At the time, my mother was writing a cookbook called Beyond Measure: The Cookbook For People Who Think They Can’t Cook. She used the major arcana of the tarot as a jumping off place in guiding her readers to learn to use their intuition when they’re in the kitchen trying to cook a meal.

Her book is about trusting your sense of smell to see if something combines well with something else, to believe in your sense of taste as you go along, to reach out and touch the fruit to feel if it is ripe. Don’t listen to what someone else thinks is the ‘right’ way to do something.

Just as in using the tarot to offer guidance, the magical power of divination lies in sparking that flame of ‘aha’ that a delicious sauce or delightful dessert can offer.

Here’s what she writes about Appetizers, inspired by the ‘Lovers’ card:

“Love and cooking both need some discrimination. In our kind of Kitchens your tools are equanimity, perception, attention, choice, honesty, no tricks. In Love: the same.

The meal is prepared. The table set. Tempting fragrances fill the air. Life is a feast. I believe in myself, and it is balm. Life is beauty and beauty is love.

We invite people to our table where Love helps us bear the oppression of closeness and the terrors of separation. We open to new undertakings, regularly bringing them to fruition. We eat from our bountiful table, letting new people, places and experiences into our lives, while changing accordingly.”

And here’s what she writes about Herbs and Spices, accompanied by the Hermit:

“Whatever else we do in life, sometimes we need to be alone.

Say there’s something that demands our attention. We become a Hermit, if just for an hour, a day, a week, a year, or a lifetime. Solitude tends to re-true us to ourselves. We replenish lost energies. The Hermit respects solitude, since, strange as this may seem, solitude is what binds relationships.

Herbs do the same for food. They bind and enhance the relationships between ingredients, and like solitude, they release tremendous energies, as vital nutrients appear like genies to serve our kindest imaginations, our most generous instincts, and our subtlest intuitions. Herbs lift us out of the mediocre into the extraordinary. They waft us to India or to Italy in a pinch. They are basic to homeopathic medicine. Alive in our gardens, their fragrances awaken us to our own healing powers. Working at the cellular level, herbs restore levels of harmony we may be unaware have been abandoned.”

Images drawn by Alexander Eliot.

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What would you do if there was nothing you had to do?

Only you have the answer to that. Only you have a map, a compass, and solid walking shoes. The map is your powerful mind; your compass is your authentic feeling-nature. The shoes are your physical body and the time and space in which you live.

And, if you would like, I can be your guide.

In my book called “What Would You Do If There Was Nothing You Had To Do? Practices to create your life the way you want it to be” I give you twenty-two keys that will open twenty-two doors, each one going deeper into discovering your heart’s desire.

You don’t have to give up anything in order to find out what you really want out of life. This is an inward journey, and it may have little to do with quitting your job, leaving your spouse, or spending less time with your children. You are going to travel a road that, as the Sufis say, is in the world but not of the world.

This journey takes you through a deeply personal process so that you emerge into your ‘real’ world in a spirit of mindful self-creation and joy.

“Each of us has been called to take the great Leap into the unknown—finally, an instruction manual!  A brilliant and beautiful companion to the soul’s evolution. Ms. Eliot’s gentle guidance, wisdom, and practical exercises make the journey a joy.” —Dr. Jan Seward, Clinical Professor of Naturopathic Medicine, Psychologist, Creative Arts Therapist

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Essentially, they form a deck of 78 cards. Fifty-six of these are the precursor of our familiar playing cards. There are four suits, numbers 1-10, and four court cards (instead of only the three we are familiar with). The four suits represent the four elements: earth, air, water, and fire, which in turn symbolize the human bodies: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

In addition to these 56 minor arcana cards are 22 major arcana cards. These cards represent the ‘fool’s journey’ or ‘hero’s journey.’ Through your own journey, you discover increasingly intriguing aspects of yourself, and you are guided to a deep inner wisdom and self-understanding.

Here is how the psychologist Carl Jung describes the major arcana:

 “They are symbols, or pictures of symbolical situations. For example, the symbol of the sun, or the tower struck by lightning, or the wheel of fortune, and so on. Those are sort of archetypal ideas, of a differentiated nature, which mingle with the ordinary constituents of the flow of the unconscious, and therefore it is applicable for an intuitive method that has the purpose of understanding the flow of life, possibly even predicting future events, at all events lending itself to the reading of the conditions of the present moment.”*

By creating spreads, laying out the cards in various formations, and interpreting their placement and meaning, a tarot reader helps you gain an insight into situation, dilemma, or relationship that can be as refreshing as opening the window of a dark, stuffy room and letting in clear light and fresh air.

* Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930-1934 by C.G. Jung, Volume 1

Images from the Knapp-Hall Tarot Deck

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