Teneice Durrant, creator of Tarot with Ten, uses various tarot and oracle decks to provide monthly readings for writers, with exercises on using imagery and intuition as prompts. September's prompt is about using the Chariot card to develop a situation where your character must balance two opposing forces and get them moving in the same direction.
Using the Chariot to balance two opposing forces
Watch and listen to Teneice's tarot reading for writers or read the transcript of the reading below.
Hi everyone, welcome to On Deck. My name is Ten and I am a third-generation tarot reader, a writer, and a mentor with the Center for Creative Writing. We are currently working our way through the major arcana of the tarot and lining up the full journey of the major arcana with the narrative arc of our main character.
A small disclaimer, I skipped over the Chariot last month in my eagerness to get to the Strength card, so this month we're going to discuss the Chariot and then next month, we will be back on track. Okay, so let's get started talking about the Chariot and what it represents in the major arcana.
The Chariot
So the Chariot here is the idea that one can take two opposing energies, ideas, paths, right, and get them to work together to move in the same direction. Okay, a lot of times, this is metaphorical in terms of like our own personal desires, our own personal conflicts, right, we want to do one thing but we're concerned about how our family will react, so it's like two kind of desires in yourself that are in opposition to each other. They're pulling you in two different directions, and the Chariot represents kind of getting those two different energies to alig,n and once you get those two ideas to align, there's nothing that can stop you. Like you're moving forward, things happen very quickly, right, it's like you've worked through the mental or emotional blocks that you have that keep these two energies in opposition, okay, and you are channeling them, guiding them, in the same direction so that you can move forward, you can move past some kind of roadblock in your life.
Okay, this is the Cancer card. If you're a Cancer, this is your card. One of the things that I like to do is give my main characters like a birthday and then I can, you know, create a birth chart for them and that will help me identify the different kind of characteristics and challenges of my character. So maybe you have a character that embodies, you know, Cancer, you know, you can do a lot of fun things incorporating that kind of thing into your work.
Okay, so the idea here in the narrative arc is that our main character has resolved either like momentarily or, you know, has kind of a fundamental realignment of ideas to get them over some kind of roadblock and moving in the right direction. This can be physical—they figure out how to use their knowledge that doesn't seem like it would go together to navigate getting over a mountain or getting to a new city or, you know, however you want it to represent a physical thing; but a lot of times, it has to do with our emotions, right, getting two conflicting emotions headed in the same direction. Two wants: I want financial stability but I also want to pursue a career in, you know, small animal photography, whatever it is, right, so two ideas that seem on the surface in opposition to each other, but our main character figures out how to get them moving in the same direction. And that, you know, can be anything, it's just whatever two feelings your main character has that are in opposition to each other and how do we figure out how to get them moving in the same direction. Okay, this is part of the character development, right, your character arc, how they work through challenges, learn about themselves, and overcome obstacles.
Okay, so let's pick a few cards and see what kind of energy, idea, you know, prompt we can come up with for our character in this moment of trying to get two opposing forces to work in the same direction. Okay, so let's kind of just move this guy over here for a minute. I am using this week the Astro Matrix tarot. I think it's a lot of fun and has a little bit more contemporary imagery sometimes. One more, fantastic. Okay, so we are going to pick these three cards to see what kind of prompt we can get for this week.
King of Cups
So, we'll move him off to the side for a minute. Okay, we have the Knight of Cups [edit: pulled card is King of Cups]. I don't generally tend to read reversals, but I will tell you what the reverse means. Two of Pentacles and the Five of Swords. Okay, so let's talk about these one by one. We have the King of Cups.
Now, I really like this version because he kind of looks like prince, and I find that like really, you know, as a like 80s and 90s kid, I find that really, you know, speaks to me. The King of Cups is all about, and this is interesting that it's playing with the Chariot, the King of Cups is all about emotional stability, right? It's not about denying your emotions.
Sit that down so it's not too wobbly. It's not about denying your emotions. It's not about, you know, stamping them all down and like showing a stoic front. This guy understands that to be human is to have emotions, and it is not healthy to stop yourself from experiencing emotions. He just knows how to handle it, right? He understands his past, his triggers. He knows what tools he has to work through any kind of extreme emotional situations that he may come across.
These little fish here you can see that are leaping around are like the subconscious ideas, right? We don't have necessarily just one subconscious or one unconscious, you know, way of thinking. We have different aspects of our lives. We may have some kind of subconscious ideas about money, and those ideas could be different than our subconscious ideas about family, right? So this is just kind of like him.
This card is acknowledging all of the different things he may feel, all the different ways he might represent himself emotionally, and he's totally in control of all that. This could represent a mentor, a counselor, somebody who gives good advice in an emotional capacity, somebody who is there for your main character who can comfort him but also not even give him good advice but just kind of like hold up a mirror to the emotions so that the main character can see what the real issue is, okay?
Two of Pentacles
The next card we have is the Two of Pentacles. Now the Two of Pentacles is all about balance. It's like juggling, and it just depends on where you're at. You know, in this weather, you can see behind her, there's these rough waves. I like that all of these cards so far are really talking about emotions. This will kind of really help develop an emotional scene for your story, you know, for your character. So this idea of the Two of Pentacles is trying to balance, for example, two different jobs or two different maybe relationships, two different resources, okay? I have time but I don't have money. I have money but I don't have time.
You know, I don't have money, but I have a house or a car and resources that can help me balance something out. Whether or not you're successful at balancing this out depends on what's going on around you and how you are able to react to, you know, the emotional ups and downs.
So you can see there's waves in the back here up close to the shore. Further back, you know, in the ocean, in the background, the sea is calm, right? So she knows, this juggler here, in the high vibration, she knows that it doesn't matter what the waves are, the storms are, it doesn't matter what she's feeling. She knows how to manage those feelings so that she can keep juggling, okay? If your character does not know yet how to manage those feelings—and this kind of lines up with the Chariot—then the emotions are going to be all over the place and they're not going to be able to juggle the different things that they have going on, okay?
Five of Swords
And last we have the Five of Swords, okay? So the Five of Swords talks about a couple of different things. For example, um, it could be an example of winning at all costs, like no mercy, okay? Depending on the situation, that might be what the battle calls for. That might be what position your main character needs to take, okay? The other side could be sore winner, could be, um, like letting your desire to win override everything, right? You want to be right, or do you want to be fair? Like that.
Now, depending on the situation, um, you know, that you're writing about, like these people lost fair and square. This guy here, he's entitled to those swords. He won them. He's not stealing them. It's not his fault that these guys are off crying and sad because they lost. They knew what they were getting into and they lost and he won these swords fair and square, okay? He does have to deal with the consequences of his actions. Maybe these were people he should not have been fighting and now he's lost some allies, okay? There's context around the situation, but the energy here is there was a fight. Somebody won fair and square. Other people are sad about it, okay? It is an opportunity, an opportunity to evaluate what kinds of battles, situations, skirmishes are worth it. Was it worth it for him to lose these two people from his life to win these swords? Maybe, maybe it was and that's okay. Maybe it wasn't. And maybe he's, he's learning to pick his battles. And sometimes, you know, having friends is more important than being right, okay? So those are what those three cards mean.
A writing prompt
So let's put them together and come up with a writing prompt for this month, okay? So it looks like, I guess we can spread these out a little bit, right? Our goal here is for our character to become the Chariot, right? We want them to wrangle these two opposing ideas or two opposing feelings or two opposing, you know, energies, motivations, plans into the same direction.
Maybe it's two friends. Maybe he's trying to get two of his friends to come together and see that we need to work together if we're going to move forward, okay? So the prompt here is there is a situation where one friend, one energy, one idea, is all about balance, right? Balancing our resources, not being hasty, not being impulsive, right? This one energy or person or idea, like whatever these two things are for you, one of them is trying to balance out resources or, you know, emotions or something.
The other force is: win no matter what. The most important thing to this force, this idea, is winning, whatever winning means. Maybe what they think is winning is wrong, but that's what this scene or this part, this writing prompt, will negotiate. And to help this main character get these two different ideas moving in the same direction, we have some kind of mentor or older brother or oracle, right? Or boss, you know, at the hardware store that helps, that kind of holds up a mirror to the main character, to the whole friend group, to each of them individually, that holds up a mirror to these two energies or ideas so that they can see what the impact is, what the ramifications are if they don't work together, okay? So, you know, he's kind of just showing these two people or ideas, he's showing the character how these two ideas can be resolved to work together because once they work together, the main character is unstoppable, okay? Clouds are parting, you know, moon or sun, I guess that can be either one, is shining, they are victorious, they have their wand, they are, you know, you can see he's not even holding the reins anymore. He's got them pointed in the same direction and now they have the same motivation, and he just takes off, right? He doesn't have to have a stranglehold on these two opposing ideas or energies or people, okay?
All right, so that's your writing prompt. Write a scene where your main character figures out, with the help of a mentor mirror, how to get this idea and this idea working in the same direction, okay?
Thank you guys so much for joining me. Next month we are going to be back on track, so I hope you will join me then and, you know, share with us some ideas that you have for this scene in your main character's journey, okay? All right, have a great month.
What did you think of this tarot reading and the cards as visual prompts for story development? Share with us in the comments, and contact us if you’re interested in working one-on-one with Teneice in part 3 of Writing Toward Balance and Wholeness: Tarot and the Narrative Arc (taking parts 1 and 2 first is not required).
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