Tarot as a Tool for Gratitude
It’s November, so it’s time for Gratitude! In the U.S. we celebrate Thanksgiving during this month and so this is a time when traditionally we focus on being thankful, even if it’s only for a quick prayer before we carve into the turkey. If you subscribe to blogs and newsletters, your inbox is probably filling up with many other wonderful articales about this topic. An internet search will quickly yield a virtual cornucopia of quotes about gratitude – like this one by Eckhart Tolle: “Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance”. (We’ll come back to that in a minute.)
But this year being grateful seems to be a little more challenging than usual. Times have been tough for everyone. There is much civil unrest, inflation is at a 30-year high, climate change is getting more intense, and social media seems to have morphed from an amusing recreation to a battleground. It’s much easier to feel fear, anger, and resentment than gratitude. Yet for that very reason, gratitude is the very thing that can help us move into a better space in regard to the perceived chaos. Why is that, exactly?
Back to Mr. Tolle’s admonition that being grateful for what we have – no matter how little that appears to be in the mundane world - is the foundation for abundance. Here in the world of our day-to-day lives we have become accustomed to thinking about rewards and success as coming only from diligence and hard work. Why, if I’m Bob Cratchit with a paltry little bird to feed my family, would I smile and be so happy on Christmas morning, thus mystifying the spying spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge who worked hard and saved his pennies and believes himself to be worthy of abundance, unlike all of the unworthy souls, each of whom he believes should be “boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart”.
I believe that it’s about energy and our mental and emotional interaction with it. According to an article on the neuroscience of gratitude, “when we express gratitude and receive the same, our brain releases dopamine and serotonin, the two crucial neurotransmitters responsible for our emotions, and they make us feel ‘good’”. Now, looking at the metaphysics behind that, the theory is that like attracts like. We will attract into our world that upon which we focus our attention. So, if we express pleasure and gratitude about the gifts that we already have, that expressed energy will in turn attract more of the same.
Today I’m using a tarot reading as a tool that can help us focus on our capacity for being grateful. I asked the cards, “How can we use gratitude to survive and thrive in these difficult times?” I got The Emperor, the Wheel of Fortune, and the Ace of Pentacles. Let’s see what they have to say.
The Emperor is a great place to start! He’s skilled at taking ideas and making them manifest. He represents our practical, logical, planning, realistic selves and is able to take dreams and ideas that came from the spiritual High Priestess and the creative Empress (major cards that precede the Emperor in the classic order of the Major Arcana) and make them into reality. When we focus on what we’re grateful for, we can start with what we ourselves have already created as well as what has been created/provided for us. The Emperor teaches us to see both what is and what to have confidence in what will be.
Next, we take a chance and submit ourselves to the winds of change by taking a ride on the Wheel of Fortune. The Wheel reminds us that we may not always be able to control our fate but we can control how we respond to it. Let’s step a little deeper into the esoterica by remembering that the astrological correspondence to the Wheel of Fortune is Jupiter with its energies of expansiveness, optimism, and abundance. We can quite literally see our glass as at least half full. The Wheel reminds us of how important it is to remain optimistic and stay in sync with our own higher mind.
Finally, we get the Ace of Pentacles. Oh my gosh, could there be any better tool for making our dreams and wishes come true? Aces are new beginnings, and for pentacles – which I perceive as what we manifest on the earth plane in terms of health, wealth, and well-being – we are quite literally planting a seed! To sum it up, we center ourselves in our own power (Emperor), focus on change in an optimistic way (Wheel of Fortune), and plant the seed of our desired reality (Ace of Pentacles).
Of course, it’s always a good thing to be grateful simply for its own sake. Among other things, I am grateful for Tarot and that you have decided to join me on this journey by reading my blog and/or newsletter. Here’s to a great holiday season and may you reign with benevolent abundance over your own seeds of destiny!
