How to Read The Scariest Tarot Cards

You are giving a reading and then you pull the dreaded Death card.  Or worse, the Tower!  

First of all, these cards are not supposed to mean terrible things. The death cards just means letting go.  We need to let go to start a new beginning.  The Tower means that old structures are falling away. We need to clean out the old to begin the new.  So you can tell that to yourself if you pull this card or to the person you are reading. You can also throw a few more cards afterwards to see what lies beyond. Keep throwing until you come to something positive. You can then see the path that leads to the new positive beginning.

If you are reading for yourself, however, you might not have anyone there to help you with the anxiety that arises. 

So listen up!

Many people find that they can’t easily read for themselves because of a tendency towards anxiety. 

If you are one of these folks, then understand that asking a question when you are worried is likely to turn up your fears. But it doesn’t mean that the worst things will end out happening. It does mean that your fears are showing up in your cards.

Here are some tips:

1. Before you read for yourself, center yourself.  Take a walk, meditate, breathe.  Do something nurturing, and/or make a list of ten things in your life you are grateful for. Or think of some of the best events in your life and the ones that made you laugh, and relive those moments in your mind.  Then, begin reading your cards.
2. Remember the cards are not objective reality, but a subjective view. They are your feelings, your thoughts, your perspective, not what is actually going to happen.
3. If these ideas don’t work, then consider having someone else read for you.
4. I can’t easily read for myself when I’m worried, but I can do it when I am among friends.
5. Know that you are pulling the negative cards because of anxiety and worse-case scenario thinking.
6. Consider subscribing to the free website, Happify.com, for daily tips so you can make your brain more positive.  Happiness takes practice and it’s very doable!

Here are some other tips to keep in mind:

1. The Tarot represents consciousness, not events.    Negative cards  can look scary, like someone is in pain.  The Rider Waite deck has some gruesome images of people with swords stuck in their backs.  The Thoth deck’s nine  of swords, called  “Cruelty” shows  broken swords with blood dripping from them.  The Tower card, which is the scariest card  in the Tarot (see image),  looks like  Armageddon. But these scenes merely represent how a person perceives a situation, not the actual  event.

2. Ignoring  negative cards is like sweeping something under the rug. It  just keeps the pain inside  rather than  providing  a chance to release it.  I have known people who only use happy decks with sunny messages.  I find those decks a bit fluffy and have a hard time trusting their message. Often it is the pain that helps us grow.

3. Seeing  a negative card in a reading of the future is a useful.   Precognition is a gift that helps us become more aware.  It can even steer us around the mine fields of life, though not always. Studies show that we all have this gift because it has helped our species survive. So when you see a negative future, find out how it can be avoided or, if it can’t be avoided, how it can be resolved over time. Maybe the person needs to see how they are creating that future.  Maybe they just need to see what steps they will have to go through to come to resolution and happiness. So if you’re reading a spread and you don’t like the outcome card, just throw more cards to see how it can be resolved.

4. Negative  cards can serve to make us more aware of how we experience reality which enables us to choose more healthy  reactions to events.  We create our reality with our expectations, our thinking, and our responses to the events in our lives. This  awareness is the basis of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is the leading form of psychotherapy today.  It’s only when we become aware of the thoughts we form about our lives that we can change our thinking and see life through a more positive lens.

5. Negative Tarot Cards Can Help You Transcend Your Fears.  In her book, The Tarot Handbook, cross cultural anthropologist  Angeles Arriens addressed the negative cards as positive and negative mind states. Arriens notes that the Thoth Tarot’s thirteen negative and twenty-six positive Minor Arcana cards correspond to the Tibetan Buddhism’s thirteen Bardo or Beasts states,    similar to the structure  of Dante’s Purgatory.  These cultures saw negative mind states as aspects of thinking that we have to transform to become happy or enlightened.

6. In the Thoth Tarot, there are twenty-six positive states that Arriens says  we can use to transform the negative ones.  This is cognitive behavior therapy  a la Tarot. When you pull negative cards, tell  yourself they are indicating fears and distorted thinking, rather than reality.  Ask the cards what will help turn this thinking around and pull another card.