Trial of Tarot: The Magician and I
My Introduction to Tarot
I have been aware of tarot for a long time, but I only started exploring it about 5 years ago. Tarot appears in numerous TV shows, often ridiculed as a throwaway storyline to get the characters to worry about the future. Though there is a great scene involving a tarot reading in the pilot episode of Father Ted - a Channel 4 show from the 90s about 3 Irish priests living on a remote island off of Ireland. In the episode, Ted and Dougal visit a psychic for a reading, and the whole scene is gold from start to finish. But, we never get so far as for that to set up a storyline for the episode; it is just a throwaway scene at a country fete. But that scene stuck with me for the humour built into the reading.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with tarot, here is a quick breakdown of a standard deck. The deck consists of two parts - The Major Arcana (22 cards) and The Minor Arcana (56 cards). The Major Arcana cards represent the journey of the psyche - those deeply rooted issues within our lives. The Minor Arcana usually point to situations you are experiencing. They help give context to the Major Arcana cards when you do readings.
The Major Arcana cards are numbered 0 (The Fool) to 21 (The World). Each one represents a different named archetype of being. The Minor Arcana consists of 4 suits - Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles. Within each suit, there are numbered cards 1 to 10, and 4 court cards - Page, Knight, Queen, and King. The court cards usually represent people, whereas all the other cards represent situations.
Each card has a meaning and themes attached to it. When a card is in the upright position, it follows its regular meaning. When the card is in a reversed position (upside-down), the meaning is inverted. This allows you to play with 156 meanings if you use the reversed positions of the cards. This should give you a good picture of the deck configuration and what the major roles are for each aspect of it.
When I say that I started exploring tarot 5 years ago, I mean that I bought a deck of tarot cards. A deck that largely went untouched for 4 years. It was something that I wanted to understand more. What drew me to tarot was the mystery and mystical nature of the art. But looking through a deck of 78 cards that felt meaningless to me was overwhelming, and I didn't know where to begin with it. That was until Agatha All Along was released on Disney+. I fell in love with everything about that show, and Lilia's powers of divinity and connection to tarot fascinated me. To see such a well-crafted storyline utilise tarot in a way that granted viewers reasons to rewatch and go deeper was just chef’s kiss. This prompted me to start drawing one card a day and try to understand this mystical art form.
My Deck
I don't remember how I decided upon which deck to buy. All I know is that I bought it on Amazon in June 2020. I had chosen The Wild Unknown Tarot by Kim Krans. I appreciated the artwork and style of the cards. So I took a chance and ordered the set. I am still enthralled by the artwork, the accompanying book structure, and the messages within the introduction of the book. As I flick through it now to jog my memory for this post, I'm seeing pages about how to get started with tarot, and trying a simple task of drawing one card per day. This is very likely what prompted me to start my daily tarot reading. More on that later!
An interesting observation about this deck and book is that the creator chose to rename the court cards from Page, Knight, Queen, and King to Daughter, Son, Mother, and Father. This renaming was done in an effort to make the court cards more relatable for readings. In addition, they have a reflection about their choice to only focus on the upright meanings of cards.
I was happy to embrace the upright meanings of cards while going through my learning process and daily ritual. I will in the future explore the reversed meanings. I have, in the past few months, purchased a second deck of cards that explores the reversed meanings. I have not started working with those cards yet - you might say, I'm waiting for the right time.
My final note about the deck I use is a spooky one. In Agatha All Along, we briefly visit the bedroom of one of the main characters, Billy. On my third or so rewatch, I paused to look for easter eggs and noticed that the tarot deck he owns is The Wild Unknown Tarot! It felt like an incredible coincidence, and to me, it felt like a sign that exploring tarot was going to be a fruitful experience. I embraced Billy's storyline on the show. His characterisation, evolution, and growth over the series felt relatable to me - he was searching for meaning, and found his power within himself.
Why I Enjoy Tarot
I have always been fascinated with time travel and exploring the future. We have come such a long way in the last century in relation to technology that I cannot wait to see where we can get to in the next hundred years. On a personal note, I have connected with the idea of telling the future, in order to help give me some direction in life. This is one of the big questions I brought to my tarot readings. Over the years, I have had some tarot readings administered by friends. I don't remember the specifics of them, or if they made sense to me at the time. I did take photos and write down the interpretation that my friends shared with me. I'm going to take this as a sign to set time aside to revisit those readings and craft a new blog post about them. Stay tuned!
As I started to explore my daily tarot reading, I found that where it became meaningful was in asking questions about my present, not my future. I have come to realise that this is the real power of tarot. It is a reflection of and insight into your present moment. The cards reveal the path you are currently on. The real magic comes from taking that meaning and applying it to your life. Is there some action you can take to change that trajectory? Is there a change in mindset you can embrace that takes you towards greater things? Is there abundance in your life that you should be grateful for?
One of the aspects of tarot that overwhelmed me initially, but now is a big reason I love this practice, is the abstract nature of the cards and their meaning. This was a big learning curve to get over, but AI helped with that immensely. I was able to execute my ritual, generate a reflection about the card's meaning, and then double-check my work using AI. At the beginning of this exercise, I noticed a lot of meaning and interpretation that I was missing because I was taking the themes too literally, rather than focusing on the context of the card. Now I am far more comfortable interpreting the meaning, and I don't need to rely on help to get there.
As I have grown more accustomed to this deck, I have noticed that certain cards seem to be popping up repeatedly, or tend to show up when I ask a particular style of question. When I get particularly stuck, The Magician usually shows up to help me get through it. I have grown accustomed to considering this card a reflection of me. It is one of five or so cards that make repeat appearances at interesting times. Mother of Swords is another one, and only two weeks ago, this card showed up 3 times in 5 days! As a mathematician at heart, I know it is statistically improbable that I would pull the same card 3 times in one week. I have tracked all the cards I pulled and on which days, so theoretically I could analyse that and see what patterns have emerged. Better yet, why don't I say I will do that, and just write a blog post about that too? I'll add it to my series of tarot. Where science meets magic!
How I Started With Tarot
In November 2024, I sat down and performed my first daily reading. My intention for beginning this was to learn each card and its meaning. I opened a new note on my phone with the date, the card, and a brief interpretation. I decided to perform this ritual without replacement, meaning once I drew a card, I left it aside until I had gone through all 78 cards. My reasoning was rooted in exploring all 78 cards. I started to notice my card's meaning might show up during the day - some days it was quite strong, other days it was not. The final card I drew on Day 78 was Death. Death is one of those cards that people find scary, but it isn't. It signifies the death of an old way of life and the beginning of a new one. Naturally, that felt significant!
I was now faced with what would come after. Over the next four months, I periodically went through phases of drawing a card a day. The ritual now had no significant meaning or end goal, so I didn't keep up with it. That was until I had a new brainwave and created an upgraded ritual.
How I Evolved My Ritual
On May 13th, 2025, I realised that to build a consistent ritual, I needed something creative to generate from it. This is when I merged my interest in tarot with my newfound fascination with manifestation. I shuffled my deck, drew a card, and used the card's meaning to generate an affirmation that I could take with me throughout the day. I went so far as to post this affirmation on Instagram. This was the creative spark I needed to make this ritual feel important to my day.
Two weeks into this daily ritual, I upgraded it. Rather than letting the cards guide me, I added a question to generate a dialogue with the card. My new ritual involved deciding on a question, shuffling the deck while reciting the question, drawing the card, interpreting its meaning in conversation with my question, and generating an affirmation to answer my question. This updated version connected exactly with the daily single-card reading that Kim suggests in her book accompanying The Wild Unknown Tarot. With such a well-defined structure in place, I decided to call this project my Trial of Tarot. I envisage great things to come from this practice now that I have a clearly defined strategy and output.
I am finding that as I connect with this deck of cards, I am leaning more into the language and imagery presented by tarot. It requires interpretation and reflection on how the theme impacts me personally, and so I have attuned with my deeper self. It helps my creativity as I use some of the language of tarot and mysticism to describe my systems of working.
What Have I Learned Since Starting
Tarot is a practice like many others - it requires time, patience, and belief. You get as much out of it as you put into it. Its misunderstood and abstract nature is where the power lies. How you harness it is very much up to you. For me, I feel that I am just scratching the surface. I have not explored doing full spread readings yet - they are definitely on my mind.
The way I find power in tarot is by considering it a conversation between me and the universe. It is an external power I can enter dialogue with in order to answer questions I have about my day. I could do this through journaling, or speaking with a friend, and I do! Tarot is just another tool in my arsenal that I can draw upon when I want some direction but don't want to pick up a pen or a phone.
One final takeaway in the realm of learning is that AI has helped me to unlock the potential of tarot. As I've spoken about before, I use AI as a collaborator - someone to brainstorm with, converse with, and learn from. Traditional search engines can only go so far, and usually cannot help with my questions, such as "how can a card about lack of focus help me to focus?". This question came up recently when I drew the Five of Wands while asking how I should structure my evening. ChatGPT helped frame this as a warning more than an answer, and I realised that the nudge about scattered thoughts was there to direct me towards focusing on what would bring me a sense of achievement for the day.
What Comes Next?
Well, in the course of writing this blog post, I came up with two ideas - revisiting my old tarot spreads and generating statistics from my daily tarot notes. Those are two creative pathways to explore. Who knows, they might be revealing in ways I can't even imagine. They might also be dead ends, but I prefer to direct my energy towards the positive outcomes.
I mentioned earlier that The Wild Unknown Tarot deck explains only the upright position of the cards. I also mentioned that I bought a second deck - this one is themed on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and it includes reversed meanings. I am keeping that in the back of my mind so that some day soon I get inspiration for how to incorporate the reversal meanings into my rituals - whether to enhance my existing ones, or to explore new ones.
Just this week, I changed up how I utilise my daily ritual. I had been posting my daily affirmations to Instagram as reels since May 13th, when I began my upgraded ritual. As I continue my work in other areas, I am starting to see where else I can weave in my Trial of Tarot. I started a Daily Video Diary series on TikTok and decided to include my daily affirmation. This effort felt more natural and rewarding than creating an Instagram reel, so I switched things up and evolved yet again. This iterative process shows the power of small action. My suite of reels will remain a marker of a time when that was as far as my creativity could reach. They are a testament to where I am now, and I am grateful for the time spent on that practice, as it has helped me develop a more meaningful version now.
I am interested in exploring the messaging of the cards over a week and seeing what themes emerge. Now that I have a few weeks of questions, answers, and affirmations built up, I can reflect on them one week at a time to dig deeper into the meaning. I am excited to see if themes emerge that I wasn't aware of just from looking at the cards one day at a time. On the other hand, I can use a 7-day reading to generate a story for my week and use it as a form of journaling and reflection. Honestly, the possibilities are endless, and this is why I decided to start with small rituals that can build to great things over time.
With those ideas in mind, I am going to take this inspiration forward into my Trial of Tarot and let the magic take me on a wonderful journey. I hope you have found some inspiration that you can take with you. Until next time!
Kiki <3
