Instinct Vs Intuition | The differences between Tarot Cups & Wands

Instinct Vs Intuition | The differences between Tarot Cups & Wands

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Once you start down the road of Tarot reading you’ll hear the words ‘instinct’ and ‘intuition’ thrown around a lot. But, at first glance, it can be difficult to understand what the differences are between the two. 

Both are considered a ‘feeling’ but labelling them when they appear isn’t always as black and white as people make out. 

I want to talk you through the differences between these two core energies that we use frequently in both studying the meanings of the cards and practically when performing Tarot readings for the self and others. 

What is intuition?

Let’s start with intuition. The mysterious, cosmic feeling that seems to strike us like lightning and pull us in the right direction. It’s a word heavily associated with Tarot reading because we often refer to reading without the help of a guidebook as ‘reading intuitively’. 

You’ve probably heard it in other contexts as well such as ‘women’s intuition’ or ‘allowing your intuition to guide you’. It is like an inner compass, it gives you an idea of which direction to travel, of which choices to make, of what should be done and what should be let go. 

However, it is not the energy that spurs you into action. This is where many people get confused. Intuition doesn’t take action, intuition informs you, it gives you an unconscious knowing so that you can feel confident to take action, but it does not light the fire that is needed for you to make a move.

For some, intuition may be a small voice whispering directions, for others, it feels more like a physical tug. 

What is instinct?

Instinct is more primal. Your instinct is the driver and the motivator to get you to take action. A good example of this is the human fight-or-flight response. This is an instinctual energy that makes the body take action, there’s no time for thinking with instinct it is a synapse fire and off we go. 

In my opinion, instinct is a much trickier energy to deal with than intuition. Intuition feels magical and divine, like guidance from the universe. Instinct can be rooted in not just our natural, human reactions, but can also be motivated by learned behaviours and beliefs. 

The biggest challenge when working with instinctual energy is knowing whether it is coming from a place of power or a place of fear. We’ll explore this a little more when we dive into the Wands Tarot suit, but working with instinct can be a learning curve and it asks for a level of self awareness to ensure you’re acting in your own best interests. 

Instinct though is often much more physical and less cerebral. There’s not a lot of thinking and if there is it feels very definitive and spur of the moment.

The Tarot Wands: Acting on Instinct

The Tarot suit of The Wands relates to the element of Fire. It’s the burning energy that fires us up, makes us take action, makes us feel powerful and fuels our movement.

We think of all of the Tarot as a series of cycles, one feeding into the next. Within each suit, we are looking at the cycles of individual human experiences. For the Wands, this human experience is our experience with instinct. 

Let’s have a look at what is happening in this cycle. 

The Ace to the Five of Wands

The Ace to the Five of Wands shows us what happens when we get that sudden instinctual lightning bolt. The Ace of Wands is that gift of instinct, the handing of a wand to us from the heavens, to help us create whatever our heart desires. 

From that point on, we face a series of challenges as we try and learn to wield this power. We make mistakes, we do damage because we can’t channel it in the right direction.

In the Two of Wands, our instinct helps us decide between two viable options. In the Three of Wands, we’re encouraged to step into the unknown and take a bit of a risk to see what could happen. It’s an adventurous energy, something we experience a lot when instinct kicks in. Like when we finally take the jump when doing a bungee or skydive!

Right up until the Four of Wands, we’ve got a good handle on our instinct. It is serving us well, keeping us alive, keeping us moving. It feels fun, fills us with excitement and gets the adrenaline pumping but once we ‘level up’ in the Five of Wands, things start to slowly slip out of our control. 

The Six to the Ten of Wands

From the Six all the way to the Ten of Wands, we start to feel the effects of overpowering instincts. Things start to feel less fun and more ‘urgent’. The pace has quickened and although we have a moment of respite in the Six of Wands, we soon start to feel like we are fighting an uphill battle. 

Our instincts are firing off whenever they sense danger, whenever we have a lot to think about or we have a big to-do list. Our instincts, due to their lack of direction and focus, are always on. This is often a place where anxiety breeds because the fight or flight reflex is always on. The signals to switch it on and off have fallen by the wayside and we now face an energetic imbalance that keeps us burning through our instinctive fuel leaving us feeling burned out and exhausted. 

The Tarot Cups: Leading From a place of intuition

The Tarot Cups represent the element of Water, they’re free-flowing, they’re fluid and changeable, cleansing and life-giving.

When we are in a cycle of Cups, we are faced with emotions, both welcome and challenging. Within this suit, we face things such as grief, nostalgia, guilt, joy, fulfilment, pride and more. It is the day to day ebbs and flows of the range of emotions we go through as humans navigating our normal lives. 

Intuition is always emotion based. It comes from the deepest depths of our psyche where our hidden emotions and beliefs are housed. That’s why Cups are also associated with intuition, because it’s almost always the case that our intuitive pulls are emotionally rooted. 

The Ace to the Five of Cups

When we move through the Ace to the Five of Cups the journey is one that ends in a grief or sense of loss. In many ways, this first half of the suit’s cycle is where we start to build a relationship with our intuition.

The Ace of Cups offers us the gift of that first intuitive pull, the Two of Cups illustrates us choosing to partner with our intuition, the Three of Cups is us strengthening that link to intuitive knowing, Four of Cups is where we start to realise that our intuition isn’t there to fulfil our every wish but instead, guide us to do what is ‘best’ for us in that moment. 

This section ends with the Five of Cups, the first moment where our intuition has pulled us away from something we want in order to put us on a path that is better aligned. When we’re in this state we can feel a lot of grief and even resentment that our intuition doesn’t ‘agree’ with us, but this is just a learning point. 

The Six to the Ten of Cups

The Six of Cups starts this ‘part two’ of the Cups cycle. We start to go back to our foundations, get back in touch with our inner child and open up to exploring deeper parts of ourselves to find answers and work towards a sense of peace and harmony. The Seven of Cups shows us the power and possibilities involved in working in alignment with intuition. We see many different paths we can take and we’re asked to trust intuition to lead us down the one that is going to be the best for you and who you are at this point in your journey. 

The Eight of Cups is a nice contrast to the Five of Cups as it shows the growth we’ve achieved. Instead of standing and dwelling on the things that aren’t right for us, we have the wisdom and strength to walk away and trust that something better lies ahead. This shows a level of trust in the intuition that we’ve not yet seen in the cycle. 

Finally in the Nine and Ten of Cups we start to see the ‘pay off’ of trusting and following intuition. We reach our desired goals, we are put in a position that offers us a great sense of pride and we feel like we can take a second to take a break from all the lessons and just enjoy the fruits of building this relationship with intuition.

Instinct vs Intuition: Knowing which one is speaking to you

The trickiest part of differentiating between instinct and intuition is knowing how each ‘feels’ when it shows up for you. And to make it extra difficult, it can feel different for everybody. 

For some, intuition may be a small voice whispering directions, for others, it feels more like a physical tug. 

Instinct though is often much more physical and less cerebral. There’s not a lot of thinking and if there is it feels very definitive and spur of the moment. 

The way I like to separate them is that intuition is like a guide, gentle but firm. Instinct is more like a coach, it tells you what to do, there’s no discussion, and it is more direct and assured. 

A great way of working on being able to tell the two apart is by using Tarot. Separate your cups and wands from your deck and ask the cards to help you make a decision about something. 

When you pull a card, right down how it makes you feel. Does it feel like gentle advice or more like a straight-talking friend who is telling you what the best course of action is?

*I have a free intuitive Tarot reading guide over in the freebies section if working on intuition is on your to-do list. Click here to sign-up and download the workbook!

The High Priestess Tarot Card Meaning: Upright and Reversed Meanings & Breakdowns

The High Priestess Tarot Card Meaning: Upright and Reversed Meanings & Breakdowns

The High Priestess Tarot Card Keywords

Upright Keywords

Intuition, Instinct, Inner Voice, Spirit, Spirituality, Mystery, Enigmastism   

Reversed Keywords

Secrets, Mistrust in Self, Unperceptive, Psychic Blockage, Psychological Complex

The High Priestess Tarot Meaning

The High Priestess is a tough card to fully wrap your head around and for good reason. She is an energy that represents the intangible aspects of the divine feminine energy. She is the bridge between the spirit and the real world, transmitting intuitive and instinctual messages to our conscious so we can take action on them. 

The High Priestess – in traditional Tarot decks like the Rider Waite-Smith deck, sits in front of two pillars with a curtain draped behind her, hiding what lies on the other side from the ordinary passer by. She is the keeper of this deep unconscious knowledge and she will only share it under unique circumstances. Instead, she prefers to deliver the messages she receives from this great unknown, meaning that there is often a lot left unsaid or in need of further investigation.

Often she can be a frustrating card to work with because as a society, we are so used to having all the information at our fingertips, but The High Priestess is here to keep us humble and remind us that not everything is meant to be known. 

 

The High Priestess Upright Meaning

The upright meanings of The High Priestess refer to a healthy and strong connection with the unconscious and the spiritual self. It can be an invitation to explore these parts of ourselves to better understand our own thoughts and actions. 

When The High Priestess appears upright, intuition is at work, there is a knowing that wants to come forward but it’s not yet fully formed in a way that the conscious mind can comprehend. Instead, we have to work with the clues that The High Priestess is willing to offer to us, in order to piece together the puzzle and start to build the whole picture. Be prepared to leave without all the answers though. The High Priestess upright is very much like the oracles and seers of ancient civilisations, she can help to give us the general thread to follow, but she won’t be giving you the answers you’re looking for on a silver platter. 

The Fool Tarot Upright Meaning - Pagan Otherworlds Tarot

Should The High Priestess appear upright in your Tarot reading, look for what is hidden. Try and read between the lines, look beneath the surface, think outside of the box. There may be a riddle that needs to be solved. 

Journal Prompts for The High Priestess, Upright

If I woke up tomorrow and could completely change just one detail of my life what would it be and why?

If there were no boundaries or limitations, what would I want to achieve? 

How might I be keeping myself small right now? How might I be denying the things that could help me reach my full potential?

“The medial woman stands between the worlds of consensual reality and the mystical unconscious and mediates between them. The medial woman is the transmitter and receiver between two or more values or ideas. She is the one who brings new ideas to life, exchanges old ideas for innovative ones, translates between the world of the rational and the world of the imaginal. She “hears” things, “knows” things and “senses” what should come next.”– Clarissa Pinkola Eseté

The High Priestess Upright Meanings | Love, Career & Finances

In a love reading, The High Priestess upright hints at things left unsaid and things being kept under wraps, whether for better or for worse. Don’t believe what you see on the surface, especially when it comes to how YOU feel about the relationship and your own feelings towards this partner. 

In a career reading, The High Priestess upright could suggest a big learning opportunity, but not in terms of skill. This learning could come in the form of finally understanding what you want to work for or what the true value of your work is within the grand scheme of your life. 

When it comes to finances, The High Priestess upright reminds us that money is often an energetic transference. Our money mindset can put obstacles in our way that otherwise not exist, so making sure you’re always working on your perspective and beliefs around money is imperative to feeling abundant. 

The High Priestess Reversed Meaning

The Fool Reversed Tarot Meaning

The High Priestess moves within the underworld, the world beneath the world, the underbelly, the subconscious and mysteries behind the vale of the universe. When The High Priestess is reversed, there’s often discourse in these realms. It can manifest as psychological complexes, repressions, denials or the suppression of deeply intuitive instincts. 

We move through the energy we see in The High Priestess reversed more than we know because we’re not as connected to our natures as much as we used to be. There is a disconnect and within The High Priestess card, this can result in our inability to really trust in the divine or trust that there is a force bigger than us that is guiding us. Within the realms of science there is so much we don’t know, things happen all the time without any logical rhyme or reason and when that is mirrored within our own psyches, that’s when we start to notice The High Priestess reversed popping up.

With this card, we’re already looking inwards, questioning the things we thought we knew, but when it’s reversed, we need to go deeper. We need to ask harder questions, ones that feel alien to us, ones that we’d never dream of asking anyone else. We need to be able to step outside of ourselves, hovering overhead and taking a perspective of our internal world that may be uncomfortable or difficult to reconcile. 

Journal Prompts for The High Priestess, Reversed

What might I be avoiding or overlooking in favour of the things that make me feel good or support my pre-existing beliefs?

How many times over the last month have I ignored my intuition and what was my conscious reasoning?

What is my current viewpoint around my spirit, soul or existence and how could I challenge them to gain a fresh perspective?

“We feed the deep intuitive self by listening to it and acting upon its advice…Clarissa Pinkola Estés

The High Priestess Reversed Meanings | Love, Career & Finances

In a love reading The High Priestess reversed could indicate a repression of intuition around a potential partner. These will be red flags that may seem very subtle and almost invisible at first, until we take a magnifying glass to them and see what is at the root. 

In a career reading, The High Priestess reversed could suggest a wealth of possibility, but maybe not a clear or traditional road to success. This role will be what you make of it, it will be filled with twists and turns and you may never know what’s coming next. Decide whether this sounds exhilarating or exhausting in order to move forward. 

In a financial reading, The High Priestess reversed can indicate a reluctance to admit how deep your financial matters go. This could be in terms of a true lack of financial security, or even an underestimation of just how secure you are. In either of these cases, there’s usually a deeply rooted money belief that is causing you to repeat old cycles.

Nurturing Our Spiritual Self

Any divine feminine energy within the Tarot, whether it be The High Priestess, The Empress or The Queens of the Court Cards, is here to nurture the energy it is channelling.

For The High Priestess, it is the spiritual self that is being nurtured. That little voice of wonder that whispers to you when something ‘lucky’ or ‘spooky’ happens and sends a shiver of thrill and excitement down your spine, is The High Priestess empowering and nurturing that spiritual connection and curiosity.

The High Priestess | Esoteric Correspondences

Astrological Sign
The High Priestess Tarot Meanings Astrological

The Moon

The Moon is a celestial body that matches The High Priestess’ ever changing cycles and represents how much or little she is willing to show.

Elemental Energy
Ace of Cups Tarot Meanings Water

Elemental Water

The High Priestess is elemental water due to its free flowing, emotional and creative energy. It matches the element of the moon.

Numerology
The High Priestess Tarot Meanings Two

Number 2

The number 2 is all about balance, decisions, and can also form a portal through which a transition can be made, just like our card.

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How The High Priestess and The Empress help us to nurture our inner and outer worlds

How The High Priestess and The Empress help us to nurture our inner and outer worlds

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When you first start learning to read tarot, you might come across a few cards that – on the surface – seem very similar. It can be hard to differentiate between them early on and in a lot of cases we can become frustrated with our reading progress. That was definitely the case for me when I was learning to tell The High Priestess and The Empress apart. 

When we learn the traditional meanings of the cards, we tend to start with simple keywords. However, some keywords have a lot of crossover, so it’s only when we start to expand our thinking about the cards that we start to see the real differences between them. 

In this blog, I want to walk you through how I now see and work with The High Priestess and The Empress, and how I’ve gotten to grips with both their similarities and their differences. 

Understanding Inner and Outer Worlds

In the Foundational Tarot Course, I make sure to cover the ideas around the conscious, subconscious and higher consciousness early in the course for this very reason. Once you understand the different levels within the self that energy can exist, it becomes a little easier to apply context to both the cards individually and within a reading. 

When we refer to an energy existing in the conscious world, we are referring to its tangibility. This means we can see it, hear it, feel it, and experience it physically in our outer world. Things like conscious thought for example are very surface level, they may have roots in the subconscious but they appear formed within the conscious. 

The subconscious is a deeper level of our psyche. It tends to house our belief systems, sense of self, fears etc. Think of the movie Inside Out, it’s the main control centre of who we are and handles all of our automatic behaviours and actions.   

The Empress exists primarily within that conscious world, the outer world, and uses her divine feminine energy to nurture elements of the physical self and our environment. 

The High Priestess exists primarily in the subconscious – the inner world – and nurtures the world within. She is the keeper of our secrets, the guarded parts of ourselves. For example, say you wanted to tackle some limiting beliefs, it’s The High Priestess that stands guard of the gateway you need to pass through in order to access those limiting beliefs. 

The High Priestess and The Empress in Conversation

The High Priestess and The Empress both exist within all of us, no matter what your gender identity or sexuality. We all have divine feminine energy, it’s what helps us to be compassionate to ourselves and to others, to access intuition and natural born instinct. 

Therefore, the divine feminine energy is made up of both the energy of The High Priestess (Intuition, Spirituality, Subconscious Thoughts and Feelings) and the energy of The Empress (Fertility, Abundance, Material Pleasures, Emotional Connection). In order to nurture both our inner and outer worlds, we need to create a space within ourselves where these energies can easily communicate with each other. 

Just like any partnership, the two individuals need to be given the freedom to act on their strengths and do what they do best. You could say that if you get The High Priestess in a reading, it means that you need to work on allowing her the opportunity to put you in connection with spirit and receive the messages it’s trying to tell you. The other cards in the reading would act to provide more context and help you find ways to open up those channels of communication between The High Priestess and The Empress.  

What to do if your High Priestess energy is out of balance

The main way to get back in touch and feed your High Priestess energy is to connect with your intuition. If your intuitive signals are not firing as they should, then taking time to do some consistent intuition exercises can make a huge difference. You’ll start to notice your confidence and trust in yourself increasing, which in turn, helps you to manifest and take action to nurture and transmit love and compassion out into the outer world (The Empress’ domain). 

Everyone has access to intuition and it only grows stronger the more we interact with it. It’s like a muscle, if you don’t use it or you’re always questioning it, it starts to lose strength and that’s when we can start to feel like it’s disappeared completely. 

Daily intuition exercise for strengthening intuitive muscles

As soon as you wake up, take 1-2 minutes to sit still and ask yourself, “What kind of day will today be?” You can pair this with a card pull to give you some guidance, but to start with, it can be helpful to use the thoughts and feelings that pop up naturally. 

Write down your intuitive ideas on a piece of paper. Later that day, check in to see how accurate you were. 

Remember, you won’t be spot on and you’ll definitely have days where you were wrong, but the purpose of this exercise is to get you conversing with your intuition so that you can rebuild the strength and connection. You’ll notice you get closer and closer to your predictions the more you do this. 

“We feed the deep intuitive self by listening to it and acting upon its advice It is a personage in its own right, a magical dollish-sized being which inhabits the psychic land of the interior woman. In this way it is like the muscles in the body. If a muscle is not used, eventually it withers. Intuition is exactly like that: without food, without employment, it atrophies.” – Clarissa Pinkola Esté, Women Who Run With The Wolves

 

What to do if your Empress energy is out of balance

Sometimes you can be a highly intuitive being, but forget to give your outer self the same love and attention *cough* me *cough*. Too much time spent making sure the inner world is taken care of might pull you away from ensuring your physical body is strong and healthy, that your relationships are thriving, that your career is being taken care of. 

The key to channeling your Empress energy and nurturing your outer world, is mindfulness. Being fully present with what is happening in the here and now is the number one way to ensure you’re spending enough time in the outer world and balancing it with your inner High Priestess energy. 

Mindfulness can look like a few different things, the most common is self-care such as pamper sessions, making time for passions and hobbies, spending time relaxing and unwinding. Body scan meditations are a great way to really merge the energies of The Empress and The High Priestess because you are not only taking time to nurture the physical body, but you’re also allowing the mind and spirit to relax and connect as one. 

How to do a body scan meditation for mind, body and soul relaxation

You can try and do your own body scan meditations by simply sitting or lying down, closing your eyes, and slowly -starting from the crown of the head – wash your awareness over each part of your body, working your way down to the tips of your toes. Take a second to notice how each part feels and make a mental note of it. If you feel any tension along the way, take a deep breath and as your breathe out, focus on letting go of that tension.

I’m currently loving the courses and meditations from the app Headspace and I had a look and found this free body scan meditation you can try. Just click the image to head to the full page and also learn about the benefits of body scan meditations.  

The importance of nurturing the inner and outer worlds

In order to feel truly whole, safe and secure in both body, mind and environment, we have to work on balancing our inner and outer worlds. Working with The High Priestess and The Empress in these ways can help us do that.

Whenever you feel like things are spiralling or like you’ve not quite got a grip on life, put some time aside to think about how The High Priestess is showing up, think about how The Empress is manifesting and assess to see if one is more dominant than the other and work to bring them back in alignment.   

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If finding a balance between your High Priestess and Empress energy is something you feel you need a little more support with, make sure to check out my bespoke Tarot reading package; Inner Alchemy, which helps you to feel more spiritually and instinctually connected. Find out more by clicking the button below.

The Magician Tarot Card Meaning: Upright and Reversed Meanings & Breakdowns

The Magician Tarot Card Meaning: Upright and Reversed Meanings & Breakdowns

The Magician Tarot Card Keywords

Upright Keywords

Creation, Manifestation, Magic, Action, Conscious, Experimentation, Abilities, Inspiration

Reversed Keywords

Trickery, Dishonesty, Narcissism, Manipulation, Over Confidence, Illusion, Fakery

The Magician Tarot Meaning

The Magician is the Major Arcana’s first step into the conscious realm. After The Fool’s leap into the unknown, the first energy he comes into contact with is The Magician. This is where he learns how to wield all the forces available to him. We can see this in many illustrations of The Magician, as a figure stands in front of a table ladened with the four classical elements, represented by the four Tarot suits.

You’ll most likely see a wand being held aloft, to help channel the power of the universe down from above and into the physical realm below. You’ll see a sword to represent the element of air and things like communication, inspiration and knowledge. There’ll be a cup to represent the element of water and the emotional and intuitive energy and a pentacle to represent the element of earth and its grounding, physical properties.  

With these tools The Magician sets to work, wielding them, mixing them together and seeing what he can create from seemingly nothing at all. This card is an energy designed to inspire us to think about the power we wield and how we can use it to create, find wonder and be more conscious of the impact we have on the world. 

 

The Magician Upright Meaning

The Magician is an archetype that is focused on development of any kind. It’s an energy that encourages experimentation in the hope of transformation. Think of a scientist locked away in their lab mixing different chemicals together, testing their reaction and then making small adjustments to the formula in order to aid the scientist to create what they want to achieve. That’s the sort of energy The Magician upright brings to the table. 

The use of the four classical elements – Fire, Water, Earth and Air – are to remind us that this ‘magic’, this ‘power’, this ‘energy’ that we work with when we step into The Magician, is based in the physical realm. We have everything we need at our finger tips and now it’s time to play around with them to see what we have the power to conjure. 

The Magician Upright Meanings Pagan Otherworlds Tarot Deck

When The Magician upright appears in your readings, it could be a call to spend some time experimenting and exploring. The Magician upright is a perfect card for personal development and working to grow, heal and transform the self. At this stage, with The Magician, you’re just gathering the tools you need and thinking about how to use them. Results from your experiments will vary, but the value lies in the act of conducting the experiments in the first place.

Journal Prompts for The Magician, Upright

What does the next level look like for me and what needs to change to get there?

How can I use what’s already available to me to help me get to where I want to be?

What knowledge and or skills could help me with my personal development or to reach my goals? 

“The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary” – Christopher Priest

The Magician Upright Meanings | Love, Career & Finances

In a Love reading, The Magician Upright can represent a a relationship that motivates and inspires you. But, with the Magician’s tricky nature, it also suggests a need to always be looking deeper than external actions, look for the motivations behind the actions to gauge genuine and honest gestures.

In a career reading, The Magician Upright can indicate a desire to level up, to really open up and show others what you are capable of achieving. It may also be a call to retrain or work on honing a skill that could help you land that promotion or a job with more responsibility and/or career development.

When it comes to finances, The Magician Upright could symbolise a need to be more conscious of spend and/or current finances. With The Magician, there may be room to experiment with new financial investments, but be on guard for opportunities or offers that look ‘too good to be true’. 

The Magician Reversed Meaning

The Magician Reversed Meanings Pagan Otherworlds Tarot Deck

The Magician reversed can reveal the card’s trickier personality traits. We all love a bit of slight of hand magic as a source of entertainment, but if it’s used against us it could cause us to be cheated, frauded or have the wool pulled over our eyes. 

With The Magician reversed, it’s best to be vigilant, watch every move, be hyper aware of what is happening around you so that you don’t fall victim to a falsity. When we turn this energy inwards though, like we often do when a card is in a reversed position, we channel all of this into our sense of self, our sense of being and perspective on our own abilities. This can cause common limiting beliefs like imposter syndrome and not feeling good enough to do the things you feel called to do. We doubt our abilities to manifest the things we want most and downplay our own magic.  

When you get The Magician reversed in your readings there’s two areas to look at. The internal world and the external world. With the external world, look out for opportunities or offers that seem to promise the world. More than likely these will be a way to trick you into a position you have little power in. With the internal world, assess and explore any limiting beliefs you may have about your abilities and skills, question any thoughts that come up that say things like “You’ll never…” or “You’re not good enough to…”. These thoughts are not facts, they are a symbol of a need for Magician energy in your life that will lift you up. 

Journal Prompts for The Magician, Reversed

How might I be doubting my own power and abilities right now?

How might I be being manipulated right now and for what purpose? – Could be internal or external

Where am I lacking a sense of wonder and sources for inspiration? How could I resolve this?

“You have all the tools right under your nose to manifest your goals. It’s all just a matter of focus” – Theresa Reed a.k.a The Tarot Lady

The Magician Reversed Meanings | Love, Career & Finances

In a love reading, The Magician reversed could suggest someone is not quite as they seem, especially if they seem to be without flaws or fit everything you’ve wanted in a partner perfectly. It’s worth keeping a sharp eye on whether the person seems to be adapting to what you want rather than being fully themselves. 

In a career reading, The Magician reversed could symbolise a limiting belief that is keeping you stuck in a role or job that you’ve now outgrown. Your power is bigger than the container you’re stuck in and it’s time to explore how you can break out and unleash it to aid with transformation and career development.

In a financial reading, The Magician reversed could suggest you’re not being honest with yourself when it comes to how much you do or do not have. In some cases, this can be caused by The Magician’s need to bury their head in the sand and not accept what they’re either fully capable of affording due to fear and/or lack of confidence. 

The Motivation of The Magician

When reading The Magician – whether in the upright or reversed position – it’s worth keeping the card’s archetypal motivations in mind. The Magician first and foremost is motivated by a need to transform and make dreams a reality. It wants to understand fully how things work so it can use this knowledge in the transformative work it is designed to do. 

The Magician is also a bridge. As the second card in The Fool’s Journey, The Magician creates a connection between The Fool soul/spirit and the spiritual understanding of the physical world in The High Priestess. It is a bridge between the inner and outer world and channels the energy that surrounds us into physical manifestations.

The Magician | Esoteric Correspondences

Astrological Sign
The Magician Tarot Meanings Astrological

Mercury

Mercury is the planet of mind and intelligence. The Magician channels this through its ability to take what’s in the mind and make it a reality.

Elemental Energy
Wands Tarot Meanings Fire

Elemental Fire

The Magician has the element of fire because of its passion for creation and embracing personal power through its use of the wand.

Numerology
The Magician Tarot Meanings One

Number 1

Within numerology, the number 1 is the number of creation. Even its shape mirrors the wand that The Magician holds aloft.

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How to Develop Intuition and Read Tarot More Intuitively

How to Develop Intuition and Read Tarot More Intuitively

It’s one of the biggest frustrations of beginner Tarot readers, how do you develop intuition and read Tarot more intuitively? 

Before we dive in, I want to make it very clear that intuition isn’t a skill as such, it is a natural, instinctual power that every human has. It transcends the conscious mind and you can find intuition in every living thing, no matter how sentient. 

So if you’re thinking you don’t have ‘intuition’ you’re wrong. You have it. It already exists within you, it’s just a muscle you haven’t used much and so it has weakened. Our goal before the end of this blog is to have you feeling an awareness of that intuitive muscle again. It is to feel like you know where it is inside you and how you can tap into it for Tarot readings or just general life.

Instinct vs Intuition

I want to create a stand-alone blog diving into this in more detail, but I think it’s important to touch on it before we get stuck in. 

Instinct and intuition are two different entities. The simplest way to explain it is this: 

Instinct – A base, almost animalistic feeling that comes from our need to stay safe and alive. Your instincts are what tell you to run when there’s danger, to breathe, to eat when you’re hungry, to drink when you’re thirsty. Essentially, it is an unconscious understanding that is designed to spur you into some kind of action. That’s why the Tarot Wands are associated with instinct; they are a suit of motivation, power, and action. 

Intuition – A ‘knowing’ that is not directly influenced by facts and conscious thought. It is like Spider-Man’s spider senses. It’s like someone or something has whispered in your ear imparting information and knowledge that seemingly comes from out of the blue. The Tarot cups are the suit that is linked with intuition because it’s a knowledge that doesn’t come from logic, it’s more emotional than that, it’s more intangible and often helps us decipher what is right and wrong. 

The reason it’s important to know the difference between the two is because we’ll be working with intuition and it can be easy to mistake one for the other. Understanding instinct is a little more complicated because there’s a lot of psychology that influences instinct and what it encourages to act on. We’ll be looking at intuition, the unconscious knowing, the feeling of just knowing something and learning how to trust it and lean into it.

How to develop intuition

Like I mentioned before, your intuition is a muscle, the more you use it the stronger it gets. But how do you even start exercising a muscle you can’t feel and have no idea where it is inside your body?

The first step is drawing it up from the depths so you can form that reconnection. Here’s a quick and easy exercise to draw that intuition back out, like fishing. We need to put ourselves into a position that requires the help of intuition to gain greater insight. What better way than using an Oracle card? 

Oracle Card Free Writing Exercise: Grab a notebook and a pen then take a look at the card.

The Starseed Oracle Card You're Not Alone for Intuition Practice

Write down everything that comes to mind. Don’t overthink anything, don’t analyse anything, just write whatever the card brings to mind. 

Aim to write a full page. Don’t worry about it making sense or grammar or creating full sentences, the important thing is we get the knowledge the card sparks down on paper.

Learning to recognise and act on intuition

The hardest part is done. You’ve already opened the door to your intuition and allowed it to say what it needs to say in the previous exercise. 

Now, we need to work on becoming more conscious of our intuition’s messages. The previous exercise allowed you to reignite that intuitive muscle, now it’s about how we can consciously recognise when our intuition is trying to tell us something. This time, all you’ll need is a random object. 

Mindful Observation Exercise: For this, we’ll be using all five senses to help us become more conscious of the intuitive messages we’re being sent. Essentially, we’re channelling this unconscious knowing into something more external, which allows us to better recognise and act on intuition.

Take an object that’s in your vicinity. It could be a lamp, your phone, or a remote control, the more seemingly mundane the better. Again, grab your notebook and start writing down answers to the following: 

What do you see? – Get really specific about what you see, what the the finer details of the item that you’ve never noticed before?  

What do you hear? – Give it a tap, drop it on the floor (as long as you won’t break it that is), if it’s got buttons what do they sound like? Play around with it and treat it like an instrument to see what sounds you can create. 

What do you feel? – Toss it between your hands, run your fingers over every lump and bump, and make a note of the different textures, temperatures, where the lumps and bumps are and where it’s smooth.

What do you smell? – What does the object smell like, is it pleasant, or unpleasant, does it smell like nothing or does it smell like something?

You’ll notice I’ve left out your sense of taste because I do not want to encourage you to go around licking objects in your home. However, if you want to give this a try, do it with something edible like fruit or even try it at meal times to add an extra ounce of mindfulness to how you eat.

Intuitive decision-making

Now we’ve both consciously and subconsciously connected with our intuition, it’s time to test it out in a more practical way.

One of the most common ways we use our intuition in our daily lives is when we have to make a decision. It might be when we’re trying to decide what to have for breakfast, we might ask ourselves ‘What do I feel like eating?’ and our intuition chimes in with the answer.

Intuitive decision-making is a skill we can apply to all areas of our lives and its especially useful for when you’re reading Tarot or Oracle cards. I want to use these tools to get you started with intuitive decision-making and to do this, I’m going to again use Oracle cards. If you’re more proficient in Tarot, you might want to try this next task with your own Tarot cards. 

*I use Oracle cards when I want to make an exercise as accessible as possible to a wider group of people, hence my use of them in this blog. But, these exercises can easily be used with either Oracle or Tarot cards.  

Pick a card, Any Card Exercise: Before you take a look at the three cards below, I want you to write down in your notebook one line that describes what’s on your mind and how you feel about it right now. You don’t have to go into detail, just a brief summary. 

Now, close your eyes and take three deep breaths. Try and ground yourself in the moment by focusing on the movement of your chest and stomach as you breathe in and out. Bring your awareness to how your body feels.

Three Starseed Oracle Cards Face Down to choose from

Once you’ve completed your three breaths, choose the card you feel the strongest pull towards. 

This pull can feel different for everyone so I can’t say exactly what it will feel like. For me, I notice how my eyes are instantly drawn to one card more than the others. For others, there may be a voice in their head that says something like ‘left’, ‘middle’ or ‘right’. 

Once you have chosen your card scroll down to see what you picked and spend some time thinking about how that card relates to what you wrote down at the beginning of this exercise. Think about what it’s inviting you to explore. Think about how it might be giving you more insight into why you feel the way you do. Make a note as to whether the card’s message is a comforting one, or if it’s highlighting something you might have been avoiding.

Starseed Oracle Cards Choosing card one

Where to go from here?

Like with strengthening any muscle, you can’t just run through these exercises once and hope you become an intuitive master overnight. In order to develop your intuition, you need to work on it consistently and frequently. 

Because I’m a Tarot reader and so read Tarot or Oracle cards in some form every day, that acts as my intuition workout. It may be you start doing daily card pulls to help you build that muscle, or maybe you come back to this blog every week or every other day to complete these exercises. 

Find a way to practice that feels organic and fun for you. You don’t want your relationship with your intuitive self to feel forced. If you really enjoyed the mindful object exercise, do more of that, maybe meditation is something you want to try or you want to give intuitive writing a go. Experiment with different exercises to build the best workout for you and your preferences. 

If you’re interested in exploring your intuition more within the world of Tarot, don’t forget I have a free workbook and guide that teaches you two additional skills that make intuitive Tarot reading feel easier than ever. Just click below to sign up and instantly get access to the editable PDF!

Easy Intuitive Tarot | Editable PDF Workbook & Guide

With just two key pieces of knowledge, you’ll be able to easily and intuitively interpret all 78 cards with ease and confidence.