Tarot Tutorials: How To Interpret A Positive Card In A Negative Position
Common question. Simple answer!
How To Interpret A Positive Tarot Card In A Negative Position
This question has come up a lot lately…
…both in my Tarot class and in my Cauldron Calling community, and my answer is the same: Hot fudge is amazing (especially on ice cream or straight out of the jar). But not on rare steak.
First of all, there are no always-positive Tarot cards. Nor are there any always-negative Tarot cards. It’s all about context, context, context, and it’s through the context that the message comes through.
Even in language, meaning arrives through context more than definition:
If someone says a performance was “tight,” that means it was good. But…
If a financial advisor says that your retirement funding is “tight,” that means you’ll be living on a shoestring in your later years.
Or…
If a drag queen calls you “fierce,” you look AMAZING. And…
If a meteorologist calls a storm “fierce,” you better get to the cellar.
If you pull a card that is typically good, first consider its good qualities.
Do you love what you’re learning here? Want to practice this with me, live? Join us over at The Cauldron Calling: A Virtual Platform for the Magickally-Minded. Members at the Dabber and Seeker levels get access to live virtual Tarot Tutorial study hall every Wednesday where we work on these exercises together in real time!
Let’s practice with The Empress:
Common positive interpretations of The Empress include:
A mother’s love and/or a maternal instinct
Nurturing energies
Lavish wealth and comfort
Fertility and/or raising children (can also apply to pets or businesses)
Examples of situations where these interpretations would NOT be so positive:
For querrents unpacking trauma around mothering or their mothers
A fine line between nurturing and enabling
Needing to streamline expenses and spending
Struggles around fertility, challenges with child-rearing, miss-spent energies (e.g., treating co-workers as family when professionalism is called for)
This spread, which focuses on solving a current problem, has lots of chances for “good” cards to appear in challenging places:
