The Release of Meaning by Leela Williams

Inviting tension into your card readings

Once upon a time, I was chatting with a painter who didn’t write artist statements. She didn’t feel the need to interpret her work for her audience. In fact, when people asked her what a painting was about, she asked them what they saw.

“And, you know,” she winked, “they’re always right.”

I was in my twenties, the painter in her fifties. My first thought was that it was amazing that people could interpret the colours and symbolism to know the artist’s intention. If only I could feel understood in this way! Of course, that wasn’t the point she was making.

Every painting meant something to her. That meaning was her own — not secret, but personal. What someone else saw belonged to them. There is something magical in releasing a work in this way. Not just selling the painting but letting it go out into the world without a story. Letting it write its own, over and over again.

With this approach, she invited people to engage more openly and curiously with the work. They made connections. She sold more paintings. She also benefited from seeing her creations through other eyes and expanding her experience of her work.

This encounter often surfaces when talking about the ways we interpret tarot and oracle cards. As readers, we come to the card images with fresh eyes, finding meaning in the symbolism, colour and structure without ever opening the guidebook. This is a completely valid way to read cards. As the artist above confided, whatever you see is “right”.

But when we stop there, content with our own interpretations, we remain within the limits of what we already know.

When we pick up the guidebook or push ourselves to look closer, we invite another perspective into the reading. Not one that is necessarily more correct than our own, but one that may show us something we would never have found for ourselves. We might be delighted by a detail. Surprised by a contradiction. We might encounter an interpretation that simply doesn’t sit comfortably beside our own.

Chase that tension.

When we keep looking, exploring and prodding at a card’s message until it pushes back against our own interpretations, we become open to discovery. We can make connections we might otherwise have missed. We can see things from outside ourselves. There’s no rush to decide which interpretation is right. Both meanings can be true. Sit with the space between them. What does the other interpretation see that you don’t? What does your resistance to it reveal?

Somewhere in that tension, you might discover something forgotten, lost or previously unseen. We can be the painter, releasing our attachment to the story we already know and allowing another perspective to expand it.

When writing tarot and oracle decks, I try to sit with the tension of the images. I don’t want to write what is comfortable or obvious. I want the card to push back and tell me something more — something I didn’t see, something I didn’t know. When that happens, it feels as though something has broken through from the “other”. The process is alchemic. I learn and grow as I go. I hope the joy of self-discovery comes through in my work, and that it is somewhat contagious.

Of course, I write knowing that not everyone reads the guidebook, and those who do will interpret the words for themselves — regardless of my intention. Not only does that not matter. It’s the point.

Image features Sacred Earth Oracle. Artwork: Helena Nelson-Reed. Guidebook: Toni Carmine Salerno and Leea J. Williams. Connect with Leela at https://linktr.ee/leelajwilliams and find her oracles and journals, including Maxine Gadd’s Zoologica: The Steampunk Oracle at Tarotopia.