- Speaker #0
Have you ever felt creatively blocked and stuck? It can be frustrating, heartbreaking, and even infuriating. When you're in a blocked moment and you know you have creativity that needs to come out, but for some reason it just can't, you would give anything to have some magical tool to unlock your voice and vision. Well, what if I told you there was one? Today's guest will teach you how to use tarot to unleash your creativity, connect with your spirituality, and hone your intuition. Welcome to Unleash Your Inner Creative with Lauren LaGrasso. I'm Lauren LaGrasso. I'm a Webby Award-winning podcast host and producer, singer-songwriter, public speaker, and creative coach. This show is meant to give you tools to love, trust, and know yourself enough to claim your right to creativity and pursue whatever it is that's on your heart. Before we get into the guests, I want to remind you I have a new song out, not even a month old, completely a newborn. It is my cover of Genie in a Bottle. My goal is to get to 10,000 listens on Spotify, and I'm not going to lie, we're really far away from that goal. So it would mean the world to me if you would support me and go stream the song. If you like me, if you like my music, what I stand for, and for God's sake, if you like 90s and early 2000s pop, go stream Genie in a Bottle wherever you get your music. You can even listen to it on a loop on Spotify, might I suggest, if that's something that makes you happy. Anyway, I want to thank you for supporting me in this small way that makes a huge difference. I'm going to put the link in the show notes and it's also in my Instagram bio. Okay, today's guest. Her name is Chelsea Pippin. She's an author, tarot reader, and certified shadow work practitioner. She's written books including the Tarot Spread Yearbook and Tarot for Writers. Her new book, Tarot for Creativity, just released and gives readers a card-by-card guide designed to help you use tarot as a tool to beat creative blocks, nurture a creative mindset. and get to know and trust yourself. I wanted to have Chelsea on because quite honestly, I have felt over the years a mix of curiosity and hesitation when it comes to tarot. Growing up Catholic, I was taught to basically view this practice with a lot of skepticism and even fear. However, I found that Chelsea's approach to tarot is refreshing, inviting, and I really like the approach of using it to unleash your creative power. I see now how it's another tool to connect with yourself, your intuition, and your creativity. and I'm excited to implement it into my creative practice. If you've been looking for a way into tarot or even just like out of a creative block, this episode provides a really wonderful and non-intimidating way to start your relationship with tarot. From today's chat, you'll learn the basics of tarot, how to overcome creative blocks using tarot, how to interpret tarot cards in your own way, ways to use tarot for emotional and creative grounding and inspiration, and much more. Okay, now here she is, Chelsea Pippin. Chelsea, thank you so much for being on Unleash Your Inner Creative. I cannot wait to dive into this topic with you.
- Speaker #1
Thank you. I'm so excited.
- Speaker #0
Same here. So before we dive into Tarot and Tarot for Creativity, I would love to just get an understanding of your creative journey. What has the trajectory looked like to get you here today?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, that's a great question. And it's a nice, juicy, long one. I think creativity has always been my first love. I grew up moving around. My dad was in the military and I spent a lot of time jumping from base to base as a young, shy kid. And so it was very comfortable for me to recede into art and recede into stories. Those are things you can take with you. Books, as someone wise once said, are a uniquely portable magic. I think that's Stephen King. And I think that was very early on for me, the truth, even if books didn't make it to new homes, a library was always around. And I really deeply relied on story, on the consistency of characters in stories when I was constantly meeting new people. And I was a storyteller in my own head. So I had a lot of respect and appreciation for words and stories very early on in my life. I identified as a writer very early on. At age 10, I entered a writing competition and won that competition.
- Speaker #0
Shout out.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, I try. Well, my first paid gig as a writer, I was 10. So here we are.
- Speaker #0
That's amazing. Wow.
- Speaker #1
But it really all, I think, begins there. I was playing and telling myself stories before, and I loved the idea of writing books. That was very early on for me. But something about that moment is a real jumping off point. The competition was a... It invited, I think there were four or five age categories all the way up through adult writers. And it was hosted by a local museum. I was living in Charlottesville, Virginia at the time. And the idea was to go in and choose a work of art and write a story about. the work of art and you know what goes on after what goes on behind the scenes what led up to this moment and i was captivated by that process of looking at a piece of work that existed and coming to my own conclusions around what the story and expanding the idea of what that piece of work could mean and what it meant to me so that combination of interpreting art engaging with with someone else's art and using it to create my own really then followed me through the rest of my creative life. I've told this story a lot in the lead up to this book and am now having this epiphany that also I never talk about writing fan fiction as a kid. And I very quickly after this got into writing fan fiction, right? And again, there was something about drawing on existing art and letting that be this launching off point for my imagination. I was working in the theater, so I love working with a script and then turning the script into its own unique. piece of work and production. And so there always to me has been this relationship between consuming and engaging with creative work and allowing that to launch my own creative process and my own creative projects. And that has been true forever. I went to school, I got a BA in theater and creative writing. And then I went on to study my master's. I was looking at theater history and different representations of how we convey deep topics on the stage physically. And then I started working in media and became a professional writer. Up until then, there was this big question mark of my life's going to be creative, but I don't know what industry I'm going to work in. I had a lot of interest in many different industries. And so I was very lucky. I landed a job based on some blogs I'd been writing at BuzzFeed in the heyday and really... became a writer right out of my master's degree. And from there, I knew I was going to write, that was going to be my work. And then I found the tarot in my 20s after leaving BuzzFeed in kind of the shedding of writers towards that pivot to video moment. And I found the tarot, I was in my 20s, I'd lost my job. I was trying to figure out what was next. I was working rather lovely. I was working in a school library at the time, kind of figuring out what was next. Did I want to write a novel? Did I want to look for another job in media? Did I want to go freelance? Had all these big question marks and enter this tool that is about asking questions and receiving answers. And here we are today. I fell in love with the tarot and I bought myself a deck and I haven't looked back ever since.
- Speaker #0
What a beautiful story. There's two. key moments from it that really stand out to me. And one is that creative inciting incident when you were 10, where you can really directly draw the line from then to now. And for a person listening at home right now, like I always encourage them, think about what that is for you. Even if it's not like I was at 10 and I figured out I'd like to write from looking at some sort of artwork or like previously existing archetype, like whatever your thing is. I think it's helpful to find the origin story for it so you can draw it back and just keep that kind of as like a grounding factor in your creative life. And then the other thing you said that I thought was so interesting, especially like having a show called Unleash Your Inner Creative, is you said, I always like to recede into creativity. What's the power of and meaning of receding into creativity? What does that look like in action?
- Speaker #1
That's... So interesting that you picked up on that. I think for me, in the early years, for me, it was a safe place, right? So it was an anchor point and something that I could come back to. And I think today it still feels like something I can come back to. But I do love that term Unleash. I do think creative freedom and creative risk are really, really critical to the creative process. You can't just proceed. You have to also push the boundary. And the idea that there's that anchor point that exists and that also you can go really far from home and always come back is really important. In my book, which we'll talk about later, I end on the idea of coming home to your creativity because I think that's so important. But up until then, I've guided the reader through 77 other opportunities to leap off the cliff because at the end of the day, we can always come home to what we truly love, even if we're... trying a whole bunch of other things in the meantime.
- Speaker #0
No, I really love it because I'm more of a person, I've recently taken up belly dancing. This is very random, but it will make sense in a minute. And there's like two like chest like bump moves. So basically there's one and it's going to be hard without visuals, but I'm going to try my best to explain it. One where you like push your chest out and then come in. And I find that extraordinarily easy. And there's one where you push your chest in and then go out and it breaks my brain. And I look at this as a metaphor for how I exist in the world. Like outward energy feels very easy for me, but coming back home, receding into my creativity, coming back to myself and being in my own body, that feels really hard. For people like me who are listening. who have a hard time receding and finding stability just within ourselves, what would be your advice on how we can start to do that with our creativity and even otherwise?
- Speaker #1
I hope it's not too on the nose for me to say that's exactly what I see the tarot as the perfect tool for doing. What I love about the tarot carried over from this idea of what I loved about and have always loved about engaging with. an external piece of work and then drawing from myself how I feel and how I want to express myself based on what that work has brought up. What the tarot does is it goes, hey, here's an external mirror for something to explore inside you. So it serves as this prompt, because inner work is really scary. It's really intimidating. It can be really hard to figure out where to start. I don't know if... You or any listeners here have experience with Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, a program that I love, but I always found morning pages to be really, really daunting because I didn't want to sit down at the page and for there to be nothing there. And as soon as I started doing them in tandem with drawing a tarot card where I just give myself that little place to put my attention and go, okay, so what is this to me? And I can start to ask myself focused questions. again, to look at a piece of art and go, what is this to me? And then I get to create in response to that question. To me, changes everything. Being able to look at something and go, how do I feel about that? Instead of wandering through the world going, how do I feel about everything?
- Speaker #0
That's what I do all day.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, me too. Me too. I'm prone to it and it's overwhelming. But that kind of trigger of like, I'm working with one image. I'm working with one thing. I'm working with one feeling, one vibe, one archetype, whatever, that focusing in then kind of creates a corridor into the self where you're like, all right, I can open this door today. I don't have to stand in the hall of mirrors. I can open this door and see where it goes.
- Speaker #0
I love that. So the idea that if you're trying to like come home to yourself and get grounded in ourselves and in our own creativity and in our own worlds, a good way to do it is giving yourself some sense of like. a container basically to create in and to understand yourself in. And so for you, that is tarot. Before we go any deeper into tarot, for people who are listening, who aren't super aware of what it is, could you just explain what tarot is?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, I would love to. It's one of my favorite questions. Thank you so much. The tarot is a deck of cards, a deck of 78 cards specifically, that feature archetypal imagery on them throughout history. These cards have been used in cardamancy practices. Cardamancy is the diminutory reading of playing cards. It's not something that's relegated specifically to a tarot deck. A tarot deck just tends to be the most popular representation of cardamancy. You can do it with playing cards. There's a very popular practice of Lenormand cards, which is another set. I'm not a Lenormand reader, so I can't speak specifically to that. And there are individual oracle cards. You'll see a lot of modern artists creating oracle cards because... there's no rules. You can create as many as you want in a deck. You can put them on any topic. You can follow any rules, whatever. It's just a collection of images that people can shuffle and do what they will with. But a tarot deck specifically is a very specific system of cartomancy made up of these 78 archetypal images. However, we do all cartomancy and all divination a disservice, I think, in my opinion, thinking that it's a fortune telling device solely. That is one aspect of its use and one of the most popular aspects of its use and a very valid aspect of its use. However, what it is at the end of the day is a tool. Like you can use a pencil to write, you can use a pencil to draw, you can use a pencil to make a mark on a wall to hang a photo. You can use a tarot deck for different purposes. And today in the modern world, there are a lot of different purposes we can use. We can turn to the tarot for the images provide. points of reflection. So as I've suggested, asking yourself questions, looking at them in order to guide yourself into a self-reflective purpose. Many, many modern readers use them as journaling prompts. You may use them in fortune telling. You may use them as part of a broader spiritual practice. Many people who work with their ancestors or with spirit guides may use the cards as a conduit to that. Or you may do what I do, which is generally speaking, alongside that reflection. work. Use them to generate new, exciting, creative ideas and commune not with your spirit guides or your ancestors, but with your own creativity. Does that answer the question? Is that enough?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I think so. I mean, my next question is why tarot for creativity, which I think you've already answered in a number of ways. But I'd love to also get a clear vision of like why we should start integrating this into our creative practice.
- Speaker #1
Great question. First of all, why not? why a paintbrush? Why a pen? Why a camera? Why anything? Why not? It's there. It's a material we can use. Just the sense of like, here's this thing. Why not get curious about it? I think we should approach everything that comes across our path as a potential for creative production or even just creative reflection. But what I particularly love about the tarot, a couple of things. It's tactile. It's something that we can hold in our hands and use. So it's not our phone. It's not a screen. It's not a keyboard. It's not tech. And yet it's novel. It's shufflable. So it can offer us something different all the time. So it fills almost that like doom scrolling impulse in a way, because you can doom shuffle if you want, but it separates you a little bit from the tech, which I think creatively is really in the same way that... you know, many writers suggest writing by hand, just having some kind of tool in your hands that is tactile, I think is automatically very creatively.
- Speaker #0
It's like grounding. There is something even though I, to your point, like really dislike actually handwriting. When I do journaling with my computer versus when I do it with my hand, I have a completely different day if I started in the morning. And I don't know why that is, but there's something to it.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, it's that connection to the body and getting tactile with something. And the thing that you get tactile with certainly doesn't have to be the tarot, but I recommend that being one of the things that you get tactile with because it comes with a range of creative benefits. There are, as I say, 78 images in a deck. A deck fits in your pocket, in your purse. It's easy to carry around. You can consult it when you're feeling blocked and just say, hey, give me an idea, give me something to work with, which is a great thing for any artist to have. on hand. You can consult it when you're faced with something challenging. I turn to the tarot a lot when I have a rejection for a pitch that I've been really excited about, or when I don't feel like my work is received in the way that I had hoped it would, or when I'm feeling envious of another creative and I don't want to sit here and stew in it, but I need to hold space for that feeling. Creatives are hugely emotional people often. We have big feelings. That's why we create. And what I think the tarot does beautifully is hold space for those feelings and interrogate them and go, okay, so what is this? Which is how then the wheels get moving for making something out of that experience as well.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. And I know when you first got started with tarot, it was like your friend did this reading for you and then you became obsessed with it, but you were initially really. nervous to get a reading because of your upbringing and your religious upbringing. I grew up Catholic. My mom told me basically like tarot cards are like the devil. I was always scared of them and I've gotten a few tarot readings, but honestly I'm not. I am so like so spiritually open, but this for whatever reason, the tarot, like I've had a set of tarot cards for four years and I've never touched them. And so it's like a huge block for me, which is really interesting because. It doesn't really make sense even. If someone listening right now has a similar block and they were told very specific messaging around the tarot being, ooh, crazy, how can they release some of that and start working with it?
- Speaker #1
For me, I was very lucky that I had the introduction to the cards that I had from a friend that I felt like really understood me and how I functioned and how I worked and was able to give me. that sense of safety that I needed in order to give the cards a try. What I think is important, if you are tarot curious at all, but at the same time, a little reticent, which is normal because we have a complicated relationship societally with the idea of fortune telling. It's not just religion. It is often tarot cards are related to a lot of, you know, misogynistic thinking about women and their silly tools. And you get a lot of. And like the witchy aspects on that end, there's the persecution of the witch as well. So there's the fear of stepping into that from a I'm going to hell point of view, but there's also the fear of persecution for using that on this level, which is more societal and can be just generally sexist, I think. Men can use tarot cards. It's just that they're often associated with silly looking women in 80s makeup going, you're going to meet your husband tomorrow or you're going to die tomorrow, one of the two, which is unhelpful.
- Speaker #0
Right.
- Speaker #1
Coming to the cards not as a cult practice and instead getting interested about their imagery from an art history perspective, getting interested in, again, what they might do for you creatively, I think makes a huge difference. The first question that I ever asked the tarot was not about my life and what I should do and whether or not I should pursue one job or the other or anything like that. It was about a book I was writing. So I was already in this imaginative fictional space. And there was something really safe about going, okay, well, what's the worst that can happen? They cannot spark any idea and then nothing bad happens because it's already made up in my head anyway, right? I think drawing cards about your art is a really safe place to start because your art is made up in your head anyway. So you can treat the tarot cards as something that's made up in your head also and get release some of that pressure of like, and now I do I have to believe what they've said about my life and who I am? No, they're just they're just offering an idea on a thing that's made up anyway.
- Speaker #0
So what I got out of that is start with something small, like start with something that doesn't feel like. should I be with this person or should I not? Should I move to Texas or should I say, you know, like don't go with the huge ranging questions if you're just coming into it in general, but especially if you've had some sort of indoctrination that has made you afraid of these cards. Also like being Catholic myself, if anyone listening has that sort of upbringing, we have tarot cards. They're called prayer cards. They're called saints. You know, like I think about that a lot. And also I'm a, 100% Italian, 75% of that is Sicilian. And I know that my ancestors probably use these cards. I mean, they were very common in the origination throughout Sicily and Italy. And so for me too, that has been kind of a way in and building curiosity around it is like, maybe I'm actually getting back to my roots. Catholicism has so much mysticism in it. Any person listening, trace back your culture before. whatever prevailing religion came through there, they were engaging in some sort of practice like this. So it's almost a way of like, again, receding, returning home, honoring your lineage.
- Speaker #1
I love that point. And I love that you so beautifully and succinctly synthesized what I was trying loquaciously to say about starting small, because I think that's exactly it. And in fact, the tarot itself is kind of set up in that way. I spoke about cardamancy before. Cardamancy is a very old tradition, but the tarot itself, as you pointed out, has its roots in Italy and in France, where I happen to live. And it was a parlor game. Yeah. Cardamancy is beyond that. Cardamancy has a lot more spiritual depth to get into. But the tarot itself, as a 78 card deck, it was a game. Some bored people were playing and then decided at some point, hey, you know, it would be fun. We played this game 70 million times. What if instead we saw which person in our group has a crush on one of us? And that's where it comes from is just play. I think remembering that there's nothing wrong with playing with a doll. There's nothing wrong with getting a tarot card out and playing with it. That's how I like to come to them first as objects of play and curiosity rather than the devil's language. It's how you decide to frame them in your head.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. And I mean, there's some cards that look really negative. Like I think there's one called. the hangman that also has been a thing that has kind of kept me away because as somebody who is an eternal optimist and also somewhat impressionable like I will like to say that I'm not but if somebody says something to me I like can't stop thinking about it how do you deal with getting those cards and are they as dark as they seem
- Speaker #1
I love that you asked that because this is one of my favorite things to talk about the scary cards in the tarot are scary primarily because media has used them that way you see a lot of i think the most recent example i saw if this was one of the recent seasons of american horror story they do an episode where the character goes and gets the same tarot reading like five or six times and he gets all of the scary cards every time and it's omen of the aids crisis so truly have they tied death i think the hanged man and and the ten of swords to you a human disaster. However, what's really interesting is none of these cards are meant to be taken literally, first of all. Media takes them really literally because it creates this drama really quick. really easy, really threatening. But none of the designers of these cards intended for them to be death means you're going to die. The tower means you're going to be in a burning building. And the 10 of swords means somebody is going to stab you in the back 10 times. These are reflective of experiences that we already know. They tend to be metaphors in the way that art is never, you're never just looking at the image you're thinking about. Why would the artist have chosen to portray this? What were they feeling at the time that would express this? What does this represent in a broader term? You're thinking that way about a tarot card. So let's take death, for instance. It's easy to say the death card with its grim reaper on it means that you're going to die tomorrow. It doesn't. What it really is a symbol of is change and the march of time. Death is a part of life. Death changes everything. We all experience and encounter it, but what it really is is the end of what we know and the beginning of what we don't. Almost any tarot reader, modern, but also any of the key tarot thinkers involved in the renaissance of the tarot in the early 20th century would have the same take. It's boring for death to mean death. It's not creatively interesting. It's not spiritually interesting. It's not... useful in any meaningful way, but to go, ah, this means a change is coming and there's nothing I can do about it except allow it to bring me into the next phase of life. There's something there, there's something to reflect on, there's something to work with. And each one of those scary cards has something deeper behind it that's really about the way that we move through life. It's never about what's going to happen to us. It's about how we experience what already is happening. to us.
- Speaker #0
That makes so much sense. And that doesn't seem scary at all. Tell me this. I've heard a bunch of people be like, you have to infuse the cards with your energy. Like you have to shuffle the right way. Like tell me some like about some of like the preparations you make before you even pull a spread. Like, is that true? Do you have to infuse them with your energy? Like what happens in the before you're pulling cards phase?
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Every reader works differently and every reader needs different things in order to feel ready to come to the cards. I am not a particularly ritualistic reader myself. I'm very much, again, I like to approach them with play and curiosity. And so what's important for me in setting up for a reading isn't, I don't work with occult practices necessarily or with spirit guides. And so what's important to me in order to connect to the tarot and what i would certainly suggest for anybody who's doing it for the first time and wants to wade in and get playful with the cards is just to set an intention the same way that you would do if you were journaling or if you were doing a meditation it's about connecting with the tool and connecting with yourself and we'll all have different ways of doing that and we'll go through different cycles of what we need to connect to ourselves when i'm having a really stressful week, I have to do a little bit more work to connect to myself. So I may light a candle and, you know, speak in intention aloud or do a journaling session before I draw cards, if that's what I need to connect with myself. Sometimes, today I've done six tarot readings, so I'm feeling real, like, real connected. But to, like, kind of...
- Speaker #0
cleanse the energy a little bit, which is a metaphor more than I think it is literal. What I do before I bring a client into the room or into the proverbial Zoom room is I just shuffle through my deck and I make sure all the cards are upright. I own many tarot decks. So is this the deck that I want to be working with now? Is this the one that I feel connected with? So again, I feel like it's all about asking yourself questions. What do I need to feel ready to tap in right now? Maybe you do need to go say a prayer if that's what you need. Maybe you do need to sage your space. Maybe you don't. Maybe you do want to do some kind of ritual that works for you. Maybe you don't. But it's just the question of what do I need to feel connected?
- Speaker #1
Awesome. And so you set your intention or you ask your question and then you go to pull a spread. What is a spread?
- Speaker #0
A spread is a prompt. for the cards, essentially its structure. You can pull a one card spread, which is essentially just the question that you're asking the cards in some way. So whenever you ask the cards a question, you're writing a one card spread. More traditionally, you'll see anywhere between two card and 10 card spreads. And it's just the assignation of a card that you draw to a specific prompt. The most famous most accessible tarot spread is past, present, future. Three cards. One card to fit into the past position, one card to fit into the present position, one card to fit into the future position. The spread is the story that the cards will tell when you draw them. And it can be really useful in terms of making sense of what they're saying to you, where to focus your attention when looking at the card. A death card in the past will give really different vibes than a death card in the future. So it just gives us information.
- Speaker #1
So if someone listening is feeling blocked, let's say, and they want to pull some cards around that, can you take us through what that might look like?
- Speaker #0
So the first thing that I would do with a client who came in and was feeling creatively blocked is start with a one card pull and just ask the cards, where is this block or what is this block? And see what comes up from there. we'll have more questions. And when we have more questions, we'll pull more cards in response to them. Or we'll talk through that question and we may feel we don't need a card. We may feel we know the answer, but we'll ask those questions and then we'll decide what's the next question. Or, you know, I have my book here. It's got a tarot spread for every single card. So we might draw a card, go, ah, the block is justice. Well, let's draw the justice spread and start to unpack. what's going on here and why there's a block and how I can start to clear it based on what's coming up through this spread. Yeah. The first thing to do is just what's the block and let the tarot guide you.
- Speaker #1
Awesome. And then can you also ask it more specific questions? Like for instance, I'm putting out a new song and I've had a lot of feelings around it. Like there's one part of me that's like super excited to put it out just as the creative exercise and for the joy of it. And that's ultimately why I'm doing it. But going back to the outward thing, there's also a part of me, and I don't know that this is bad. Like I want to own my ambition, but like I want the song to be received in the world in a bigger way than my other songs have been. And I'm kind of like struggling between these two perspectives, one that is actually very internal and like self-satisfaction. And one that is wanting to be received and seen in a certain way or magnitude. What would be... something I could do, like a question I could ask to gain some clarity around that?
- Speaker #0
So first of all, yes, you can absolutely ask the tarot as many specific questions about anything as you want. You can ask the tarot yes or no questions. It takes, I think, a little bit of a relationship with the cards to really know what card means yes for you and what cards mean no for you. You can't do that straight out of the gate. I don't think, I think you need to spend some time with the cards getting to know. which individual ones feel like a yes and a no for you, but you can ask any question you want if you're open to the answer leading you somewhere unexpected. In your case, this is a really interesting exercise, and I suppose I would start with pulling a card or two about where the creative lesson is for you in this experience, because that's going to tell you a lot about where you put your focus on the external or the internal, because maybe this is about pushing it out and kind of pedal to the metal, doing whatever you can to get that song in front of as many people as possible. But maybe a card comes through, say a card like the High Priestess comes through, and that's really about... wrestling with your own relationship to your work regardless of how it's received and so I would start there what's the lesson and what can I gain through putting this out there and then I would let the card its external versus internal imagery and meaning guide how you think about that creative experience wonderful
- Speaker #1
and you've already done a few of these but every single card you go through in the book and I'm wondering if whatever three intuitively come to you, could we just go through three cards that have, from your perspective, great creative messages and some of the prompts we can use to go off of those?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, absolutely. There's one I definitely want to talk about. Yeah. And then maybe we'll draw the two others and see because I think they all have great creative messages. Of course I do. I wrote a book about how they all have great creative messages. Shocker. To come back to our conversation about scary cards, the card that jumps out at me that I actually think is one of the wisest creative cards in the deck is the Three of Swords. So in the Three of Swords, you have, it's raining in the background, you have a big red heart in the front, and you have three swords piercing the heart. It's associated in fortune telling with heartbreak. You see it come up and you go, oh man, my heart's about to get broken or I have to sit in my sad feelings and like I have to. deal with this terrible thing that either has happened or is going to happen. However, the imagery in the Three of Swords is so much more complex to me than the idea of the heart being stabbed through. First of all, there is no blood. There's no actual violence in this card. We're not seeing a hand take it and stab it through, which I think is important. Second of all, the rain and the piercing, to me, are about release. not about violence that's done, but about what is allowed to come out. I say this a lot, but it's my favorite metaphor and it's kind of gross. I think about the three of swords, like when you have a blister and you have to take a needle and like stick it through. Yeah. Let everything come out.
- Speaker #1
That can be oddly satisfying.
- Speaker #0
It's oddly satisfying and you feel so much better afterwards. And actually you're protecting yourself from bursting a blister later. Like it's important care work to do. creatively we develop those blisters we develop those kind of things that we are avoiding touching those things that are tender and we don't express ourselves about them or we don't necessarily allow ourselves to feel safe to just let out whatever we're feeling out on the page but the rain and the piercing in that card the encouragement to me is always just like hey whatever it is get it out stop trying to wait for the perfect sentence that will express exactly the ennui of existence. Just like whatever it is, get it out because that's going to clear you up creatively. Turn that tap on, you know, pierce that blister, get the stuff out and you'll feel better and you'll feel clearer and you'll feel ready to do whatever the thing you actually need to do is. And maybe you'll realize that expression, what the thing you need to do is. So that's a creative favorite for me, especially because it turns the head a little. on what that card surface level looks like it's doing.
- Speaker #1
She's shuffling, folks. I was going to say, I'd love to pull the other two and talk about that. That was so great.
- Speaker #0
Let's see. Let's see what we've got. It's like a fidget toy, too. I sit here and I just shuffle all the time. It's probably really disconcerting when I'm on non-related tarot calls when I'm sitting here.
- Speaker #1
No, it makes me think you're really graceful because I feel like shuffling isn't the easiest thing to do. And you're doing it so easily.
- Speaker #0
I don't shuffle gracefully all the time. But it's also really fun when a card like jumps out of nowhere or when you drop your deck and see what accidentally reveals itself. That can be a fun. Well, there we go. One just jumped right out. So this is interesting. This is the seven of pentacles, which is not a particularly like active or exciting card, if I'm honest, which makes it all the more interesting because part of the creative exercise is to find. what's going on there, even if it feels a little stagnant. The Seven of Pentacles, for our listeners, it depicts a figure who is standing in a field looking at a big bush that is growing golden coins. And he's just kind of standing there looking at this bush full of golden coins. He doesn't look particularly excited. He doesn't look particularly pleased, but he doesn't look mad either. He's just kind of like, huh. Here they are.
- Speaker #1
Wow. I mean, I feel like that's kind of remarkable. Maybe you should change his expression.
- Speaker #0
It's really interesting to look really closely at the faces on the card sometimes, because especially the deck that I'm working with, the Rider-Waite-Smith, which for anybody who's listening who hasn't gotten into tarot and is wondering what deck to start off with, is the deck to start off with. It's kind of the OG modern tarot deck. It's been reprinted so many times that... Some of the like cheaper versions of it muddy the design and you can't tell if people are smiling or frowning and you're like, I don't know how I'm supposed to feel. And I guess that's part of the fun. You then have to decide, all right, do I see the smile or do I see the frown? You have to figure it out yourself. But let me tell you about the seven of pentacles. So in Tarot for Creativity, I write about it as a moment of pausing and reflecting on progress made, which is something that. I don't know about you, but I find myself as a creative person and many people in my orbit, many of my clients really bad at because we're moving on to the next thing. There's always the shiny new idea or there's always the, but this could be better mentality when we're making something or when we're pursuing a creative career or any kind of creative legacy. And what that seven of pentacles does is go, hey, why don't you just take it in and see where you're at? What if you stopped for a second and went? hey, I've actually done all this stuff. That doesn't have to mean that it's finished, but cool.
- Speaker #1
Right.
- Speaker #0
It's important.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. I love it. So maybe a good exercise from that would then be writing down, like journaling about all of your creative things that you've done recently or in your whole life that you're proud of that got you to where you are right now.
- Speaker #0
Exactly. And they don't even have to be big things. You know, sometimes it's, I sent that email out to somebody that I think is interesting. I showed up to a workshop. for a new skill that I was a little bit nervous about trying out. I bought a book that I'm excited to read that will make me feel more creative. I went to the museum. Those are all great things to reflect on and encourage yourself to do more.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
All right. I'm going to take one more. See what we've got. Oh, this is a juicy one. Okay. This is the Seven of Swords. So I'm really sword heavy today, which is good because I think Especially when you're getting to know the tarot, the suit of swords. There are four suits in the tarot, listeners, plus a fifth bonus suit called the Major Arcana, which has 22 cards instead of 14, and it's gorgeous. But there are four suits, the wands, the cups, the pentacles, and the swords. And the swords tend to be the quote-unquote scary suit. swords are weapons there's a lot of drama in the swords we've seen the three of swords already and talked about that piercing of the heart the ten of swords features a figure who's been stabbed in the back ten times there's a lot of drama a lot of catastrophization which is part of the journey through that suit as well is rethinking how we are experiencing an event the high drama of our experience versus the reality of the event In this case, the Seven of Swords, it's a figure who is running away from a battlefield or a war camp with five swords in their hand and they've left two behind. In your like standard tarot dictionary, if you get like a little booklet with your tarot deck, it will probably say that the divinatory keywords associated with this card are betrayal, spying. untrustworthiness and cheating. If you go to an off the street reader and get a tarot reading and you get this card, they're going to tell you your partner's cheating on you. I think that's very unfair. I think it's very unfair. What I love about this card is it's actually a lot more ambiguous than those keywords make it out to be. First of all, this figure who's running away from the battleground with swords in their hands, to what extent... Are they making a betrayal and to who? We have no information about that whatsoever. There are no other figures in the card. They're leaving swords behind, so they're not completely leaving the side without tool at all, if that's even what they're doing. They could very well be running in the direction of the tents. Maybe they have to go around something to reach them. They could, for very good reason, have decided that the side that they're stealing these swords from, we don't even know that they're stealing them. shouldn't have these weapons in their hands for good reason. There are so many alternative stories to just flat out betrayal that are available to us if we look at this card for more than a minute. And that storytelling is being willing to ask the question, okay, but what's really going on? And what are all of the different ways that this might be experienced? And so when I see this card. The creative advice is to look at the situation, at the project that you're working on and go, okay, but what are all the angles and what assumptions am I making? What assumptions can I free myself from?
- Speaker #1
Oh, I love that. You know, as you were talking, I had this idea because what do you think about this? I kind of want to dive into the tarot not knowing anything. Because when I saw that card, I didn't think anything bad at all. I thought. wow, that person figured out what was right for them. And they left behind the dead weight. And they're not even afraid of danger because they're holding the swords by the pointy end. And they're running toward what is correct for them. I think what could be really cool, what I want to do is start doing your activities, you know, Tarot for Creativity, but like do my own interpretation first, then go into your book. and get more information.
- Speaker #0
I love everything you just said so much. And that is yes. Absolutely. I think if you're serious about getting into the tarot, if you're interested in the images, start with the images. Don't start with someone with what someone is telling you about the images, even me, even me who would love to sell some books right now. I'm not here to tell you what these have to mean to you. And there is a very precious and important part of the process where you engage with this art. To take it back to this competition I won when I was 10, I didn't read the curator's note on the painting that I wrote a story about. I looked at it and I went, huh, I wonder what would happen if this girl's friend helped her get back home to somewhere she'd run away from. Nothing to do with what was actually in the picture but I was captivated by a girl in the picture and I went... I wonder if she has a friend and I wonder if she ran away. And there we were, 10 years old. My greatest success. I'll never stop talking about it. But there is this sense of, yeah, being present with the raw image and then read the material, get curious. There is no shortage of perspectives on every tarot card. And if you're serious about becoming a professional reader or reading for yourself long term, Being able to lean on lots of different perspectives on the card is a beautiful thing. Being very well versed on many, many ways of reading the card and the traditional way of reading the card and the way that they may read it in different tarot traditions is so important. But first, you have to have a relationship with those images, and you have to know what feels true to you in those images. Then, in the same way that we work with any artistic canon, Then you can decide what you like, what you want to keep, whether or not it matters to you, what the artist's intention was, or whether or not what the painting says to you or what the story says to you is way more important than who was behind it or what expert says it's about. We have to start with those images first.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. And it's a way to trust your own intuition, too. Like, that was something I was going to ask you, but I feel like you just answered it. You can use the tarot. to start to trust yourself, which is one of the key tenets of this podcast is to give people tools to love, trust, and know themselves enough to claim their right to creativity and go after whatever it is that's on their heart. I really see the tarot the way you're presenting it as another tool to love, trust, and know yourself. And I will say back to your point about the book, I really think doing your own interpretation, then going back to Chelsea's book is the way to do it because everything you have in there is expansive. It's not limiting. There's like a million different iterations of every single card and like how you can use it. Trust your own intuition first and then allow Chelsea's wonderful breadth of knowledge to even expand you more.
- Speaker #0
Thank you. That's so kind. I'm touched. Yeah. What a beautiful thing to say.
- Speaker #1
Hey, creative cutie. I want to tell you about a podcast I love called Well Adjusting on the Edit Audio Network. The show is hosted by award-winning actors. comedian, and author Robin Hopkins. Join Robin as she speaks to real people about the real questions that many of us face, from how to find work-life balance to dealing with generational money trauma, uh-oh, I need that one, to grief, or even finding common ground with family across the political divide. I think everybody in the United States of America needs that episode. Well, adjusting isn't afraid to get personal or honest about the tough stuff in life. Think less therapist couch and NPR and more chatting through a problem with a friend over cocktails. Whether you're looking for advice on how to manage stress, set some boundaries, or just a reminder that we're all figuring it out one day at a time. Well, adjusting is for you. And let me just say, I know Robin personally. She is somebody you want to talk to, you want to trust, you want to come back to time after time. Love her. We're also going to be doing each other's shows coming up. So you want to check out this show. Follow Well Adjusting on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, now back to the show. You know, you mentioned your sweet 10-year-old self. One question I had is, how can we use tarot to remember the voice of our inner child? Like, how can we use tarot to reconnect with our younger selves?
- Speaker #0
The first thing I would do Again, similarly to the block question, is just ask the cards. What's a message from 10-year-old me, 12-year-old me, 15-year-old me? What can I reflect on that would bring them joy or would excite them or would make them curious? That's a great way to do it. We talked about tarot spreads. I love tarot spreads. Before Tarot for Creativity, I wrote a book about using a tarot spread every week. And I love them. But... One of my favorite ways to use the tarot is just to interview whatever the subject I'm thinking about is. Often that's me talking directly to my creativity, but it works very well with the shadow self. It works very well with the inner child. Using the tarot as a medium to connect to something that you're feeling disconnected to. What a beautiful thing to do. So ask it. Hey, tarot, help me receive a message from... my inner child or even this sounds like a chat GPT prompt, but tell the tarot, you're my inner child right now. Give me a message. You know, you can do that. You can code and prompt your deck in a way that works for you and see what comes up. The other suggestion I would make is to work with a deck that brings you a lot of joy that your inner child would have loved. So I recommended the Rider-Waite-Smith as a first time tarot deck. But if you what you really want to do, for instance, is connect to your inner child, something like Chronicles, the cat tarot can be beautiful because it's playful and sweet. I've got a really, really stunning deck called the Every Little Thing Tarot by Callie Little and Morris Seal. And it's collage art. There's a lot of animals in there. And it's there's a little bit of like Lisa Frank energy.
- Speaker #1
Oh, yes.
- Speaker #0
thing really fun. I think there might even be an actual Lisa Frank tarot. There's certainly like Buffy the Vampire tarot, etc. So like finding a deck that connects you to that part of yourself. Beautiful.
- Speaker #1
So fun. Is there any closing message or thought you want to leave the creative listener with about tarot, creativity, spirituality, anything?
- Speaker #0
I would love to draw us a card. That would be amazing.
- Speaker #1
I was hoping you would do that.
- Speaker #0
There are so many things I would like to leave. I think most of my manifesto on what it means to live a creative life can certainly be found within the pages of Tarot for Creativity. The most important thing, if you choose to work with that book, if you choose to work with a tarot for me, is to approach everything with play and curiosity and as little pressure on yourself to perform as possible. and as much pressure on yourself to engage for the love of it as possible. I think that's, we misattribute the importance of creativity to a finished creative project when really the point is the getting there. So this is beautiful. This is the Four of Swords. So once again, the swords are really present here in this conversation today, which is cool. In the Four of Swords, we have a sleeping soldier. who's retreated to a church sanctuary for a nap. And there's some argument in the tarot community about whether or not this is a sleeping soldier or an effigy in a tomb, a crypt. I fall on the sleeping soldier side. The head on the pillow, if it weren't for the pillow, I might believe that it's a tomb. But the head on the pillow to me is, it doesn't look like it's cast in marble. But that card is about for me and the way that I write about it in the book is about catching moments of rest and retreat. Coming back to that receding that we began with at the beginning of this podcast, there are many cards about rest in the tarot, but this card is about resting amidst everything. It's about snatching those moments to touch base with the self. You don't have to go on some lengthy, expensive creative retreat. You don't have to invest in every course and commit to every course that comes your way. You can snatch moments with your creativity and you can find that retreat in just the momentary touch-in of engaging with work that matters to you, whether it's yours or someone else's. Touching base, coming home to that creativity in the moments of your life instead of... assuming that one day you'll have all the time in the world to do all of the creative things I think is the most important message of that card
- Speaker #1
Chelsea thank you so much for bringing us into your world today I really feel like we got to dive a little bit into your creative life and brain and soul and spirit and I just appreciate you sharing it with us and making the tarot seem and feel fun and accessible this is the first time I felt that so thank you you
- Speaker #0
Thank you very much because that's exactly how I want people to feel, exactly that way. So I'm touched and I'm really honored. And thank you so much for all of your thoughtful questions.
- Speaker #1
Oh, my honor. Yeah, no, it really, like, I feel excited. I can't wait to actually dive into the deck because, I don't know, I think I always felt like, well, I don't want something to just tell me what to do. I want to tell me what to do. But now that I know I'm interpreting it, I feel empowered.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. And do you know what? I will say a final thing.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
You are always welcome to reject what a card is telling you. That's important also. So if you draw a card and you go, that's not right, that's your intuition telling you something important as well. And actually, that's the tarot offering you an answer. It's showing you what's wrong. And sometimes that's the message that we need. There's never a time when the tarot knows better than you. It may express things you are not ready to grapple with, but it's only expressing those because you already know it. There's never a time when it knows more or better than you. There's only ever a time when it's revealing things to you so that you can work with more information. It's all information.
- Speaker #1
Wow. And with that, go read Tarot and claim your creative power, my babes. Thank you, Chelsea. Really appreciate you being here. Thank you for listening. And thanks to my guest, Chelsea Pippin. For more info on Chelsea, follow her at PIPcards. tarot and visit her website tarotforcreativity.com you can get a copy of tarot for creativity there or wherever good books are found unleash your inner creative is hosted and executive produced by me lauren lagrasso produced by rachel fulton with theme music by liz full again thank you my creative cutie for listening if you like what you heard today remember to rate review and follow the show on apple podcast spotify or wherever you get your podcasts share the show with a friend and post about it on social media Tag me at Lauren LaGrasso and at Unleash Your Inner Creative, and I will repost to share my gratitude. Also tag Chelsea at PipCardsTarot so she can share as well. Remember to stream my song, Genie in a Bottle, on Spotify and Apple Music and follow me there too. It makes a huge difference. And my wish for you this week is that you incorporate new tools and practices that can help you unlock more creative potential. Approach your creative endeavors with a sense of play, curiosity, and trust in your own. own intuition. I love you and I believe in you. Talk with you next week.
