Intro to Tarot Course & Portal Access
Intro to Tarot Course & Portal Access
In order to create magic on the page, we need to have a little magic up our sleeves. Tarot isn’t magic, but it’s the closest thing I’ve found to it. In this workshop, we’ll be learning the basics of building a tarot practice for your writing, how to use the archetypes and meanings of the cards to deepen character and story resonance, and discover how the decks themselves can be guides to working with our inner critics and strengthen our relationship to our writing and story goals.
The Course & Portal
Access to the recording of the Intro to Tarot for Writers recorded workshop (October 2022), which includes working through a spread together, Q+A, and next steps.
Lecture Notes to follow along
A beautiful PDF workbook filled with spreads to play with, tarot journal prompts, writing exercises for using the cards for character/story, and more.
Access to my Tarot for Writers Portal. This is a space that I will be adding to from time to time - new decks, spreads, resources, and more.
Bonus Material: Lecture notes, readings, and activities from my lecture on “Becoming the Hanged Writer” - an homage to my favorite card, The Hanged Man, and how it relates to our writing practice and process.
Optional 1:1 Reading and Tarot Practice Call With Me
(90 Minutes): $300
Two Readings: In this 90-minute call, I’ll do two readings for you (I’ll choose the deck and spread based on a short email intake we’ll have a few days before). One is for you, and one is for a challenge you’re having with your book.
We’ll talk through what the first spread is bringing up for you with your practice, process, and writing life. We can also use this time to talk a bit more about integrating your tarot practice into your writing life. This is like my Breakthrough calls, but with a tarot focus!
In the second spread, we’ll work with a problem you identified in your intake. This is also a great, hands-on way to learn how to use tarot for yourself. This is how I untangle some of my biggest plot and character snarls.
The best part? We’re going to have SO MUCH FUN.
More About the Course
Once upon a time I dragged my husband to all the magic shops in London…This wall one was in the Seven Dials. ☺️
“Thank you to Heather for sharing this spread. Doing it for myself it did not bring up what I expected, but I feel it brought up exactly what I needed. I can’t wait to use this spread to get to know the characters in my next writing project! If you want to learn many more ways to use tarot in your writing, Heather’s Tarot for Writers is bound to be helpful. ”
✨ 🔮
This is a class that will be fun, stretch your creativity…
and give you a lifelong tool for self and story discovery!
Card: Modern Witch Tarot
I first taught this course in October 2022, and am putting it up here as part of the Intro to Tarot offering. This is intended for tarot practitioners of all levels, including totally new ones. We will be viewing the tarot through the writing lens, so you’ll be invited to look at the cards on many levels: for your practice, your creativity, your stories, your characters. Tarot is the art of getting curious. In this course, we’ll be getting curious about how tarot can help us in and out of the writer’s seat.
Why Tarot
I really like how author Michelle Tea describes tarot as the “helpful uncanny.” For me, that is what it has been - and so much more. Tarot has become an abiding source of delight in my creative life. I love the tangible nature of the cards, the beautiful illustrations, and the ways the cards are a system in which I can make sense of myself, my work, and the world around me - as well as continually refine my place on this planet.
The tarot acts as a scaffolding that allows us to hang all our questions and concerns all over it, and then step back and get some clarity. In a world that is spiraling out of control, a publishing industry in flux, and an urgent need for narratives to help us make sense of it all (and a deep desire to understand why we should keep writing and telling stories in the first place), the tarot can be a friend and guide that you can access any time you need one.
The tarot is not fortune-telling. It is a system that helps you access your own inner wisdom through the use of ancient archetypes and powerful imagery that get you curious and expansive. From this place, you’re able to access the clarity that is already inside you.
Card: Tarot of the Divine
Why Me
I have been a tarot practitioner for years, but have hesitated to teach because I liked having it be just “mine” for a while. I needed a lot of time with the cards, a lot of life to live side by side with them, and study this system as both a psychological and spiritual art. I had to get over being worried I’d look too “woo” if I shared it widely, and thus reduced people’s trust in me as a writer, writing teacher, and mindfulness for writers mentor.
After countless spreads and daily pulls and journaling and using the cards to help me create stronger characters on the page (which then created more resonant plotting)—all in addition to transformative readings with a wonderful teacher—I got over my fears and decided to create opportunities for writers to learn tarot for their practice and process.
Over the years, I have slowly integrated tarot into the 1:1 work I do with my writers and seen how transformative this practice can be. Sometimes we look at how they might use the cards to get through areas in their books that feel stale and inaccessible to them. Other times, the tarot is a space to explore what they need to bring in or release from their lives in order to have a more fruitful writing practice. They have a lot of fun, too, choosing a deck and experiencing the uncanny ways it helps them make sense of their world.
🖋 There are many great books and tarot teachers out there, but this class (and the ones to follow!) is something different: We’re looking at tarot as writers, through the writer’s lens. We’re training in thinking about our plots and characters as a journey through the cards. We’re going to think about what qualities our characters have - are they the Knight of Swords, the Page of Cups? Is chapter 23 of your book a real 10 of swords moment…or a 10 of Pentacles? (If you’re new to tarot, then this just went over your head, but don’t worry! You’ll understand what I mean by the end of this class).
For a lot of people, tarot can seem overwhelming. I remember when I bought my first deck, took one look, and put it in a drawer for the better part of a year. It’s hard to just grab a deck and start working. But once you put in a very small amount of time, the cards will become as familiar to you as your favorite journal. Once I started taking classes and getting books on the topic, everything fell into place.
Many of us were raised in spiritual traditions or cultures that see tarot as evil at worst and hogwash at best. It can take time to work with that baggage, and this class will be a trauma-informed space to do that, too. One thing we’ll be looking at is how to find decks where we feel represented - where the “King” cards aren’t necessarily white males….or people at all.
I’ll be giving you tools to work with what the cards bring up for you. This might be mindfulness techniques when you receive a message that is hard to hear. Or it might be ways you can work with words to understand the deeper levels of meaning the card and its imagery represents to you. We’ll talk about a few different modalities that may be helpful to integrate tarot with - Internal Family Systems or Depth Psychology are two examples.
Class Overview
By the end of our time together, you will…
Understand the ins and out of the major and minor arcana (the full set of cards) through the writer’s lens
Have a strong foundation in how to work with tarot, from phrasing questions before pulling cards, to working with the answers you receive
Walk away with a cache of resources to continue your exploration in tarot on your own
Have options for a daily practice, pulling cards on new /full moons (and other important times in the month / writing process) , and using tarot for pre-writing and story exploration.
Begin creating your “writer’s grimoire” - tarot is only a small part of this!
Extensive Q+A to answer your lingering questions about tarot (is it too woo? wait, what does it mean when the cards are spot-on…or totally off? how do i choose a deck??)
Understand how to approach the cards in a way that is most supportive to you (trauma-informed, mindful, and tender)
Cards: The Spacious Tarot
I was delighted to support the Kickstarter that got this deck into the world, and adore its co-creator, Carrie Mallon, my go-to tarot guide!
What you need:
You don’t have to have a deck, but you’ll have a bit more fun if you’ve got one to play with. Note that we are looking at tarot cards, not oracle cards. Oracle cards can be great for your writing practice, too, but they are very different from the tarot system.
Below are a few of my favorite decks. I recommend that, if you’re just beginning, you choose a card that works within the traditional Ryder-Waite-Smith system. But if you don’t have more traditionally named / organized cards, that’s fine!
Pinterest is a great place to look at lots of decks. Type in “The Hanged Man” or “Queen of Wands,” for example, and you’ll get all kinds of different images. Connecting to the imagery of your deck is really important, so choose one that speaks to you.
Current Favorite: Light Seer’s Tarot
Most Beloved: Shadow Scapes
Favorite Learning Deck: Modern Witch Tarot
Fave Old-School Deck: Pamela Coleman Smith Centennial Edition
Most cosy deck (also has no human figures): The Spacious Tarot
The Gut Check Deck: The Wild Unknown
Happy Place Deck: Tarot of Pagan Cats
Best Storytelling Deck: Tarot of the Divine
“Intuition is really learned expertise, disguised as a voice within.”
A peek at a Tarot for Writers Spread
Tarot celebrates the inner journey, which is why it’s so great to do for yourself AND for your protagonist or another character you’d like to know better. Click below to try out this spread I created as part of the course PDF.
Questions? You know what to do…
About Your Instructor
Heather Demetrios (Queen of Wands) is a critically acclaimed author, writing coach, and certified meditation teacher based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her publishers include Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and HarperCollins.
She has an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a recipient of the PEN America Discovery Award for her debut novel, Something Real. Her novels include Little Universes, I’ll Meet You There, Bad Romance, as well as the Dark Caravan fantasy series: Exquisite Captive, Blood Passage, and Freedom’s Slave. Her non-fiction includes the Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection Code Name Badass: The True Story of Virginia Hall, and she is the editor of Dear Heartbreak: YA Authors and Teens on the Dark Side of Love.
Her honors include books that have been named Bank Street Best Children’s Books, YALSA Best Fiction For Young Adults selections, a Goodreads Choice Nominee, a Kirkus Best Book, and a Barnes and Noble Best Book. Her work has appeared in LA Review of Books, Bustle, School Library Journal, and other fine outlets.
Heather works with writers on integrating mindfulness into their writing practice, process, and life. In addition to being a meditation teacher and Zen student in the Soto tradition, she holds certificates in Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness and Integrative Somatic Parts (IFS) Work.