Welcome to The Tarot Tent, a special five-day event brought to you by The Shuffle.
Each day over this past week, as part of this virtual summer camp experience for writers, I’ve brought a Tarot-for-Writers workshop out of my archives to share with you!
Want to keep the camp vibes going?
Join me for a free LIVE workshop this Sunday, July 21. We’ll be exploring Shadow Work and the Tarot through journaling exercises.
*
You can also watch all Tarot Tent workshops on demand here.
*
Finally, full-access subscribers can find details on booking a complimentary mini-spark session with me at the bottom of this email!
Joan Didion says that “we tell ourselves stories in order to live.” And nothing makes us feel more alive - more aware of our own fragile, vulnerable existence -than stories about death.
Ghost stories allow us to explore that liminal space between living and dead ghosts are not alive, but not truly gone. Their hauntings are a metaphor for what really haunts us: our own mortality.
That ghost stories are the most popular kinds of tales to be told around campfires makes sense to me: camping creates its own liminal space, confronting us with the same fragility and vulnerability that ghost stories do. The world is so much bigger, older, and more mysterious than us. Exposing ourselves to the wild sleeping beneath the sky, connecting to the earth… it all gets us thinking about what came before us, what will come after, and the things that threaten our own survival.
A ghost story, then, acts as a kind of cautionary tale: learning from the hauntings of others helps us imagine ways of escaping the particular threats faced in the story.
The Tarot functions in a similar way: any given card conjours warnings, advice, comfort, and perspective.
So today, we’re combining the practices of tarot reading and ghost-story-telling, and activating all the storytelling knowledge you’ve played with over the course of this week.
Today, you’re going to enter the liminal, wild space of your own imagination; you’re going write a ghost story, and the tarot is going to help.
Here are a few tarot-inspired ghost story prompts to get you started…
Queen of Cups: An opulent queen scatters her own ashes to the sea...
The Hanged One: An executioner is put on trial in front of a jury of his victims...
Strength: A gentle spirit befriends the beast that killed her...
Six of Swords: A family board the wrong boat and washup on the shores of hell...
Temperance: A fallen angel offers you the cup of Life... it will only cost your soul...
Below you’ll find today’s pre-recorded workshop: TELL A GHOST STORY WITH THE TAROT
NOTE: This workshop was first recorded in October 2023, as part of my TAROTWRIMO workshop series to help writers prepare for NaNoWriMo.
Wherever participants have been invited to share in the chat, I encourage you to share in the comments below.