A Tarot Exercise

Adapting an idea

Danielle Park of Oak Moon Tarot posted recently about her ‘Tarot Poetry Practice’ and encouraged others to join her in pursuing it. Check out her post here:

Tarot Poetry Practice

As part of her reason for this she writes:

“It is really necessary to find ways to work with the cards that aren’t about personal psychological excavation or reading about your life. That rubs you raw…and promotes main-character syndrome.”

That makes a great deal of sense to me. Tarot can become a negative if we use it to overly focus on ourselves to the exclusion of all else that is important to us. Much as our phones can become a negative if we become so focused on them and their apps that we fail to meaningfully converse with the real people in our lives.

Tarot can also become a negative force if we become dependent upon it. We are the decision-makers in our own lives, not the cards.

The practice is really simple. Danielle suggests simply reading the poem, then selecting a card for the poem as a whole, or specific lines that stand out, and let the poem and cards converse with each other.

It’s a really solid idea.

But, I don’t think it will work for me. Just because I’m rather poetry deficient. I don’t really enjoy most poetry, and the poetry I do enjoy is probably too lowbrow for most people. What can I say? When it comes to poetry, I’m sort of a caveman. Or a cowboy.

Ah, but I do love quotes. And I think that we can learn a great deal from words uttered in the past.

As I was thinking about this, it kind of came to me that maybe instead of doing it with poetry, it could be done with quotes. So this is my experiment.

One quote, with one card commenting on it.

Let’s see what we can do…

“There is one kind of robber whom the law does not strike at, and who steals what is most precious to men: time.” -Napoleon Bonaparte

That quote certainly seems perfectly relevant to our world in 2025, where more money is made by massive corporations capturing our time and attention than in any other way. A world populated by platforms specifically designed to addict us to our devices.

What does my deck say?

The story of Jacob’s Ladder comes to mind.¹

All of us existed long before we were born on this earth. We came from the divine, to which we will return, in order to experience the life we are living. If we are living that life well, we will fulfil our purpose here while doing so.

But how do we know what that purpose or reason might be?

Only by looking deeply within ourselves. By peering behind the veil that is our ego. Only by coming to truly discover and know ourselves.

Doing that takes time.

And it is our highest calling for our time here on earth. Indeed, how can we accomplish that which we are here to accomplish if we have no idea what it is?

We can visit the inner planes, but doing so takes time and silence, and a relaxed mind.

We can’t do it if our every waking moment is distracted elsewhere. If we are so upset by the media we consume on our phones that our minds can’t let it go and relax. We can’t do it if we are spending hours doom-scrolling through a social media feed, looking at hundreds, maybe thousands of cat videos or images of porn.

Indeed, we can’t do any of this unless we push our laptop aside, and set our phone down.

For we need silence, and time, if we are to explore our innermost selves.

I think that is what The High Priestess is telling us about this quote.

Over the past couple of weeks, my wife and I have been watching the latest season of one of our favorite television shows, The Gilded Age on HBO. The show is great fun, filled with characters representing those people in United States history who are now known as the Robber Barons.

Today, not only in the United States, but around the world, we are faced with a new class of Robber Baron. They aren’t in New York, or Chicago, but in Silicon Valley, and Seattle. People who have built platforms designed for dopamine addiction, people who actually refer to those who engage with their products as ‘users.’ Just as drug dealers have their ‘users.’

Modern day Robber Barons who steal that most precious resource, time.

But, while I did not draw it, another card also comes to mind:

These Modern Day Robber Barons aren’t holding a gun to our heads. They aren’t threatening us. We aren’t being forced to spend countless hours (that we will never get back) on their social media platforms.

No, we are doing all of that to ourselves.

As The Devil shows, we can simply lift our hands to our necks and remove the chains that bind us. We can push the laptop aside. We can set the phone down.

Did you pull a card for Napoleon’s quote? If so, I’d love to discuss it in the comments below!

1. Genesis 28:12

“And he dreamed, and behold, a ladder was set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.”