The right hemisphere of the brain is “the realm of imagery, holistic thinking, nonverbal language, autobiographical memory, and a host of other processes” (Siegel, 2010, p. 72), while the left hemisphere is “dominant for language, logic, linear and literal thinking” (Siegel, 2013, p. 171). Although these processes are distinct, Siegel emphasizes the importance of their integration. It is through this integration that different ways of knowing can inform one another.
The practice of tarot, a divination practice that evokes synchronicity, offers me one way of cultivating this integration. Tarot invites intuition, or what Siegel (2013) describes as “how we receive the wisdom of the body’s input from our muscles, our hearts, our intestines” (p. 172). Intuition is often situated within the realm of the irrational—not because it is necessarily unreasonable, but because it exceeds what can be reached through logical thinking alone.
Much of daily life privileges rationality. Its demands call upon logical thinking, linear communication, and the capacity to organize experience into understandable sequences. These capacities are necessary, but when they become the dominant way through which I understand experience, my ability to imagine interconnecting possibilities beyond rational explanation can narrow (Siegel, 2010, p. 109). Images, symbols, and metaphors invite another way of knowing, one that makes room for sensation, emotion, imagination, and wholeness. The complexity and mystery of life become more available to me when these different ways of knowing are allowed to exist together.
Tarot provides a practice through which I can engage this integration. Rather than requiring me to decide that either “this” or “that” is true, tarot invites me to consider the possibility that this AND that can be true (Siegel, 2010, p. 109). My understanding of myself or a situation can therefore move beyond the binary certainty of either/or toward the more expansive possibilities of both/and.
This movement also complicates the idea of self-knowledge. We often behave as though fully knowing ourselves is both possible and necessary, constructing an identity from what we believe to be true about who we are. Yet self-knowledge might be understood differently: not as mastery of the self, but as a frontier between what is known and what remains unknown. It is precisely at this frontier that possibility and potentiality emerge. Whyte (2015) reminds us that a “detailed audit of the self is not possible and diminishes us in an attempt to establish it” (p. 200). If we relinquish the demand to know ourselves completely, identity can become less a fixed answer to the question Who am I? and more an ongoing encounter with who we are becoming.
Psychologist Beverly Tatum describes identity formation as a complex developmental process shaped by individual experience, social forces, and cultural influences across the lifespan. At the center of this process resides an enduring and often unanswered question: Who am I?
Engaging this question requires observation and self-reflection, but it also requires a tolerance for not knowing. Over time, identity formation involves “integrating one’s past, present, and future into a cohesive, unified sense of self” (Tatum, 2018, p. 101). Yet cohesion does not necessarily mean certainty. Our understanding of ourselves continues to shift as new experiences alter how we understand both our histories and our possibilities.
Tarot scholar Mary Greer (2019) describes tarot as a practice of self-reflection and observation that can create a “meaningful connection between the past, present, and future—between ourselves and everything that exists” (p. 27). In this sense, tarot offers a way of exploring identity without requiring that identity become fixed. The past can be reconsidered, the present observed, and the future imagined. The future, precisely because it remains unknown, becomes fertile ground for potentiality.
Greer (2019) describes the familiar three-card spread of past, present, and future as a “powerful tool for feeding back information about your own processes of making decisions and dealing with situations” (p. 56). Pulling three cards therefore brings rational and intuitive forms of knowing into conversation. Reflection on the past and present invites us to reinterpret the past through the lens of who we understand ourselves to be now. At the same time, we inhabit a present that we can only partially understand and move toward a future that has not yet taken form. Tarot allows me to dwell at the intersection of these three temporal spaces. Rather than asking the cards to tell me who I am, I can use them to remain curious about who I have been, who I understand myself to be now, and who I might yet become.
The practice does not need to provide a definitive account of what the future will be. Its value may reside instead in opening possibilities that were previously unavailable to conscious awareness. In this way, the three-card spread becomes a practice of holding the known alongside the unknown. Identity can then be understood not as something we discover once and hold in place, but as an ongoing process of becoming.
References
Greer, M. K. (2019). Tarot for yourself: A workbook for an inward journey. Weiser Books.
Siegel, D.J. (2013). Brainstorm: The power and purpose of the teenage brain. Penguin Group.
Siegel, D. J. (2010). Mindsight: The new science of personal transformation. Bantam Books.
Tatum, B. (2017). Why are all the Black kids sitting in the cafeteria?: And other conversations about race. Basic Books.
Whyte, D. (2015). Consolations: The solace, nourishment, and underlying meaning of everyday words. Many Rivers Press.
