Forgotten Places - a tarot spread for remembering 🍂🐭
inspired by Stephanie Burrow’s Heartwood Tarot @three_trees_tarot
Spread Positions
Descending past ghosts, cobwebs & dust: What deters you from entering the stillness and quiet place within - the place where you are called to go right now, to find what needs to be found? (Perhaps past self, a buried memory, a suppressed aspect of your character, a lost dream)
Arriving at the forgotten places in your heart: Is there a specific memory that you're remembering right now? Perhaps a flash of a scene from your childhood? An emotion that has been long-awaiting to be felt?
Finding a secret passage way behind the antique bookshelf: What is the clever designed "unlocking mechanism" that will lead you towards the portal to your inner wisdom?
Uncovering the magic that had always been there: What is a positive aspect of your past that you have forgotten? Perhaps a creative project you've left on the shelf? Something that made you happy that you get to revisit now? A hidden talent?
Returning with new destinies to weave: How has remembering your past or uncovering a secret part of you changed your perspectives towards the future…or who you are right now?
Weaving light into the stories that now unfold: With the power and insight that you have now, you now have the freedom to take action and tell new stories, new narratives, new destinies. How will your story unfold - according to you?
these are cards I drew for myself when I used the spread (or rather, I came up with the spread positions to do this reading LOL)
a spread for remembering
This tarot spread is inspired by Stephanie Burrow’s upcoming tarot deck, Heartwood Tarot: an adorable, serene and emotive deck featuring the bittersweet journey of a tiny mouse into (what I perceive to be) a forgotten cottage full of woodland creatures that have taken refuge there.
There is always so much peace in Stephanie’s decks as well as Adam Oehlers’s enchanting illustrations - always the few decks that I never get tired of and forever sitting on the favourite section of my tarot shelf. (I organize my tarot & oracle deck collection based on hand traffic - the more often I reach for them, the closer they are to my desk. I have a “favourites” section for my tarot & oracle decks and they are basically just within arm’s reach and right next to me lol)
This deck came to me as if by divine timing…the perfect deck for slowing down and stepping away from the hustle-bustle of uh, hyperproductivity, toxic perfectionism and capitalism. It’s not the first time that I grew weary of hustle culture but I kept getting sucked back to it, after declaring several times that I shall never hustle again. It’s hard to resist the adrenaline, the speed…and…this is kind of an ugly thing to say and I’m sure no creative and heart-centred business owner want to admit to this but….greed. Hustle culture is driven by greed, right? And greed is really a reflection of lack…the fear of not having enough, so we gotta have more, more, MORE. More money. More deck sales. More engagement. More followers. More status. More productivity. MORE BUSY. More looking like a successful business woman, Kim! More looking like you’re serious about being a girl boss!
Greed, according to Buddha, is one of the 3 existential “poisons” that perpetuate suffering (the other two being ignorance and hatred) and uh, long story short, I guess ‘tis the season for deep shadow work and deep destruction because over the last few months…I’ve come face to face with those 3 things about myself and how the patterns of greed, ignorance and hatred have been running the scripts in my subconscious and keeping me entrapped to things that were making me really, and I mean really, unhappy. Like getting stuck in a toxic relationship with a covert narcissist for 2 years, for example. Which leads me to want to escape the pain of being emotionally and mentally abused by diving into hustle culture, for example. Ah, nothing like a socially acceptable addiction like workaholism to look like I’m a functioning adult, hooray!
Anyways. THE POINT IS…I left that toxic relationship and cut out the toxic people in my life, picking up the pieces of myself and my heart by slowing down and I mean really slowing doooooooooooown so my nervous system doesn’t jump right back to hustle-over-pain mode.
Why am I telling you this, you may ask?? Ok, so like, since I’m in the season of slowing down and reconnecting with the joys I have forgotten and traversing timidly into the corners of my heart…this deck…Heartwood Tarot…is literally the perfect metaphor.
As I look through the images of this deck and journey down the corners of this world with the story’s protagonist - the mouse - I was completely entranced by the narrative, and how every scene is just hitting a soft spot in my being and making me light up, or feel a little something, or feel a lot of something, or feeling a little or a lot of something deeply all at once. There is magic behind every corner. Memories. Stories of the people or creatures that once dwelled in this little cottage. I can’t begin to describe to you how much this deck is resonating with my own inner emotional landscape right now. Am I this little mouse? Is this little mouse ME? Is this mouse arriving at this seemingly forgotten house, and discovering the stories and secrets there? There is an air of sadness there, wistfulness tucked in between the folds of this world, but there is also this sense of peace-making, this feeling of timid discovery and wonder, and most prominently…acceptance.
the cottage-core vibes is realz
Something about this deck is deeply healing to me. It’s giving me all the feels and all the vibes. Not to mention the mouse is so cute, ugh!!!!
And so, I made this tarot spread for us to discover and perhaps rediscover the forgotten places in us. Long lost memories. Forgotten joys from our past. Lost dreams. Feelings that burrowed deeply into the earth, into our bones that need to be awakened and felt even more deeply than where they were buried.
You can use the narrative-infused spread positions for a more straightforward spreads and just like, use the tarot cards you pull to answer the questions. Or, OR, you can do what I did…write an intuitively + creatively channeled STORY that is really a story about YOU, what you’re feeling at this very moment, and what you are moving towards.
Heartwood Tarot is available for pre-order on May 3rd, 2024. If you’re reading this and it’s already past that date - you can probably find it via Three Trees Tarot’s official website, here.