Do You Know Your Tarot Life Card?
How to calculate it and tap into your tarot destiny
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I couldn’t start my tarot blog until I got a P.O. box, and this almost ended everything before it had even begun.
Apparently, you cannot legally send mass business emails without providing a mailing address at the bottom of each email. And, since I had neither a business address nor a desire to give my home address to every last person on the world wide web, I had to get a P.O. box.
I had been reading tarot for myself for a few years when I started itching to share my discoveries with others. (As a writer, I often feel like an experience - especially a potentially life-changing one like working with tarot had been - is incomplete if I haven’t looped others in through writing. It’s a calling as well as a curse.)
One of the factors that finally convinced me to take the plunge and start my tarot blog (which was years before this Substack newsletter, and wasn’t even called The Tarot Professor at first!) was discovering that my tarot life card was the Hierophant.
If your life card is the Hierophant, you are a seeker of truths. A teacher or translator of esoteric wisdom. That’s precisely the direction I was feeling pulled in when I got my blog idea. The Hierophant really struck a chord and was the cosmic green light I needed if I had any hope of quieting my inner critic and allowing myself to pursue the idea that was sparking both intellectual curiosity and intuitive excitement.
But I needed a P.O. box before I could sign up with my email service provider. So there I was, standing in line at the post office, waiting for a key to the tiniest P.O. box money could rent and trying not to berate myself too much for already having to invest funds in a blog that wasn’t even up and running and probably wouldn’t go anywhere and would probably lie dormant after a few posts because I already have a day job and did I really think I was going to start telling people I read tarot now? After all, what would my high school bullies who may or may not be on Facebook think!?
And then it happened. The brusk lady behind the mail counter placed two copies of my brand new P.O. box keys in front of me, exactly like this:
I stared at them in disbelief until she hurried me along so she could help the next customer.
Do you see it too? Here, this might help:
This split-second yet uncanny synchronicity delivered by a decidedly unmystical and rather unamused public servant told my judgmental ego to just shut up already and let me do my thing.
In fact, when I would eventually start The Tarot Professor, these little Hierophant keys would inspire my logo, which you may notice on title images, social media, and even my Inquire Within deck of tarot questions! May it remind me to honor my intuition and that my writing serves - if nobody and nothing else - my own curiosity and joy.
So you see, tarot bestie, how could I not share the potential magic of tarot life cards with you?
In this week’s newsletter, I’ll help you figure out which Major Arcana tarot card is your life card (otherwise known as your soul card, birth card, or life path card). We’ll walk through the tarot life card calculating process. Then, I’ll break down the meaning of each life card and give you two additional tarot (or journaling) questions to help you go even deeper in discovering what your tarot life card could mean for you.
Ready!? I can’t wait to hear which tarot life card is yours!
First, what exactly is a tarot life card?
I don’t know about you, but a big question I’m constantly asking myself is, “What is my soul’s purpose?” What is my calling? What have I been put on this earth to do? What will truly make me happy?
Or, in my more agonized and pessimistic (read: panicked) moods, the way I phrase this inquiry sounds more like, “What the hell am I supposed to do to prevent utter regret over how I spent the precious little time I was given on this earth!?”
Enter: Your tarot life card.
Relying on numerology and our birth dates, our tarot life card is a personalized Major Arcana card that illuminates a potential life’s path or soul’s purpose in which we are likely to find great meaning, satisfaction, and success.
Ready to figure out your tarot life card? If you’re not the best at mental math, grab a pen and scrap of paper and keep reading!
Next, how to figure out your life number (aka birth number)
As I said above, we rely on numerology to find our life number (also called our birth number). To calculate this number, add up the digits of your birthdate and reduce down until you get a single digit.
Let’s say you were born on March 17, 1984.
[EDIT: I had originally used 2024 as the birth year in my example but I now realize this may have been confusing as a birth year since clearly no newborn is sitting here reading this newsletter. Use your birth year - not the current year. That’s why I have substituted 1984 in the below calculation. Fun fact: You could swap out your birth year for the current year and find out your tarot card for the year. But that obviously changes every year and is not the more constant destiny-filled card that is your life card. Alright, on we go!]
Here’s how you would add up the numbers of that birthdate:
3 + 17 + 1984 = 2004
Next, add the digits in 2004. Remember, we are reducing to a single digit.
2 + 0 + 0 + 4 = 6.
So if you were born on March 17, 1984, your single digit life number, or birth number, is six. That’s it!
Frequently asked question: What if you do your calculation and don’t get a neat one-digit number, like six? What if you get, say, 17?
Then you just keep adding digits until you get a single-digit number (that is, a number from one to nine). For 17, you would then do 1 + 7 to get a life number of 8. For 19, you would do 1 + 9 to get 10, and then you would do the additional step of 1 + 0 to get 1 as your single-digit life number.
And now, it’s time to find your tarot life card!
Now that you have calculated your life number, or life path number, you simply look up the Major Arcana card with that number. This means that everybody’s life card, or birth card, is one of the first nine cards in the tarot deck. These are the nine major life paths according to tarot.
Below is a brief description of each tarot life card. I have also included two tarot (or journaling) questions to help you go deeper and further customize the specific message of your tarot life card.
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