Spring Cleaning the Mind: A Tarot Guide to Clarity and Renewal

Spring Cleaning and Sorting Things Out

The best fun I’ve had in ages has been doing an Easter Egg Hunt for my youngest. I say youngest, but they’re coming up to the end of teenage years. You’re never too old for a hunt,

though. Puzzles, clues, rewards when you work it out.

I was particularly proud of “If you want something to walk in the sea, you’ll need to have what a fish has."

Puzzles have a universal appeal - the internet is bursting with word puzzle games. One of

my favourite things about Christmas is working out the cracker jokes. Horribly corny but

that’s not what matters - we love making sense of our world, our language, that sense of

connection when we see what the other person was trying to tell us. When we bend our

understanding of something in a different direction.

That’s often how I feel about Tarot cards - that they are puzzles, and we need to look at

things in a different way to work out how our understanding can be improved, or how we can

think our way out of what seems like a labyrinth of conflict and confusion. That’s why it’s so

important to give ourselves time and space to puzzle it out. Often when I’m doing readings, a

particular card will spark a connection, and the previous cards seem to fall into place. It’s

always a beautiful moment.

The other thing I’m very pleased about this Spring is the slight increase in my energy. It’s

been a tough winter - physically, emotionally and mentally. Like a lot of the people I’ve read

with, I’ve had a feeling of being adrift, not quite in control of what’s happening, helplessness

and lack of direction. A disconnect with what I want from my life. It’s been a winter of

muddling through. So Spring is very welcome.

With this extra energy, I’ve been ‘sorting out’. Drawers full of junk have been emptied out

and reorganised, donated or binned. It has been so cleansing and cathartic. It’s amazing

how things accumulate, get forgotten and gather around us. I do believe that an unseen

accumulation of detritus has an impact on our mental well-being. It becomes a weight that

we don’t know we are carrying.

I think the same thing happens with our thoughts. Unexamined and unchallenged, they layer

on our mental processing until we feel sluggish and unresponsive to the important things

around us. We have such a lot going on, we just put our thoughts and even our emotions on

hold until we have time to deal with them - so now is that time. Gift yourself some mental sort

out time.

And to practise what I preach, I decided to gift myself a Tarotherapy reading. Josie and I

generally draw a card every day. (Spookily, sometimes the same one) My card today was The

Chariot - the card of drive and determination. It’s what I need at the moment. It’s a part of my

identity that has been diluted by the difficulties I’ve been facing this winter, so I need to

reconnect with it. To push myself, just a bit more - to write this blog, for example!

But I don’t often read for myself in detail - it’s so much easier to do things for other people!

So I gifted myself some time away from the TV, from my phone, from all the household tasks

(that one was easy, to be fair) and pulled some cards for myself, in my newly organised

office, with an evening view of the sun going down over the fields.

All my readings start with a card to represent the self, in the present. It’s a good anchor for

the reading, a perspective from which to view the later cards. My card was the 9 of Wands. I

love this card. Wands tend to be my suit - they appear in all my readings for myself. They’re

also the suit of Spring, of energy and passion and getting on with things. All very much

needed by me right now. And I can’t draw the Nine without thinking of the song ‘Hold the

Line’ by Toto (which both ages me and possibly asks questions about my musical taste, but

still). The Nine reminds me that I have been stalwart, and brave, in the face of difficulties. It

reminds me of my strength, but also the strength of the other support I have around me, and

to be grateful and appreciative of that.

My next card represents the main difficulty in my life right now, but is also one of my

favourites, and is a major arcana card; in fact, the first major arcana card. The Fool steps out

into the unknown, with a flower and a tiny bag over their shoulder. I recognise the Fool in

myself, when I was younger, taking ridiculous risks with my life and heart without a thought. I

miss, and reminisce about myself, then, as I have become so much more careful in my

decision-making. Because of the position this card is in my reading, I am reminded that too

much going over the past, and my many, many mistakes, is not helpful going forward.

Now I have a card for the past, another wand card, this time the 5 of Wands. This shows a group of people in a circle, attacking each other with their staves. Weirdly, I’ve seen this card quite a

bit recently in readings. The emotional feeling I have is one of pointlessness. Endlessly

fighting and not getting anywhere. What comes to me is the time I’ve wasted on social media

this winter, watching the endless wrangling of people getting further and further entrenched

in their positions, egged on by algorithms that vie for our attention. I need to let go of division

and focus on living in the real world.

And finally, a future card. This one is much more of a puzzle, but those are good. When that

happens in a reading, sometimes we have to leave some time and space to mull it over, or to

reveal itself in the coming days. My mother is convinced that her relationship with my son

(then unborn) was predicted in a reading I did with her several decades ago. The Page of

Swords is generally associated with communication, which I feel I’m good at. But I

acknowledge the suggestion in the card that I’m sometimes too blunt. Is it warning me to be

more sensitive? The page can be a person, so might not be me...someone curious,

inquisitive. It also warns against getting drawn into conflicts, which fits with my ‘past’ card.

But also someone who speaks out against injustice, which I think is vital right now.

Lots to think about. Tarot doesn’t give us all the answers, but perhaps it helps us ask the

right questions...

But in case you do want an answer, to walk in the sea is ‘wade’ a homonym for ‘weighed’

and to do that you need scales, where the next clue was, in my kitchen scales. Treat yourself

to an Easter egg, by booking your free first glimpse session here.

Blessed be,

Janie