Tarot Magic Mini-Course: Lesson 8: Breathing the Elements Meditation

Welcome to Tarot Magic — a revolutionary new way to use the archetypes of the tarot for powerful personal transformation, practical enchantment, and spiritual growth.

In this mini-course, I’m providing free access to selected material in the full Tarot Magic course. If you enjoy this material, please consider signing up for the complete course here.

1. Tarot Magic Mini-Course Main Page
2. Goals of the course
3. Creating sacred space
4. Definitions of magic
5. How Tarot Magic is different
6. The aces and the classical elements
7. The Fourfold Rite meditation
8. Breathing the Elements meditation (you are here)
9. Four weeks with the aces and elements
10. Tarot altars
11. Tarot Magic at the Crossroads

Breathing the Elements

You will originally do this meditation when working with the aces and the classical elements. But later, you can do this any time you feel the need for a boost of the specific energy.

For example, have an important test or presentation coming up? Draw on elemental air via the Ace of Swords to prepare yourself. Asking for a raise? Draw on elemental fire with the Ace of Wands. Need to have a compassionate heart-to-heart conversation with your spouse? Breathe with the Ace of Cups.

Here’s the simple but powerful technique.

1. Find a comfortable place to sit quietly, without distractions or interruptions. Turn off your phone or put it in another room. Keep your back moderately straight, but don’t strain.
2. Place the appropriate ace of the Marseille tarot on a stand, or prop it up so you can see it. Eye-level or just below is best, but not absolutely necessary — just make sure you can easily gaze at the card without straining. Light a candle if you wish (any color).
3. You may want to ring a bell or use a singing bowl to focus your consciousness for the meditation.
4. Take a few deep, calming breaths with your eyes closed.
5. Open your eyes. Calmly gaze at the Ace while breathing slowly and quietly for a moment, just taking in the imagery of the card.
6. When you feel ready, with eyes open and looking at the card, breathe in deeply through your nose while drawing in the elemental energy from the card. For example, draw in elemental air from the Ace of Swords. Feel that element coming through your nose and expanding to fill every cell in your body, from the tip of your ends of your fingers and toes.
7. When you exhale (through your nose, not mouth), feel that elemental energy circulating through your body. You are NOT exhaling the energy back out. This is important. You are simply inhaling the energy then circulating it through every cell of your body on the exhale. You are packing your body full of the element, creating a reservoir of the elemental energy.
8. Do this 9–12 times. If you lose track, don’t worry. Just repeat until you feel full of the elemental energy.
9. On the final exhale, close your eyes. Breathe normally, slowly and deeply. Focus on your internal state and how it correlates with the Ace you are using. Are you feeling warm and energized (Fire/Wands), Intellectually stimulated and mentally sharp (Air/Swords), emotionally stable, compassionate and open (Water/Cups), or deeply rooted and stable (Earth/Coins)? Sit in that energy, breathing slowly and calmly, until you feel ready to open your eyes.
10. After you’re familiar with this exercise, you can direct the energy to specific parts of your body. For example, air to your head in advance of an important exam, or fire to your genitals in advance of a sexual encounter.

Though the Eyes Variant

Try this variant, too. It’s based on a tantric meditation I found very powerful, and will be used with the Major Arcana and when we consecrate ritual tools, talismans, etc.

1. Instead of breathing through your nose, breathe in through your eyes. I know that may sound odd, but try it. Imagine yourself pulling the energy in through your open eyes as you inhale. You may feel your eyes widening slightly on the inhalation. Imagine the elemental energy entering through your eyes and filling your body as previously.
2. On the exhale, however, feel that energy exiting your body through your eyes and going back into the card.
3. You are creating a circuit — inhaling/absorbing the elemental energy through the window of the card and into your eyes/body, then exhaling the energy through your eyes back into the card. You’re creating a symbolic energetic link.
4. Do this at least 9–12 times or for as long as feels comfortable.
5. Sit comfortably, breathing normally. Note how you feel. Do you feel a deepened connection to the card and its energy?
6. Stand up, shake yourself off a bit to ground.

This Through the Eyes mediation will be especially powerful when used with the major arcana in the Journey Through the Arcana module, so it’s great to get practice now.

Other variants:

Energetic palms: Another option is to hold out your hands toward the card and feel/visualize the energy pulling in and sending out through your palms.

Breath circuit method: Breathe in through your nose but out through your mouth, blowing energy into the card on the exhale. You are breathing in the element then exhaling the element back into the card, creating a circuit/link.

> Next Lesson: Lesson 9: Four Weeks with the Aces and Elements

Michael M. Hughes is a writer, speaker, game designer, and magical thinker. He is the author of Magic for the Resistance: Rituals and Spells for Change(coming soon in a revised and updated edition), the Blackwater Lights Trilogy,as well as numerous other works of fiction and nonfiction, and he speaks and teaches classes on magic, tarot, pop culture, psychedelics, and more.

His comprehensive tarot course, The Art and Magic of the Tarot: Foundations, is available here, as well as his most recent course on Tarot Magic.

Michael’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, CNN, The L.A. Times, Rolling Stone, Comedy Central, Wired, Elle,Vox, Cosmopolitan, The Tamron Hall Show, and even the ultraconservative The American Spectator, which wrote: “He may play footsie with the devil, but at least the man has a sense of humor.”

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