Blend Witchcraft and Tarot to ramp up your rituals in 7 magical ways
If you’re into witchcraft, then there’s a good chance you’re into the Tarot too. And why not? Combining the two can sharpen and focus your witchery while enriching your journey through the material and immaterial world. Here are my tips on how to prepare, choose, and use a tarot deck in your magical workings.
You can also skip straight to the section in this feature on how to use the Tarot for witchcraft, magic and spells. That’s where I’ll be talking about spells and rituals for 7 magical purposes:
- Domination
- Ending harassment
- Influencing relationships
- Watching over someone or something
- Making spell bags
- Protecting the home
- Witchery with tarot cards and magical powders
How to Prepare Your Cards
Everyone has their own method for preparing their cards before using them. Some people like to meditate with their cards, some people like to surround their cards with sea salt, and others like to keep their cards with crystals that appeal to them.
If you’ve got a favourite method for prepping your cards before readings, you can use it to prepare them before using them magically, too.
If you don’t have a method for consecrating and preparing your tarot deck before you use it, then you can try the method I use.
How I Prepare My Deck for Witchy Purposes
As a practising witch and pagan, I’ve accumulated my own methods for cleansing and consecrating objects over the years.
I’ve taken bits of information from my mentor, bits from the internet, and bits that I’ve discovered for myself, and developed a two-step process that works well for me:
1.) I use the pillars and spheres exercise from Jason Miller’s The Sorcerer’s Secrets to help me connect with the powers that be, and to place myself in a state of spiritual authority.
2.) Once I’ve done this, I visualise myself speaking with the Fool card of whichever deck I will use in my spell. I mentally tell the fool what I intend to do, why I’m doing it, and ask that the cards be effective tools for me.
Empowering Tarot cards with consecrated salt, oils and more
Visualisation aside, you can also use salt, condition oils, and powders to cleanse and empower cards if you prefer.
To do this, start by placing the cards in sea salt to cleanse them (consecrate the salt first). You can leave it at this, or you can take things a step further by applying some consecrated, empowered oil or powder that suits the purpose of your spell.
Don’t worry if you’re not sure how to consecrate and empower your salt, oils and powders. There’s a handy guide by The Hood Witch that teaches you how to do it.
While her post does focus on cleansing thrift shop items, you can easily adapt it to cleanse, consecrate and empower your cards, oils, salt, and powders.
Pro Tip: Don’t use oils on a deck you want to keep looking pretty — they can leave some weird-looking marks!
You can choose which Tarot cards to use for your magical workings
As you probably know, Tarot suits represent various things, from situations to general themes:
- Pentacles represent your home and material things in general, including finances and career.
- Wands represent your passions, drive and hobbies.
- Swords represent tough decisions and cold intellect.
- Cups represent your relationships and all things emotion-related.
So, for example, if your spell was to help you make a tough decision, you could choose the swords suit to represent making a the decision using your intellect, and not your emotions.
If your spell was for financial wealth, however, then the suit of pentacles would be a no-brainer.
The Minor Arcana
The tarot takes you on a journey through the aspects of each thing that a suit represents, from aces (beginnings), all the way to 10 (completion and stability).
Choose a number (or numbers) from the minor arcana that most closely represent an aspect of – or outcome of – the magic you’ll do.
For example, going back to the idea of working some magic to help with a tough decision, swords would be the suit you need overall.
Out of all the cards in the sword deck, you could choose the two of swords as a focal card, because it represents the first steps you take to make a decision using cold intellect, instead of flighty, irrational emotions.
For financial magic, you might choose the 3 of pentacles to represent the first tangible results of a new venture.
Be creative, choose cards with meanings that really speak to you, and experiment. If you’re new to the tarot in general (or if your memory isn’t what it used to be!), then Ian Eshey’s site, Learn Tarot in a Day, will help you to work out which cards have the right meanings for your magical work.
The Major Arcana
Ah, Courts. These cards are the bane of many Tarot readers’ lives because they can represent so many things. Courts can represent not just people, but other things too: parts of yourself, events, and also the maturity of a person (or event). Oh, and they can be genderbent too, so a queen doesn’t necessarily have to represent a cis woman, a king may not represent a cis man, and the pages can be anyone too.
Unfortunately, I have no quick fix to help you memorise the courts when it comes to doing Tarot readings… but there’s an easy way to use them in your magic.
Just pick a card you feel represents who you want to be, how you want to approach a situation, or who you feel you are at the moment. Unlike understanding courts in a tarot reading, that’s all there is to it when it comes to combining the courts with witchcraft; you don’t have to know the meaning – you get to decide.
How Many Cards Should You Use?
By now, you might have decided on a suit to use for your next magical working, but you might be stuck on how many cards to use.
Just like using the courts, this doesn’t have to be hard. It boils down to how detailed you want to make your spell:
- Choose several cards, from one (or more) suits, for a more nuanced approach.
- Use just one focal card to represent the target of the spell, or the result that you’re after.
Now go ahead and use your Tarot cards for magical workings!
How to use Tarot cards for witchcraft, magic and spells
The way you work your tarot cards into the witchy stuff you’re going to do is limited only by your imagination.
Experiment, stalk blogs and search online to see what other people do with them. Trust your instincts.
Here are several ideas that you can squirrel away in your memory for later:
Tarot Card Working for Domination
- Place the card(s) representing your target or outcome under a candle to dominate the target or situation. I.E. the candle sits squarely on top of the card (or cards).
- This is especially effective if working with candles linked to a particular entity. For example, you could place an Archangel Michael candle on top of someone’s photo to prevent them from doing harm.
Tarot Card Working for When Someone or Something Needs to Be Watched Over
- Place a candle just partially over the top edge of the card, or cards, that you’re using.
- This symbolises that the target of your working is watched over, or protected, by the spiritual force that you dedicated your candle to.
Tarot Card Working for a Good Old Spell Bag
- Cleanse, consecrate and charge a card, then use it as the core item in a spell bag.
- Add other items to the bag as needed.
Tarot Card Working for When You Need Someone to Leave
- If you’ve chosen a card to represent someone you don’t want in your life, you can prepare your card, name it as the person in question, and chuck it into a moving body of water.
- Alternatively, burn the card and throw the ashes into one, or more, bodies of moving water.
- This also works well for situations you want get rid of.
Tarot Card Working To Stop Harassment
- Choose a court card that represents the perpetrator, prepare it, give it their name, and then bury it.
- You can get creative here, if you like, and place the card inside a mini coffin, before burying it. If you’re feeling particularly ballsy, put the card in a coffin and leave it on the perpetrators doorstep. Don’t do anything illegal though – be sensible here.
Tarot Card Working for To Change Relationships
- If there’s a situation where you want to keep people together, or drive them apart, take two cards that represent the people in question.
- Stitch the cards together in a way that represents your goal (faces outwards to break people up and inwards to keep them together). Before you sew up the last edge, you can fill the space between the cards with supporting materials, like ashes, hair (theirs, never yours), and herbs.
- If you really can’t sew well, glue also works, but you’ll need to let the glued edges dry before you stuff the gap between the cards.
Tarot Card Working To Protect Your Home
- To protect your home, anoint a card that represents you as sovereign over your home (choose a Queen or a King) with a protective oil like Fiery Wall of Protection Oil. Place it facing out of the main entrance to your home.
Use The Cards to Help With Other Spells Entirely
- You can use the cards as a tool to deploy another spell entirely, and not as part of it: dust the cards with powders then let someone you like (or dislike) handle them – traces of powder pass to them without them knowing.
- If you wanted to curse or bless someone, you can work this into the deck that you then gift them with. Sneaky, huh?
WITCHING TIPS: Be smart about how you deploy your spells, especially when using powders. Apply consecrated powder, using safe ingredients (yes, even if you hate the target of your spell), and dust it off before you give powdered anything to anyone. Not only do obviously dusted things give the game away, but you’re likely to raise suspicions that the powder isn’t harmless.
Oh, and if you value not having to deal with your local police department, never ever put powders in an envelope and mail them.
Final thoughts on using Tarot for witchcraft and magic…
Using tarot cards in your spells and rituals is a creative way to ramp up your magic and do things differently.
The next time you’re stuck for magical ideas, try out some of the techniques and ideas in this post. See how combining witchcraft and tarot cards makes everything better (and more fun).
You might also like:
- Tarot meditation technique to enter your cards
- Getting to know your tarot – basic tips
- Spells and rituals on Mookychick