Have you ever been stuck not knowing what direction your character should turn? Which is the way to go with this plot, conflict, character? Consider drawing a tarot card for guidance.
I hold the deck and consider my hero’s issues and problems. What shall he do next? How does he handle the situation that I have written him into with the heroine?
He wants her sexually, emotionally, on every level of his being. However, he doesn’t believe he is worthy of her. He is a broken man. Some consider him evil, the stuff children’s nightmares talk about. He is estranged within himself from his other. (He is a shapeshifting dragon.) He considers himself soulless. He is loosing grip on his self control when he’s around her. What should he do? What is his situation and the cause of it?
I selected Temperance (reversed) from the Gilded Tarot by Ciro Marchetti and Barbara Moore.
Let’s see how it relates to our hero.
Temperance is one of the Major Arcana cards, which indicates an overall life theme or spiritual lesson. Temperance in its upright position is a card of moderation, blending, taking a middle course or combining energies.
In its reversed position, it can indicate being extreme in one’s behavior and or some type of excessive behavior or lack of balance.
Well, duha. Yes life is out of balance. His feeings for the heroine are tearing him apart.
I shuffle the cards again. We’ve discovered his past is ruled by lack of balance.
What can we learn of his present. I pull the “Lovers” another card of the major arcane. Can this help me know what my hero should do?
The Lovers is a card which represents communication and duality. It rules the element of air and is a card of intellect, inter-relations and communication. This card can symbolize the challenges associated with choosing a path. Often the path of pleasure leads to the greatest distraction in spiritual growth. This card represents relationships and the challenges associated with them. The Lovers is one of the Tarot’s most fundamental cards, symbolic of inclination and openess toward inspiration, spiritual sensation, cognition and intuition.
When the Lovers card is reversed it indicates childishness, superficiality and abstraction. It can symbolize inconsistency, controversy and a tendency toward trivial and false intellectuality.
I can’t reveal how this helps me know what is going on with my poor dear man… But I have to laugh. Yes for all his brokenness he is very childish about how he chooses to resist our heroine. Yes, he is very inconsistent right now. I see how I can increase the conflict for my dear hero with this information. And oh how this is going to heat up the romance and action between them. *Laughing* Wonderful inspiration for the next steps in their journey.
I choose not to reveal the card that indicates his future. I am not ready to see that information yet.
What do you think? Do you see tarot as a way to inspire your writing?
Eden Glenn 