The Tarot Practice
A river is always in motion, welcoming in new water, changing the edges of its banks, providing homes and carrying life, and eventually returning again to the sea. The riverways of our body, fed by the same waters that feed the riverways of the land, are ever in motion, too, receiving, holding, parting with, and returning again. We learn to be in motion with our river selves, reminded that we are full of life and ready to flow.
The following tarot spread helps us to connect with the riverways of our land-body, exploring their currents, and understanding what may be hindering or supporting our flow. It can be used as a general reading for checking in on your energy or focusing on a specific part of your life, including creative projects, where you feel like your flow is blocked or stagnated.
Riverways
Card 1. Rain: What is being received
The first card helps us understand what we are currently receiving into our riverways. Supportive cards can reflect back to us practices and beliefs that are helping our flow, while challenging cards may suggest things in our environment that may be hindering our flow.
Card 2. Riverbank: What is being offered
This card helps us to understand what it is our riverways offer to the world whether through our relationships (with ourself or others), our work, our practice and/or calling. Challenging cards in this position may suggest confusion about this aspect of our life, pointing to where we might be hesitant that we have anything to offer, where we struggle to see our own gifts or if we are feeling too much tension (whether from fear, worry, etc) to connect with our generosity. In other words, this card explores our relationship to abundance in our life.
Card 3. Current: What is being carried
This card illuminates something that we are currently carrying in our riverways that is affecting our energy. It might be a particular feeling, habit, belief or practice that is wonderfully supportive of your flow or, if it is a challenging card, it may be something that needs reexamining or exploring.
Card 4. Confluence: What is being released back to the sea
There is a beautiful impermanence to a river-in-motion and this card helps us understand what is passing from the life of our riverway back into the waters of the collective sea. A challenging card in this position may represent something that you're finally able to release or something you're struggling to let go of. Be gentle with yourself no matter what sort of card turns up here as more than any other card in this spread, this one represents a change that is occurring in your life that needs recognizing (and sometimes celebrating if it's something you've worked hard to let go of!).
Card 5. River Spirits: Who is flowing with you
A card that's a message from ancestors, plant allies, holy ones, and/or spirit guides who are flowing right alongside you.
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Remediation: If you are looking to populate your map with helpful guides and companions, you might cast Chosen Family: A Tarot Spread for Finding One Another.
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