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This blog post goes along with Healing Thru Tarot Podcast Episode 55: Healing Past Lives and Wounds thru Tarot + Past Life Spreads. In this blog, I’ll discuss healing past lives, trauma, and wounds through tarot, and I’ll share a custom spread for healing a past life and one for exploring a past life relationship with someone in your current life. 

Today we’re delving into the fascinating realm of past lives and how tarot can help us explore and heal from our previous incarnations. This is a topic that has captivated me since the beginning of my spiritual awakening in 2018 when my acupuncturist suggested that I read the book Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr. Weiss. He’s a psychiatrist who didn’t even believe in reincarnation at the beginning of his career but after working intensely with a therapy patient with multiple phobias began to believe in past lives and went on to become the leading expert in past-life regression and was featured on Oprah many times. 

Throughout his work with his initial phobic patient, Dr. Weiss discovered with the help of the patient’s ascended masters/guides, who came through during the hypnotherapy sessions, that her phobias were linked to her deaths in her previous lifetimes. The patient’s fear of water had been from a life where she drowned, her fear of flying was due to a fatal plane crash, and her fear of fire was from a tragic fire where she and her younger siblings had died. As the patient relived each death and absorbed the lesson from each life, she was cured of that particular phobia. 

Reading this book kicked off my spiritual awakening and primed me for my fated meeting with an energy healer who changed my life forever and put me on a completely different life path.

This soul sister is someone I recognized right away at the soul level, and it left me with no doubt about reincarnation. After meeting her, things came flooding back to me, images, sensations, and ultimately gifts from other lifetimes. I write about this awakening in detail in the form of a fictional book series called The Divining Sisters Series where I chronicle my awakening and healing journey through reconnecting with past incarnations related to fears, phobias, and traumas as well as gifts and knowledge that I pass on through my writing, my podcast, Healing Thru Tarot, and this tarot blog.

I’m now a firm believer in using past lives to learn more about our past wounds and traumas, how that plays out in this current incarnation, and what that means for our healing process. I believe that if we’re meant to heal those lifetimes then there’ll be an event that prompts us to discover that life and explore it in order to move through that lingering trauma, freeing us from those shackles from the past. 

My main character in The Divining Sisters, Alexandra Steele, is a psychologist who meets an energy healer, Izzy Frey, who guides her through the recovery of her past witch, mystic, and healer incarnations to heal the fear of being seen. This lingering witch wound keeps her hiding in the shadows and playing small because the memory of multiple persecutions haunt her still to this day. This story is deeply personal because it’s my journey through this healing process. And I use many of my own past incarnations in the story because I feel that the more vulnerable and raw the story is the more it resonates with readers. Writing this story has healed me on so many levels although that doesn’t mean it was easy to relive all this through it. 

Using Tarot for Past-life Healing

I've noticed that people are awakening to this idea of reincarnation and healing from past-life wounds. Past-life readings have become increasingly popular in recent years, offering individuals an opportunity to uncover hidden aspects of themselves and gain insights into their current life challenges related to those echoes from the past. Tarot is a powerful tool to use in this discovery process with its rich symbolism and wise guidance. Past-life readings are a tool for self-discovery and healing, and the insights gained can help you navigate your present life with greater awareness and purpose. 

Past-life readings differ from traditional tarot readings in that we’re focusing on previous incarnations and how the past continues to influence us versus focusing on the present or future. Past-life readings can help us identify and explore past-life experiences, patterns, and lessons that might be related to this incarnation. 

We also look for patterns in the cards that point to a particular time, place, or theme from a past life. For instance, the presence of the Hierophant card might suggest a past-life connection to spirituality or esoteric knowledge, and the High Priestess could point to a mystic life. The Tower card might indicate a significant transformative event that shaped a past life, and given that the Queen of Wands is the witch of the tarot, I find she usually shows up for past witch lives. 

Past-life readings can be incredibly healing and transformative. By uncovering past-life experiences and patterns, you can gain a deeper understanding of current fears, phobias, struggles, conflicts, and relationships. Becoming aware of these overlapping issues carried over from other lifetimes, allows us to release and cleanse unresolved trauma, energies, and patterns, which could be holding us back. For example, if someone, like me, has a phobia of water, a past-life reading might reveal a traumatic drowning in a previous incarnation. By acknowledging and understanding the root cause of this fear, we can begin the healing process and work towards overcoming it. 

Once you start the process of exploring past lives, you’ll soon discover how much the past is impacting our present lives. Understanding the trauma we’ve faced in the past can help us gain clarity on patterns or obstacles we're currently encountering and guide us toward healing and resolution. Past-life spreads can reveal karma at play across lifetimes, helping us understand cycles and relationship dynamics that continue to play out in our lives, and health concerns can often be traced back to lingering past-life wounds and fears that haven’t been uncovered or processed yet. 

Healing past-life wounds and cutting cords that connect us to traumatic incarnations can heighten the healing process. Uncovering the roots of past-life trauma and memories residing in the body, can help to alleviate physical symptoms and medical conditions. Some people report that they never experience those symptoms again after those revelations. Healing past wounds can also occur through connecting with the past versions of yourself and sending loving, understanding, and empathic energy to our past selves to create new healing lines across time and space. It definitely seems to help in my case.

Uncovering past lives with individuals in this life can also be healing. It provides a greater understanding of the dynamics that have played out in familial and romantic relationships. This can aid in resolving lingering conflicts, help us with forgiveness at the soul level, and help us build stronger and healthier relationships going forward. So much of our past-life struggles play out in our early attachments. 

Understanding the roots of those conflicts can help free us from remaining resentments that we carry that hinders our progress and growth in this life. 

You could also use a specific card in the tarot to mediate with to help unlock memories from a particular past life. This card, or signifier, serves as a focal point during meditation or visualization exercises, allowing us to tap into our subconscious and access memories or impressions related to that lifetime. For tapping into a witch life, I suggest the Queen of Wands as she is the witch of the tarot. For a past mystic life, I’d use the High Priestess, and a past healer life, I’d choose the Temperance card. The Star card could also work. Go into this process with an open mind and a sense of curiosity. Trust your intuition as you interpret the cards and explore the images and symbols they present. 

The 6 of Cups from The Light Seers Tarot

By the way, the 6 of Cups is the past life card in the tarot. So if this card starts to appear in your readings, the message could be to work on healing past-life wounds. But I want to caution you that tapping into past lives can be unnerving, disturbing, and can initially bring up anxiety and fears related to traumatic deaths from those lives. It’s not a pleasant experience, especially the first few times this occurs. To help you understand what it’s like to experience this I want to share an excerpt from my book The Call of the Cards, which is the first book in The Divining Sisters Series. This series follows a group of women who have been witches, healers, diviners in past lives. And they reincarnate lifetime after lifetime and reunite with their coven so they can fulfill a mission of keeping their craft of divination, healing, and magic alive for future generations. 

And we first meet the main character, Dr. Alexandra Steele, who is a clinical psychologist in Memphis, Tennessee, when she discovers tarot for the first time in a mystical store. She’s instantly captivated by the cards, and they soon enter her dreams unlocking memories of numerous past lives with divination. In this series, her past lives are shown through her dream life, and we see how past-life fears and traumas keep her hiding in the shadows now and playing small. But reconnecting with the cards sparks a spiritual awakening which changes her life and leads her to past coven sisters that help her work through the lingering fears of persecution that have traveled across lifetimes with her as she’s been hunted and executed for her work with the cards and with witchcraft in the past. 

The scene I want to share for you is when Alexandra first reads Dr. Weiss’ book, Many Lives, Many Masters, and this stirs up many emotions and fears related to past lives. So I’m going to include this scene here where she’s just finished the book. By the way, if you want to hear me read these scenes out, listen to podcast ep. 55 of Healing Thru Tarot.

Alex sat contemplatively after finishing the book in one sitting. She mentally ran through a timeline of her life, revisiting all her panic attacks when she was unable to avoid an encounter with water. 

     Her stomach churned as she recalled those experiences when faced with this crippling fear. It was starting to dawn on her that reincarnation might be more of a possibility than she’d realized. 

     The twisting of her gut offered clues that this was all related. All evening, her body had been sending her signals as she read the accounts from each life the patient and the therapist uncovered together. Pieces of her own past were shifting somewhere in her subconscious, just out of her conscious awareness. 

     She had been nauseated most of the night, and she had fought through an intense dizzy spell when she’d first started reading. Something buried deep within was barreling toward the surface of her consciousness while she was simultaneously fighting the acknowledgement of the realization. 

     In the back of her mind, she'd heard a voice that kept repeating, “Remember.” 

     She had fought to stay focused on the book and had chosen not to listen to the voice, but it kept creeping back into her consciousness. 

     You’ve always known. 

     And now, at this moment, she could no longer hold up her defenses, and memories started to click into place. She closed her eyes tightly as the flood of emotions and memories took control of her body. These memories pulled her somewhere back in time. 

     There was another time and place whose call she’d always heard. Deep down she'd always known she had a profound connection to this place, but she’d never fully let herself entertain this notion because the thought of reincarnation seemed too far-fetched. And here it was again. She knew this familiar call all too well. 

     She had always joked about it with her husband every autumn when the call seemed to lure her like a siren to the rocks, but tonight this feeling was the furthest thing from a joke. Her blood ran ice cold as she felt that familiar pull to a specific tragedy that had been flashing in her mind all night. It was a miscarriage of justice that she couldn’t ever forget or forgive — the witch trials. 

     Her jaw tensed and her neck began to knot as her throat closed up. She struggled to catch her breath as memories fought their way to the surface. A wave of nausea washed over her as the contents of her stomach climbed up her esophagus. 

     She lunged several feet forward and barely made it in time to aim the remnants of her dinner into the liner of the wastebasket. She hovered over it a few moments to be sure she wouldn’t have any other close calls. She leaned against the ottoman, trying to steady herself. The room spun as she pieced together the fragments of remembrances that finally pierced the barrier she had constructed long ago. 

     Her instinct had been right all along. There was a deeper reason she was drawn to study the hysteria in Salem and Scotland. It hadn’t been just a fascination with mass hysteria or witchcraft. Even when reincarnation hadn’t been on her radar as a fully formed theory, there had been a part of her that had always known. Brushing it off as a topic of interest had just felt safer. 

     She had always felt so strongly connected to the folklore around witchcraft but couldn’t admit why she felt that link on a cellular level. She feared sounding unstable. These things weren’t openly talked about in her social circles, and she didn’t want to draw any unnecessary attention to herself. But here, now, it all became very real. It wasn’t just her imagination. Her gut told her that her fear of water was related to this memory of another life. 

     Did they drown witches? 

     Massive chills traveled up her legs and spine, and she tugged at the blanket on the chair to pull over her legs. She shivered, feeling exposed and vulnerable. She knew with every fiber of her being that this was the answer to her question. 

     She needed to do more research on the trials. It had been years since she had studied the historical accounts. She had always been drawn to witch lore and the history of the witch trials in Massachusetts and Europe. Salem had always had a particularly strong pull for her. The draw toward Salem was so powerful that she feared it would knock her off her axis if she let it. She had written several papers on the Salem Witch Trials in graduate school and had researched and written about mass hysteria during the trials for her Deviant Psychology class. When reading the accounts from that time period, there were deep stirrings from within that were hard to ignore. 

     It has been there all along. 

     Every time Alex watched documentaries on the trials, she had a knot in her stomach that wouldn’t untangle for days. She knew the women in the Salem Witch Trials had been wrongly hanged, as most, if not all, were not actual witches. The hysteria that had taken over the town was rooted in fear that had no basis. Despite the lack of evidence, for centuries in every part of the world, women and men were burned at the stake or hanged to appease the villagers' concerns over witchcraft. 

     Her nausea returned. 

     On her way to her bedroom, she made sure all the doors were locked, and she closed the curtains for extra measure.

This scene captures my personal experience after reading the book about past lives. There was just a knowing in my bones that this information held the answers to my healing. It’s the reason I felt compelled to write this series because I think many of us need to do this type of healing work to release ourselves from the grip the past has on us. The Divining Sisters Series focuses on reconnecting with past-life gifts, sisterhood, empowerment through facing fears, & learning to step out of the shadows, which for Alexandra occurs through her work with the tarot. She uses it to heal from the past and you can too. 

Past-Life Gifts

Working with past lives can do more than just help with the healing process. They can also point us toward our purpose in this life. Discovering who you were in past lives can help you reconnect with past-life gifts, pick up where you left off on your progression of a skill development in a particular area, and help you embrace your future with a renewed sense of purpose, growth, and fulfillment. Often your purpose is connected to your first love in life. We’re veiled when we come into this world, so we typically forget the plan we made before we incarnated. But children often remember this purpose for the first few years of life and start to express themselves in line with their purpose. Spend some time remembering what attracted your attention in early to mid childhood. 

What did you love to do as a child?

Did you love to draw, write, play music, use your imagination, or read and talk about certain topics? Doing some inner child work and inner child spreads can bring these to mind again. What comes easily to you without much effort? That’s how I knew tarot was on my path. I picked it up so quickly and easily. I knew I must have used these cards before. And the act of shuffling felt so familiar. I also hear other diviners talking about picking up the cards easily. Feeling intensely drawn to a hobby or to a certain skill can point to a past-life occupation, talent, interest, or gift, especially when your skill level is advanced without much practice or effort. 

Soul Growth

Often, we choose to evolve on our path over many, many lifetimes where we progress in our skills with each life. So, it may feel very familiar to you. You may even get glimpses of doing this in other times. Think of child savants who can write and play music at age 3. I believe those skills and knowledge carried over so they could start on that path again very early on and progress past where they had in a previous life. We have many lifetimes where we’re laying the groundwork for our purpose, so some of those lives will be dedicated to learning the skill. And many other lifetimes after that will be for mastery and to use that skill to contribute to society for the betterment of humanity and for soul growth. 

What skills or gifts have come to you so naturally that it left you boggled as to how you possess that advanced mastery of it?

In my experience, reconnecting to past-life gifts like divination and writing has led to empowerment, more confidence, and increased self-worth and purpose. It's even boosted my own healing process. If you’re wondering about your life purpose and path, check out Ep. 52 where I discuss Aligning with Your Life Purpose, and I include a Life Path Spread to help you narrow your purpose down and learn how to align with that plan. 

If you’re looking for clues to your purpose, focus on messages from your soul family, which is the group of souls we incarnate with throughout many lifetimes. Those in our soul group will come into our lives to help guide us on path, to help us stay on track, and to offer support along the way because life on this planet is never easy and we will struggle throughout many sticking points on our journey. We usually resonate deeply with these soul sisters and brothers. We often recognize them immediately through their eyes or their energy, and we will often say that it seems like we’ve known them from before. We often become fast friends with them and feel completely comfortable in their presence. We also take their advice seriously, so if you have identified soul group members already, listen to the messages they pass on to you. 

The universe or our guides, however you like to view it, use our soul tribe members to nudge us on our path. They seem familiar because we choose to cycle through lifetimes together helping each other learn lessons in each lifetime, and karmic bonds can keep us connected for many lifetimes if we don’t work through all that karma and balance the scales. If you have trouble accessing your own past lives, there are practitioners that can help connect you with past incarnations that are relevant to this lifetime. This could be past-life counselors, some reiki healers, past-life psychics, or past-life regression healers. 

Most of my past lives have come through my work with my energy healer who can tap in and read my Akashic records. But I wanted to share a scene in The Call of the Cards where Alexandra has her first fully formed memory from a past witch life that mirrors my own experience of a memory that surfaced shortly after meeting my energy healer, Stephanie Seavers. In this short snippet, we see Alexandra experience a memory from several hundred years ago as she's soaking in a crystal healing bath shortly after meeting Izzy Frey who has helped her connect with her past. That scene is below.

After a few minutes of relaxing in the hot water, a vision started to form in Alex’s mind’s eye. 

     A young woman was being pulled across the threshold of a cottage by an older woman. When the young woman resisted and begged to stay, the older woman dragged her a hundred yards to an open field where a crowd of villagers started to gather.  

     "Mother, do not leave me here.” 

     Three men stepped forward and pulled her off her mother. They grasped her hands and held them behind her back to stabilize and subdue her. Two other men picked up a few pieces of broken wood they'd found beside a wooden fence and hammered them into the ground. After staking the young woman, they retreated as she cried out for help. 

     “Quiet now, witch!” her mother shouted. “I found your herbal potions and runes in the cottage. I have no choice but to turn you over.”  

     The woman looked heartbroken by her mother’s uncaring tone. The crowd soon dispersed, leaving her alone in the field exposed to the harsh elements. 

     Her mother would peer out of the cottage window a few times a day, watching her suffering without food or water. The young woman continued to plead with her to change her mind and take her back in the cottage. She refused and would only reply that she needed to repent for her sins and to turn away from the devil’s work.  

     After several days, the villagers gathered at daybreak. They untied her from the stake and placed her in the back of a wagon. The villagers walked behind the wagon as the size of the crowd grew with each house they passed. 

     By the time they reached the water’s edge, the wagon was full of accused witches of all ages — all proclaiming their innocence. 

     Her mother arrived just as they were preparing to dunk her underwater. Her mother’s red hair made it easy for the young woman to spot her in the crowd. It was all she could see each time she resurfaced. They repeatedly submerged her underwater until the life escaped from her body.  

     As the image of her dress started to float to the top of the water, Alex gasped for air and opened her eyes. 

     The images were so real — so vivid. 

     Could this have been a past life? 

     Alex tried to take a mental snapshot of the vision to recall all the details. Earlier in the day, Izzy had suggested that she write down all dreams and memories that resurfaced, and they would piece together all the threads of her past to help her release the trauma holding her back. 

     The path to healing might be a long, painful one, but she was comforted that Izzy would be with her on this journey. It made it less daunting. 

     Alex began to sob as sorrow rushed to the surface. 

     Her tears pierced the surface of the still bathwater. 

     She grieved for her past self for being cast out by her mother and submerged underwater until her last breath of air expired. 

     The image of her dress floating in the water as her body went limp was seared into Alex’s memory and haunted her every time she closed her eyes. 

I thought these two scenes would help to demonstrate what this past-life examination often looks like. Fragments of memories can appear out of the blue, memories stored in the body can surface, and a flood of emotions can cascade over you when reliving past experiences we’d locked up ages ago. But there is hope that unearthing these memories and releasing them can clear some of the baggage we’ve carried for centuries. I don’t regret starting this process in late 2017. In fact, I think it’s the very thing that saved me and gave me a renewed purpose in this lifetime!

Past-life Spreads

For exploring a particular relationship in this current life and your karmic history together, I love to use Lena Rodriguez’ Karmic Spread. She has demonstrated this 9 card spread many times on her YouTube channel, so I think it’s okay to share that with you. I just went ahead and made it into a graphic for you. And go follow her YouTube channel for some amazing tarot readings and tarot wisdom – her channel is Lena Rodriquez Tarot Down Under 

Here's a spread I created for this episode to help with healing past-life wounds and trauma called Healing from a Past Life Spread. Use this spread to gain insight into your current struggles and fears, release blockages, and boost your spiritual growth in this lifetime. If you throw this spread, I'd love to see the photo of your spreads. Please tag me on Instagram @healingthrutarot and please use #HTThealingfromapastlifespread 

Where to Further Explore Past Lives & Your Purpose

For more information on past lives, I highly recommend all of Dr. Brian Weiss’ books and check out Ainslie MacLeod’s amazing lectures on the subject. He is a past-life psychic who teaches about the soul’s purpose, soul types, and healing from past-life wounds that are impacting us today. He has a lecture weekly on Sundays on his site at https://soulworldsunday.com/ 

My energy healer, Stephanie Seavers, works with clients all over the world on all types of healing, including exploring past lives that require healing. She can identify past-life wounds and trauma that need to be processed and released to help you on your healing journey. You can find her on her website: thewokewanderer.com - I highly recommend her! She changed my life the day she walked through my door!

If you want to explore your life path and purpose in this life, I've got a spread eBook for you to explore just that! It includes 15 custom spreads to help you identify and align with your life path and sail to success. Spreads like the Life Path Alignment Spread, Lightwork Path Guidance Spread, Conquering Obstacles On My Path Spread, Advice From My Future Self Spread, and Karmic Healing Path Spread will help you position yourself to step into your full power and achieve the purpose you incarnated to fulfill. Plus many more spreads offering guidance and advice to get on path and stay on track. And it's only $12! Click here to purchase

Summer Break and New Book Announcement

I’ll be taking the summer months off from podcasting and will return with new podcast episodes and companion blogs like this one in September 2024 when we'll start to cover psychological profiles for each of the suits in the tarot and using the tarot as a psychological tool.

Book 4 in my fictional divination book series, The Divining Sisters, releases in June 2024. 

So now’s a great time to start the series and catch up on the first 3 books. Book 4 will be the last in the series in the current timeline, BUT I’m already writing prequels which delve into the past witch incarnations of the main 3 characters in the series. Past lives play a major role in the entire series, so if this interests you, check out this series. It's truly a unique story and based on many of my own past-life experiences plus my own healing journey in this life, which I chronicle through my podcast and blog. I have all the details about my novels below for you! 

Podcast

Link to Podcast Episode 55 click here

Other relevant Podcast Episodes:

Ep. 52: Aligning with Your Life Purpose + Lightworker decks + Life Path Spread

My Novels

Check out The Divining Sisters Series here.

If you're looking for a good witchy book series, check out my fictional divination book series, The Divining Sisters. Start with book 1 in the series, The Call of the Cards, and then catch up to book 2, We Divine Three and book 3, The Threads of Fate, that released in Sept. 2023. Book 4 releases Summer 2024. They're available as eBooks $4.99 and paperbacks $14.99 on Amazon. And the eBooks are also on Barnes and Noble, Apple Books, Google Play, Kobo, Scribd, Smashwords, and more. Find out more details on my novels on my author website author.heatherhardison.com where I post updates on book releases, video book trailers, book blurbs and quotes, as well as fun things like my Spotify playlists for each book. I carefully curate those to express the energy of each book. 

Readers are raving about the series like these 5 star amazon reviews of The Call of the Cards, We Divine Three, and The Threads of Fate.

"Absolutely Unique! Resonated so much!" 

"Life-changing. I felt seen. I don't think I've had this experience with any other book."

"I loved the awakening of the main character, Alex, and the slow revelation of her past lives. I felt like I was on a journey alongside her."

“The metaphysical series I've been waiting for! I was hooked from the beginning and even found myself slowing down because I want it to last. The characters are so relatable and genuine, and the explanations of tarot readings and past life stories is spot on! I'm eagerly awaiting the next ones. Please please, Heather, keep writing.” 

"Harry Potter for adults."

If you get a copy, please leave a book review on whatever platform you buy it on if you enjoy it. That really helps me out and can help get my book in front of more readers. And if you love it please also review it on goodreads.

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll see updates on the book releases there. I have 2 instagram accounts My tarot and podcast account - healingthrutarot My author account heatherhardisonauthor 

Watch the book trailer for The Divining Sisters Series

Books and Decks shown in this blog or recommended:

Many Lives, Many Masters book, Mystical Healing Reading Cards, The Light Seers Tarot,  Lightworkers Oracle, Rider Waite Smith Tarot, Sacred Rebels Oracle, Soul Journeys Cards, The Universe Has Your Back Deck, Ainsley Macleod's website on past lives, Lena Rodriguez' Tarot YouTube Channel Tarot Down Under, The Divining Sisters, The Call of the Cards, We Divine Three, The Threads of Fate

Writual Discount Link and Code

Use my Writual ambassador link here along with my discount code HEALING (all caps) to get 15% off ALL your Writual purchases when you use that affiliate link and code. Writual has tarot stamps and stickers, dated and undated tarot journals and planners, including one for kids, tarot decks and tarot-themed mugs, candles, and jewelry. So check them out using my link and code!

Healing Thru Tarot's Spread Ebook Line

A Spread for All Seasons - 17 custom spreads including seasonal, holiday, and astrological spreads for eclipses, mercury retrogrades, new and full moons, birthdays and more

Healing and Mental Health Spreads Vol. 1 - 15 custom spreads centered on healing

Healing and Mental Health Spreads Vol. 2- 15 9-card spreads centered on mental health

Shadow Work Spreads and Workbook - 20 shadow work spreads + shadow work exercises

Healing Thru Tarot’s Life Path and Life Purpose - 15 life path and purpose spreads

Click here to purchase any of these spread ebooks

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