Man, let me tell you, for a while there, I was just kinda floating. You know that feeling when you’re trying to figure things out, spiritually speaking, but everything just feels a bit… generic? That was me with tarot. I’d do my usual three-card pulls, sometimes a Celtic Cross, but it always felt like I was getting bits and pieces, never the whole story, you know? Like I was missing the real backbone of my own journey.
I started hearing whispers about astrological tarot spreads. People talking about houses, planets, aspects, and how it all connected to the cards. And I thought, “Huh, that sounds like it could be something deeper.” My own birth chart has always fascinated me, even if it sometimes felt like a super complicated map I only halfway understood. The idea of linking it to my tarot practice just clicked in my head. I figured, if my birth chart is the blueprint of my soul, maybe tarot could be the instruction manual for building it.
So, I started digging. I wasn’t looking for anything fancy, just a way to make sense of it. I’d hit up blogs, scroll through forums, even pulled out some old astrology books I had gathering dust. Most of what I found was pretty intimidating, to be honest. These elaborate 12-card spreads, one for each house, one for each sign. I tried one of them, a basic zodiac wheel spread. I laid out 12 cards, one for each sign, going around the circle, asking general questions about each area of life. It was… okay. I mean, I got some insights, but it still felt kinda broad, not specific to me. It was like reading a general horoscope instead of getting a personalized reading.
Then I tried another one, a “house” spread, where you map the cards to your actual astrological houses, which are super personal. I pulled out my birth chart, figured out where all my houses started and ended, and then tried to lay cards there. This felt a bit more tailored because it was about my actual houses, my actual life sectors. But even then, I wasn’t quite getting the juicy, deep stuff I was craving. It was like I was just slotting cards into pre-defined boxes, not really conversing with my own unique energy.
It was a bit of a head-scratcher. I kept at it, though. I knew there had to be a way. And then, one rainy afternoon, it hit me. Why was I trying to fit my chart into someone else’s spread? My birth chart is mine. It’s got its own quirky planets in weird houses, specific aspects, all that jazz. The key wasn’t finding a pre-made spread; the key was learning to talk to my own chart using the tarot.
I stopped trying to find “the best astrological tarot spread.” Instead, I started using my birth chart as the prompt. I’d pull up my chart, maybe on an app, maybe my printed copy, and I’d just look at it. I’d see what planets were making hard angles to each other, what houses had a bunch of planets crammed in, or what house felt like it was having some action going on because of current transits. And then, instead of a fixed spread, I’d ask questions directly about those specific things.
For example, if I saw my Mars in a challenging aspect to, say, my Saturn, and I was feeling frustrated and blocked in that area of life, I wouldn’t do a generic 12-house spread. I’d sit down, shuffle my cards, and ask specific questions like: “What is the core lesson I need to learn from this Mars-Saturn dynamic right now?” or “What immediate action can I take to unblock this energy?” Sometimes I’d just pull three cards for that specific question. Other times, if a whole house felt like it was screaming for attention, like my 10th house of career was getting hammered by some intense transits, I’d pull a few more, maybe five or seven, to explore different facets of that specific house’s energy: “What’s the challenge here?”, “What’s the hidden opportunity?”, “What’s the immediate next step?”
This approach totally changed the game for me. It wasn’t about a spread anymore; it was about a method. I was using my birth chart as a dynamic map, pointing me to the specific areas in my spiritual journey that needed attention, and then using tarot as the direct conversation tool to explore those areas. This way, every reading was deeply personal, deeply relevant, and profoundly insightful. It helped me understand my inherent strengths, my blind spots, and the lessons I was truly meant to learn, often in real-time as transits activated parts of my chart. It connected the dots in a way no other tarot practice had before. It made my spiritual journey feel truly my own.
