Tarot pathworking: meditating with a card

In this lesson: what pathworking is, where it comes from in the Golden Dawn and how to step into a tarot card safely in your imagination.

Tarot cards are pictures, and pictures can be entered. Pathworking is a guided meditation in which you imagine stepping into a card, exploring its landscape and meeting its figures. It is one of my favourite ways to learn a card from the inside, and it brings together everything from the last four lessons.

Where pathworking comes from

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in London in 1888, linked the 22 trumps of the tarot with the 22 paths that connect the spheres of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Members practised imaginative journeys along those paths, and the cards served as doorways. Israel Regardie’s published collection The Golden Dawn preserves many of their techniques. In 1983 Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki’s The Shining Paths offered a full set of guided journeys for the paths, and the word “pathworking” has since come to mean any guided inner journey.

You do not need to know Kabbalah to try this. You need a card, a quiet room and the skills you have already practised.

A fuller history of pathworking

Historical The term pathworking comes from the Western esoteric use of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, a diagram of ten spheres (sefirot) connected by twenty-two paths. In the nineteenth century, French occultist Éliphas Lévi linked the twenty-two Hebrew letters, and with them the paths, to the twenty-two trump cards of the tarot. The Golden Dawn developed this system in the 1880s and 1890s and practiced “skrying in the spirit vision”: imagining a card or symbol as a doorway and journeying through it in the imagination.

Historical The British occultist Dion Fortune (Violet Firth, 1890 to 1946) and her Society of the Inner Light continued these practices. Later writers such as W. E. Butler and Gareth Knight in the 1960s and 1970s published accessible guided journeys. The psychiatrist C. G. Jung’s active imagination offered a psychological framework: inner images can be explored as expressions of the unconscious. Modern tarot pathworking often blends both.

A full pathworking, step by step

Choose one card, for example The Star from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck (1909). Look at it for two minutes with eyes open, noticing the woman kneeling by the water, the two jugs, the large star and seven small stars, the bird in the tree. Then close your eyes and imagine the card growing larger until it is the size of a door. Step through. Notice the cool night air, the sound of water being poured.

Walk to the pool. You might sit beside the woman and simply watch, or ask her a question such as “What do I need to hope for?” Listen for any answer, which may be a word, an image or nothing. After a few minutes, thank her, walk back through the door, and watch the card shrink back to its normal size. Open your eyes, touch the floor, and write everything down.

Variations

For a short session: spend three minutes looking at the card and imagining only one detail, such as the sound of the water. For people without visual imagery: describe the card aloud or in writing as if you were inside it. For deeper study: do the same card once a week for a month and compare your notes. For a reading: after a three-card spread, do a short pathworking with the card that puzzles you most.

How to do it

Sit, breathe and ground yourself. Look at the card for a minute, taking in every detail. Close your eyes and imagine the card growing until it is the size of a door. Step through. Notice the ground under your feet, the air, the sounds. Walk towards the main figure and ask one simple question. Listen to whatever comes, even if it is silence. Then thank the figure, walk back to the doorway, step out, watch the card shrink to its normal size, and ground yourself.

A second pathworking: The Hermit

Historical Once you have tried The Star, The Hermit is a lovely second card for a quiet inner journey. In the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, an old man in a grey cloak stands on a snowy peak, holding up a lantern with a six-pointed star inside and leaning on a staff. A. E.

Waite, who designed the deck with the artist Pamela Colman Smith, wrote about this card in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (first published 1910): “It is a star which shines in the lantern.” He added that the Hermit’s beacon says “where I am, you also may be.” For Waite, the Hermit was not a man hiding away, but someone who had climbed and was holding up a light for those still climbing.

For the journey, look at the card for two minutes, then close your eyes and see it grow into a doorway. Step onto a mountain path in the evening. Notice the cold air and the crunch of snow. Far above, a small light shines. Walk towards it slowly, taking your time on the path. When you reach the Hermit, stand beside him and look out at the view. You might ask: “What light do I already carry?” Wait quietly for any answer. Then thank him, walk back down the path, step through the doorway and feel the chair beneath you.

Choosing cards for your first pathworkings

For your first few journeys, choose calm cards with open landscapes and a gentle mood, such as The Star, The Hermit, The Empress, Temperance or The Sun. Save cards with intense imagery, such as The Tower, Death, The Devil or The Moon, until you are comfortable with the method and feel steady in yourself. Those cards are not dangerous, but their pictures can stir strong feelings, and it is wise to meet them when you have some practice in returning and grounding.

Writing up a pathworking

Write your notes straight after the journey, before you check your phone. A simple structure works well: the card, the date, what you saw, heard and felt, any words or images that came, and how you feel now. Then add one line on how it might connect to your life this week. One learner’s note on The Hermit read: “Snow, very quiet. The lantern was warm. Answer: ‘You already know the way, slow down.’ Feel calm. This week: no work email after eight in the evening.”

Questions beginners ask

Do I need to know Kabbalah to do pathworking? No. You can use any tarot card as a doorway. The Tree of Life is an optional framework.

Which deck is best? A deck with detailed scenes, such as the Rider-Waite-Smith, works well because there is more to explore. Marseille-style pip cards are harder for beginners.

Is it dangerous? For most people, no. Keep sessions short, always return through the door, and ground afterward. If you have a history of psychosis or dissociation, skip imaginative journeys or do them with eyes open.

What if a figure says something upsetting? Leave the scene. Messages in pathworking are your own imagination at work, worth reflecting on, but never commands.

Myths to drop: Pathworking is not astral travel in a literal sense. Tarot is not ancient Egyptian; its occult use began in the eighteenth century. And you cannot “get stuck” in a card.

A worked example

Imagine you choose the Star. You step into a quiet night landscape with a pool of water and a woman pouring from two jugs. You feel cool grass under your feet. You ask her, “What do I need to know?” and the word that comes is “pour”, along with an image of her not keeping the water for herself. Back in your room you write it down: maybe you have been holding on to something you could share. The image came from your own mind, shaped by the card, and that is exactly the point.

Try this

Choose the Star or the Four of Swords. Spend ten minutes stepping into the card, asking the main figure one question and stepping out again. Write everything you noticed: colors, sounds, the answer, how you felt. Next time you draw that card in a reading, read your notes first.

Journal prompts: What did the card’s world feel like? What did I bring back? How did this change my understanding of the card?

A beginner’s worry, answered. “Nothing happened in my pathworking.” Sometimes the scene is faint or the mind wanders the whole time. Write down whatever you did notice, even “I saw the card but could not step through”. Try again another day with a shorter session. Pathworking, like all visualization, grows with practice.

A variation with a friend. One person reads a short journey script slowly aloud while the other listens with eyes closed, then you swap. Agree beforehand that either of you can say “stop” at any time. Afterwards, share only what you each feel comfortable sharing. Hearing how differently two people experience the same card is a wonderful lesson in how personal tarot symbolism is.

How often to pathwork. Once a week is plenty for a beginner. The journeys tend to stay with you for a few days, and leaving space between them gives you time to notice what they bring up in ordinary life.

After every journey, eat a small snack or drink a glass of water, and look around the room for a moment before you stand up. It helps the mind settle back into ordinary time.

Recap

Pathworking is an imagined journey into a card. It comes from the Golden Dawn’s linking of the 22 trumps with the 22 paths of the Tree of Life, and was later popularised by books like The Shining Paths. Ground, step in through a doorway, ask one question, step out the same way and ground again. Start with calm cards.

What next

The Major Arcana guide has every trump to explore, and the tarot learning hub gives meanings for the rest of the deck. If you want to learn the cards from the start, take Tarot for Beginners. Next lesson: shielding, and looking after your mental health.

Further reading: Dion Fortune, The Mystical Qabalah (1935). Gareth Knight, A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism (1965). Rachel Pollack, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom (1980), for card imagery.

Sources

• Israel Regardie, The Golden Dawn (Aries Press, 1937 to 1940).
• Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki, The Shining Paths (Aquarian Press, 1983).
• Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (William Rider and Son, 1910).

Go deeper: the witchcraft and tarot pages on this site

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