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Illuminated

A Journal for Your Tarot Practice

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Record your journey of self-discovery with any tarot deck by using the prompts in this journal to engage with your cards and create a sacred space for spiritual development—from the creator of The Illuminated Tarot.

Illuminated: A Journal for Your Tarot Practice is at once a primer on tarot and a sacred space to record and reflect on your readings. As you cultivate a personal practice—whether you pull a daily card to set an intention or a spread to ask for guidance on a time-sensitive obstacle—this journal is a place to work through tough challenges, come to surprising conclusions, and see things clearly.

Illuminated contains an informative introduction with tips for beginners followed by a glossary of the seventy-eight cards in a standard deck. The common interpretations are listed for each card, along with a pair of corresponding questions for the reader to reflect on. The Fool card, for example, typically represents a curious, fearless novice who is open to change and ready for anything. When you pull the Fool, you'll be asked to consider: How can I be more playful and less fearful? What journey is about to begin?

As you strengthen your understanding of tarot, Illuminated will help light the way to more introspective readings and a deeper connection to the spiritual world around you.
© Caitlin Keegan
Caitlin Keegan is a New York-based illustrator and surface pattern designer. She is the author and illustrator of The Illuminated Tarot and Dreamer's Journal. Visit her website, caitlinkeegan.com, to learn more about Caitlin and her work. View titles by Caitlin Keegan
Tarot cannot predict the future, but it sparks new ideas and clears new paths.

A regular practice helps us develop intuition, set intentions, make decisions, and clarify perspectives.

The history of tarot is long, varied, and somewhat mysterious. Tarot-like games and divination systems have appeared across cultures and regions beginning as early as the ninth century (or as “recently” as the fifteenth century, depending on which scholars you consult). Tarot’s unique symbolism is constantly being reinterpreted for new audiences and changing times, making every deck a new dialect of an old language.

My own interest in tarot started in middle school. Interpreting the cards felt like putting together an intriguing visual puzzle. I continued to be interested in tarot well into art school, where I studied illustration and even created a tarot-based game. Years later, I was seeing a therapist for the first time, and, in an early session, she asked me to talk about my own artwork as a way to access deeper issues and feelings. I understood then that image interpretation was one way of clarifying and externalizing unacknowledged emotion. This experience led me to think about tarot in a psychological context. I’ve since learned that some therapists do, in fact, use tarot as a tool in their sessions.


Up to this point, tarot had fascinated me, but I could never fully grasp what to do with it. When I realized tarot could be used for something other than predicting the future, I committed to learning more about it. At the same time, therapy had become an important agent of change in my life, and I wondered if I could contribute to therapeutic practice through my work as an illustrator. The process of studying tarot inspired me to create The Illuminated Tarot: a fully illustrated tarot and playing card deck that is designed to be read intuitively.

Art is both a universal language and a highly personal one. Tarot imagery harnesses this dichotomy, making a tarot deck an accessible and endlessly adaptable tool. In his book Tarot and Psychology, Arthur Rosengarten compares reading tarot to analyzing a dream. The advantage that tarot has over dream interpretation, he says, is that all of the imagery is right in front of us; it does not disappear when we wake up. Like dream analysis, tarot readings hint at things just below the surface; intuitive thoughts that have not yet broken through to our consciousness. When I read for myself, I usually feel that the cards either reaffirm something I already know or point me toward a doorway I had not considered. A tarot deck can be a powerful tool for getting in touch with your intuition and writing about the cards amplifies that power. A tarot journal is a record of growth and change over time; it is a reminder of where we’ve been and a map to where we’re going. I hope this journal will help you use tarot for affirmation and discovery.

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About

Record your journey of self-discovery with any tarot deck by using the prompts in this journal to engage with your cards and create a sacred space for spiritual development—from the creator of The Illuminated Tarot.

Illuminated: A Journal for Your Tarot Practice is at once a primer on tarot and a sacred space to record and reflect on your readings. As you cultivate a personal practice—whether you pull a daily card to set an intention or a spread to ask for guidance on a time-sensitive obstacle—this journal is a place to work through tough challenges, come to surprising conclusions, and see things clearly.

Illuminated contains an informative introduction with tips for beginners followed by a glossary of the seventy-eight cards in a standard deck. The common interpretations are listed for each card, along with a pair of corresponding questions for the reader to reflect on. The Fool card, for example, typically represents a curious, fearless novice who is open to change and ready for anything. When you pull the Fool, you'll be asked to consider: How can I be more playful and less fearful? What journey is about to begin?

As you strengthen your understanding of tarot, Illuminated will help light the way to more introspective readings and a deeper connection to the spiritual world around you.

Author

© Caitlin Keegan
Caitlin Keegan is a New York-based illustrator and surface pattern designer. She is the author and illustrator of The Illuminated Tarot and Dreamer's Journal. Visit her website, caitlinkeegan.com, to learn more about Caitlin and her work. View titles by Caitlin Keegan

Excerpt

Tarot cannot predict the future, but it sparks new ideas and clears new paths.

A regular practice helps us develop intuition, set intentions, make decisions, and clarify perspectives.

The history of tarot is long, varied, and somewhat mysterious. Tarot-like games and divination systems have appeared across cultures and regions beginning as early as the ninth century (or as “recently” as the fifteenth century, depending on which scholars you consult). Tarot’s unique symbolism is constantly being reinterpreted for new audiences and changing times, making every deck a new dialect of an old language.

My own interest in tarot started in middle school. Interpreting the cards felt like putting together an intriguing visual puzzle. I continued to be interested in tarot well into art school, where I studied illustration and even created a tarot-based game. Years later, I was seeing a therapist for the first time, and, in an early session, she asked me to talk about my own artwork as a way to access deeper issues and feelings. I understood then that image interpretation was one way of clarifying and externalizing unacknowledged emotion. This experience led me to think about tarot in a psychological context. I’ve since learned that some therapists do, in fact, use tarot as a tool in their sessions.


Up to this point, tarot had fascinated me, but I could never fully grasp what to do with it. When I realized tarot could be used for something other than predicting the future, I committed to learning more about it. At the same time, therapy had become an important agent of change in my life, and I wondered if I could contribute to therapeutic practice through my work as an illustrator. The process of studying tarot inspired me to create The Illuminated Tarot: a fully illustrated tarot and playing card deck that is designed to be read intuitively.

Art is both a universal language and a highly personal one. Tarot imagery harnesses this dichotomy, making a tarot deck an accessible and endlessly adaptable tool. In his book Tarot and Psychology, Arthur Rosengarten compares reading tarot to analyzing a dream. The advantage that tarot has over dream interpretation, he says, is that all of the imagery is right in front of us; it does not disappear when we wake up. Like dream analysis, tarot readings hint at things just below the surface; intuitive thoughts that have not yet broken through to our consciousness. When I read for myself, I usually feel that the cards either reaffirm something I already know or point me toward a doorway I had not considered. A tarot deck can be a powerful tool for getting in touch with your intuition and writing about the cards amplifies that power. A tarot journal is a record of growth and change over time; it is a reminder of where we’ve been and a map to where we’re going. I hope this journal will help you use tarot for affirmation and discovery.