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The first rule for creating the conditions for a most magical year is that you gotta look alive.

Expanding your surface area for luck and magic is not a passive inheritance; it’s co-creative. You gotta but your big boy pants on and be accountable for your part in all this, while also keeping your ego in check and surrendering to the group project vibes of this whole endeavor. Operate in the faith that if you do your part with as much integrity as possible, your creative partner (god, source, universe, benevolent aliens, ancestors, unicorn spirit guides, whatever your belief is) will act that way, too. As above, so below, right?

When I say look alive I’m being ridiculously literal. Use your eyeballs. Look and see.

What are you looking for? Well, signs, of course.

Are you looking or are you seeing (obnoxious but important!)

As I was thinking about this episode, my list for why looking for signs is a high-leverage practice kept expanding. Sign-finding is one of those low-effort, high-return activities because its a non-boring way to practice paying attention.

Like, you could meditate in silence for 20 minutes. Or, you could pretend you’re living in a life-sized version of an I Spy book … either way, you’re going to slow waaaaay down (clues are hard to spot when you’re sprinting through life). Slowing down forces you to clock what’s coming up, like:

* sensations in your body,

* thoughts, ideas, patterns in your mind

* information in your physical environment that you might usually take for granted

Now, noticing “the signs” is sort of a daunting task. I’m getting overwhelm-schwitzy just thinking about it. Everything is a sign if you’re looking for signs, which seems like the worst version of confirmation bias and perhaps something that can send you into light levels of spiritual psychosis.

We don’t want that. Which is why we’re turning to tarot and archetypes today to be our guides.

Why this works no matter if you’re too “advanced” for tarot or if you’re a newborn baby when it comes to tarocchi

You might be reading this like, Really, tarot? Doesn’t that feel a bit… remedial? Give us something COOL and ADVANCED! Something tricky!

OK, yeah, I hear you. You might be o-v-e-r tarot, which is your right! (Maybe check out Zener cards, if you feel you’ve ascended beyond the humble tarot deck)

But if you’ve graduated onto more esoteric methods like, say, black mirror scrying, I actually think this is the perfect time to blow the dust of ye olde tarot deck and look at the cards and their symbols with fresh eyes.

And if you’ve yet to crack the spine on the Tarot for Dummies book that’s been camped on bedside table for the last seven months, great! You’re in the right place, too.

Tarot is an incredible tool for accessing the unconscious mind because it is non-linguistic. Language is a somewhat modern technology. Cormac McCarthy explains it better than I can, but humans had thoughts and ideas for thousands of years before language developed. We can assume, then, that language developed as a cognitive extension — a way to translate our thoughts outside of our selves. We should assume that this translation, like most translations, will never be a perfect representation of our internal ideas. And while we might have an internal dialogue that involves language, this is a learned way of thinking. Basically, ur brain thinks in images first, then translates those images to words so you can talk about them with your pals.

The unconscious mind is the most ancient part of you. It operates in visuals, patterns, symbols, and comes alive when surrounded by the imaginal.

Tarot as a sign-cipher

Tarot is mostly non-linguistic. It’s all symbols and colors and images, baby! So it’s a perfect tool for waking up your ancient inner awareness.

I love tarot as a sign-cipher for a few more reasons:

* At this point, it’s pretty accessible! You can get a tarot deck at CVS (lol), you can download a tarot app, you can probably borrow a deck from the barista at your local coffee shop. Barrier to entry is low.

* Tarot is easy for habit building. Pull one card a day… that’s it. No need to do a 39-card spread. Start simple and work up to complexity later, if you want.

* You already understand the symbols in the tarot. You don’t need a guidebook. Trust me! If you’ve seen a movie, read a book, admired a painting at any point in your life, you know enough to be able to reasonable interpret the card in front of you.

* Whether you believe an invisible hand of fate is guiding you to your cards or the cards are simply a psychoanalytical tool doesn’t really matter. This practice of finding symbols and signs is pretty agnostic.

For our purposes, tarot gives us a place to start. You’re looking for winks from the Universe that you’re on the right path — the tarot can help us identify the beginning of the breadcrumb trail so we’re not frantically chasing down every semblance of a path that we see. It helps us figure out what we’re looking for by presenting us with a smaller “database” (I guess that’s the right word?) of signs and symbols to consider.

From there, we can laser in on what’s significant.

“The true symbol should be understood as an intuitive idea that cannot yet be formulated in any other or better way.” — C. G. Jung

The Rider-Waite-Smith deck is probably the most well-known tarot deck, but all decks — even the most austere — have some symbology to them. We use the symbols in the cards in front of us as a jumping off point to determining signs, symbols, and archetypes that are personally meaningful… and that’s what you look for out in the big, bold world.

I’m going to encourage you to shake off the idea that there is a “right” definition or association with a card or symbol you see. Trust yourself. Suspend “logic” for a second. Don’t worry about getting it right.

My recommendation is that you pull a card every day. You might not resonate with anything on the card in front of you — that’s fine! Just the practice of paying attention will do you so much good.

That said, you might not vibe with the card imagery but keep an eye out for where the card is mirrored in your world as you go about your day. Did you pull a Page of Swords in the morning, only to hand over your keys to a teenage valet driver later that night? Did you pull the Moon, then see a scorpion tattoo on your guitar teacher’s wrist? Those are winks, homie.

HOW TO PRACTICE SEEING THE SIGNS

Pull a card

Don’t try to understand the “message.” Treat this like a work of art — notice what speaks to you. Is there a color you’re drawn to? An image? A symbol? A shape? What are you drawn to? What are you repelled by?

How does it make you feel?

As you go through each element you’re drawn to, consider how it makes you feel. Scared, excited, calm, nostalgic, anxious, silly…?

What associations do you have with what you see?

Themes? Patterns? A memory of your aunt crying when your cousin got a butterfly tattoo on her 16-year-old hip in 1996?

Now, you have the option for more research…

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.” —Zora Neale Hurston

If you’d like, continue to saunter towards a research rabbit hole with the symbols that feel most resonant to you. I’d encourage you here not to look up what the sign is “supposed” to mean, but instead research almost anything else about it — its origins, where it shows up in literature or paintings, its significance in different cultures, yada yada.

And that’s pretty much it — simple, right? We’re not trying to read the cards. We’re just using them as a tool to practice symbology. I recommend trying to pull a card every day and going through this investigative process with yourself. If you do, I can practically guarantee that your life will ...