What is Tarot?

The Story of a Lifelong Companion

This is part of my 'What Is?' series, where I share the tools I work with every day. Tarot. Dreamwork. Mediumship. Astrology. Each one arrived before I had language for it. Mysterious. Magnetic. Often in secret. Now, they shape how I companion others.

You can start with What Is Spiritual Direction? right HERE.

When I was fifteen, I hid a secret under my bed.

It lived in a metal cash box. Locked. Tucked under jeans and a stack of Seventeen magazines. The key was woven deep into a braided rope bracelet cinched tight around my wrist. One of those 90s sailor knot bracelets. You had to cut it off to take it off. I wore it for years before I finally did.

Inside the box was a deck of Tarot cards I bought at Quonset Hut. I had no idea what I was doing. I just knew it was mine.

I bought the cards after a strange moment at the front door of my high school boyfriend's house. His mother called out behind us as we left, "I'm not paying for your traffic ticket!" I looked at him, confused. He waved it off. "Ignore her."

But we did get a ticket. That same night.

So I asked her: "How did you know?" I needed to understand what she understood.

She gave me a glimpse into a world I already felt. A world where something unseen was always present. Where inner knowing wasn’t strange, just unnamed. It felt like remembering something I'd never been taught. Like coming home to a language I’d been speaking in secret.

Tarot became my guide, my mirror, my friend. I would lay the cards on my bedroom floor, the pages of the one library book on Tarot open beside me. I still remember those pages. The way they mixed with song lyrics and spiral notebooks and long, aching hours of adolescence.

I was raised in a fundamentalist Baptist household. Cards like these were not allowed. But I knew, even then, this was going to be the rest of my life. The church would never offer the intimacy, wonder, or honest companionship I found in my deck. Not the same mystery. Not the same presence I met in those cards.

Tarot was where I first felt seen.

I didn’t have words for what was happening then. I just knew the cards saw me when nothing else did. They helped me trust that my inner world mattered. That it wasn’t foolish to believe I could sense truth in image and story.

Years later, in my work as a Spiritual Director and Intuitive, Tarot remains my favorite tool. Because it opens space for questions we didn’t know we were holding. It draws out what matters most.

I use Tarot in two ways: inside Intuitive Readings and as part of long-term Spiritual Direction. Sometimes the line blurs.

Tarot lets us sit together with a visual conversation. When I place the cards between us, the querent (the person asking the question) sees them too. They’re not looking at me for answers. They’re looking with me. The images are rich, strange, stirring. Professionally, I use the Tarot of Mystical Moments deck by Catrin Welz-Stein, and it's often the art itself that invites the soul to speak. I don’t approach Tarot as fortune telling. I approach it as visio divina.

This is what makes Tarot such a powerful companion in Spiritual Direction. We aren’t trying to figure things out. We’re trying to listen more honestly to what already knows.

Visio divina is Latin for "divine seeing." It's a prayerful, symbolic way of engaging imagery. And Tarot lends itself beautifully to this. We look at the card and ask: What do you notice? What do you feel? What might this be showing you?

In this way, Tarot centers presence. It brings us into the moment, not out ahead of it. It reveals what is at play beneath the surface. It helps us name what’s rising. The feelings we’ve been carrying without words. The insights forming just under the surface. The longings we’ve buried or barely dared to feel. Tarot makes space for all of it to come forward so we can witness it, honor it, and begin to understand what it’s asking of us. It brings in the voice behind the veil. A presence that walks with us. That reminds us we’re not alone in our asking, our wondering, or our waiting.

And it does something no other tool quite does. It lets the querent trust themselves. When a card is on the table, and it stirs something real inside you. That’s the work. That’s the point. I hold the space. I share what I see. But your knowing is the most important voice in the room.

That’s why I keep returning to Tarot. It opens a doorway. It speaks when words won’t. It holds space for your truth to rise. Not mine. Not the culture’s. Yours. And that moment, when your inner voice meets a symbol on the table. That’s the beginning of something honest. A moment when something stirs and won’t go back to sleep. A deep sense of yes, felt more in the body than the mind. A quiet knowing that something just shifted, even if you can't name it yet. That’s where we begin to name what’s true and claim what’s ours.

Tarot is a lifelong companion. For me, the spread is only the beginning. What matters most is the sacred conversation it opens. It takes courage to ask a question you don’t already know the answer to. It takes tenderness to really look. And there’s a kind of quiet joy that comes when you realize this whole time, you haven’t been alone. You’ve been guided all along.

If you’re ready to see what the cards might hold for you, I’d be honored to sit with you. You can join me at The Cottage in Bath or meet with me virtually through The Study. Learn more or book a session at bethanysward.com.