I recently got told to look back 4 generations into female ancestors on my mother's side (with me being generation 0).

So I came up with the following:

Using ONLY court cards, pull a card for you and for each of the ancestors you want to look into and define who they are. Read them according to characteristics like suits, position in court, details on the card, etc. Look for character insights or a common thread weaving through the generations. I found readings I did this way very illuminating!

(for me those were, for example:

• 0 - me

• -1 - my mother

• -2 - her mother

• -3 - her grand-mother

• -4 - my mother's great-grand-mother

I never met any of them beyond my grandmother and I hardly knew her - but I found an interesting cascade of reactions to each of their mothers which are now influencing me - might post the reading itself later)

That's a very interesting spread! I knew my grandmas very well (one is still alive, the other I lost early this year ), but I was never really close to the generations beyond them. I think I may try this! I believe this spread could also be used with 'people-heavy' oracles (as in, oracles that feature a lot of characters/people cards).

Thanks for sharing!

Edited August 6Aug 6 by Marina

So sorry for your loss, @Marina . Consider yourself hugged (but only if you want) !

And yes, any deck with lots of (single, unless there are twins?) people will do, we could even filter out people cards from the majors!

Here is a summary of the reading I did for myself using this spread.

I used the “Zwischen der Zeit” Tarot (“inbetween time”; translated from a rather bulkily named “A Day in the Forest with the Tarot Witch” deck) for my generational reading – me and 4 generations up on my mother's side, all female.

Me – Knight of cups

She sits on a black horse, wears romantic coat with lots of embroideries; holds a big cup from which a white flower grows, pointing towards throat chakra; cup at level of solar plexus. I need to learn to speak for myself. (also very funny because I don't consider myself romantic, but others have pointed out that sometimes I am)

My mother – Page of wands

Facing away , looking through a doorway into the distance where the sun sets. She had dreams, She took decisions that she may have regretted but felt it was too late to remedy. (She also had a tendency to put others first and put her own dreams aside). She also was very afraid of me growing as large as her mother

Her Mother, my grandmother – Queen of cups

coming out of the ocean, steaming cup / pot in one hand, fork in the other. She may have eaten her emotions (she was rather large), she also had a lot of love to give but may not have known how.

My great-grandmother (mom's grandmother) – King of Swords

Sharp mind, strong character, strict ruler, no love to learn from. Any emotions got turned into blame, never got internalised (flower worn on lapel). Possibly spiritually sensitive but rationalising it or thinking she was crazy (being told she was crazy).

Her mother (great-great-grandmother) – Knight of wands

She may have been the passionate one who did what came into her head, impulsive, spontaneous, not always conforming to social norms.

Possibly not very reliable, therefore her daughter tried to be the rational one.

Her grand-daughter therefore did not learn how to love and got submerged by emotions she didn't know how to handle and all she learned was serve.

Which she bestowed on my mother who dutifully did what she was taught – not speaking up and handing that to me (and I became exactly as large as my mother feared I would).

After the reading, I spoke with my sister, and she had a tidbit of information - one of these women was absent, I have a feeling it may have been this knight of wands!

Edited August 6Aug 6 by karma_eleon

Thanks for sharing your reading. This is interesting. It would be good to include a background of dates for the era each one lives/lived through - the zeitgeist and cultural norms - for context.

For example, my grandmother's father died before she was born in WWI, impacting her mother.

His Irish ancestors likely travelled to England around the time of the potato famine.

Epigenetics or past life material can be revealed through this. I hoard food that sits in the cupboard for years, for example.

@JoyousGirl thanks four your idea (I hadn't even thought of epigenetics in this context, even though I JUST explained (or tried to) them to someone recently...)

I am just barely a Gen X (narrowly escaped the boomers 😉 . We are all from the same region, not a lot of migration on that end (very different on my dad's side).

My mom was born in 1937, was very young when WW II hit; HER mom was, iirc, around 1918, so around WW I . So both knew food scarcity and insecurities well; also my grandma was quite young when she had my mom, after that, she had at least 10 more children (that survived), so she was always pregnant, nurturing, nursing, for over 20 years of her life (Queen of Cups, alright!) .

Before her, I have no dates - but my grandma's austere mom must have been around during Victorian ages (although our region had nothing to do with Victoria, it must have been the "Zeitgeist" even here).

The furthest one back, I have even fewer ideas, just that it looks like she may have been the adventurous one (and the absent one) branded as insane because not fitting the times....

Edited August 7Aug 7 by karma_eleon
(typo fixins)

*Nancy Hendrickson is the author for ancestral Tarot books (e.g. "Ancestral Tarot, uncover your past and chart your future").

I have 2 of her books sitting on my shelf as yet unread (well...I've begun one).

Great decks for this are:

The Relative Tarot by Carrie Paris (designed for ancestral work, she got permission to use ancestral photos)

Stretch Tarot by Joseph Stretch

The Quiet Rebel Oracle by Lyn Thurman.

These are the 3 that I have - and will use for this purpose at some point (when I can get 2 minutes to read thoroughly through Nancy Hendrickson's book).

Now, I'm off to check out that deck of yours @karma_eleon on youtube...

Edited August 7Aug 7 by Tanga

11 hours ago, karma_eleon said:

because not fitting the times....

This is the crux of it all. The norms of an era require that we conform to those norms.

The personal desire to belong (originating in the stone ages for safety) means we will agree with others and modify who we are and our behaviours in order to fit in, whether or not that is honest representation of ourselves, or honest more generally.

Today's context is we're supposed to be professional. And nice and diplomatic, polished. Usually to grease the wheels of economy and maintain social inequalities. Civilisation isn't civilised if we look around at the environment. Now everybody's looking at their phones and don't look up - it will all disappear - and 'they'll' blame someone else, when in reality it was because they were in a culture that brainwashed people through slick marketing by psychologists not working to heal but make people think a particular way - in this case - that they need to consume. That we need to wear designer labels because hand-me-downs are shameful, who cares about environmental sustainability - or let's greenwash.

Sacrifice is limited to going to work to provide for the children we bred - encouraged by the government - so they'd be unknowingly enslaved and provide billions to some guy with no name dodging tax, that should pay for the world's healthcare and educational needs, in the Cayman Islands. Everyone is so busy meeting the housing and food needs through externalised providers that have turned these essential needs into consumer items, that they don't stop to think that this is not necessary, or right, that the commons have been enclosed, and that if they do not work for someone else they cannot eat. Then there are people forced to be poor and go without because of the system. When it is all free in nature! We would behave much better and protect these things if we were closer to them. Yet we're told someone needs to pay for all this healthcare, when everyone could volunteer 3 days a week and get the belonging they seek, and contribute meaningfully to a community who knows each other, and meet their needs, But we leave everything up to someone else. Even our 'new agers' encourage people to meet their own needs without regard to the wider world's.

So that's some of our current zeitgeist context.

Let's hope that's a zeitgeist that transforming. People are protesting all the injustices, but the state is moving to outlaw protest. Governments have been leaving things to the market, and works for the corporations, not the people now. Everyone needs to act quickly.

Sadly, the world could be destroyed in front of our eyes, but some of us need to be seen in a particular way for our ego's sake, status is important and maintaining our self-image. Another burden of being so-called 'civilised' meanwhile killing others to take their lands and food and water - and the Animals are especially included in this self-riddled era.

So the external context I rambled about above, and personal things like religion, caste, even historical standing in the little village, and blood feuds, marriages, all of these things add context that are worth exploring. We are more than the sum of our parts, we are own and we are others'.

I'm known as a bit of a ranter and raver on a soapbox around these parts, but I settle down occasionally. My intentions are good.