The Grandmother's Tarot

The Grandmother's Tarot is intended to act as a surrogate grandmother by using pictures and messages to translate some of her essence and attempt to recreate what playing cards with a wise, loving grandmother would be like. Each card has a saying around its edge offering shrewd and intuitive Grandmotherly thoughts, and what we would want her to offer: wisdom, experience, reassurance, love, patience, stoicism, continuity, and comfort. The Grandmother's Tarot has been made to be played and shared but the cards also offer an additional layer of guidance through interpreting the images. Twenty-two cards resemble the Major Arcana of Tarot decks, the rest are familiar cultural and narrative motifs. The cards themselves are also therapeutic, the motifs magical, ambiguous, enigmatic. The accompanying book helps you to find some of the messages in the cards, although the best method is to listen to what you recognize or perceive in them. There are no inherently negative cards. "Reading the cards" should be a therapeutic process for gaining valuable understanding, and should affirm your own intuition. As the archetypes spring from the ancient shared narratives of our forebears, they are universally identifiable. They are the figures that help us navigate life--from childhood fairy tales to dreams and the universe, they are characters we recognize all around us if we listen to our instincts. Early storytellers utilized this well of symbols to help the shadows to recede. They have many modern counterparts, who still help bind the world together. Stories and kindness stop everything falling apart. They teach us how to journey through the dark woods, to treat strangers decently (in the words of the Grandmother, "Be kinder than you have to be"), they offer moral and humane structures that enable us to prevail, trust, and love.