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.

Review of the Psychic Tarot Oracle Deck

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I’m not liking the Psychic Tarot oracle deck at all. I mean, let’s just start with the above photo of the cards. Look at the quality. This is a brand new deck mind you. I bought it still encased in shrinkwrap. All that white stuff you see along the edges of the card backs is how these cards came, brand new.

It’s a fortuitous thing that I got my hands on the Psychic Tarot for the Heart before this one, otherwise I’m not sure I would have had the mind to give the Heart one a try. Earlier I reviewed Psychic Tarot for the Heart here.

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Here is a close-up of the cards. I’m digging the reference to sacred geometry on the card backs and throughout the packaging (such as the interior of the box that the cards come in), but if returning these cards and getting a refund wasn’t such a hassle, I have to tell you, that is exactly what I would have done.

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And…here’s the front of the cards. It wasn’t that the plastic wrap peeled the coloring of the cards off. That was my first hypothesis, but the plastic wrap was clear. It came like this! Many of the cards from the center of the deck, which wouldn’t have come in touch with plastic wrap or anything sticky, had that white scrape-y stuff.

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I believe both the Psychic Tarot and the Psychic Tarot for the Heart oracle decks have the same number of cards, but look at the thickness of the Psychic Tarot deck compared to the Heart one. Yes, I am dazzled by the gold gilded edges of the Psychic Tarot, but that wasn’t enough to appease me. I much, much, much prefer the Heart one over this deck. I’m so bummed. And the backs of the Psychic Tarot are so nice, too!

Continue reading “Review of the Psychic Tarot Oracle Deck”