Video installment #11 in the orientation course series for the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot is a guided meditative tarot reading rendered through accessing the Akashic Records. The direct link to the video on YouTube is here or you can check out the entire course series on this page here.

In this post I’ll be documenting an Akashic Tarot Reading I did for myself, guided by Video #11. I’m using it as a case study so that it might help round out your own approach with the reading exercise and to think about how you can interpret your own results from the Records.

You’re going to need your Spirit Keeper’s deck on hand, and also a journal or notebook to write in, along with a writing instrument. Having your copy of The Book of Maps on hand is optional, though you may find that reading the passages for the card entries help prompt revelatory hits for your own results.

I like to set aside a special notebook that’s exclusively my tarot journal, where I will log all things personal-tarot.

Though it wasn’t mentioned in the video because it isn’t necessary, I do like to set up a little crystal something nearby. There’s absolutely no need for one, unless you feel like you need one. Here I have a selenite tower surrounded by twin fluorite terminated peaks. I also have a little obsidian cat friend to watch over me. The raw citrine quartz you see at right isn’t part of my setup; that’s just something I always have in my home office.

I’m doing this on my computer desk so that I can watch the video while I do the guided reading. The above photograph shows my final reading result layout and you’ll notice it’s different in layout from what’s pictured on the video. That’s okay.

In the front I have the first three cards I pulled for the three guardian spirits close by during this chapter of my life path–those for mind, body, and spirit respectively. Then you’ll see the three respective cards I pulled, or messages, from each of the guides.

When we got to the section about the mirror and reflecting back the self, those three cards went up top, for no other reason except I ran out of space on my desk, so that top left corner was the only place I had to lay out the cards. I’ll explain that  fourth card in the final three-card reading later.

Left to right, the first card (top of the two) is the spirit mediator sending me information from the Records that pertain to my mind and mental space. Recall the invocation for the first spirit and the accompanying message:

By your Grace, I know of your presence.
I acknowledge you.
Deliver to me
The message I most need
To achieve that aspiration
Which I have carried in my thoughts.

In my personal reading, the spirit that came forth was The Vagabond, so this is going to indicate to me the most prevailing archetype reflected by my head space at the moment. The card I pulled to express my thought plane was the Six of Orbs (Six of Pentacles). So I would then read this revelation through the themes of my aspirations, goal-setting at the moment, and that which is still intangible as thoughts in my mind that I haven’t yet set into action or materialized.

The center pair relates to the body. Recall the invocation:

By your Grace, I know of your presence.
I acknowledge you.
Deliver to me
The message I most need
To achieve the prosperity
That will most nourish my body.

This is the message coming through from the Records about your body, health, labors (which can then pertain to your work), and what’s going on in your physical plane.

The Golden Shield is the guardian spirit over all matters pertaining to my physical plane and body at this stage of my life path. The Ten of Scepters (Ten of Wands) is the message, which I read through the subject line of my health, wellness, and also that which I have already materialized into physical work. It can also relate to business and money matters. This is all in my life that has already taken form.

And the final pair over on the right:

By your Grace, I know of your presence.
I acknowledge you.
Deliver to me
The message I most need
To fulfill the aching in my soul
And to heal the fragments of my own doing.

For me, I got The Erudite as the spirit presence with custodianship over matters pertaining to my spiritual plane and soul development at this stage. The message proffered forth by The Erudite is the Knight of Orbs (Knight of Pentacles). The third pair of cards is read through the topics of your spiritual path and soul’s journey.

The elemental synchronicity in my reading was kind of uncanny. Left to right in the photo above: Earth-Earth (both spirit card and message card from the suit of Orbs/Pentacles-Disks); Fire-Fire (both from the suit of Scepters/Wands); and Earth-Earth again (Key 9: The Erudite/Hermit is associated with Virgo, an Earth sign paired with a card from the suit of Orbs).

To me, even though the precise message coming through here wasn’t clear to me at first, the fact of the synchronicity itself at least validates (to me) that something definitely went right here, and I just need to dig deeper to extract the meaning.

When I pulled The Vagabond, though the rational side of me would not associate it with the mythology of Sun Wukong (the Monkey King), that’s what came up as an instant download, so I went with it. I didn’t strike out the thought just because my analytical side was telling me it’s wrong.

For me, I don’t necessarily think the Monkey King is literally my guardian spirit floating around in a fourth dimension around me while I walk through life. It’s more that the story of the Monkey King and his associated traits bear significance. The Monkey King is this incredible character in Chinese folklore who is, in essence, incredibly multi-talented, clever as all heck, and managed to defy both the King of Heaven and the King of Hell! The Monkey King was, by nature, a demon, a lower vibrational energy, but he said nope, not for me, and cleverly found a way to not only escape hell and the grasp of the King of Hell, but he eventually became immortalized as a deity in Heaven. The Monkey King is an endearing character who is at once both selfish and heroically selfless. He’s powerful, talented, yet flawed.

Plus, his signature weapon is a magical rod and I couldn’t help but notice that a symbolic reference to a rod then appears in both subsequent cards– The Golden Shield (Queen of Wands) and The Erudite (The Hermit).

The final three-card reading is asking the Records to reflect back who you are, to tell you about yourself so that you might then see and understand yourself (or who you are at the moment) better. The above are the three cards I pulled. Recall that specific to the SKT deck, when a Stronghold (court Pages) comes up, that symbol of the sealed envelop in the bottom right corner is a sign to me that I can pull a second card, that there is a secondary or supplemental message for me to check. So I pull a third card and place it in juxtaposition with the Stronghold (Page).

In my reading, I saw the Nine of Scepters as revealing of a character trait that the Records is reflecting back at me, so that I might look at this facet of myself with more discernment. I’m going to read the Stronghold of the Zephyrs (Page of Swords) in a two-fold manner. It’s a messenger angel (which is why I then pull another card, the message card from the angel) and it’s the associated personality for the Page of Swords card in  tarot. Funny enough, yet another court card popped up– the Archangel of Mysteries, which can also be read as the King of Pentacles in the tarot. These three cards together are a mirror reflection of who I am at the moment, positive and negative.

The secondary message card I pulled was Key 15: The Demon (Devil card). In my case, this clarifying card was powerful and a great cautionary reminder of how I take my next steps.

If and when you are feeling blocked, ready your pen over your paper, focus your gaze on the imagery of the card that you can’t make full sense of, and address the spirit of the card. For example, here, I might say, “Stronghold of the Zephyrs, I see your message, The Demon, the Battle with the Typhon. Please tell me how I can make sense of this. Help me make sense of your message.”

Try to enter a meditative state and allow another part of your own consciousness to take over. Free-write onto your paper, feeling as if you are channeling what is coming through. Then process the words you’ve written.

If that still doesn’t work, I might address the card again. “Stronghold of the Zephyrs, I see our message of The Demon. By your Grace, please send me the signs and omens along my path that I need to understand The Demon. Fifteen days, your Grace, I will keep you in my heart and mind.” (Any verbiage to that effect.)

I chose fifteen days because The Demon card is Key 15. You don’t have to go by the numbering of the Key, but it’s a pretty easy-to-remember and methodical approach. Then, for the next fifteen days, every morning I’ll focus on the imagery of that Page of Swords and The Devil cards, and then go about my way. Synchronicities that tie back to the symbology of these two cards that I see in my direct path for the next fifteen days will be interpreted as signs and omens to pay attention to. By the fifteenth day, I’ll return to this card reading and process its implications further.

The above snapshot shows what I managed to write down during the three minutes allotted. I used the three minutes to write down the card reading results and some quick impressions. Note also that during the reading (as prompted in the voiceover), for me, in this specific case (this does not always happen, so don’t fret if it doesn’t happen for you), names or identities immediately popped in to my head in response to seeing the three spirit cards.

You’ll see a question mark in brackets next to the third card The Erudite, where the name that popped in to my head was Saint Nicolas [sic]. I had no idea what that was about during the reading, because I have no sense of connection to Saint Nicholas. During the reading, as I wrote it down, I even thought it made no sense. It didn’t make sense to me correspondence wise, not that I knew one damn thing about correspondences for Saint Nicholas… Nonetheless, I leaned in and yielded to my hunches and wrote every impression down, no matter how the logical/analytical/I-know-tarot side of my brain wanted to tell me I was wrong.

You do the same. To a certain degree, you do need to throw a lot of what you think you know about tarot card meanings out the window and lean in to your hunches.

Also, at this time, midstream of the guided reading as the video is playing, I am not necessarily trying to interpret the results or process the reading in my mind. Still keep yourself open so that you’re channeling insights, receiving downloads, and not trying to impose your go-to methods of interpreting tarot spreads on to the cards– you will do that later, after you close the Records, but not during.

After I closed the Records, I went online to read more about Saint Nicholas of Myra (270 AD – 343 AD) and that’s when so much more started to make sense, and the message card– the Knight of Orbs– also made sense. I rewrote his life story and miracles in my own words. Then I reviewed that story and looked for correspondences to the symbolism of The Erudite and the message card I pulled, the Knight of Orbs, The Shining Quarry.

What shocked me was just how much it all made sense, though before I looked up Saint Nicholas of Myra, I knew next to nothing about the figure. How my subconscious picked up on the associations and how it all managed to come through to the forefront of my awareness through this Records reading, I have no idea.

Remember: only after you’ve closed the Records and the guided video is over should you start to process your reading results. The three minutes you’re allotted during the guided video session should be used for direct downloads from the Records and all channeled impressions you’re receiving. Block everything you think you know about tarot at this time. Don’t read the cards as a tarot reader. Just keep yourself open, receptive, and take down everything that’s coming through, no matter how nonsensical the analytical side of you is trying to tell you it is.

By the way, that means during the conscious interpretation stage, you don’t have the actual reading layout in front of you. You have a couple of options. Since you wrote down all the cards during the three minutes of quiet time, you can now re-enact the reading spread and then scan the re-enactment of the cards to do your interpretation. If you want, you could have also kept your camera phone close by during the guided video reading. Then during the three minutes, take a photograph of your spread. Work off photographs of the spread later. Finally, you can simply look up the card entries one by one in The Book of Maps and use the card entries as prompts for further intuitive hits.

After the video session is over, you can let your analytical side talk to you and start processing the results. Reconcile the downloads with your go-to tarot reading methods.

In my case, my first spirit guide result was The Vagabond. For the first three cards you pull–indicative of the three guardian spirits that are your mediators to the Akashic Records–focus mainly on the spirit’s title, which appears at the top of each card in SKT.

In other words, instead of focusing on the fact that this card is the Five of Orbs/Five of Pentacles/Five of Disks, focus on the fact this card identifies The Vagabond.

However, when you get to the message card (the second card you pull, one to indicate the message from each of the three guardian spirits), now you focus on the tarot card correspondence. The Vagabond (Five of Orbs) delivered me the message of the Six of Orbs (which corresponds to the title The Giver).

To read the message card, I focus on the Six of Orbs and my go-to tarot reading interpretations of the Six of Pentacles (RWS) or Six of Disks (Thoth).

So, to recap, for the first three order of cards, focus on the top caption– the spirit’s title as it appears on the card. Think about any names that immediately pop into mind, that almost feel implanted in your head the moment you see that title and the imagery or symbolism of the card. Don’t process the download. Don’t try to discern whether it makes any sense to you correspondence wise. Just receive the download and don’t rationalize it.

If you see The Golden Shield and your immediate download is ham sandwich, I would say roll with it and write down “ham sandwich.” You can process how that download happened and what to make of it later. (Fortunately, I didn’t get “ham sandwich.” I got “Angel of Fire,” which still felt rather obscure and unclear, but I didn’t care; I rolled with it.)

Another point. You know the concept that a lot of religious traditions hold, which is essentially that when you channel the language of spirit, you end up speaking in tongues? A lot of religious traditions, east, west, north, south, hailing from all continents, have that belief.

During the Akashic Records reading, you may find what comes through to be nonsensical, or the cards drawn to feel at once both affirmatively relevant to you and yet too abstract for you to come away with anything concrete, like you would in an ordinary tarot reading. That may be because what’s coming through is in tongues. Even the tarot symbology is coming through in this specific way of tarot reading as an abstraction– in other words, in tarot tongues. =) The messages, even to you as a seasoned tarot reader, aren’t coming across as constructed ideas or statements of forecast. Rather, they feel like imprints of energy. A part of you feels absolutely convinced these imprints are relevant and important, but the appearance of the messages are still abstract and not in any language (even tarot symbolic language) that you’re used to.

The tongues, the language of the spirits reading the Records to you, is channeled, and leaves you with an imprint of energy, not these cogent well-formed sentences of information like you can more typically receive in a tarot reading. When you allow yourself to simply feel and receive that imprint of energy, momentarily taking off your expert tarot reader hat, you’re going to be surprised by the sudden knowing that can come through.

This particular Records reading exercise gives you the experience of learning to read the tongues of tarot. In the same way you think you know language but when tongues are channeled through voice, suddenly you have to reframe the way you interpret language, a Records reading with the tarot is similar: you think you know how to read tarot, but then you receive the tarot tongues channeled in such a reading experience and you find yourself re-learning and re-framing. If you’re willing to re-learn and re-frame, boundaries and limitations to your psychic abilities get lifted, your capacity expands, and the wild frontier of the Akashic Records becomes open to you.