About This Journal

This is my second Tarot-related LJ. It won't take much detective work to find the other one I used to have—but who would waste the time trying to figure that out?

This is a spot for my readings, primarily. LJ is a better record for me than notebooks and paper scraps that invariably get lost and, when they are not lost, are hard to search and organize.

I also have plans of conducting a more in-depth study of the Tarot than I ever have previously. I do not approach the Tarot from any particular spiritual path or religious beliefs; my interest is academic, hence the journal name.

Story Reading: YNF Characters

YNF is a story idea I've had for a couple of years now, and I'm finally getting around to writing it. F moves into a new apartment and finds a box of letters written by KH, apparently to a local DJ. There is a story in the letters, of course, but also a story about F and how she responds to and interacts with the letters.

Some parts of the characters were still fuzzy to me as I began writing, so I sat down and tooled with my deck. Inspired by this court card technique I like so much as well as this Tarot constellation method, I shuffled the deck and then rifled through the cards. The first Knight, Queen, or King I pulled would be their Sun sign. I also paid attention to the cards that flanked this first court card.

Deck: Russian Tarot of St. Petersburg



For KH:

Sun sign: King of Coins (Taurus)
Destiny card: 7 Coins
Will cards: 5 and 6 of Coins
Other cards: High Priestess, Page of Cups

I had been unsure as to KH's gender; the fist card I pulled was The High Priestess, so that settled that issue for me. As for Page of Cups: an initiate into the realm of water: both in terms of emotions (the story is about KH reaching out for perhaps the first time in her life) but also mysticism and intuition. Initiate but not fully-experienced or well-learned. Knowing just enough to be dangerous, as it were.


For F:

Sun sign: Knight of Clubs (Sagittarius)
Destiny card: 10 of Wands
Will cards: 8 and 9 of Wands
Other cards: 3 of Swords, Queen of Coins (Capricorn), Emperor

The Queen of Coins ended up immediately flanking the Knight. My instinct is to make F's Moon sign (or the Hidden Teacher) Capricorn/the Queen of Coins, but we'll see. The 3 of Swords struck me, as it always does, and I put it aside. What heartache could she be carrying? Death, I decided. But who should die? A parent would be a nice mirror of KH's own life, but which parent? Well, there's the Emperor. That settles that. A perfect correspondence: two dead fathers.

There are other ways I could have interpreted the cards, of course. Especially for F. But when I use the Tarot for writing projects and other creative projects, I play more fast and loose. The important thing is to generate ideas.