Familiars: A Tarot Spread to Connect with Your Intuitive Allies

We are heading towards the deep valley of Samhain and I come to you again with what is becoming an annual tradition of a new tarot spread for the season. Whether studying the celestial energy of the season, connecting with ancestors or exploring the themes of reconciliation, transformation, and shadow work, Samhain is a rich time for practicing divination, in part, because the veil between the worlds is thin and the opportunity to connect with ancestors, descendants, and spirits alike are many.

For this year's Samhain celebrations I wanted to offer a tarot spread that helps us connect with the tradition of the witch's familiar. The following tarot spread helps those of you who want to connect with the magickal current of familiar relationships to do just that. If you have an established familiar relationship, this tarot spread can be one way of communicating with your familiar. If you are calling a familiar to you, the spread can be a casting of a spell, helping you call a familiar to you. For those who are not called to the familiar tradition, the tarot spread easily adapts to being one that helps you connect with your hidden but guiding intuitive and instinctive nature.

If you want, you can make a ritual of casting cards to connect with your familiar and/or intuitive-instinctive self. Light two candles from a common flame, make an offering of water, food, and sacred scent and/or song. Find four stones and hold them in your hands while whispering a spell that only your familiar (or intuitive self) will know, placing them in the four corners of your home helping to make steady the path by which your familiar (or intuitive self) can come home to you. Then cast your cards…

Familiars
A Tarot Spread to Connect with Your Intuitive Allies

Card 1. I Am Called…

Some of the most powerful works of magick are acts of naming. While this card might not offer a distinct name (but, it just might), it helps you understand the name your familiar wishes to be called. For an intuitive-instinctive spread, this is an interesting practice of naming a part of yourself yearning to be named. 

Card 2. By This Sign I Am Known…

This card acts as a descriptor for your familiar and may also indicate the signs they show you to indicate that they are about. For an intuitive-instinctive spread, the sign(s) or descriptive elements of the card indicate when you need to stop and pay attention.

Card 3. Welcome Me With…

This card helps you understand the ways that your familiar wishes to be taken care of. In other words, the feeding of your familiar on a magickal, energetic, practice-based level. The feeding of a familiar can take many forms through offerings of all kinds, breathwork, song, and more. For an intuitive-instinctive spread, this card is about the feeding or nurturing of your intuition.

Card 4. I Call You…

With this card we learn about what your familiar calls you, for it is not only an act of magick to name something, but to be named in turn. Often this card highlights an aspect of your magickal nature that calls your familiar to you. For an intuitive-instinctive spread this card names something important, interesting, inspiring about your intuitive gifts that is important to recognize about yourself.

Card 5. About You, I Know…

Following I Call You, this card further expands on what your familiar knows about you and a certain need you have that calls them to you. In a way, a familiar is an answer to a witch's question, and this card highlights what that answer (or another useful question) might be. For an intuitive-instinctive spread, this card represents something that you are hoping to discover through connecting more deeply with your intuitive-instinctive self.

Card 6. Together We Can…

This final card highlights what may be accomplished, developed or understood through working with your familiar. For an intuitive-instinctive spread, the card represents the same thing, except with your relationship to trusting your intuition.

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If you're looking for more inspiration for your Samhain celebrations, check out my might-do list for the season or my post on the herbs and astrology of Samhain (including Lunar Samhain!). If you're feeling haunted, there are some plant allies you might consider working with.

May your work with the part of you that knows before you know, be it familiar form, intuitive nature or a bit of both, be revelatory and healing.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎

Three Tarot Spreads for the Season of Samhain

The season of Samhain has nearly begun and I am ready for the new year and the cooler weather to come. As I write this the skies are gray, promising rain, and the wind is stretching through the branches of autumn tinted trees, excited for the wild riders who’ll soon take to the sky to fly the land ‘tween Hallows and Midwinter.

For many Witch folk, myself included, the season of Samhain is the most auspicious time for divination, so I thought I’d share a few spreads to inspire your own casting of cards and lots. The following three spreads touch on important themes and lessons of the year: how we reconcile our differences with members in our family and community so that we can journey into the new year unburdened; the ways we can invoke transformation to help us call in our dreams; and the magick of facing our fears to know our power.

Enjoy and blessed be!

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The Hazel Branch Tarot Spread

To help you reconcile differences between you and another, so that the new year can arrive with greater lightness of heart and spirit. If you're looking to learn more about Samhain and the practice of reconciliation (including a suggested ritual), come this way. This spread can also be cast to help you heal the wounds between yourself and someone who has passed beyond the veil - Samhain teaches us that healing knows no time, no space, only possibility.

Card 1. The Knot

This card highlights the grievance which binds you to the other person that you are in conflict with.

Card 2. What I Think I Want
& Card 3. What They Think They Want

These cards help to highlight what has been expressed publicly about the grievance. These cards are about the surface level of the conflict and what is easy to see. 

Card 4. What I Actually Need
& Card 5. What They Actually Need

These cards dig a little deeper and examine some of the unconscious or hard-to-share needs of both involved. Comparing the first two cards with these two cards can reveal unspoken elements of the challenge which is adding to the conflict. It's important to remember that Card 5 is only going to reveal to us what is appropriate for us to know and ways for us to find compassion for the other within the conflict.

Card 6. What I'm Not Seeing
& Card 7. What They Are Not Seeing

These cards show what part of the conflict remains hidden from view, but is important to recognize.

Card 8. The Hazel Branch

This card shows a step towards reconciliation, the Hazel branch being a symbol of peace and wisdom.

Card 9. The Ancestors Speak

A card of unknotting, this card illustrates the possibility of what reconciliation may bring and the healing that is possible.

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The Cauldron Tarot Spread

To tap into the transformative energies of Samhain which straddles time and space, spiraling between life, death, and rebirth to help you manifest a dream. A great spread for casting during ritual and with a coven of friends to help you focus on a goal and how to work towards it.

Card 1. The Fire

That which inspires you and keeps you engaged with the world and your magick. 

Card 2. The Cauldron

How your desire guides you and can be transformed into a tool to reshape your life in a way that supports your goal.

Card 3. The Swirling Brew

As yet unknown, unfamiliar or forgotten energies at work that you can choose to connect to between now and Yule to help you with your goal.

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Facing Your Fear

A spread to support the work of facing our fears to know our power. Choose one fear or anxiety to focus on for this spread - it is often best to start with the one that is most present in your day-to-day life and/or hinders your ability to connect with your magick.

Card 1. My fear

The card which highlights your fear - sometimes in surprising ways.

Card 2. The ties that bind

This card looks at the way that your fear has created restrictions in your life.

Card 3. The wall that separates

This card examines how your fear is, in often misguided ways, trying to protect or support you.

Card 4. What lies beneath

Fears have origin stories and this card highlights the most important part of that story for you to examine.

Card 5. Where there is fear there is power

The final card starts to help us understand the power that lies within our fear. The title for this card is a quote by activist and elder, Starhawk.

If you’re looking for more Samhain inspiration I have a whole might-do list for the season and a tarot spread for connecting with your ancestors and the magick of the new year. You could also spend some time learning about the herbs and astrology of the season - including Lunar Samhain. Or maybe you’re just looking for a cup of tea.

I wish you and your community a beautiful Samhain - may you find the joy and reunion with those who have gone before and plenty of peace with the living.

This post was made possible through patron support.
❤︎ Thanks, friends. ❤︎