Tarot, as we know, has many applications, and one of the more interesting ones is as a tool for looking in depth at the human body. Not only does it tell you what is going on with the body, but you can, with the right layout, look at the influences that are bringing about changes in the body, be they organic or inner.
Before we go any further, I have to point out the common sense thing that everyone knows but it has to be said anyway: using tarot as part of healing is not a substitute for going to a doctor.
You can use an ordinary deck but, if this is something that you are going to use often, I suggest that you make your own deck, maybe based on an ordinary deck, but with the minor cards adjusted more towards body matters.
When you look at the body using tarot, you begin to see some very interesting things that relate to illness, body changes, and the minute reactions to things that have long-term consequence but few outer symptoms. You start to see the impact that inner work has on the body, how magic sometimes changes things within the body, and how various parts of the body react to power in various ways. It also maps out the passage of inner power through the body, which in turn gives the magical worker clues as to how to care for the body while doing powerful work.
The other interesting thing that begins to emerge is the pattern of illness. Normally we see only the outer symptoms, which are treated and we get better. Using tarot, we start to see the profound implications of a virus or bacteria, how it can change things at a deep level, and we also start to see the inner manifestation of the outer virus. Every living thing has an inner expression and through the tarot we can look at these illnesses to see their inner ‘personalities.’ This, in turn, can change how we approach an illness and how we get rid of it.
When you start to track the progression of an illness using tarot it quickly becomes apparent that some illnesses, while they may make us miserable, have positive uses for the body. I used to hate the occasional cold—I very rarely got them but when I did they made my life a misery. But when I started to look at them from an inner point of view, using the tarot, I saw that the body was using the cold to ‘dump’ a whole load of toxins that it had in storage. The cold virus was actually a positive thing for me, so I stopped trying to treat the symptoms, and let the body get on with it.
In fact, the more you look at the body and illness using tarot, the more you see positive sides to illnesses that the body can use to avoid deeper and more troublesome problems. You also start to see the positive and negative affects of certain types of magic and how the body copes with such power—it changed the way I did magic.
It also began to become very clear that the endocrine system processed the heavy impact of magic—too much heavy work, or the burden of a serious attack/curse could seriously damage the endocrine system. This was something that Dion Fortune wrote about from her own body observations, and to see it expressed within a spread is fascinating.
I also began to look closely at the immune system and tracked how magical attacks trigger the immune system. The body treats the energy as an invasion, which, in reality, is what it is. The immune system kicks in and tries to fight the attack. If it cannot succeed, the reaction becomes chronic and manifests as an autoimmune disease. No amount of treatment can cure it because it is not an outer illness. There is no virus to subdue—it is purely an inner attack and has to be dealt with using inner work.
It really helps if you are doing a lot of magical work to be able to differentiate between ordinary illness and illness that is a manifestation of magic. Too many people think their body problems are the result of magic and the reading will very clearly point out if it is or not. Mostly it’s not—but it is always good to check, particularly if someone is just not getting better. If someone is sensitive, then his or her body will react to all sorts of things and you can track that reaction all the way through the body—it’s fascinating!
The layout is the key to working in this way. The layout has to be specific so that you can pinpoint certain things that you need information about and the layout has to have no ambiguous parts to it: it must be precise. I put together a layout that I have used for a few years now: it’s not perfect but it does its job and I am constantly trying to improve it. Maybe it will come in useful for others to use as a starting point which they can expand upon and develop.
The layout
1 = the inner powers: what is coming in from the inner worlds
2 = the inner landscape: the threshold between the body and the soul
3 = the brain/head
4 = what is taken in (food, drink, drugs): what feeds the body
5 = emotions: What are the emotions doing? How do they feed the person?
6 = short term immune system: primary immune reactions
7 = longer term immune system/thymus: chronic problems
8 = core of energy/central organs
9 = male bits/hormones/male power
10 = female bits/hormones/female power
11 = digestive system/ processing of food
12 = sleep/processing of thoughts
13 = nerves/muscles/bones (motor system)
14 = skin
15 = near future pattern
The layout works in a sequence so that as powers come into the body, you begin to understand how the body processes certain types of power. So, for example, if you look at the pattern of the layout, you can see that food comes in, affects the primary immune system (feeds it, triggers it, etc), is processed through the digestive system, and then exteriorises.
Emotional power is processed through the thymus gland which is the seat of the long-term immune system, which in turn processes it through sleep. The central pillar is the flow of energy from the inner worlds, through the landscape, through the endocrine system in the brain, through the central organs and glands, through the musculoskeletal system to finally exteriorise out on the skin. Hence ‘a rash is good!’
When inner power impacts the body, it always shows first in 1 and 2. Then it will go straight to the centre or to the two polarities of hormones to play itself out there. When the illness comes from a virus/bacteria, it will show in 6; the primary immune system. You can track the progression over the days of the illness, seeing if it alters the deeper parts of the body in any way.
I have watched things in my children, seeing how an illness has caused a change, and then watching that change emerge over the years. At first I used to panic and try to put back whatever had been altered using homeopathy, cranial work, or inner work.
Eventually I learned not to do that: we are the sum total of constant change within ourselves, and the changes that come from the viruses are all part of our maturation and growth. Nothing stays the same, everything is always changing and moving.
As a person who uses a lot of homeopathy, this method of using tarot to look at the body became invaluable. I was able to look at the possible progression of a specific remedy to decide the potency or even if it was the right remedy. What I learned over the years is that sometimes even though it’s the right remedy picture, the remedy would wreak havoc in the body if I took it or gave it. For me, that was not too much of a revelation. When you do a lot of magical work, the ‘blood’ changes—the way that the body processes power and substance becomes inextricably altered so that normal everyday remedies, medicines, and herbs do not work, or have an opposing effect. You have to approach a magical body in a totally different way.
So I began to use the layout to help choose a remedy in a difficult situation, or to look at possible treatments and their potential outcomes.
It also becomes useful to look at a person’s body rhythm. By becoming familiar with someone’s processing pattern, you can then make better decisions regarding recovery/treatment. By a person’s rhythm I mean the way that the particular body in question processes power, food, and illness. Everyone’s body has their own unique way of doing things, and that ‘way’ is borne out of the body’s previous experiences, its miasms, and its personality. By tracking certain behaviours through the readings, you begin to see the individual pattern of action/reaction in the body and such information can be invaluable when trying to help them.
To sum up, be clear with your questions—this is always the cornerstone of good reading. Develop the work to fit what you do—quite a few doctor friends of mine have taken this layout and quietly use it in their diagnostic work with some adjustments. And finally, allow your curiosity free rein—that is how we discover things!