5 Benefits of Journaling with the Tarot
If you are not already several stacks into a collection of notebooks and journals, journaling is a practice that can help writers in a myriad of ways, and pairing the tarot with this practice can amplify both the method and the outcome.
In fact, one of the most effective ways to become acquainted with the tarot is by making the cards a part of your daily writing routine, exploring the images, focusing on the ideas that most immediately and intuitively stand out, asking questions, and then journaling your experiences.
As such, journaling with the tarot can have a number of benefits on one’s writing craft. These benefits may include the following:
Coping with Anxiety and/or Depression
While journaling offers an outlet for safely expressing thoughts and feelings, the tarot can help identify triggers, provide direction, and inspire resolutions. However, if you are experiencing anxiety and/or depression that is interfering with your wellbeing, please seek help from your doctor or a licensed counselor.
Managing Stress
Pulling tarot cards can help prioritize challenges, concerns, and fears. Journaling about them can help track symptoms so that you can discover healthy ways of handling them.
Improving Mood and Quality of Life
Journaling provides an opportunity for positive self-reflection and motivation, while the tarot can serve as anchors for processing negative thoughts and behaviors. Again, if you are experiencing thoughts that are interfering with your wellbeing, please seek help from your doctor or a licensed counselor.
Meditation and Relaxation
By including intuitive tarot journaling in your regular self-care routine, you are uncovering daily opportunities for meditation, quieting the mind, and relaxing the body.
Self-Discovery and Reflection
Journaling with the tarot can provide a conduit for reconnecting with ourselves and rediscovering who we are or revealing who we endeavor to become. Pulling cards can help with understanding our desires and dreams, naming our stressors, establishing healthy boundaries, and ruminating on aspects of our lives for which we are most grateful.
How to Get Started
Invest in a journal.
Whether a Moleskine or bullet journal, tarot-themed journal or traditional notebook, keep something handy on which to jot and track your thoughts. If you’ve never journaled, or if it’s been a while since you practiced journaling, you can simply start out with an everyday lined notebook. The inner child in me highly recommends Sanrio and Lisa Frank covers. Think you’d benefit from a guided tarot journal? You might enjoy my offering 78 Days of Intuitive Journaling: A Guided Tarot Journal for the Creative Storyteller. It’s a guided, digital journal and it’s available in my shop: The Intuitive Storyteller Hub.
Use the tarot cards as journal prompts.
In my offering Tarot Quick Reference for Storytellers, I have paired each tarot card with a single word—both upright and reversed—that resonates from the writer’s point of view. Referring to word lists like this one can help spark ideas for journaling. Additionally, each tarot card includes an infinite number of stories. As such, you can use the cards to journal a new story every single day. If, however, you are unsure how to get started learning the cards and what they mean, my resource Tarot 1-2-3: Learn to Read the Cards Intuitively in Three Easy Steps can help!
Plan your tarot journaling practice:
Daily—Pull a single tarot card at the start of the day for guidance or at the end of the day for reflection. Whichever you choose, journal your thoughts about the card each day.
Weekly—At the start of each week, pull a single card and journal your ideas for approaching the week, or pull seven cards and journal about your overall outlook.
Monthly—Similar to pulling cards daily and/or weekly, you might also pull cards as the months change on your calendar. You can do this by the month, or annually by pulling twelve cards for a year-ahead spread.
Annually—In my blog post Who are YOU in the Tarot? I share how to use the cards to uncover what I call “Your Tarot Code,” which includes your Birth and Year Cards. At the end of the calendar year, calculate the numerology for the year ahead and then journal your thoughts around personal goals, plans, and dreams.
Need a tarot journal to get started?
Are you a writer who practices journaling as a means of self-care, self-discovery, writing practice, or simply for a creative outlet?
Do you also enjoy working with the tarot for creative inspiration?
Could you benefit from journaling with the tarot as a means of self-discovery, but you’re afraid you won’t know what to write each day?
Do you need a journal that is accessible everywhere you go?
The 78 Days of Intuitive Journaling is a guided tarot journal that invites you to explore each card from a creative storyteller’s point of view. This self-paced journal offers one or more questions for each of the 78 cards in the tarot that range from big picture ideas to everyday situations. Each question is designed to provoke thoughtful, holistic nourishment of the heart, body, mind, and spirit. This digital journal features tabbed pages and fillable spaces that can only be accessed on your computer. Mobile compatibility is not a feature at this time.
This interactive digital journal includes:
Creative insight into the Major and Minor Arcana.
78 guided journal prompts that include questions crafted to conjure memories and stories.
Daily Notes pages for pulling a card a day and tracking your own unique interpretations.
Digital format for saving to your computer. The pages are fillable, so please remember to save your work as you go!
Here's what's inside:
Find 78 Days of Intuitive Journaling: A Guided Tarot Journal for the Creative Storyteller and more writing resources on The Intuitive Storyteller Hub, where creative writers can access tools to help hone their craft.
Prices subject to change without notice. All sales are final. No refunds. For the best results, open and use this document on your computer. Please remember to save your work!
Additional tools can be found in my shop, The Intuitive Storyteller Hub.
In her more than thirty years as a storyteller and visual designer, Amanda “Mandy” Hughes has written and designed over a dozen works of literary, Southern Gothic, and women’s fiction under pen names A. Lee Hughes and Mandy Lee.
Mandy is the founder of Haint Blue Creative®, a space for readers and storytellers to explore, learn, and create. She holds a Bachelor and Master of Science in Psychology, and she has worked as an instructional designer for nearly twenty years.
When she’s not writing fiction, Mandy enjoys the movies, theater, music, traveling, nature walks, birdwatching, and binging The Office. She is a tarot enthusiast who uses the cards to enhance creativity and foster wellness. She lives in Georgia with her husband and four sons, two of whom are furrier than the others (but not by much). Visit her website at haintbluecreative.com and follow her on Instagram @haintbluecreative.