The Tarot images are great for visualization. You don’t have to create the scenery from scratch: the surroundings, the key images, the symbols are already there.
Lucid Dreaming & Visualization
I’ve started my experiment with the Ace of Coins. In the Rider-Waite deck and most of its clones, it features a hedge maze in the background. Whenever I look at the card, I can’t help wondering what is inside the maze and where would it lead. Since my imagination was already captured by the image, I’ve chosen it as a subject for visualization.
I practice visualization at the stage of hypnagogic images. As soon as I’m aware of falling asleep, I imagine the card and start “zooming” it until it’s big enough for me to step in. At this point the image is already three-dimensional. You start feeling the temperature, the smells, the texture of the grass under your feet. The coin in the sky, or pentacle, feels warm, emitting the heat of the sun.
As I approach the maze, however, the weather changes. It becomes gloomier, the skies darken. The air grows colder and, as I look back, a storm is building up in the background.
It’s ok if the images change or if you see images not related to the subject at all. That means your subconscious is working now, developing the picture, giving it more life. For instance, I know that the gloominess comes from my subconscious wariness of mazes. It is always associated with mystery and danger. Probably that wariness denied me the entrance into the maze for several nights.
Meditation & Lucid Dreaming
I kept meditating night after night, until at some point, looking at the locked gates, I’ve realized I was sleeping. The excitement at the realization pushed me out of the dream. I went back to sleep, and the next dream was not directly related to the subject of my visualization, but a coin held by one of the dream characters reminded me of the Ace of coins (an arm holding a pentacle). I became lucid and kept the state for a long period.
For the next month I experimented with four more cards, about a week each with at least one lucid dream per card induced by an image reminding of the card subject.
In other words, even if a card didn’t directly induce a lucid dream, it certainly facilitated a MILD (memory-induced lucid dream).
Reality Checks & Dream Signs
As a next step, I’ve made a list of Tarot related images regularly occurring in my dream to use them as reality-check anchors. At least those you can see in daily life: coins, bushes, cups, arches, swords (knives and razors will do) etc.
In fact, we often use such anchors to remind us about reality checks. The thing is, we usually choose them randomly, especially if we follow LaBarge’s instructions. But what is the use of an anchor if it is chosen arbitrary, without any connection to our dreams? Let’s say, I choose to do a reality check every time I see a rose or a red traffic light. But what if I don’t usually dream about roses or traffic lights? I won’t perform this check in a dream.
It seems to be more logical to pick a dream subject and, since we experiment with Tarot, some dream-and-Tarot related subjects we are likely to see in a dream.
At the same time, as long as Tarot-related imagery appears in your dreams, you can use these images as dream signs. The better you are acquainted with your deck, the more the chance you will recognize certain images or symbols as dream signs.
Tarot is very convenient in this respect: it contains most of the archetypal images we may see in the daily life or dream bout.
I can’t say using Tarot is an entirely new lucid dreaming technique. Rather, Tarot can give a better focus for most of your lucid dreaming skills, facilitating the studies in visualization and providing anchors for reality checks and dream signs.
Tarot also can help you to better recall and analyze your dreams, which, once mastered, is a useful and fun lucid dreaming technique helping you to reach deep into your subconscious and make a lot of amazing discoveries.
Have you done any amazing, life-changing discoveries yet?
