This post is part of a 2025 series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach founded in 2018. Sona Srivastava, a 2025 Bedford/Saint-Martin’s WIS Fellow, is a writer and translator as well as a writing tutor at Ashoka University in Sonepat, India. Learn more below and in posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.”
I turned to the art of divining in general, and the tarot specifically, in the unsurest of times. The pandemic had mastered its grip across the world, and we had been reminded of the precarity of our lives. Because life was meant to go on - and did - we resorted to ways of keeping ourselves productively occupied.
I had a lot to keep myself occupied with - I had just enrolled in an MPhil programme, and had begun working as an education specialist at an educational start-up. My professional role warranted that I necessarily churn out content for English language learners every day. The role was tiring, and very soon, wilted my curiosity. Moreover, the tense times unfurled into a disconnect that was too immense to fathom. I needed, what was in vogue on the internet at that point, “grounding” - to reconnect with my creative self, to make sense of the confusion, to channel curiosity again.
The “practice” was simple - a host of online tutorials aided in demystifying the process, and with a flourish or two of the cards from the deck, I had come around to reading them. However, this process of reading tarot cards differs from the traditional practice of reading. As the “it” phenomenon associated with it suggests, it is meant to be more grounded, more zoomed into one’s emotions, thereby prompting one to be more attentive - not only to the surroundings but also to one’s own being. This attentiveness reaches its peak as curiosity - the highest form of attention.
Each day would begin with a pull from the deck, and I would tune in, making a mental note, observing and noticing patterns as my choral routine inched towards the daily close. I was able to shake off inertia, and amble my way through my commitments.
In an introductory book on tarot, Erin Regulski writes that “the Tarot is most useful at helping us see more clearly where we are right now” (9). They depart from the understanding that Tarot helps one to “predict” the future. Rather, the emphasis is on seeing “where we might be headed if we don’t make a change”, and on considering the deck as our non-judgemental friend, one who “always accepts you exactly as you are” (9). Regulski’s words influenced my understanding, and by the time I transitioned to my current role as a writing instructor, I had adopted this mystical practice as an active pedagogy in my class - with the caveat that this was to be understood as a strictly creative exercise with no aspirations of hoping to foretell the future (I am critical of any pseudo-religious or pseudo-science claims attached to tarot).
How does one “read” a class through tarot? While tarot helped me “read” and re-orient myself creatively, I was, initially, a modicum unsure of adapting the practice in class. These were a bunch of fresh first-year students, and I did not impress upon them an art that risked funding the pseudo-science currency. To this end, I built upon the triad of “Do-Delve-Reflect” - a method introduced by Maggie Vlietstra and Nadia Kalman from Words Without Borders. The malleable triad intertwined with the tarot reading proved to be a useful methodology in gaining the students’ attention.
Since tarot was relatively new, especially to be used in a formal class setting, it inaugurated an easy flow of conversations fuelled by curiosity as well as skepticism. A question from one of the students that stands out in particular related to the role of reading their body through the emotions - and one that I found extremely relevant considering that my teaching would not attain its goal if the students were feeling out of their bodies. But did that mean we cancel classes? No! We began our classes with a tarot exercise. After a preliminary introduction to tarot, I would ask my students to think of scholarly alternatives to the images on the card.
For a week, we worked on illustrating our collective deck, listening to our emotions and sitting with them through the class - we worked through the triangulated paradigm - “do-delve-reflect”, delving into our emotions, and reflecting on them through the class - assessing our lessons by being and aligning with our bodies.
As a sampler, here are two examples of tarot cards from my class:
Changed Sword to Pen;
The Suit of Swords Tarot card meanings are associated with action, change, force, power, oppression, ambition, courage, and conflict. Action can be constructive and/or destructive. The negative aspects of the Suit of Swords include anger, guilt, harsh judgement, a lack of compassion, and verbal and mental abuse.
We changed the sword for a pen. Through this change, we reflected on the power of the pen - the pen as a sword for a scholar, capable not only of external changes but also changes within. This card proved particularly useful when students seemed a bit hesitant in expressing their thoughts through writing. Working as a prompt, the students got around to embracing free-writing with much more ease.
Changed the Woman with the Lion to a Table of Books
The Strength card in tarot is usually associated with nonviolence, self-compassion, healing, patience, gentleness, sensitivity, acceptance, responsibility, and safety. It signifies the ability to overcome challenges and usually indicates an inward, introspective turn to locate power within.
By tweaking the image to a table of books, the students were encouraged to think of reading certain books as a challenge or the hurdles they overcame to access education or inconveniences encountered in class. This, again, emerged as an interesting exercise for students to introspect and reflect on their own journeys - one that continues to fuel their thirst for knowledge.
Tarot, thus, emerged as a useful pedagogical tool to spark curiosity and thinking in students. With a fair caveat, such alternative tools of pedagogy work wonders in classrooms where the students may initially seem indifferent or hesitant. It only takes a card to get the conversation going!
References
Regulski, Erin. Find Your Power: Tarot. Godsfield, 2023.
The theme for WIS ‘26, artifact, invites colleagues to connect writing, art, and facts. Special features include a makerspace, an Artifact Exchange, and an opportunity to contribute to a scholarly publication. Proposals as well as applications for Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellows are due 10/24; undergraduate contributions are due 11/21. Registration opens in November, and the event itself takes place onsite and online January 29th and 30th, 2026.
