Angel cards are a perfect way to build a relationship with your guardian angel and spirit guides. Most angel card decks contain a series of single, positive messages or simple, optimistic phrases. Interpreting them is mainly a matter of practice. My first advice with using any sort of divination pack would be 'pack away the instruction book!' Real clairvoyants and psychics work from instinct in theory, it would be possible to use beer mats, but they're nothing like as nice to shuffle!
The angel cards act as positive qualities that can help you on your path. There are many angels that can come to you. For example the Angel of Integrity, Angel of Freedom or the Angel of Humour
The Angel Cards are a set of 52 delightfully illustrated cards, each depicting a unique angelic quality with a word and a picture. They offer doorways to a realm of spiritual awareness which can encourage us to greater wholeness in our lives.
The Angel Cards are much more than just cards. They are called Angel Cards because they represent pure essences. Meditating on them helps you expand your sensitivity to inner resources and uncover a deeper understanding of personal issues. The Angel Cards are qualities of aliveness that can assist and encourage an experience of life at a deeper level.
Each playfully illustrated keyword helps you focus on a particular aspect of your inner life. The more you think about the quality reflected by the word and picture on the card, the more you will find this quality echoing in your life.
Angel Cards can be used to support you in many different ways. Choose an Angel on your birthday to overlight your new year, or other special occasions. Select a weekly or daily Angel to bring inspiration to work, school, an activity or a relationship. Pick an Angel with a friend or relative you would like deeper communication with. Discover your own unique connection to the Angels.
Most angel card decks contain a series of single, positive messages or simple, optimistic phrases. Interpreting them is mainly a matter of practice. My first advice with using any sort of divination pack would be ‘pack away the instruction book!’ Real clairvoyants and psychics work from instinct – in theory, it would be possible to use beer mats, but they’re nothing like as nice to shuffle!
Preparing to use angel cards
the pack if you really have to!’ Make yourself comfortable with shuffling and laying the cards out on the table – get a real feel of your cards. Spend a little time playing with them – doing nothing in particular!
Then you’ll want to cleanse your angel cards before you start. It doesn’t matter what words you use but its fun to do something! Saying a Prayer may help you work with the higher realms, and you may want to dedicate their use to your reading to your own special God or Goddess.
Oils and scents
Drawing the pack through the smoke of a smudge stick (sage for purification), or holding the pack over scented incense , would be the traditional method of preparing your angel cards. I like to work with Frankincense (a high ‘vibrational’ oil which is perfect for connecting to the angelic realms). Two or three drops of oil, in an oil burner is a lovely way to create the perfect atmosphere for your reading.
Candles
Burning candles whilst you do your spiritual work, isn’t just some new age claptrap. Candles have been used for centuries in rituals and magic. Lighting your candle signifies bringing in ‘the light’, or the higher realms. You can blow out your candle at the end of the session to draw your reading to a close.
Safekeeping
It’s important to keep your angel cards in a special place. The small, single word cards are lovely in an open bowl – even my children pick a card every day as I do this at home. My sister keeps her angel cards in a beautiful gold bowl that she stands next to the telephone...useful for those moments you are waiting for those other messages to come through!
The larger angel cards deserve looking after. You can wrap you angel cards in a piece of silk or black velvet. If you’re not clever with a needle and thread, you can easily buy lovely little drawstring pouches . If you want to keep your cards free from the energy of others, then you can pack them safely in a little wooden box after each use.
Working with Spreads
What’s a spread? Usually, cards are laid out in spreads (in patterns on the table). Although you will find lots of different ‘patterns’ in books, there is no right or wrong way to do this and you can easily make up your own. With a spread, each angel card represents a question or part of an answer – the lay out of the angel cards helps you to remember which angel card is for which question!
Three Card Spread
A three angel card spread is a simple way to start. Lay your angel cards out in a line. The first angel card signifies your Past (place it furthest away from you), the middle card signifies your present (place the card in the middle) and the third card represents your future.
A Six Card Spread
Lay out angel cards as above. Place a second row of cards alongside the first. Each of these second cards can be used to expand on the first card...it might be the card you use to ‘explain’ why things happened the way they did in the past, how they are developing in the present, and as a guide to how to work out the future!
Specific Questions
Most people want to know about either love, money or work situations, and you can easily work with a single query. As with tarot cards, it is better to use at least three cards – but go ahead and use as many as you want to answer your query. You could make up your own shape spreads with each set of cards indicating certain questions. Cards in the shape of a heart might be used to answer queries about love and so on.
How to read the cards
Always follow your instincts first. Each card has many meanings and even those which are not included in the booklet or leaflet of the pack. If you pick a card which says LOVE for example and you feel that the person needs to GIVE love then say so. If you feel the card means that their angel or guide is SENDING love, then say that. If you feel more comfortable, say what you think the card means, wait for a reaction (see if it makes sense), then check the meaning in your reference – work quickly and do not spend too long worrying about getting it wrong.
Tarot Cards
The origins of Tarot are somewhat obscure. the most common theories are Egypt - Thoth and the connection to the ancient mystery school teachings. The most common myth is that it was brought to Europe by the Gypsies.
Tarot as we know it today is a collection of images and symbols from a wide variety of cultures, from the ancient Greeks and Romans to the prehistoric Norse peoples, from the ancient religions of India and Egypt to the medieval courts of Italy and France. The first clear reference that we have to Tarot cards is from a sermon that was collected with many others about 1500 in Italy found in the Steele Manuscript. The sermon is thought to date from about 1450 to 1470 and is a diatribe against games of chance. It gives a detailed description of the Tarot trumps, not only numbering them but naming them as well.
The Tarot is a deck of cards that originated over 500 years ago in northern Italy. Although the Tarot was first used in a game called Triumphs, it was quickly adopted as a tool for divination, and popularized by occult societies such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The early Tarot symbolism was deeply rooted in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, but over the centuries it has grown to incorporate everything from Astrology and Kabbalah to Runes (which predate the Tarot by 1000 years) and the I Ching (which predates the Tarot by 2500 years). Today, the Tarot is far and away the most popular tool for spiritual introspection in the West. For more information, read our Introduction to Tarot Readings. If you would like to learn more about the Tarot, check out our store.
The tarot is a set of cards used in fortune-telling. A few years ago, tarot cards would have conjured up images of Gypsies, who didn't begin using tarot cards until the 20th century. Today, the cards are popular among occultists and New Agers in all walks of life. According to Grillot de Givry (1971):
The tarot is one of the most wonderful of human inventions. Despite all the outcries of philosophers, this pack of pictures, in which destiny is reflected as in a mirror with multiple facets, remains so vital and exercises so irresistible an attraction on imaginative minds that it is hardly possible that austere critics who speak in the name of an exact but uninteresting logic should ever succeed in abolishing its employment.
The modern tarot deck has been traced back to 15th-century Italy and a trick-taking game called "triumphs" (tarots in French; Decker 1996). The traditional tarot deck consists of two sets of cards, one having 22 pictures such as the Fool, the Devil, Temperance, the Hermit, the Sun, the Lovers, the Hanged Man, and Death. The other set has 56 cards with kings (or lords), queens (or ladies), knights, and knaves (pages or servants) of sticks (or wands, cudgels or batons) , swords, cups and coins.
There are many different tarot decks used in cartomancy. The meanings of the figures and numbers on tarot cards vary greatly among tarot readers and advocates, many of whom find connections between tarot and cabala, astrology, I Ching, ancient Egypt, and various other occult and mystical notions.
The oldest playing cards date back to 10th-century China, but the four suits of tarot and modern playing cards probably originated with a 14th-century Muslim deck (Decker). According to de Givry, in the modern 52-card deck of ordinary playing cards, sticks or wands = clubs (and announce news); swords = spades (and presage unhappiness and death); cups = hearts (and presage happiness); coins = diamonds (and presage money). According to Ronald Decker, the Muslim sticks represented polo sticks. As Europeans were not yet familiar with polo, they changed the suit of sticks to that of wands, cudgels, or batons.
Tarot cards are usually read by a fortune-teller, though in these days of New Age Enterprise, anyone can buy a deck with instructions on how to discover your real self and actualize your true potential. Why anyone's fate would be mysteriously contained in playing cards is a mystery; although, sympathetic magic seems to play a role.
There is a romantic irresistibility to the notion of shuffling the cards and casting one's fate, to putting one's cards on the table for all to see, to drawing into the unknown, to having one's life laid out and explained by strangers who have the gift of clairvoyance, to gamble on the future, and so on. The idea of staring at a picture card and letting it reveal the future or mirror the soul is not one that austere critics are likely to find tantalizing, but the thought of such visionary mysticism obviously has its attraction. Centuries of scientific advancement and learning have not diminished the popularity of occult guidance systems such as the tarot, Ouija boards, astrology, I Ching, palmistry, iridology, reflexology, ink blots, graphology, enneagrams, crystal balls, tea leaves, and the like.