Tarot as a Tool for Craft

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.

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Video Lecture Screenshot
Video Lecture Screenshot

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.

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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.

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Workbook Page Spread Preview
Workbook Page Spread Preview

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
Workbook Page Spread Preview
Click image file to download the Workbook pdf

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:

  1. Intuitive Creativity to achieve self-empowerment;
  2. Divination to connect to what Paul Foster Case called the Cause of Causes—the Universal Intelligent Life Energy;
  3. Psychic Readings both to amplify your innate psychic ability and to use tarot as a training tool for strengthening your psychic ability;
  4. Celestial Contacts to connect with deities, angels, ascended masters, devas, or the metaphysical force affecting physical conditions; and
  5. Netherworld Contacts and using tarot for mediumship, ancestral connections, or connecting to entities of nether-worlds and other-worlds.
Workbook Page Spread Preview
Workbook Page Spread Preview

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.

Video Lecture Screenshot
Video Lecture Screenshot

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.

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The Video Lecture:

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Video Lecture Screenshot
Click image file to download the PowerPoint deck

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.

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Click image file to download the Workbook pdf

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.

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Workbook Page Spread Preview
Workbook Page Spread Preview

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.

Workbook Page Spread Preview
Workbook Page Spread Preview

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.

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Your Course Instructor: Me.
Your Course Instructor

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.

Click Here to Learn More.

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.

Click Here to Learn More.

Learning the Opening of the Key (Online Course)

Originally offered at the Tarot Readers Academy in 2016 for the Tarot Summer School

Course Description:

This is a FREE ONLINE video-led course taught through concise installments that endeavor to de-mystify the Opening of the Key (OOTK) divinatory technique as detailed by Paul Foster Case, MacGregor Mathers, and Aleister Crowley, augmented with commentary from contemporary masters like Chic & Tabatha Cicero and Paul Hughes-Barlow.

Much like how the Celtic Cross spread has become a golden standard, we will learn how to integrate the OOTK into personal practice. Along with deconstructing the five operations of the OOTK, we will learn about elemental dignities, Kabbalistic basics, traditional card counting, Western astrology basics, and what all of these studies combined with tarot divination can teach us about the cornerstone principle in Western occultism–“as above, so below.”

Continue reading “Learning the Opening of the Key (Online Course)”

Mental Disposition and Reading Tarot Card Reversals

From the Oswald Wirth Tarot.
From the Oswald Wirth Tarot.

Let’s talk about card reversals. No, not how to read card reversals. I mean why some practitioners read with card reversals and some do not. There’s the succinct answer of “to each his or her own; since we’re all different, we all approach tarot differently,” but I mean beyond that, why?

Some practitioners would feel remiss to not consider the energy of card reversals in a reading. For others, an upside down card image drives them mad and thus interferes with their intuitive abilities. You end up with a camp of tarot readers who read with reversals and a camp who does not, leaving beginners who are entering the tarot forum for the first time wondering what the heck they should do. When “just do what feels right to you” sounds too vague of an answer, let’s try to get down to some specifics.

So like reading with reversals vs. reading without reversals, we’ve got two camps of mental dispositions: the left-brained and the right-brained.

leftright

Continue reading “Mental Disposition and Reading Tarot Card Reversals”

Cleansing a Tarot Deck

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Many traditional Asian societies follow the lunar calendar (I once litigated a case involving an elder Taiwanese woman and all the document evidence she had was dated per the lunar calendar, which completely tripped us lawyers up and a lot of conversion work had to be done, but that is neither here nor there; just mentioning it to affirm that it really is still used today) and the super-traditional even believe that certain energies are more dominant during certain phases of the moon. Not kidding: they’d schedule major surgeries around certain phases of the moon because they believe they’ll bleed less and chances of success will be higher. They consult the Chinese almanac, which is based around the lunar calendar, for everything, from when to launch a business or throw a wedding ceremony to the optimal time for a funeral.

I’ll say that I haven’t lived or observed the universe long enough to confirm whether there is any validity to following moon phases, but if it worked for my ancestors and there is no actual adverse effects from continuing the tradition and it makes me personally feel closer to my heritage, then why the heck not. My mom was adamant about calibrating Hubby’s and my engagement and marriage to moon phases. Did it work? So far so good I’d say.

Anyway, that was a long tangent of an introduction. Sorry. This post is about cleansing a tarot deck.

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To demonstrate, I’m using the DruidCraft Tarot deck by Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm and Will Worthington (a highly recommended deck, by the way; though there is a great bit of nudity in the illustrations, which I understand why would be featured in a Wiccan-Druid-based deck, but just does not resonate well with me).

Continue reading “Cleansing a Tarot Deck”

Self-Guided Intermediate Tarot Course: Integrating the Five Components of Circumstance

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DOWNLOAD COURSE PRESENTATION

(Note: Must watch in Slide Show format, due to layered animations.)

I’ve created a self-guided intermediate tarot course on a cross-cultural interpretive framework for reading tarot that I have not seen anyone present before. The Five Components of Circumstance is a cosmological theory based on the Chinese maxim that one’s fortune is based on five factors: 1) fate, 2) luck, 3) feng shui, 4) karma, and 5) education. That theory is a cornerstone in Chinese metaphysics and is used to diagnose an individual’s personal formula for success.

By integrating Five Components analysis with tarot reading, the tarot practitioner will have a new set of vocabulary for interpreting a spread, any spread in fact, and can more precisely pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses in a querent and what adjustments need to be made to expedite the querent’s goals.

Continue reading “Self-Guided Intermediate Tarot Course: Integrating the Five Components of Circumstance”