24 Scene
INTERPRETING THE TAROT
AJ Mundane talks to Jaq Bayles about his mission to educate people on how an ancient art can be used to help improve mental health ) Coming from a religious background, AJ
Mundane was taught that tarot cards were the devil’s work, but the Cardiff-based mental health support worker has found that the ancient interpretive tool can play a powerful role in aiding people’s wellbeing and selfunderstanding. After some five years of studying the tarot, he is currently in the process of creating his own deck of cards to help people better analyse and understand their feelings, having first had to teach himself how to draw and attended two courses run by Lindsay Mack, a tutor who is on a mission to ‘rewild’ tarot. Her Tarot for the Wild Soul is described as “a radical reinterpretation of the tarot as a tool for presence and evolution, one that can assist us in differentiating the noise of our mind from the truth of our soul”. AJ says: “Lindsay’s course provided a jumping off point for me to start formulating my own ideas, because of her radical undoing of traditional tarot teachings. “I was brought up in an orthodox religious cult; a very religious environment. A load of trauma came with that. When you’re forced to see the world through a particular lens it can be so detrimental to mental health. I was taught that tarot cards were demonic and would bring chaos and destruction, but I have found the opposite.” He explains that, for centuries, people have been conditioned to look at tarot as a predictive tool, but his focus is to use it as a way of analysing feelings to gain acceptance of them. “When used solely for prediction tarot
intensifies our anxieties because we are constantly screening for threat – we are conditioned for fight or flight, but there’s not a function for that any more. People come to the tarot because they are trying to predict what will come next. If you use it more as a tool for analysis of your own feelings you can get acceptance of that. It’s less of a predictive tool and more of a tool for surrender. “[It’s about saying] this is what’s here, how do I feel about that? Can I just bow to that moment, even if that feeling is wanting to know more?” But traditional cards mainly do not reflect current society, which is what led AJ to want to create an entirely new style, throwing away the classic depictions of gender, patriarchy and white supremacy. Over time, through working on the courses and with other people, he started to see patterns that “defy the traditional interpretation of the cards”. He gives an example of one card he’s reworked and how a modern, mindful interpretation can operate: “If we were to take the Three of Swords, that’s quite a striking image. It’s a known card that has quite a bit of an old-school tattoo design – a heart with three swords plunged into it. In traditional teachings it means heartbreak, but when working with the Three of Swords it’s about air – the element – and that’s dealing with anything to do with thought processes. “This card would show up in my life but it would never show up for me as heartbreak, so that said there had to be a more universal
message. Because it’s air, we are dealing with the mind and how we allow our thoughts to pierce the mind to a certain extent. We go through a certain trauma or traumatic incident and create a mental story that lives in the mind and does not allow us to release the emotion that came with the story initially. “The invitation that’s being given [by the cards is] to allow yourself to let go of something you are hanging on to so a stillness can be found. That’s a very mindful thing to do. It’s a much more broad human experience than just ‘you are heartbroken right now’. That may be the case, but it’s more because you are hanging on to that story. The card is trying to point you to the transientness of emotions. So, if you let go of that story can you find stillness?” In his interpretation of that particular card, the heart is replaced by clouds and rain, and swords are depicted falling from a brain, pointing to the idea that “it is time to let go and be the observer”. AJ has a particular focus on wanting to help those in the LGBTQ+ community. “I have lots of LGBTQ+ experience as was reading for all my friends, all manner of genders and sexuality. But the cards can be quite heteronormative and gendered and I know a lot of people who are interested but don’t resonate with traditional readings.” When ready, he hopes his deck will be released with coloured pencils, as one of the goals is to get people to colour it in, turning the genderneutral characters he has created into whatever
