Conversations in the Deep
Tarot, Oracle Cards, and Runes as Tools for Soul‑Led Guidance
Listening Through Symbol and Pattern
This month we’re exploring the physical tools that help anchor our inner work in the Ordinary World - altars, offerings, shrines, and dream journals. Each of these practices creates a bridge between the seen and unseen, between the soul-life and the everyday life, with the goal of both being lived together, nothing between them, in harmony.
This week, we turn toward what might be many people’s favourite bridge: divination.
Divination tools - tarot, oracle cards, runes, ogham, bones, stones, shells - are not really about about predicting the future. Instead, they are methods of diving purpose and path. They are about listening. They are about entering into conversation with the our Kin, our soul-self, with the imaginal, and with the patterns that move beneath the surface of our days.
Divination is symbolic listening; it’s pattern recognition and a way of asking:
‘What is moving in me? What wants to be known?’
This week, we’ll explore how to choose a tool, how to approach divination as dialogue rather than as fortune-telling (which is far more useful in the long-term) and how to use these tools to support the inner work we’ve been doing these last months.
Why the Conversation Divination Allows us Matters
Divination tools give shape to the subtle and make the invisible visible. They offer a language for what we feel but often cannot articulate. They are also a very easy tool for establishing communication with our Spirit Kin and our soul-self.
When you draw a card or cast a rune, we are creating a moment of alignment between our inner state, our intention, and the symbol that rises to meet us. This works because the imagery and meanings of these forms of divination speaks the same language as our dreams and visions. When we visit the depths of life, we speak in symbol. When we listen to our Kin, they reach us through feeling and symbol. Our intuition communicates with us through symbolism more often than not.
What makes a deck of tarot or oracle cards so effective, is that they offer a whole book of symbolism - and the key card to translate it.
I grew up with a mother who used the Tarot. Back in those days (the 1970’s) the only tarot deck I ever saw was the Rider Waite, and this was what my mother had. As a small girl, I was fascinated by the whole process - I’m sure I must have driven my mother batty with my questions, so she probably used it more often when I wasn’t around.
As I grew older and saw more of how my mother used the Tarot, and why, I found myself growing disillusioned with it. My Mum was looking for answers, and permission, and to see ahead to better times, but as a young know-it-all, I looked at it from my outside perspective and thought that it became a crutch for her, a way of shifting responsibility, of not making the moves she was afraid to, because the cards weren’t favourable. It put me off using the Tarot any more than occasionally for a long time.
These days, I’ve grown up, and know far more about being stuck in situations, and about not feeling brave enough to do certain things than I did as a young teenager. I’ve also learnt that using cards and runes and so on offers illumination and are a valuable way to learn what the heart of a matter is, and that rather than predicting the future, they offer us such a rich way to have a conversation with ourselves and those who guide us, that they’ve become one of my favourite tools.
Like our dreams, however - and like all communication with our deep selves and our kin - they point us always toward action. We ask a question, we receive illumination, and then, we must act upon it.
For All Subscribers: A Single-Card Practice
Before we go deeper, here is a simple practice for all of us. This is one of my favourite ways of using a divination tool. It’s direct, appropriate, and manageable, and a good daily practice to strengthen our intuition and our communication with our unseen guides.
If you have a tarot or oracle deck:
Hold the deck in your hands.
Take one slow breath.
Ask: What do I need to pay attention to today?
Draw a single card.
Notice the first thing your eye is drawn to - a colour, a symbol, a gesture, a creature.
Let that be your message for the day.
If you don’t have a deck:
Choose one symbol from your day - a bird, a word, a colour, a sound - and treat it as your ‘card.’
Ask: What might this be saying to me?
Symbolic listening begins with noticing.
If you’re not a member of my online community The Beaconage, you might like to join us there - it’s free, private, and we have a whole ‘Hearth Room’ dedicated to all things oracular
Paid Subscribers: A Deep Dive Into Divination Tools
Below is the full guide for this week - how to choose a tool, how to approach divination as conversation, and a tarot spread designed specifically for this month’s theme of grounding the inner work in the physical world.
