Your Tarot deck is more than just cards; it’s a personal tool for accessing your intuition. Building a relationship with your deck is key.
Choosing a Deck: Select a deck whose imagery resonates with you personally. The connection begins here.
Handling Your Deck: Spend time shuffling your cards, looking through them, and becoming familiar with the images. Some people like to sleep with their new deck nearby or keep it in a special cloth or box.
Daily Draws & Journaling: As mentioned before, pull a card daily. But take it further: journal your impressions, feelings, and any real-life events that seem to correspond. Over time, you’ll develop your own personal understanding of the cards beyond book meanings.
Trust Your Gut: When you look at a card, what’s your very first impression? An image, a word, a feeling? This is your intuition speaking. Learn to honor these initial hits, even if they don’t match the “official” meaning.
How it Helps: The more you connect with your deck and practice listening to your intuition, the more accurate, personal, and insightful your readings will become. Tarot becomes a conversation with your inner wisdom.
Your Tarot deck is a personal tool. Choosing the right one and caring for it fosters a stronger connection and enhances your reading experience.
Choosing Your Deck:
Imagery: Does the artwork resonate with you? Do you feel drawn to it? This is key. Look at sample cards online or in a shop.
Theme: Decks come in countless themes (Rider-Waite-Smith style, Thoth, historical, animal, fantasy, etc.). Choose one that speaks to your interests or spiritual path.
Feel: How does the cardstock feel? Is it easy to shuffle? Size matters for handling.
Guidebook: Does it come with a helpful guidebook? Some decks have very detailed books, others are minimal.
Caring for Your Deck:
Cleansing: Decks can absorb energy. You can cleanse your deck by knocking on it, passing it through smoke (like sage or palo santo), placing it in moonlight, or shuffling it intentionally.
Storage: Keep your deck in a special box, bag, or wrapped in cloth to protect it and keep its energy focused.
Handling: Treat your deck with respect. Handle it carefully.
Personal Connection: Spend time with your deck, look at the cards, meditate with them, journal about them. This builds a personal bond.
How it Helps: Provides practical, accessible advice for beginners who are just getting started or considering purchasing a deck, encouraging them to see the deck as a sacred tool.
When a Tarot card appears upside down (reversed), it doesn’t necessarily mean the opposite of its upright meaning, or always mean something negative. Reversals add another layer of depth and can be interpreted in several ways:
Blocked or Stagnant Energy: The upright energy is present but is being blocked or suppressed.
Internalized Energy: The energy is being directed inward rather than outward.
Excess or Deficiency of Energy: The upright meaning is being expressed too much or too little.
Potential Still Exists: The potential of the card is there, but hasn’t been fully realized yet.
A Need to Reconsider: The card is asking you to look at this energy from a different angle or reconsider your approach.
Example: The upright Lovers card represents choice, harmony, and aligned values. The reversed Lovers might indicate disharmony, difficulty making a choice, or a conflict of values that needs to be addressed.
How it Helps: Learning to read reversals adds significant sophistication and nuance to your Tarot readings, allowing for a deeper understanding of the subtle dynamics at play in a situation. It moves beyond simple “good” or “bad” interpretations.
While the Major Arcana describe major life lessons, the Minor Arcana (Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles) reflect the everyday flow and specific challenges or joys of our lives. Each suit relates to a different element and area of experience:
Wands (Fire): Represents energy, creativity, passion, inspiration, ambition, new ventures, ideas, and action. Think sparks, growth, and initial drive. Challenges often relate to burnout, lack of direction, or conflict stemming from passion.
Cups (Water): Represents emotions, relationships, intuition, love, feelings, creativity (emotional/artistic), and spirituality. Think flow, connection, and the inner world. Challenges often relate to emotional overwhelm, heartbreak, or difficulty expressing feelings.
Swords (Air): Represents the mind, intellect, thoughts, communication, truth, conflict, challenges, and sometimes pain or difficult decisions. Think clarity, logic, and facing reality. Challenges often relate to anxiety, mental conflict, harsh words, or difficult truths.
Pentacles (Earth): Represents the material world, body, career, finance, possessions, stability, security, manifestation, and practical matters. Think grounding, tangible results, and resources. Challenges often relate to financial worries, physical health issues, stagnation, or feeling disconnected from the material world.
How it Helps: Understanding the elemental and thematic basis of each suit provides a powerful framework for interpreting the Minor Arcana cards. It helps you quickly identify what area of life a specific challenge or opportunity is showing up in.
This is the foundational mantra and core philosophy of Access Consciousness®. It’s more than just a nice saying; it’s an energetic invitation to the universe.
Ease: Without difficulty, struggle, or effort. Allowing things to unfold naturally.
Joy: The exuberance of being, the spontaneous delight in life.
Glory: The tumultuous expression and abundance of life. Everything showing up, sometimes messily, sometimes beautifully, with potency and allowance.
“All of Life Comes to Me”: This is the receiving part. It’s about being willing to receive everything the universe wants to offer you, without judgment – both the seemingly “good” and the seemingly “bad,” knowing that everything can be a contribution.
How to Use It: Repeat this mantra 10 times in the morning and 10 times at night, and any time you feel overwhelmed, stuck, or joyful! It energetically shifts your vibration and opens you up to receiving more.
How it Helps: Introduces a core, actionable tool and the underlying philosophy of Access Consciousness – moving from resistance and judgment to allowance and receiving. It’s a simple yet powerful practice individuals can try immediately.
Knowing what the 32 points on the head relate to can be fascinating. While a class teaches the exact location and sequence, here’s a peek at some of the areas the Bars address:
Healing: Relates to health and healing in the body.
Body: Addresses points of view about your body.
Control: Clears where you try to control things or feel out of control.
Awareness: Expands your consciousness and awareness.
Creativity: Unlocks your creative capacities.
Power: Addresses points of view about power and lack thereof.
Aging: Clears judgments about getting older.
Sexuality: Addresses points of view about sex and sensuality.
Money: Releases limitations around financial flows.
Joy, Sadness, Peace, Calm: Relates to processing emotions.
(Note: There are many more points, and the specific combination and sequence are key)
How it Helps: Provides a concrete overview of the wide range of life areas that Access Bars can influence, demonstrating its potential for holistic change. It shows the structured nature of the modality.
For someone considering their first Access Bars session, understanding the physical and energetic experience is helpful.
Setting & Preparation: You’ll typically lie down comfortably on a massage table or recliner, fully clothed. The practitioner may ask you a few questions about what you’d like to change or if there are specific areas you’d like to focus on, but you don’t need to share detailed problems if you don’t want to.
The Process: The practitioner will gently touch the 32 points on your head in a specific sequence. The touch is light, usually just fingertips. As they touch each point or combination of points, they are “running” or activating that Bar.
Possible Sensations: The experience varies greatly from person to person and even from session to session.
Deep Relaxation: Most common. Many people fall asleep.
Tingling, Pulsing, or Heat: Energetic sensations on the head or elsewhere in the body.
Visuals or Colors: Some see colors or patterns.
Body Releases: Twitching, yawning, stomach gurgling are signs of energy moving.
Emotional Release: Tears or laughter may occur spontaneously.
Mind Quieting: Often, the “monkey mind” slows down or stops completely.
Nothing at all: Sometimes there are no noticeable physical sensations, but the energetic release is still happening.
After the Session: At worst, you feel like you had a great massage. At best, your whole life can begin to change with total ease! People often report feeling lighter, more peaceful, having greater clarity, improved sleep, and less reactivity to stressors.
How it Helps: Manages expectations and alleviates any apprehension someone might have about receiving this unique modality. It highlights the non-invasive and often profoundly relaxing nature of the session.