Anna Oleksandrivna Shyman, course tutor
To sign up for a course or ask a question, fill in the form below
