Tarot Spread Tutorial : Healing Merkaba Spread

This is one of my custom spreads, the Healing Merkaba Spread which is great for helping you to explore your own healing or to help others heal. This is an advanced spread for more experienced readers to use when healing is the theme of the tarot card reading. To view the spread more easily, click on the graphics for a larger view. At the end of each tutorial you will be given a practical assignment - a card layout for interpretation. You can practice on your own, or join in the Discussion devoted to this particular spread in our Tarot forum.

PRIMARY USES To help you to explore barriers, blocks, repressions and meaning for health symptoms and to choose the course best suited to deal with health challenges in a holistic way.

The Merkaba

Healing Merkaba Spread The Merkaba is shaped like a star tetrahedron, which is not unlike a three-dimensional Star of David. It also looks like two interlocked pyramids. It is a very powerful sacred geometric form that can be visualized on the etheric dimension to help you to build your energy or qi or prana, and fully activate not only your chakras but your direct links to the power and energy of the Earth and the entire Universe. The symbol has its roots in Kabbalistic theory, and is said to be the spiritual vehicle of Light mentioned in the Bible by Ezekiel. It is composed of an upright yang tetrahedron which evokes electrical energy and a downward pointing yin tetrahedron made of magnetic energy.

In Meditation, the merkaba is visualized as a counter-rotating vehicle that encases the body and extends for close to 60 feet on all sides. The yang portion rotates counter-clockwise while the yin half rotates clockwise, creating the counter-rotating effect. This field is meant to rotate at the speed of light, but most people's merkaba is very sluggish and moves very slowly and in an uncoordinated way. By visualizing and meditating, this can change, and the merkaba vehicle can once again rotate properly, allowing the person to use the vehicle to explore the various dimensions. The meditation also helps us to align our chakras and our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual selves. Some believe there are actually three distinct merkaba superimposed on one another, one is stationary and matches the physical body; one is totally male and matches the mental body, and the third is female, matching the emotional body. All together they link us with the spirit world. The Merkaba fluidly integrates our feminine (intuitive, receptive) and masculine (active, dynamic) aspects of our mind and spirit. Healing Merkaba Interpretation

This spread will help you to learn to apply the tarot to give a reading to help yourself or another person explore health as a multi-fauceted process of past and current life energy of mind, body, emotions and spirit.

1. Past Life Physical-Mental Card: This card represents patterns of mind-body cell memories carried over from past lives.

2. Present Life Emotional Card: This card represents the current state of the querant's emotional health.

3. Action Needed for Emotional Health: This card points to the concrete action that needs to be taken to foster emotional well-being.

4. Greatest Health Lesson: This card represents the most important health lesson for the querant in this lifetime in the pursuit of holistic health in body-mind-emotions-spirit.

5. Present Life Physical-Mental Card: This card represents the current state of the querant's mind-body health.

6. Action Needed for Physical-Mental Health: This card points to the concrete action that needs to be taken to foster mind-body well-being.

7. Past Life Emotional Card: This card represents patterns of emotional body memories carried over from past lives.

Case In Point

To illustrate how this spread works, consider the following question:

"What do I need to do to enjoy vibrant holistic well-being?"

You draw the seven cards and end up with the following layout:

1. Past Life Physical-Mental Card: - Reversed Nine of Swords.
2. Present Life Emotional Card: - The Sun
3. Action Needed for Emotional Health: - Reversed Five of Coins.
4. Greatest Health Lesson: The Star.
5. Present Life Physical-Mental Card: - Six of Wands.
6. Action Needed for Physical-Mental Health: - Eight of Swords.
7. Past Life Emotional Card: - b> Reversed Princess of Wands.

To weave the meaning of these seven cards together, you need to read the energies of each in turn, then blend these together to give a picture of the whole state of health to come up with an answer.

Reversed Nine of Swords. - Past Life Physical-Mental Card: - Events turn for the worst. People become malicious and gossip about you slanderously. Shady characters surround you. Fear crops up frequently in your mind and fills your body full of adrenaline. In this particular past life, you were full of self-doubt and events brought you to an almost constant state of despair and despondency.

The Sun - Present Life Emotional Card: - In this life you feel quite satisfied as far as your self-esteem, career and personal life go. You enjoy a sense of achievement and material success due to your own skills and drive. This card signals a need for strong personal relationships, including marriage and children for a fulfilled emotional life.

Reversed Five of Coins - Action Needed for Emotional Health: - Do not force changes, let them flow naturally particularly when it comes to love, marriage, family. It is important that you do not marry for material security, but to proceed slowly and to develop trust and intimacy with your partner. Do not rush into anything, emotionally.

The Star - Greatest Health Lesson: - It is important for you to cultivate hope and optimism in this lifetime to heal the despair felt in your significant past one. Being filled with faith and inspiration will ensure balanced health. Prospects look bright and opportunities look promising as long as you relax and have faith that you are on the right path and that all good things will come to you if you have patience and don't rush into anything. You also need to develop tolerance for others; you CAN trust some people - not all people are underhanded (a carry over fear from your past life).

Six of Wands - Present Life Physical-Mental Card: - Although you enjoy success and comfortable earnings, you still feel fearful at times, your mind goes round and round in circles, fretting which puts your body into knots. You become agitated with any unexpected and undefined delays. You often feel dread over the achievements of a competitor and worry about being passed over for promotions, even though your position has grown steadily over the past few years.This self afflicted mental stress puts a strain on your body, catalysing your complaints of asthma, mysterious rashes and insomnia.

Eight of Swords - Action Needed for Physical-Mental Health - It is important that you tune into the blocks that you have stored up in your body, mind, heart and spirit from your past lives and your current ones. You restrict yourself too much - life must be more than mere work. It is important for you to set aside some "YOU" time for meditation, exercise, deep breathing and nature. These blocks must be dissolved before they lead to chronic disease. Every day, practice some yoga, chakra work and spend some quiet time out of doors. These will help you to heal yourself on all levels.

Reversed Princess of Wands - . Past Life Emotional Card: - In the past, you have been someone who is serious with even the trivial. You were prone to moodiness: your emotional states changed quickly and radically. This added to your mental despair and at times you mimick these behaviors, especially when overworked and stressed, or lacking sleep. It is your task in this lifetime to put a reign to these fluctuating emotions and strengthen your emotional body to be balanced and compassionate. Faith and patience are the key, as is recognizing that no one on this planet is perfect, including you.

Practice Exercise

To help you practice performing the Healing Merkaba spread, I offer a case study below. In the illustration, you can see seven face up Tarot cards. These seven cards are from the Quest Tarot Deck by Joseph Martin © 2002 (Used by permission from Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd. All rights reserved), with the following configuration:

1. Past Life Physical-Mental Card: - The Lovers
2. Present Life Emotional Card: - The Hanged Man
3. Action Needed for Emotional Health: - Princess of Swords
4. Greatest Health Lesson: Nine of Cups
5. Present Life Physical-Mental Card: - Wheel of Fortune
6. Action Needed for Physical-Mental Health: - Two of Coins or Pentacles
7. Past Life Emotional Card: - The Tower

PRACTICE CASE STUDY:

Sarah is a 40 year old divorced woman, who is raising her 8 year old son and 12 year old daughter alone, and works full time as a grocery store sales clerk. She comes to you complaining that there are no good men in the world, she feels lonely and often depressed and she has noticed lately that she feels like she is experiencing panic attacks at least once a week. She has a hard time sleeping at night and is often tired at work. She has little money to socialize, nor does she seem to have the time or energy. She is 50 pounds heavier than her ideal body weight, and her blood pressure averages 180/75. She smokes a pack of cigarettes per day and drinks a moderate amount of alcohol on a daily basis. She was raised to be Catholic but does not follow any particular faith - in fact, she shuns the idea of any kind of spiritual life. Her children often complain that they can not do the things that their friends do, and that she never takes them anywhere. Her ex-husband lives 3,000 miles away and sends her $200 a month in child support. She resents the fact that he is not closer, since she knows he is a good father when he does see the children.

How would you interpret the cards below for Sarah?

If you would like to have an interactive experience with this exercise CLICK HERE to join the Forum Discussion devoted to this particular Healing Merkaba Spread Exercise. If you prefer to work in private on your own, by all means, do whatever is comfortable for you.