2025 June 15: Please note that the following course content was produced nearly a decade ago and may reflect the production standards and media quality that were even low for that time, so may foreseeably prove to be challenging for the present day user. We appreciate your understanding and grace as you engage with these materials.
Tarot as a Tool for Craft is a FREE DOWNLOADABLE guided workbook course that teaches practitioners how to elevate tarot from a system of divination into a powerful tool for spellcraft, ritual, and magical workings. Rooted in Western esotericism and enriched by practical hands-on exercises, the course blends tarot theory, ceremonial ritual, sigil work, talismanic crafting, and energy channeling to help the student activate the cards as magical instruments. Through progressive lessons and experiential assignments, learners will explore how to work with tarot archetypes, construct effective magical workings, and cultivate a deeply personal practice integrating both high and low magic traditions.
An expansion on the talk I presented in 2016 at the Theosophical Society of the East Bay, this course covers how a practitioner of craft might use tarot, from triggering intuitive creativity for self-empowerment, divination, and amplifying psychic ability to communion with celestial contacts, mediumship, and summonings. This is an intermediate course that presumes proficiency with tarot. Subject matter also runs into esoteric and mystical applications of the tarot, so the tone of the course might not be right for everyone.
Course Objectives
After completing this workbook course, you will:
- Understand how to transform tarot cards from passive symbols into active magical tools.
- Learn how to design and execute ritual spells using the tarot as both focus and channel.
- Practice creating and charging talismans using tarot correspondences, sigils, and planetary hours.
- Develop a personalized system of magical correspondences rooted in tarot structure.
- Cultivate the mindset and discipline of a ceremonial magician working through a tarot framework.
- Strengthen intuitive and psychic faculties through ritualized work with tarot archetypes and energies
What my 2015 book Holistic Tarot taught was the first of the five pillars that are discussed in this course. This course deconstructs the form and mechanics of using tarot for:
- Intuitive Creativity to achieve self-empowerment;
- Divination to connect to what Paul Foster Case called the Cause of Causes—the Universal Intelligent Life Energy;
- Psychic Readings both to amplify your innate psychic ability and to use tarot as a training tool for strengthening your psychic ability;
- Celestial Contacts to connect with deities, angels, ascended masters, devas, or the metaphysical force affecting physical conditions; and
- Netherworld Contacts and using tarot for mediumship, ancestral connections, or connecting to entities of nether-worlds and other-worlds.
A workbook with exercises to help you learn and master the mechanics of such tarot operations will also be provided to supplement the video lecture.
Also, this is not a video lecture that you watch just one time. I propose that the video lecture and the workbook should be revisited routinely. Print out the workbook multiple times and routinely work through the exercises prompted in the workbook to help you advance and further develop the skills taught in the video lecture.
The Video Lecture:
Download the PowerPoint:
Tarot as a Tool for Craft
PPTX DECK
As it tends to be when you’re working with me, the workbook is the most important part of this course. The 49-page workbook is intended for use and re-use. Print it out many times throughout your development to work through the training exercises.
Download the Workbook:
Tarot as a Tool for Craft
workbook PDF digital file for printing
As it tends to be when you’re working with me, the workbook is the most important part of this course. The 49-page workbook is intended for use and re-use. Print it out many times throughout your development to work through the training exercises.
The training exercises begin basic and analytical, compelling you to work with numerology, astrology, Kabbalistic references, and other forms of symbolism and system correspondences to broaden your working and experiential knowledge of the tarot.
Then the course deep-dives into training exercises for mediumship, using tarot for celestial contacts, using tarot in shamanic journeying, using tarot as talismans, and so much more. I hope you will be as thrilled and enthusiastic about this workbook as I felt when I went through the exercises for myself.
I hope this workbook will be a game changer for you in terms of your relationship with tarot as your divinatory tool, especially if you’re looking to hone your psychic abilities, intuition, and experience various forms of mystical training. As I tend to do, I fuse together eastern and western esoteric principles.
Although this course presumes intermediate proficiency with the tarot prior to commencing, it is a beginner-level introduction to using the cards as living, breathing instruments of ritual magic and mysticism.
Hi! I’m Benebell Wen, the author of Holistic Tarot (North Atlantic Books, 2015) and The Tao of Craft: Fu Sigils and Casting Talismans in the Eastern Esoteric Traditions (NAB, 2016). My background is in both law and classical studies, and so I strive to bring a synthesis of analytics-based scholarship, a practical teaching style, and yet also a deep initiatic understanding of occult systems.
Other Courses By Me:
Witchcraft Fundamentals: Doctrinal Basis and Theory of Transcendental Magic
$ 79 USD
WESTERN WITCHCRAFT I: This course is a 13-module immersive study of the first 12 chapters in Eliphas Levi’s Doctrine, Part I, of the greater collected work Transcendental Magic. There are 18 video lectures with a total run time of 9 hours along with a 363-page textbook/workbook. In addition, you’ll be getting a set of guided focused meditation for the magus videos. My recommendation is to work through the materials over a 13-week period. Both theory and practicum are covered. This course is structured after a one semester 400-level university elective.
Tarot, Occultism, and Modern Witchcraft
$25 USD
This class is structured after a graduate-level course with a series of lectures plus guided tarot readings ritualized and crafted to show rather than tell you about tarot in witchcraft.
The lecture portion covers a comparative analysis of exoteric, psychology-based tarot reading vs. an esoteric, psychic-based tarot reading, and also tarot as a witch’s tool. We’ll cover the history and legacy of tarot in Western occultism, focusing in on applying Hermetic principles to the tarot. Then we’ll consider the role of tarot and witchcraft in the modern era.
Note: “Tarot, Occultism, and Modern Witchcraft” was first offered during Tarot Summer School 2018 at the Tarot Readers Academy.
benebell wen 
Dear Benebell, I deeply appreciate your first book, Holistic Tarot, but I am not ready for advanced training that you offer. I am studying esoteric side of tarot, but more following Tarot de Marseille school. I am working my way through Oswald Wirth’s wonderful book, the Tarot of Magicians. and intend to follow this with study of Jordorwrosky’s book, the way of tarot, the spiritual teacher in the cards. and also Tarot the open reading by Yoav ben-dov. There is not way or path to this. your approach overwhelms me quite honestly.
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I mainly use your book, Holistic tarot as reference book. rather than study guide. I am mystical learner, so I need “empty” space to learn.
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Benebell, I’m really excited about this bonus course, it sounds fantastic! Can’t wait for mine to arrive 🙂 Have a great week! ~Em
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Soo excited to work with this course! 🙂 Always fun to discover new areas of spirituality and work with tarot…
Just a quick reminder to the people purchasing this: Don’t forget that if you have public playlists on YouTube, and you give an unlisted video a thumbs up or add it to your own playlist, it can show up on your public lists, thus everyone can watch it with a simple click! 🙂 I know we don’t always think about it, so just wanted to remind anyone who might see this…
Much love, Ania
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THANK YOU for this! ❤ I didn't even know about this. Will add a supplemental note,
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Oh, I didn’t know this, either, Thank you for sharing that!
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You got me, Bells, you got me!
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You sent $15.00 USD to James Zhang Transaction Details
greetings benebell,
when I read your newsletter I didn’t see the area explaining your preferred PayPal Payment Method…
have paid as requested. I am so looking forward to your generous course & would love to speak to you about doing an interview w/you for The Cartomancer. If you would prefer … I could do a review of your encyclopedic works but I feel they speak for themselves & only your voice is the ‘topic’ I am interested in bringing to the The Cartomancer & you do a magnificent job of advocating your own work as well as the work of others.
an interview is to introduce a West/East POV. i am not Chinese or Asian but I live in NE Queens and many of my neighbors are Chinese. My grand-daughters go to school with predominately Chinese children… they are ages 6 & 3. I believe I do not exagerate to say Queens is the most heterogeneous place in the world. plus I am of both Northern Italian & Jewish descent… it’s not like i don’t ‘get’ what it’s like to live & thrive with many cultural heritages.
at any rate, I’ve a few snippets of my’ PCS: The Novel’ in several issues of The Cartomancer & am working with several in the Tarot Community to bring some interviews with the voice of the interview/ee forefront not the intviewer.
Thanks Again Benebell, Cynthia Tedesco
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also I was disappointed in what you covered in Holistic Tarot. I expected, hoped for a good deep blend of eastern/western divination. deep exploration of using tarot for psych/social help. Instead you covered basically the same stuff covered in myriad of tarot books, Introductory level into history, meaning, interpretations, spreads, etc. But not what i was looking for. Nothing really new or insightful. Helpful as reference when I need to understand RWS school of tarot.
Your title and intro, gave indication that your huge book offered something different from the myriad of tarot books already published. I am not a follower of RWS school. I bought your book hoping I could find depth exploration of tarot coming from different perspective. genuinely more holistic. Now I feel the name was simply a marketing ploy. all you really put together was an reference book on conventional western tarot, RWS philosophy, which already dominates the market. nothing new. insightful, same old stuff. you would have been better off being honest. stating it was sharing your study notes.
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the front of your book offers a different book than what is inside. I quit studying your free writing course, because I no longer wanted to follow your example. are you ashamed of your eastern essence? this is what sets you apart. it is beautiful unique aspect of what you are and have to offer tarot community.
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Hi Closerwalking,
I agree with some of your points. When I did research on Holistic Tarot after it was released, it seemed like a good starter book for RWS-based tarot practitioners and now that I have bought it, the book does focus on the RWS tradition, which is rightly not what you are looking for i.e. eastern/western divination.
However, I do want to point that insinuating that Benebell is “ashamed” of her “eastern essence” is something I find alarming. As someone who is of East Asian descent, I do find the references to Chinese culture in the book (e.g. Sun Wu Kong as the Fool) helpful and I do not see her shying away from such “Eastern” references in Holistic Tarot. Hence, I would like to say that I find Holistic Tarot a book that focuses mainly on Tarot (a tradition that was realized more fully in the Western culture) but with helpful notes that do point towards the Chinese culture.
Benebell has also written a book on crafting Fu, a Chinese practice, so I suggest if you would like to learn more about the Chinese esoteric arts, that book may be more suited to your tastes.
Best Regards,
Casper
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As another person of East Asian descent, I agree with Casper that your suggestion that Benebell is ashamed of her heritage is misplaced. As was mentioned, Benebell did include elements of Eastern esotericism throughout Holistic Tarot – the Theory of Qi, the Ba Gua spread, and the Lo Shu square to name a few. To be sure, those aspects did not take center stage – but in a book about Tarot, why would they? While there is plenty of evidence to suggest that playing cards originated in the East, Tarot itself – in the form that it is practiced today – has its roots in European (and eventually Hermetic) tradition. The title “Holistic Tarot” is a reference to the use of Tarot not just as a fortune-telling tool, but as a tool for overall life guidance and self-reflection. It was not a reference to amalgamating both Western and Eastern thought into the practice of Tarot. I believe Benebell was clear about what “holistic” meant in the very first chapter of the book.
Chinese culture has its own rich divinatory traditions. I Ching, Ling Chi Ching, Tai Hsuan Ching, and Mahjong divination, to name a few. If you’re interested in a syncretic approach, I would begin by studying the I Ching – on its own merits and wisdom – before trying to combine it with Tarot and other Western esoteric practices. Or if you’re looking for something more Tarot-like, go with Mahjong divination.
I must say, it’s funny… when one reads criticisms about the English translated versions of the I Ching by Wilhelm/Baynes, Steven Karcher, James Legge etc., the complaints are that it’s never Chinese enough – that they lost nuances in translation or in their faulty interpretations – all different ways of accusing them of interjecting too much of their Western background into their work on an Eastern spiritual tradition. And here, an author of East Asian descent is being criticized for not putting ENOUGH of her Eastern background into a book she researched and wrote as accurately as she could about a Western divinatory practice. What a strange double standard. I don’t know which is worse, a Western practitioner being accused of cultural appropriation for (respectfully) participating in non-Western practices, or a non-Western practitioner being accused of cultural self-shame for practicing in the Western tradition.
To Benebell – I hope you’ll keep this Tarot for Craft course available for awhile! My plate is currently full with the esoteric studies I’ve already taken on – Tao of Craft being one of them. I’m about halfway through enjoying it immensely. And can I just say that I am still getting a lot of value from my birth chart monograph that I ordered from you? I’ve read through it but still turn back to it time and again when other questions come up – as I suspect I will continue to for years to come. 🙂
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