6 minute read
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.
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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 they want. It’s his way of trying to overthrow the accepted white supremacy represented by the cards. “The traditional Emperor is an old white guy on a throne – it speaks to the time it was invented. All that needs to go. It might have been the visual representation at the time, but not now. We all have a right to power and regency. It’s the birth of you. I’m trying to offer a reclamation of that.
“It’s serious mental health work. There’s trauma work in it. If you are coming to ritualistic theory there’s a genuine want to understand yourself. It’s not a gimmick – it’s a journey that I have gone through myself and would like to share and facilitate.”
AJ has “been in contact with the tarot since I was about 18 but it was a guilty relationship”. He says it took his last long-term relationship to change that as he still carried religious guilt and “had very heteronormative values” due to the “insidious” nature of organised religions that condemn the act of homosexuality, “but they tell you god [still] has plans for you, all genders, sexuality, colours”. That relationship was the first time he had pursued a nonheteronormative route.
As to the origins of wanting to create his own deck, it was quite a journey. He had tried to embark on the project with two friends at different times, but both times it fell through. However, the calling was strong.
“I do communicate with the spirit, the divine,” he says, adding that such a communication can also be seen as akin to a Jungian place of collective consciousness. “One day I was out walking the dog, bummed out that the project had fallen through, and I had this message to do it myself.
“You can kind of argue with the spirit and I was like: ‘But I can’t fucking draw’. This was only about two months ago but for it to have happened so quickly…” The theme that goes with the deck is Mystical Self Help, and AJ says he is “mid-journey” at the moment.
“I have drawn 14 cards and have five more designs. They come to me in waves. Every time I try to push it doesn’t work.”
But he has set himself a goal to complete his deck by the end of the year – that’s 78 cards in all. No mean undertaking for someone who, just a few months ago, didn’t believe he had the artistic ability to go it alone.
