5 Benefits of Journaling with the Tarot
My journaling practice began in the summer of 1985 with a Hello Kitty diary and a trove of little girl dreams. I was eight, and four decades later nothing has changed—I still journal almost every single day.
These days, however, I enjoy incorporating the tarot in my journaling practice, and in this post, I’m sharing five benefits of doing so.
If you are not already several stacks into a collection of notebooks and journals, journaling is a practice that can help writers in a myriad of ways, and pairing the tarot with this practice can amplify both the method and the outcome. In fact, one of the most effective ways to become acquainted with the tarot is by making the cards a part of your daily writing routine, exploring the images, focusing on the ideas that most immediately and intuitively stand out, asking questions, and then journaling your experiences.
As such, journaling with the tarot can have a number of benefits to one’s writing craft, and I hope one or more might inspire your own.
Be sure to read to the end
because I don’t want you to miss the free journal I gifted every backer of the Mystic Storyteller BackerKit Campaign...
Coping with Anxiety and/or Depression
While journaling offers an outlet for safely expressing thoughts and feelings, the tarot can help identify triggers, provide direction, and inspire resolutions. However, if you are experiencing anxiety and/or depression that is interfering with your wellbeing, please seek help from your doctor or a licensed counselor.
Managing Stress
Pulling tarot cards can help prioritize challenges, concerns, and fears. Journaling about them can help track symptoms so that you can discover healthy ways of handling them.
Improving Mood and Quality of Life
Journaling provides an opportunity for positive self-reflection and motivation, while the tarot can serve as anchors for processing negative thoughts and behaviors. Again, if you are experiencing thoughts that are interfering with your wellbeing, please seek help from your doctor or a licensed therapist.
Meditation and Relaxation
By including intuitive tarot journaling in your regular self-care routine, you are uncovering daily opportunities for meditation, quieting the mind, and relaxing the body.
Self-discovery and Reflection
Journaling with the tarot can provide a conduit for reconnecting with ourselves and rediscovering who we are or revealing who we endeavor to become. Pulling cards can help with understanding our desires and dreams, naming our stressors, establishing healthy boundaries, and ruminating on aspects of our lives for which we are most grateful.
How to Get Started
You can get started using your tarot cards for journaling in only three easy steps.
Invest in a journal. Whether a Moleskine or bullet journal, tarot-themed journal or traditional notebook, keep something handy on which to jot and track your thoughts. If you’ve never journaled, or if it’s been a while since you practiced journaling, you can simply start out with an everyday lined notebook. The inner child in me highly recommends Sanrio and Lisa Frank covers. Think you’d benefit from a guided tarot journal? You might enjoy my offering 78 Days of Intuitive Journaling: A Guided Tarot Journal for the Mystic Storyteller. It’s a guided, digital journal and I’ve gifted it to every backer of the Mystic Storyteller BackerKit Campaign.
Use the tarot cards as journal prompts. From a storyteller’s lens, I pair each tarot card with a single word—both upright and reversed. Referring to word lists like this can help spark ideas for journaling. Additionally, each tarot card includes an infinite number of stories. As such, you can use the cards to journal a new story every single day.
Plan your tarot journaling practice:
Daily—Pull a single tarot card at the start of the day for guidance or at the end of the day for reflection. Whichever you choose, journal your thoughts about the card each day.
Weekly—At the start of each week, pull a single card and journal your ideas for approaching the week, or pull seven cards and journal about your overall outlook.
Monthly—Similar to pulling cards daily and/or weekly, you might also pull cards as the months change on your calendar. You can do this by the month, or annually by pulling twelve cards for a year-ahead spread.
Annually—In my post Who are YOU in the Tarot? I share how to use the cards to uncover what I call “Your Tarot Code,” which includes your Birth and Year Cards. At the end of the calendar year, calculate the numerology for the year ahead and then journal your thoughts around personal goals, plans, and dreams.
Would you like to practice using your tarot cards for journaling and other methods of storytelling?
Through the end of August, if you become backer of the Mystic Storyteller BackerKit Campaign, you can access free writing materials at Camp Mystic Storyteller (MST).
A community feature inside BackerKit, Camp MST is a safe space where you can engage with other writers, participate in storytelling and divination activities, download free writing materials, and prepare to participate in National Novel Writing Month in November.
When we reached our first goal of raising $10,000 in funding, I gifted a tarot journal to every backer. I’d love to offer the same gift, along with access to Camp MST, to you.
About Mandy
Amanda "Mandy" Hughes is an author and instructional designer who uses the tarot to inspire storytelling. Her book Mystic Storyteller: A Writer’s Guide to Using the Tarot for Creative Inspiration is coming to La Panthère Studio summer 2024. She also writes fiction under pen names A. Lee Hughes and Mandy Lee. Mandy lives in Georgia with her husband and four sons, two of whom are furrier than the others (but not by much). Visit her website at www.haintbluecreative.com and follow her on Instagram @HaintBlueCreative.
I also like to do some tarot, get a different perspective, and jounalling about it. Brings quite some order into the inner chaos.