A Daily Divination Practice
If you don’t have a daily divination practice, you’re welcome to borrow mine.
BRIEF PROMO NOTE: I will be teaching a 3 week online Tarot intensive through Wyoming Valley PA CUUPS starting Monday, July 7th, 2025. Please consult their events calendar for more info!
A lot of witches include a tarot pull in their daily practice. I've talked a lot about the idea of daily devotional practice, its pleasures and pitfalls. You can read the blog post and listen to the pod. The basic thing to remember about daily devotional practice is that the key to doing it and keeping it up is to be realistic about what you can and can't do, and give up the fantasy you might have about what your practice ought to look like. Do what works and do it as consistently as you can, and try not to get too judgey about it. Let the work do the work.
Tarot pulls are great for this because the actual operation is incredibly simple: you shuffle the deck, you pull a card, you interpret its meaning. There's no need to spend a lot of time preparing a space, or preparing yourself. The acts of shuffling and pulling supply all the routine you need to create a sense of ritual to it. And it is a testament to the power of the symbolism of tarot that a card, once pulled, can supply enough meaning all on its own that its wisdom is capable of infusing an entire day.
You can certainly add more to the operation if you want to. There are no rules, really, other than than what you devise. Does reading reversed cards make you uncomfortable? You can decide not to read them if you like. Want to do an elaborate mental warm up that requires a combo of deep breathing and hand motions? Well, go ahead. There's really nothing stopping you. it's this personalization of what you do that ends up making what appears to be a simple, universal practice, into something with a lot of flair baked into it.
Over the years of doing daily devotional practice with a tarot pull often incorporated into it, I've developed my own practice that serves me well. Its only claim to being special is that it works and it's mine. It's not better or worse than any other practice, nor is it terribly novel or uniquely powerful. But it doesn't need to be any of those things. The only reason you need to have for engaging in a daily Tarot practice is that you want to do it. And the only requirement for what it needs to look like is that it is what you want to do.
Alythia's Daily Tarot Pull:
Step 1: Shuffle the deck. If you are using a riffle shuffle (the kind of shuffle where you take the two halves of the deck and interleave them by releasing them from the thumbs so that they fall to the table in a staggered pattern) a 78 card deck needs to be shuffled a minimum of seven times to be fully randomized. So a full shuffle requires seven riffle shuffles. I usually weave into the shuffling a verbal query, asked three times, during the 2nd, 4th and 6th times I shuffle the deck. The query is: "What do I need to know about this day?" Also, to randomize the reversals, on the 4th shuffle I'll take one of the two halves of the deck (usually the one in my right hand) and I'll rotate it a half turn, changing the direction of half the cards with that gesture.
Step 2: Pull the card(s). Here's where my natural tendency to make simple things more complicated shows up. I pull one card. If that card is right side up, that's the end of it. Proceed to step 3. But if it shows up reversed, I draw a second card. If that second card shows up right side up, that's the end of it. On to step 3. If that second card also shows up reversed, then I turn them both right side up, and proceed to step 3 and read them that way.
I need to explain all of that mess, I suppose. People have curious ideas about reading reversed cards. I suppose I am no exception. Some readers won't read reversals. Some do. My attitude about reversals is that if the person who authored the deck intends for reversals to be acknowledged and read, then i read them. There are some Tarot deck creators who have explicitly said they don't want their deck to be read reversed, and in that instance I respect the wishes of the author.
Assuming I am using a deck that incorporates reversals, my thought process is that a reversal is a call to remedy. A reversal is asking to be rectified. And drawing that second card is me asking what I need to do to rectify the first reversed card. If the second card shows up reversed, then something different is going on. I am of the belief that if the entirety of a reading is comprised of reversed cards, what is happening is that the deck is shouting at you to get your attention. It's not that every card's energy really is reversed, but rather that the deck is trying to shock you into really looking hard at every card. So when it happens, you "rectify" the cards, and turn them right side up, and read them together, understanding that the message contains some urgency. Thus, if both cards in my daily pull show up reversed, I rectify them.
Step 3: Read/Interpret the cards: This is the "easy to say, not so easy to do" part of the process. I've had a relationship with the Tarot since I was 14 years old, and spent more than half of those years as a professional reader and a teacher. So at this point, interpretation for me is somewhat reflexive. As someone who teaches, I recognize that is not the way most people describe their process of interpreting Tarot cards. And despite my experience, I have to confess that it's not always easy to settle on meaning, even when you're only dealing with one or two cards. That's part of what has kept Tarot so relevant for almost 800 years -- there is so much meaning to be mined, and you never quite reach the bottom of it all. Decades into my tarot journey and I am still discovering layers of meaning in each of the cards.
Do not hesitate to consult books if you need to. I will often consult any handbook provided with the deck I'm using, and I keep a copy of Rachel Pollack''s Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom by my altar for when I am really in need.
It's important as you're interpreting the cards, that you remember the question you're looking to answer with them, which is the question you asked during the shuffle. What do you need to know about this day? The first card provides the answer: Look for this energy during the day. If it's reversed, that admonition is a warning, and the second card is there to indicate what energy needs to be brought to bear to rectify (or put right) the energy that is stalled or reversed or somehow out of tune. If the cards have been artificially "rectified" (turned right side up because both were reversed), then you still read them together, with the second card describing the modification of the first, and pinpointing therefore not just the energy that will be present, but what you might do to respond to what the Unverse is laying down in that first card.
The point here isn't to tell you what to do during the day, but rather point out what you need to be on the lookout for so that you are ready to respond. Forewarned, as the saying goes, is forearmed. But that's not the end of it.
Step 4: Record the reading. I keep a pen and a notebook next to my altar and record each reading. There's no particular magic in using pen and paper other than the fact that pulling out your phone or a tablet could lead to you getting derailed from the energetics you're working with in the context of the reading process. Plus for me there's just a vibe there from handwriting it down on an empty page that appeals to me.
What do I write down? I top the page with the date, and I record the name of the deck I read with, the first card I pulled, the second card I pulled (which I set with a null sign if I only picked one), and if i had both come up reversed I will make the notation "Both cards reversed and therefore rectified." Then I'll put a section titled "message" that will be where I make notes based on my interpretation of the cards I pulled. Usually that message is only two to three sentences long.
Writing it down serves two functions -- it allows you to go back at the end of the day and see what transpired. Maybe the card's energy manifested in a way you didn't anticipate. It also allows you to track if cards keep showing up. Today, for instance, a card showed up for me in my daily pull that had recently appeared about a week ago. The record allows me to go back to that day and see if there are any other connections or similarities I might want to look out for. The record also allows you to see progress you've made.
And the thing is, daily practices, which include these kinds of divination practices, do help you make progress. If you've ready my other work on daily practices and devotionals, you know that the the point of daily practice is to stack small experiences every day one upon the other. You might not see how the small thing you're doing each day will help you learn and grow until you've been doing it awhile. Only then can you look back and marvel at how much you've learned, how much easier interpreting the cards comes to you, and how much has been added to your life as a result of small daily effort.
I love doing a daily tarot pull, and if you don't have a method that you like, you're welcome to try mine.
Blessed be, witches.