How to Read Tarot with Megan Hamilton

Megan Hamilton (00:01.516)
I'm Megan Hamilton and this is the Embracing Enchantment podcast. Well, it's just you and me this week. Happy new moon in Aries with everything else apparently in Aries as well. And your very own host is in Aries. I had my 52nd birthday earlier this month. And Chiron.

for me is also in Aries. And Chiron just had a big return. So there's a lot going on.

I hope that this new moon brings you clarity, blessings, and new direction as I hope it does for all of us. Because boy, we could use some new direction, huh? So today, I'm actually going to talk about something I've wanted to talk about for a while. And I'm going to teach you about how I read tarot cards and my approach.

And I started to think about it because I have this new program that I launched and it's called Impact Magic. And for those of you who have been around for a while, you likely know that I am a speaking coach and I also do performance and presentation coaching for small business owners and regular folks who want to do well in a job interview or who don't feel like they're representing themselves well at work or anywhere.

but I also coach TEDx speakers and keynote speakers. I've coached TEDx talks around the world. I am the speaker advisor for the second largest TEDx in Canada. And when I started to use Tero in some of that work, at first, it was hard for folks to understand how the two would relate. I mean, people who'd worked with me before, I don't think had such a hard time. But what's been really interesting,

Megan Hamilton (02:11.869)
is how skeptics start to see the value of tarot, of the storylines, of the symbolism, of the ability to connect with yourself in a different, possibly deeper and more profound way. So that's the reason why I included this tarot portion in Impact Magic so that

folks could learn for themselves how to use tarot combined with shadow work, basically to help get over your fears and blocks that you might have around public speaking, around visibility, around marketing your small business. And I just realized this sounds like an ad, but it's more of an explanation. And one thing that has come up over and over again for me with

clients, tarot clients that I've had for years is they'll get a card and they'll have a certain response to it. And I'll, I'll give my response and I'll be like, I thought it was so much worse than that. And I'm always really interested in exploring why that is because my philosophy with tarot is that it's a very supportive tool.

I don't use it for divination specifically. However, sometimes certain choices come through that seem incredibly obvious in terms of what decisions to make or what might happen.

Megan Hamilton (04:00.333)
But the way I read the cards is the way I have always felt intuitively about the cards, which is that they can be a powerful tool to support yourself, which means that how you approach the reading, in my opinion, needs to be intentional. So.

You know what? Let me just give you some examples. Let's pull a card first for the collective. I'll give a little read on it and then I'm going to start pulling some cards and I'm going to try to explain through the cards what the heck I'm talking about. And so, you know, if you have a deck, you might want to pull it out or if you have access to YouTube.

You might want to check it out or if you're very familiar with the cards, I'm using the Rider Waite Smith deck as usual. And that is the imagery that I will be focusing on. All right, so card for the collective.

Megan Hamilton (05:15.469)
What do we need to know?

Megan Hamilton (05:21.389)
Okay, well, we've got our High Priestess, heavy hitter. I've been pulling a lot of majors for myself today. This morning I pulled the Magician probably for the third time this week. Sun is my shadow card. The Emperor, which was my card for the month also relates to Aries. Also everything's in Aries. And I thought, okay, I mean, you know, it could be random, but it doesn't seem like.

So our beloved High Priestess, I mean, I have an altar to her right over there. This is my favorite card, always has been. I'm also a musician and my band shirt has the High Priestess on it.

So this is about intuition and the moon, know, happy new moon. It's about it is about feminine energy nurturing, which is literally what I was just talking about supporting how tarot can be supportive and nurturing. Now, I just want to be clear that doesn't mean sunshine and roses. In fact, like, frankly, that that's

That's the least likely thing that's gonna happen. Taro's gonna show you what you need to do.

Just like your best friend, who doesn't lie to you.

Megan Hamilton (06:44.257)
but it doesn't do it the way I read in a crappy voice. It's the messages that are coming through Tarot are trying to tell you what to do so that you can be happier, live a better life, feel more courageous, whatever it is, reach your goals. So our High Priestess is

Obviously very connected to the moon, but she also reminds us we don't have to give everything away. Some things are just for us or the people who have really earned our trust in our friendship and that she shows us with the scroll that's kind of half hidden in her robe. We also noticed that the blue is very similar to the blue we find with the Virgin Mary. So there is some kind of

reverence that we have here. The two pillars are Boaz and Jaquin or Jaquin, I think those are the two pillars of Solomon. And so with that, we think of what we learned from Solomon, which is how to make things fair, how to make things balanced and they're black and white. And if you are ever looking at your deck, you might want to go and look at

the King of Cups because his throne, one of the armrests has the same etchings as the etchings that are on our high priestess pillars. And so when I pull the King of Cups, I always think that the high priestess is also kind of behind him going, hey, me too, here I am. The pomegranates on the veil behind her represent

beauty and sexiness and pleasure and our senses. And so there is very much a connection even though she is of kind of another world, there's still very much a connection to the earth and grounding ourselves with our senses. And the top of her head,

Megan Hamilton (09:08.113)
is the moon crown. And so I've been taking Reiki too with Molly Dunlin, who was the first person on the pod to have two episodes. And when you're practicing Reiki, you allow the energy of Reiki to come in through the crown of your head. And so I often think of the high priestess when I'm doing that, because she literally has, you know, a moon crown on her head.

So when we think of her, I think we're thinking of that.

certainty.

that we will be creating whatever it is, whatever life we would like to live. And it's not just me, me, me, I want $40 million and I don't know, whatever. It's.

the reminder that when we wish for a better world, we have to include everybody in the world.

Megan Hamilton (10:20.747)
we cannot just wish for our own path because it just, it won't happen if the world is crumbling around us. Okay, so I'm gonna leave her, I'm gonna leave her up here and now I'm gonna see if I can, you know, start to help understand different ways that you can interpret the cards and what it might say to you, what information you might get based on.

how you're deciding to read the cards. Okay. So let's see what the first one is here. Knight of Wands. All right. So Wands we know are in the realm of fire, high Aries, or getting the messages. And the Knight's Tunic is covered in salamanders. the salamanders are, and so aside from the queen in this court card series,

There's salamanders. And the salamanders in the page are open. And then they slowly start to close. By the time they get to the king, they're pretty much closed. And so we think of Ouroboros or completing a cycle. Salamanders are also able to walk through fire and come to the other side unscathed. So there's a, in our wands,

These folks have seen some stuff. Wands also have a lot of sprigs of growth on them. So we think of the growth that we experience. And there's creativity, spark, what motivates you, passion. There's lots of, know, the night's plumes coming out of their helmet look like fire. And there's...

red hair there. So there's like lots of fire, fast energy and the horse is going. We're full speed ahead. And it's also in the desert, which is one of the places that fire can't burn. So there's a safety to that. Or, or the fire has already torched everything. And the pyramids are there. So there's that mystery in that.

Megan Hamilton (12:39.799)
There's a lot of energy associated with the pyramids. So one way of looking at this is.

you're going to go too hot too fast and you're going to burn everything down in your path.

So if you were somebody who, you know, like me, for example, has ADHD and you get really stimulated very quickly and then you have so many ideas and you can see how they all need to be executed and you've got to do it really fast so that you get everything out. But probably in the meantime, you might like deplete all of your resources, all of your extra resources or, you know, some people might get hurt in the process because you're like, leave me alone. I got to do this.

That's one way of looking at it. Another way is we're going all in.

we have decided to go full in on our passion. We've decided to go for it. We're taking everything on and we're gonna do it. So do you see how the two are a little bit different? One is kind of like you're gonna burn yourself out, you're gonna hurt people and the other one is more like we're all in, we're going for it. There's different levels of support in terms of the language. So let's see if we can get another one and get.

Megan Hamilton (14:05.067)
little bit closer to what I'm trying to say.

Megan Hamilton (14:14.775)
Like on the one hand with the Night of Wands, you're thinking like, I'm too hotheaded. I'm too much. I'm too fiery. And that's not helpful.

Megan Hamilton (14:30.143)
unless it's in the shadow position, in which case that asks you to reflect on some of the behaviors that you have that you want to take a look at. So next we have the two of cups. And this is a card of romantic relationships. It's a card of togetherness. It's a card of, you know, a friendship.

sharing reciprocity and the health that comes from that. we have our, is it a cadacious? And then we had like the winged lion and then the two snakes intertwining that is like the same as our pharmacy symbol. And you might think, this is about love and togetherness and romance, which it is.

Megan Hamilton (15:28.213)
So if you were reading this and you were a single person, you might feel hopeful, I guess. If you're reading this as a a partnered person, then it might you might consider that it's asking you to like lean into reciprocity within your relationship. You also can look at this as as building friendship. It really is about love. But here's another take.

Where might somebody be taking more than their fair share in a relationship?

So she's holding out her cup and he's going to grab her cup.

And it really bugs me.

And so the message here in terms of supporting you might be where are you allowing everybody to take from your cup who's also not giving back to you, right? That doesn't look like he's about to give her his cup in exchange. He's just taking hers.

Megan Hamilton (16:46.199)
Okay.

Megan Hamilton (16:53.045)
Eight of pentacles. So here you've got somebody, pentacles are in the realm of earth. We associate them with money and career surface level stuff. Okay. So here you've got what looks to be a worker and they are working on pentacles. They have made several and they're still making more. So in some cases you can look at this as keep working at what you're doing.

And eventually, you know, or you might look at this and say, work is tedious and that's just part of life.

because he's just making the same pentacle over and over again. And then you also might look at this as an apprentice. That's certainly a version that a lot of folks use. But you could also go deeper into the symbol of the pentacle.

as so if we are relating to the material world and by material I don't just mean stuff related to money I also mean tangible you know like everything that is material i.e. not spiritual

Megan Hamilton (18:15.347)
then we can also look at the magic of the symbol itself. And so if you've taken my course, the magic of aliveness, it focuses on the pentacle. And that was my, that was like last year or 2024 for me, focusing on the magic of aliveness through the pentacle and thinking of the pentacle less as about money and career and more about resources, relationships.

what we forget is actually a resource. For example, all that junk in your garage that you just got to get rid of, donate or whatever. Well, that is an access of resources, right? That is an abundance of extra. Sure, you don't want it, but it's still there. It could be traded or it could be given away. There's still...

It's still a resource. And so what if this person is working away at the things that are very meaningful and magical to them and building within their vision, this idea of the magic of being alive. And as they look forward, they see everything through that vision of, you know,

Gravity is magical, if you think about it. Steam, all of these things that we kind of take for granted, sometimes you look at them and you go, wow, that's actually incredibly beautiful. That's where the magic exists all around us. And so you could take that kind of level to this card.

and remind yourself to look for the good, look for the magic, look for the things that keep you hopeful. Because we create the world in which we live, basically, through our philosophy and our attitude. So if our philosophy and our attitude are constantly focusing on the negative and the difficult, which, mean, like, let's be fair, hello, we are living in a very, very, very difficult time.

Megan Hamilton (20:44.599)
but there's always room to see beauty and magic and find enjoyment.

All right, you know, I have a lot of caveats with that, I'm sure that I don't need to list them off. I'm not getting the kind of examples I was hoping to get with this, but maybe instead we're just being shown how different differently we can interpret the cards. And this is part of the reason why it's, you know, I understand when you're starting to learn tarot that

You wanna use the book, you wanna get it right. But any person who has worked with Tarot, studied Tarot, gives Tarot readings, teaches Tarot will tell you your relationship to the card is more important than one other person's relationship to the card, which is what they will be teaching you. There are certainly standard

ways of looking at the card, but even then there's so much disagreement between, you know, what does it actually mean? And then there's this whole idea of the interpretations that the general public got versus the interpretations that the folks within the different occult communities were actually using. So the nice thing about this kind of work about

you know, alternative spiritualities is that provided it's not within a closed structure, a cultural structure, you can kind of use what works for you. Let's see what else we want to get here.

Megan Hamilton (22:41.943)
justice. Okay, this is a great example. So you might get this card and say,

Megan Hamilton (22:52.055)
Well, the person I wronged five years ago is finally gonna get justice. Something bad's gonna happen to me, I know it. That's the balancing of the scales. That's one way you could get this card and think.

Maybe justice is coming.

Megan Hamilton (23:15.149)
for a lot of people.

Because and here's the other thing justice really is about balance. And so if we're talking about balance when justice is served.

somebody gets the positive aspect of justice and somebody gets the negative aspect of justice, right? If somebody has wronged somebody, the person who has done the wrong is, is the scales of justice are weighed accordingly and they go to jail or whatever might happen to them. And the person who was wronged receives, I don't know.

the wonderful knowledge that the person who harmed them is in jail. This is where I really struggle with the concept of justice, except if we think of spiritual justice, I really like to think about something that Mitch Horowitz talked about in his book, Practical Magic, which I know I've mentioned a few times on this podcast, which is.

Megan Hamilton (24:18.913)
when you are casting a spell, putting an intention, making a wish, wanting something.

making a sigil, we charge it. And you can do that with sexual energy, you can do that with, you know, yearning, like longing for this thing to happen. You can put emotional energy into it. And he also talks about the idea of the fact that if you have

really, really worried about something before in your life, or if you've been very, harmed, you kind of then have

reciprocity money in the bank, which means at some point the scales of justice will balance out and you will be in receivership of all of the stuff you went through. And I really like to think about that. So sometimes when you get the justice card,

we can think about what am I ready to receive as a result of energy I've put out into the world, harm that was done to me. I mean, I don't usually focus on that, but you certainly could. And so that that is also the balancing of the scales.

Megan Hamilton (26:01.131)
All right, let's do one more.

Megan Hamilton (26:11.191)
Maybe now's a good time to let you know that I'm gonna take a break this summer. I am going to take a hiatus from the pod. And what I would love is to know who you would like me to bring onto the pod. Who are your favorite magic makers? Who are your favorite tarot stars? Who are your favorite witches? Who are your favorite creators within the realm of

the esoteric and the spiritual and the magical and the hopeful.

If you go to the show notes, you'll find a place where you can leave a voice note and just leave me a voice note. Let me know who do you want to hear in the pod? I'll get on it. I've not had very many people say no. So.

Megan Hamilton (27:06.253)
I've had a few people not answer me, but that's fair. I mean, I'm asking people like Chani, just so we're clear of who I'm trying to get on here.

All right, this is our last one. Night of Pentacles.

Megan Hamilton (27:26.631)
Some people might see this and say, I'm stuck. I'm stuck in my career. I can't move forward. I don't know what action to take. I'm not being very brave.

And you could, you could say that.

Megan Hamilton (27:46.829)
But that's not actually going to support you in the change that you're looking for. If you're just dumping on yourself.

Megan Hamilton (27:58.456)
What you might say is...

It's time to take action. I'm going to lead with what is important and valuable to me.

I'm going to use strength. Okay, so we have these oak leaves, right, as the plumes of this knight's helmet representing strength.

I'm going to explore my shadow. That's the black horse.

and that's gonna help me make the decisions that I need to make to move forward. But I'm gonna lead with.

Megan Hamilton (28:39.905)
the magic of aliveness. And that is what I mean when I say it's not helpful to get

messages from tarot that are as mean as you could be with your inner voice.

So when I'm doing this work, for example, I do coaching with Taro and we always break it down. Is this a supportive way of looking at this card? Does it have action steps? If it's showing something that needs to be corrected, what is it also showing in terms of the action steps to correct it? Because if there's no action, if there's no remedy,

It's not supportive. It's just dumping on you. And that doesn't help anybody. It's like, fear is a great motivator, but then you just have to keep using fear because you're not helping somebody actually like fix whatever it is that they're doing that you don't want them to be doing.

Megan Hamilton (29:52.853)
I hope that I would love to know, did this come through? Do you get what I'm trying to put down? Did the message come through clearly? Let me know. You can always, like I said, leave a voice note. I love an email. You can comment on Instagram, at Embracing Enchantment Pod. And,

I hope that you enjoyed this episode and thank you for being here because I love making podcasts for you. You can find all of the information and takeaways from today's episode in the show notes or at embracing enchantment.com. Please subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts, leave a review or ask us a question or a suggestion through a voice note.

Make sure you're subscribed because we always have some exciting guests on the horizon. Until then, here's to building an enchanted life. And may this moon bring everything that you need to move forward.