I have been working with affirmations a lot lately. If you aren’t in the habit, please allow me to introduce you! Affirmations target self-sabotaging thoughts and help you shift into a mindset that fosters healthy confidence and self-empowerment. The more centered we feel on our own path, the more stoked we are in our daily lives and the more easily we magnetize our goals. Pairing affirmations with Tarot archetypes adds another dimension to the practice.

Let’s use the Eight of Cups card as an example. In readings, the Eight of Cups suggests an emotional situation, a time of feeling strongly about something or someone, having an extreme response to a discovery or a powerful realization. Depending on the other cards around it, it can be a positive feeling (like love or joy) or a negative one (like fear or disappointment) but either way, it’s overwhelming for the person consulting the tarot. Some people are uncomfortable with (or even afraid of!) emotions, so for those folks this can be an unpleasant card. Some people try to repress emotions in themselves, hide from them and/or just try to gloss over them. But emotions have information for us – when we have a reaction, that’s our inner compass telling us where we are in relation to our path. And the Eight of Cups is very much about surrendering to the truth of the emotion we are feeling and letting that wisdom motivate our next action or course correction.

So for the Eight of Cups, I wrote these affirmations:

I feel my feelings.
I trust my feelings to show me what really matters to me.
I commit fully to the projects, relationships, and goals worthy of me and I release those that are unworthy.

Sometimes we need a reminder that feelings are important, that they have information for us, and that we can work with them to build more vibrant lives. Giving ourselves permission to feel fully and to honor the wisdom in our feelings is the meditation of the Eight of Cups. By repeating affirmations like these regularly – especially the ones that spark a strong reaction – we plant these concepts in our fertile brain garden. Which is what affirmations are meant to do – take root and blossom in the moist greenhouse of your mind.

(Nice metaphor, huh?)

The Tarot card shares its wisdom and serves as a visual stimulus for the verbal mantras. So pairing a card with the affirmation work gives the concept more entry points. You get more bang for your self-healing buck, if you will.

Affirmation for the Eight of Cups

That’s a small taste of how I use affirmations with my Tarot practice. I’ll share more techniques and Tarot affirmations in the weeks to come. If these inspire you, please check back weekly for more and/or follow along on Twitter or Facebook!

(And if this vibes with you, you might dig my Haiku series! Check out the Eight of Cups Haiku here.)