Intuitive Reading Activity - Family Portrait

[Libra]

For me, one of the major ways that I work on intuitive reading is to work with my cards in an out-of-the-box or of way. Not for reading or contemplation, but just for fun. It gets me out of my head with the cards and stuff comes up when I'm in "play" mode with them that actually is really helpful in my more serious tarot practice!

One of my little games is to pull 3-6 cards and create a "family portrait" out of them. Every card, whether it be Major, Minor or Court is a member of the family. A card or two or three steps into the role of parental figures, maybe one is the quintessential vodka aunt of the family, maybe there is a kid or two, maybe the grandparents make an appearance. One might actually be that kinda weird neighbour that is always on their couch, but fixes their leaky sink so they don't kick him out.

I see what relationships form and what challenges come up - in one of my families, The High Priestess mother found herself perplexed and a little disgruntled by her Page of Cups daughter because the parlour tricks that the daughter loved reminded her of The Magician dad who Houdini'd right out of their lives...

This feels like just a lil fun when you're doing it, but at the same time, the example above bright some interesting connections between the cards that I didn't have before, and also brought out some of my views of the cards - like this unconscious bias towards the wisdom and intuition of The High Priestess vs what I saw as "low magic", showmanship in The Magician. There is often meat to dig into about why you choose certain cards for certain roles, and some stuff may come up that you can reflect on in regards to the way you view "family" too!

Let me know if you try this sometime. It's one of my favourite activities!

[Joan Marie]

One of my little games is to pull 3-6 cards and create a "family portrait" out of them. Every card, whether it be Major, Minor or Court is a member of the family. A card or two or three steps into the role of parental figures, maybe one is the quintessential vodka aunt of the family, maybe there is a kid or two, maybe the grandparents make an appearance. One might actually be that kinda weird neighbour that is always on their couch, but fixes their leaky sink so they don't kick him out.

Oh this sounds fun. Or like it might start off fun and then get ...interesting.
I am definitely going to try this one.

[Lionsmane]

I know this is only meant to be intuitive, but I found this exercise really helpful in mapping out group dynamics I've been finding it impossible to navigate for years. It's the constellatory aspect.