I am obsessed with a few YouTube tarot readers that I subscribe to and watch daily. A friend of mine is also obsessed with a few as well and we compare notes. We were both healing from friendships that had suddenly ended, our hearts were broken, and we wanted answers we would never get from our friends. After months of watching these readers, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

It’s not that I don’t have my own decks, I have four. Two decks are traditional tarot and two are angel oracle cards. They are powerful and I am connected to them. The first deck I purchased was the classic Waite Smith version. The second tarot deck I bought in Sedona, is one of the more spiritual, magnetic vortex places on the earth. I knew I had to have this deck, it’s covered in my favorite colors blue and purple and the drawings are made by a local artist. This deck has been reliable and inspiring. As for the angel oracle cards, they often have slept with me under my pillow. These two decks are ethereal and I’ve seen them work their magic when I’ve shared with strangers. They reveal such specific support and messages from the unseen. After sharing all this love I have for my decks, I still went to YouTube for support. The truth of it is, I got lazy and needed to let others tell me what I thought I needed to hear.

To break the addiction to YouTube tarot readers, I decided to get back to basics. I dusted off the classic deck by Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith and began to befriend them again.

1.  Devote a journal for the daily tarot. (Add stickers for maximum fun.)
2.  Meditate for at least 10 minutes.
3.  Shuffle your deck and ask it to share the message you need to hear at that moment.
4.  Spread the deck before you, breathing deeply to connect to your heart’s center.
5.  Allow your hand to stop instinctively on the single card it wants to pull.
6.  Write the date and the name of the card in your journal. Describe everything you see on the card.

I like to peek at the little book the deck comes with after I discover my own meaning. Slowly and surely, I am interpreting the daily pull as messages of support and steadiness within my own life.

Today on the Winter Solstice, I pulled the Death card. Combining the shortest and darkest day of the year with the Death card, I became excited, not alarmed.

The day prior, I had a day of molasses depression that caused me to lay in my bed all afternoon watching Byron Katie‘s videos as she helped a sweet woman unpack her chains of ego and righteousness. Nothing like layering on the heavy wet blanket of depression by watching how it’s all an illusion of our egos. Little did I know how this little death would transform some life the next day.

Winter is truly there for us on purpose to help us should we allow it. While it may appear that things are dead because the trees are barren, plants go dormant, and animals hibernate, everything becomes brutally efficient in its scarcity. Life is still occurring, slowly, in the cold short days of little sunlight, there is still movement. Winter allows a withdrawal from the world, a metamorphosis, not a death but a crucible for newness.

As you can see, the Death card is full of messages, with the white horse in motion, leaving the dead king behind you can see the child curiously looking up at the scary skull knight on the horse, the bishop pleading with him, and the sun rising in the distance. Between the movement of the horse, the curious child, and the bright rays of the sun rising between the gates in the distance, I sense that my little ego death has burned away.

And sure enough, after much sleep, I woke with an adrenaline I have not had in quite some time. As I meditated before pulling out the Death card, words began forming into columns of essays I wanted to write like this one. I began believing again that life happens for us, not to us. That our egos cannot be the only driver in this short life. More allowing, less doing. We have to let go in order to discover what is real and true about ourselves and our lives.

“In the end, you have to let go. No matter how much effort you make and where it takes you, it doesn’t take you all the way. Because it is not your effort that makes you free, but your discovery of what’s true about yourself and life.” — Jack Kornfield