r/SecularTarot

One interpretation of The Lovers card that I keep returning to in my readings is the idea of unrealistic ideals, imagined perfection, and emotional overidentification with a desired outcome -  especially outside of romance readings. I think people often reduce The Lovers to “alignment” or “soulmates,” but in practice I’ve found the card frequently appears when someone is emotionally attached not only to a person, career, or path itself, but to what it symbolically represents psychologically.

I noticed this strongly in a recent career-oriented reading where the broader theme became “fantasy vs reality.” The spread itself was not about romance at all, yet the emotional structure surrounding it revolved around idealization, projection, and attachment to imagined futures. The reading kept pointing toward the tension between authentic fulfillment and the fantasy of what a certain path was supposed to emotionally provide: certainty, transformation, validation, escape, identity, or a feeling of finally becoming “enough.” The emotional attachment was not only to the outcome itself, but to the symbolic meaning placed onto it.

That’s part of why I often interpret The Lovers as psychologically complex rather than automatically positive. To me, it’s a card about attraction and alignment, but also about projection, longing, emotional fusion, and meaning-making. Sometimes it appears when someone has unconsciously turned a relationship, career, creative pursuit, or future version of themselves into an idealized emotional solution. In those moments, reality can become difficult to engage with honestly because the fantasy has started carrying too much emotional weight.

I think this is especially important in career readings because modern culture often encourages people to search for a “perfect” path that will completely fulfill them emotionally, spiritually, creatively, financially, and psychologically all at once. But no path can sustainably hold that amount of projection forever. Sometimes The Lovers asks whether we are pursuing something because it is genuinely aligned, or because we have attached impossible emotional expectations to it.

 In that sense, I often read The Lovers as a card about the tension between genuine alignment and imagined perfection, and then learning how to tell the difference between the two.

After doing a large volume of readings recently, one theme that kept repeating was people struggling to distinguish intuition from anxiety, projection, and fantasy. There was also a repeated pattern of reversed Wands, which made many of the readings feel less “blocked” spiritually and more energetically depleted, like people were trying to navigate life while emotionally and psychologically exhausted.

I think The Moon archetypically captures this core tension really well. With all the ways our intuition can become distorted by attachment, fear, hypervigilance, memory, longing, or past wounds, how do we actually learn to trust our gut?

One insight I kept arriving at through the cards was that intuition and anxiety feel very different somatically. Intuition tends to move quietly and coherently. There’s a sense of flow, groundedness, or internal steadiness to it. Anxiety, on the other hand, interrogates us constantly. It loops, drains, pressures, fixates, and depletes our internal resources.

Another thing I realized is that discernment is not something we achieve instantly. We develop it gradually through self-trust. Through grounding. Through learning our own patterns. Through becoming more regulated and emotionally honest with ourselves over time. The readings felt less like “be more psychic” and more like “learn how to stabilize enough to hear yourself clearly.”

Estoy empezando a perder la fe en estas cosas, pero me gustaría saber si lo que sugiero es realmente posible. Dos amigos ya me leyeron las cartas, y antes de hacerlo, les conté todo lo que le pasaba a esa persona. Fue solo después de eso que hicieron la lectura, y por supuesto, no salió nada bueno; sinceramente, todo fue malo. Pero esto es lo que me hace dudar: creo que eso podría distorsionar el resultado, porque la mente es tan poderosa que intentará encontrar exactamente lo que ya sabe, y eso se refleja en las cartas.

Hi, could someone help me find a reliable source/ class where i can professionally study reading tarot?

Me compré unas cartas del tarot que son 73 en temu y bueno yo inicie tirando las cartas y también me hacía preguntas en tiktok todas las cartas apuntaban a qué iba a tener una bonita relación así que al momento de comprar mis cartas yo inicie haciendo preguntas mias de familia de mi mamá más que todo concejos y todo acertaba pero había un concejo que decían que yo y mi chico teníamos que tener un equilibrio sobre quien daba en la relación en ese lapso nos dejamos 2 veces la primera vez lo busqué yo y las cartas decían que tenía que esperar que regresará el pero no lo hice así que una semana después nos dejamos pero está vez cumplí el concejo de las cartas y las cartas nos pusieron de frente así que peliamos pero nos arreglamos bueno antes nos salía el sol ya después nos salía todo mal entonces creo que mas que adivinar se mueve más con la energía del momento se que no era experta pero también tengo mucha intuición y se cuando si o cuando no o cuando irme pues mi corazón estaba en paz y las cartas todas volteadas no sé si era por qué todos los días preguntaba a las cartas hasta que comenzó en mi casa una energía pesada y tuve 2 peleas que perdí los estribos así que oré y corte todas las cartas a la mitad y volví a mí centro entonces alguien que sea experto que me diga como funcionan o que pasa realmente con ellas yo las interpretaba con chat ptg pero siempre e sentido que más allá de las cartas las cosas pasan por algo y cuando alguien no es para ti o se va pues está bien no tengo problemas con eso solo que era curiosidad de saber si mi intuición era real o afirmarla y pues me decidí por mi intuición por qué yo veía que las cartas salian mal y mi intuición me salía distinta y me iba por ella y salían bien entonces alguien me puede decir como realmente funciona y si es completamente veridica?

Si quieres corroborar mi nombre es Jacqueline 25 04 95

This thread is refreshed on the 1st of every month. It is a space for new subscribers to introduce themselves to the community - feel free to share as little or as much as you would like. How did you get into tarot? What's your favourite deck? What brings you to r/SecularTarot vs. other tarot communities? What are you interested in learning more about?

Welcome to the sub! :)

Are there others here who are making their own Tarot deck and/or booklet? If so, would you mind telling about it?

Things like:

Why did you decide to do it?

Are you basing it on another deck of is it entirely your own ideas?

Do you have a theme?

If you have finished, would you make another one?

How do you come up with your images/interpretations?

Anything else?

I enjoy drawing so making my own deck is a nice big (very big) project but it started because I felt a bit annoyed at common interpretations of Death. I started thinking about how I would depict it and decided to actually do it.

Then I started on the rest of the Great Arcana. I have 13 finished now and have designed 3 more. The idea of doing a whole deck is still pretty daunting but I do think I will make als the court cards as well. I do have explanations of what can be seen on the cards but at this point those only exist in my head.

I come up with the designs by reading several different interpretations and thinking about what appeals to me and what doesn't. It makes me reconsider what things like maternity and feminity (I just designed my version of the Empress) and then there's the question of how to express this in a drawing.

Thanks for reading and I hope I will hear from you!

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Hello everyone, life has been tough lately...my family came to know about my relationship....I had to break up...secondly they took my social media passcode...I only have one chance now to prove them wrong ..i took one of the exams which is one of the hardest exams in my country....I want to know if i will be able to pass or not....my result is in August ..i can't sleep , and I am scared of my parents every time...please can anyone do reading and tell if I would pass or not🥹 it will be really big thing for me

hello! I'm new to all this spiritual stuff and I wanted to make tarot cards to learn more about myself, but I was wondering how do I make them? I've read some posts and I saw some users suggesting to print the card deck. I have some doubts about it, will it work the same? I also thought thought about buying them but my household is quite strict about that and I don't know any place where it is sold💔💔.

do you guys go with the first card that comes out or second etc. does the first one always apply or do you shuffle until it resonates with you

what would you guys suggest or think if tarot cards have moved many times by themselves. 3 times wrapped together and once not yet still together. should i sage, is this a sign of something? idk! help 😂pls ty

Hello lovely souls,
I wanted to talk about my experience with the cards, a few experiments that I have tried, and how it all works with having a general sense of intuitiveness.

I have always had a pretty strong sense of intuition since my childhood. About certain people or situations or energies in general. I also happen to be a pretty anxious person and this anxiety has hindered my intuition, pushing me to analyse everything. Which just ends up being stressful. Over the years, I have worked on myself and calmed the anxiety and focused my gut feeling. The way I have been right about bizarre things is ridiculous. Takes me by surprise! It's a skill that I need to hone more and more.

Coming back to the card. I have played a lot of games in my childhood that involves a deck of cards, uno, games using the typical 52 deck of black and white cards. Let me tell you, just how bad I've sucked at handling those card. Can't shuffle to save my life. Don't know the names of the techniques, my cards used to always just fall down and spread all over. Basically I used to have a butter fingers moment.
I bought my own deck of tarot cards, to understand what my intuition is trying to tell me. Basically trying to get a more concrete read on energies. And man let me tell you, my hands took to the deck like a duck takes to water. Within half a day, I shuffled the cards without anything falling in a mess. I was able to try a few different shuffling techniques and was able to get them right on the first or second try. It was so weird that I was able to do that.

Another thing I try is, I ask the deck to show me a card with water in it. Shuffle it, the card that falls has imagery of water in it. Tried this a couple of times and got my desired cards. Then I tried asking to show me my desired card at the bottom of the deck. Again it worked. As if the deck is listening to me. It was so exhilarating and weird. I usually visualise what I want. I prefer visualisation as my tool. Even when I'm working with clients I visualise their energies.

What are your thoughts? Anything to add? Any experiences to share?

hello to anybody who stops to read this thank you!!
I’m sure many of you know the debate about Christianity, tarot, people claiming you can’t be Christian if you use Tarot, etc.. I never fed into the religious debates nor cared to look at it deeper until recent..

so for the past two months my boyfriend has been hinting to me that Tarot seems to either not work or just be a bad idea and refers to it as occult or demonic.. i can be wrong but i found the origins were 1500’s and occult didn’t take it over until 1900’s despite this, does that still mean tarot was overall taken over / not in alignment with a \*true\* God/Christian devoted life like he expects? (idk i guess he wants me to churn butter somewhere outside? not too sure yet)

I always found it to be about your intentions however, maybe if it is inherently adapted for more occult / witchcraft regardless of if you call yourself a witch, regardless of if you practice witchcraft the energy will still be there? i always thought it to be person specific.

anyways, please don’t laugh at me. I know I have a shitty taste in men, but he’s been sending me free mason videos about how tarot is bad so does anybody have any really good YouTube video to counteract his claims or his current mindset and give real perspective of tarot.. or is he more right of viewpoint of tarot being occult/demonic/bad energy welcomed into homes?

BTW, just found this group it’s so cute !