Halloween Tarot: The Four Royal Advisors

This year I got a beautiful Tarot card set by one of our favourite artists Yoshitaka Amano for my birthday.

Amano Tarot on Amazon

Halloween is one of the rare nights where traditionally the border between material and spirit world thins, and is the best for seeking guidance to right actions and clear insight in the darkening year. So what better time to do that most Halloween-like activity, the Tarot card reading? Only this one is special: it uses all 78 cards.

As a meditation tool, I prefer using runes or the intuitive and creative Faeries' Oracle by Brian Froud. But there is a mystery and magic that suits the Tarot on this holy night, and Amano's art is so beautiful that it seemed a shame not to use it.

Learning the Tarot by Joan Bunning is a comprehensive guide: accessible, straightforward, and she compares the suit pair of Cups and Swords to Star Trek characters McCoy and Spock. This lady is a wonder | wander | woman!

The original chart and idea for the Four Royal Advisors.

The Four Royal Advisors is a full-deck Tarot spread developed by writer and blogger Copperbadge specifically for Halloween readings. There are other 78-card spreads, but this one was written with a narrative in mind and can be used with your deck for writing ideas as well as meditation and fortune-telling. There's a useful PDF sheet to write your card readings in as well.

The tools: the cards, the book, a nice journal and pen to write the readings in for further contemplation, an offering of coins (to be donated afterward) and tea, because this is going to take a while.

The Eye: the Self, the Visible Life, and the Unseen Life. I love the way Amano drew Justice: instead of calling down judgment on others from a position of power (as in the standard Waite deck), they are weighing themselves on the scale.

The Pillar of Virtues (upright) and the Pillar of Vices (horizontal). In Tarot readings we take past and future into account as well as present: some of the virtues can be potential only, needing encouragement; some of the vices represent past mistakes to learn from so we don't repeat them.

The Wheel: the Cycle of Life - our life, with the personal influences affecting it from within and the worldly influences acting on it from outside. It's important to know these influences, and to see that they are not your Self, just forces that cause behaviours and reactions. 

The Wall represents what stands in your way to joy and fulfilment. The Mythic Tree beyond the Wall shows you the steps to achievement, and the final four cards the Journey that you make - but this is advice, not divine orders. We have to choose what path to take and then set our own feet in the steps before we can get where we want to go. Remember that these are only road signs and you're the one driving!

It's a good time to contemplate next actions and to hold a quiet space in ourselves as the holiday rush begins. A Blessed All Hallows Day to everyone!