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Why be more creative?
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Tarot is creative, but are you?

Did you know you have to be creative to read tarot cards? Tarot reading is a creative activity, and increasing your creativity will deepen your reading.

But what is creativity?

37647When we think about creativity, it is usually artistic creativity that comes to mind. Creative writing, poetry, painting, sculpture, and music are creative activities, but so are thinking of a new idea, finding a fresh solution for a problem, an improved process, a new product, a journal entry, and how you tackle challenges.

Creativity is the ability to create something new and original that is also useful, beautiful, or transformative.

A new shape for a mug may be original but not creative if we cannot drink from it (putting the handle on the bottom, for example).

“Transformative” in creativity means leading to something new, such as a new way of thinking. A painting in an original, compelling style can lead us to think differently about art or the subject of the painting. Einstein’s creative theory of relativity led us to think differently about reality, time, and space. The iPad changed our way of consuming information. The smartphone conceived a different way of communicating.

Using tarot cards for creative problem-solving techniques (like we do at The Sceptic’s Tarot) is a (not so) new (anymore) and original way to use tarot cards, and thus creative.[1]

You are creative!

More than 59% of people feel they are NOT creative, and less than 33% feel they are living up to their creative potential (Source: Adobe survey of 5,000+ people).

So, you might not believe me, but you are creative. Everyone is creative to some degree. We all devise excuses and ideas for meals and new bedtime stories. We daydream when we should be working. Some people are more creative than others, but here is the good news: creativity can be increased and enhanced.

Robert Sternberg, an American psychologist and researcher, claims that creativity is a decision. If you decide to be creative, you are. The only condition is that you believe the decision to be creative will be rewarded, not punished.

You can become more creative

Researchers have found various ways to boost your creativity: from simple things (a good mood, being playful, listening to happy songs, going for a walk, drinking coffee, meditating, drinking a small amount of alcohol, doing yoga, and sleeping) to technical methods such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS).

Be more creative when solving problems

Most relevant for The Sceptic’s Tarot, you can increase your ability to solve complex problems creatively. Since the 1950s, creativity experts have looked for and designed techniques that can stimulate creativity. Some of these techniques have been popularized in books such as those by Roger von Oech and Michael Michalko.

The best-known technique might be brainstorming, invented by Alex Osborn in the 1950s, but there are many more.

You can:

  • add a random stimulus, such as a word or image,
  • use combinations, free association, and forced connections,
  • try the active verbs of SCAMPER by Bob Eberle, popularized by Michael Michalko,
  • immerse yourself in the problem and then take a break (also known as incubation),
  • look at things from different perspectives,
  • reframe the problem,
  • break it into pieces (Attribute Listing by Robert Crawford),
  • create analogies,
  • think laterally (Edward de Bono),
  • employ Morphological Analysis (Fritz Zwicky),
  • use Force-Field Analysis (Kurt Lewin),
  • explore TRIZ (Genrich Altshuller),

and many more.

Using tarot cards to solve problems creatively

Of course you can use tarot cards to improve problem-solving, find creative solutions, and explore challenging situations.

One way is to use tarot spreads targeted at problem-solving (such as the Sceptic's Tarot spreads: some examples are The root of the problem and How else can I solve the problem?).

Another way to solve problems creatively is to explore creative techniques that The Sceptic's Tarot's repurposed for tarot cards, such as:

At The Sceptic's Tarot you will also find creative problem-solving techniques explicitly created for tarot cards, such as:

Tarot reading is a creative activity

Tarot cards are excellent tools for creativity, but reading them is also a creative activity (more about this in a future post). Not only are you creative when you read tarot cards, but if you practise being creative by, for example, exercising your imagination and doing creative activities, you will become a better tarot reader.

[1] Before The Sceptic’s Tarot, Mark McElroy used tarot cards for brainstorming and problem-solving in his Putting the Tarot to Work (Llewellyn, 2004). I have been building on his work and taking it much further since 2007.

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