Edain McCoy: Past-Life & Karmic Tarot
Llewellyn's Special Topics in Tarot

Journey Through Time With Tarot

Just as many people view the Fool's journey through the tarot's major arcana as symbolic of the soul's journey toward enlightenment, many people also believe that the soul reincarnates again and again to learn important lessons and balance karmic debts. With its deeply psychological and spiritual symbolism, the tarot is an ideal tool for exploring the mysteries of karma and reincarnation.

Llewellyn's Special Topics in Tarot series was created in response to an increasing demand for more tarot books on advanced and specialized topics. Past-Life and Karmic Tarot is the first book to offer specific spreads that answer the karmic questions that follow you from one lifetime to another.
See how a current life relationship has progressed from the past
Discover which past lives have the strongest influence in your current life
Explore incidents from your current life that may have created un resolved issues or karma
Uncover karmic choices that can affect your future lives
Use astral projection and meditation for a more in-depth look at karmic issues and interpersonal relationships

Learn more about your past, present, and future lives and make more informed life choices as you explore the timeless mystery of life, death, and rebirth..*

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From the Introduction

An excerpt from Past-Life & Karmic Tarot by Edain McCoy

The ancient archetypical symbols of the tarot cards can open many doors to the inner self, including all of our inner selves who live in the post of in the future. Thanks to our perception of time as a linear, though omnipresent force, we can look into the cards for answers to karmic questions that follow us from one lifetime to another. Armed with these insights, we can then work to change our lives for the better, no matter when or where they take place.

You don't have to have been previously regressed to a past life through hypnosis or even feel you’ve ever experienced a post-life scenario in a dream or through meditation for the cards to work for you. They have the power to help you discover where you've been and where you're going even when you don't know.

You also don't have to believe in karma as a balancing act of good and bad that runs between lifetimes for the cards to help you uncover your flaws and talents. We all have free will, and we can assert that will for better or worse at any time we choose. So can everyone else.

As a former past life "junkie," this is where I take exception to the common linear view of past-life karma, which essentially teaches "everything that's done to you is done because you did it first to someone else." If everyone's bad life experience was based on some wrong done in a post life, we would find ourselves in a circular argument that makes no sense. By logic, if everything bad that happens to us in one lifetime is the result of something bad we did in the past, then all of humanity would have only lived one life in peace and harmony before moving on to a higher spiritual plane of existence. That is a narrow and inaccurate view of karma. It is our free will that keeps us on the wheel of karmic debt. We must learn to make amends for wrongs done to others so that our wisdom, or our making of restitution, will erase negative karma whether it occurs in a past life, your current lifetime, or in one yet to come.

A narrow view of karma creates a "blame the victim" mentality that ignores free will. People always have and always will do bad things just because they can. Over the course of any lifetime we put many of our personal resources into protecting ourselves and those we love from the harm these people cause.

Karma is a choice, not predestination. Could you look into the eyes of a father who cannot find his child and tell him this is the result of his own negative karma coming back to haunt him? Could you keep a straight face while telling a young woman her rape was caused by her own past actions, perhaps from a past lifetime when she was the rapist?

Another misconception about karma is that once it's in place that it's a doom, sealed in blood, that can't be undone. If you understand your karma, you can make amends. You can take your past-life knowledge and turn it into positive action. Positive action creates wisdom, and wisdom can untie karmic bonds.

Unresolved karma seeks its own best time to strike. It may happen tomorrow, next year, in this lifetime, or in a future one. Karma can take many lifetimes to overcome or it can be of brief duration, depending on how well we put our knowledge into action.

Any harm you caused a few years ago, or even yesterday, can be examined via the tarot cards, and then you can make the corrections that free you from its bonds. You should do another tarot reading after you feel you’ve balanced your karmic debt to be sure it's erased. The final outcome card in any spread should give you a clear answer if you are knowledgeable about your chosen tarot cards and their meanings. *

Edain McCoy (Midwest) has been an active part of the Pagan community since her formal initiation in 1983. She has been studying and reading tarot for over twenty-five years. Edain is the author of more than a dozen books.*