Which Deity Wants To Work With Me? Discerning deities with Tarot Divination

Introduction

This will be a relatively short article about how to discover the identity of some sort of deity using tarot divination.

This is a question which usually gets asked by Wiccans and other pagans who work in some way with multiple gods or find their “patron deity”. It can also be used by Western Esotericists (e.g. Golden Dawn initiates) to work out which godform they ought to be assuming for their theurgical aims or by astrologers for birthtime rectification (by discerning the lunar mansions and then repeating the method in an adapted way for the exact degree).

Method

Step 1: List all possible gods

For clarity, I will use the example of a GD initiate discerning Egyptian gods.

The first thing you must know is all of the possible deities/entities which might “want to contact you”. This can take a lot of research but is well worth the effort.

Common Egyptian deities are; Ra, Isis, Apophis, Osiris (IAO) Horus the Younger and Horus the Elder, Nephyths, Set, Apu, Tum, Tehuti (Hermes), Hathor, etc…

Let’s say that our full list is: Maat, Hermes, Horus, Ra, Set, Nephyths, Isis, Osiris.

So now we have our list, we move on to step 2.

Step 2: Decide which card(s) represent which god(s)

The next steps is to decide what represents what.

This is not always an easy task but the process can be helped by considering correspondences. Thing a corresponds to thing b when there is some king of correct analogy, agreement, proportion or conformity between the two things. Importantly, a correspondence is not a connotation causation or mental connection. Nor does it need to be factually accurate. For example, The GD initiate can profit from the study of E.A.W Budge’s books on Ancient Egypt despite their falling out of favour with scholars.

Ra may correspond to Kether, which in tarot terms would be the Aces. Set may correspond to Mars which would be cards such as The Tower, The Emperor (Aries is ruled by Mars), the 3 of Disks (Mars in Capricorn) etc.

In our example, the full list of correspondences might be: Maat (Libra/Justice), Hermes (Magician/Mercury), Horus (Sun/Tiphareth), Ra (Kether/Aces), Set (Mars/Aries), Nephyths (Queen of Pentacles), Isis (Queen of Cups), Osiris (King of Pentacles). Geb (Earth suit and World card).

I can hear people carping over these correspondences but don’t take it too seriously. It’s an example.

Once you have decided how you will find each of your deities, select your cards for the reading and move on to step 3.

Step 3: Exclude deities

Now you want to analyze the cards for their correspondences and exclude all the deities which appeared in the reading.

So for example, you pull a 3x3 tableau of

Top row: Queen of Swords, King of Pentacles, 3 of Disks

Middle row: Justice, Ace of Cups, Magician

Bottom row: 3 of Swords, Devil, World.

We thus have Osiris, Thoth, Geb, Set, Ra and Maat in the cards.

And we are left with: Isis, Horus and Nephthys.

We may then narrow down further or not depending on our intuition.

Step 4: Ask questions about the remaining god(s)

Once you have your narrowed down list (which may be more than one deity), inquire positively about this god or set of gods, to gain further details. To do this, you can either use a custom spread about the deity or a shadow work spread which tells you what would be best for you to work on for spiritual purposes. For example, four cards about your spiritual growth which show; conscious competence (you’re good at this), unconscious competence (you’ve mastered this), conscious incompetence (you know you need to work on this and are probably already doing so), unconscious incompetence (you’re not really aware of this or have been avoiding the issue). You would then choose a deity which corresponded to your area of incompetence.

You migh now wonder “why not just do a shadow work spread from the start?” Basically, to mitigate bias from the lower mind.