Awakening the Arcana: Are Your Tarot Cards Secretly Your Spirit Guides?

​I stick strictly to the Rider-Waite deck for this study. Why? Because I believe these cards were created with a highly specific, brilliant intent: to hold every ounce of knowledge needed to master the profound spiritual lessons and methods woven into them.
But to truly understand how these cards work, we have to talk about something a little controversial.
In the past, I taught a course on how to create your own spiritual guides. To some, that might sound a bit creepy or unsettling. In reality, it is a completely natural psychological and metaphysical process that we all engage in every single day—whether we do it intentionally or unintentionally.

The Architecture of the Mind: How We Build Spirits

To make this idea a bit more tangible, let’s look at two drastically different examples of how human energy creates entities.

• The Internal Entity: If you constantly tell yourself that you are ugly, unworthy, or don't deserve a good person in your life, you are doing more than just harboring low self-esteem. You are actively breeding a distinct entity housed within your subconscious. The more emotional attention you feed this thought, the stronger it grows, and the harder it becomes to uproot.
• The External Entity: Consider a tragic event, like a suicide occurring in a house. The overwhelming, concentrated blast of trauma can generate a heavy spirit bound to that location, perpetually echoing the tragedy. Without a thorough spiritual cleansing by an experienced practitioner, subsequent residents may find themselves influenced by that same dark impulse—a tragic cycle that only feeds and strengthens the entity.

But here is the exciting part: if human emotion and focus can accidentally create negative forces, can you use this exact same mechanism to create a beneficial spirit?
Of course you can. In the esoteric tradition, these are called servitors.

A Timeless Tradition of Hiding Knowledge in Plain Sight

While servitors are usually personalized to the practitioner who creates them, they can absolutely be crafted for anyone to use. This practice is as old as humanity itself and remains one of the most profound ways secret knowledge has been preserved and passed down across millennia.
We see brilliant examples of this throughout esoteric history:

• Angel Magick: In Secret Angel Magick by Adam Blackthorne, we learn about the potent, historical energies of Moses and the Angels of Omnipotence—profound forces ready to assist the practitioner.
• The Crystal Skulls: Spiritual teacher Kachina Ma’an hosts a fascinating course on thirteen ancient crystal skulls. These artifacts were intentionally programmed with vast storehouses of knowledge by ancient civilizations and buried in the earth, waiting to be reunited.
• Modern Magical Decks: A perfect contemporary example is The Forty Servants by Tommie Kelly. Tommie created forty distinct spirits and housed them directly into a deck of cards, where each entity is designed to assist you with a specific area of your life.

Why the Major Arcana Hold Vastly Superior Power

Tommie Kelly's concept is brilliant, and it functions beautifully. But it also beautifully illustrates exactly what the Tarot actually is.
The traditional Tarot—particularly the Major Arcana—holds a vastly superior, monumental power. Why? Because a spirit's strength relies entirely on the amount of focused attention it receives.
The Law of Attention: The more humanity feeds an entity with focus, study, and emotion, the more powerful that entity becomes.
The Major Arcana have been contemplated, studied, wept over, and channeled by millions of people, every single day, for centuries. They are massive, beautifully constructed spiritual powerhouses. 

The Portal of Proximity: Why You Must Connect with Your Cards

If the Major Arcana are already massive, pre-established spiritual powerhouses, why do we need to put effort into connecting with them? Why can't we just flip open a book and expect them to work?
Because an unread book on a shelf holds potential energy, but it only comes alive when you open it and engage your mind.
Connecting with your cards is the process of tuning your personal radio frequency to the massive broadcast tower of the Tarot. Without a personal connection, the cards remain mere cardboard, and their messages can feel sterile, generic, or confusing. When you intentionally connect with them—through daily draws, meditation and coloring the cards  —several critical shifts happen:

• You Establish Mutual Recognition: By feeding the cards your specific attention, you are activating your own energetic gateway into that centuries-old collective power. You aren't just reading about The Magician; you are introducing your subconscious to him.
• You Develop a Shared Language: Every practitioner's energy is unique. When you connect deeply with the deck, the cards learn how to speak to you, utilizing your personal symbols, memories, and intuition to deliver incredibly precise guidance.
• You Move from Spectator to Participant: A superficial relationship with Tarot keeps you passive—you are just waiting for the cards to tell you what happens next. A deep connection transforms the relationship into an active partnership, allowing you to ask the cards for help in manifesting changes in your reality.

Moving Beyond the Reading

​When most people open a Tarot book, they learn that the Major Arcana signify major turning points, milestones, or spiritual lessons within a reading.
But here is what is rarely mentioned: these cards don't just signify the lesson. They can actively teach you the lesson and mentor you through it. To know what each card can help you with, read our detailed breakdowns here.
Though the concept of viewing your deck as a living collective of entities might seem startling at first, this is exactly how we will be approaching the Major Arcana in this study. If you open your mind to it, as you progress along the path, you may well find that these cards have stopped being mere pieces of cardboard—and have legally become your spirit guides.

​What are your thoughts? Have you ever felt a distinct, living presence or personality radiating from a specific Major Arcana card during your meditations? Let's discuss in the comments below!