Tarot for Ancestral Healing: 3 Spreads for Connection
Ancestral healing is a practice that helps you explore, honor, and heal your lineage. It invites us to connect to the present, looking at how patterns manifest in our lives.
A powerful tool for this journey is Tarot—a deck of 78 cards rich with symbols and meanings, often used for divination, self-reflection, and spiritual guidance.
What is Tarot for Ancestral Healing?
Tarot for ancestral healing can involve:
Using the cards as a gateway to communicate with your ancestors,
Understanding and unlocking deeper generational patterns,
Identifying pathways to heal familial wounds
Integrating with mental health and wellness practices
Altar creation with tarot cards as representations of ancestors
Whether you’re seeking wisdom from your ancestors or healing generational trauma, Tarot serves as a spiritual tool to unlock hidden messages and offer guidance on your path to healing.
Why Does Ancestral Healing Matter?
Ancestral healing is essential because it allows us to release patterns, trauma, and limiting beliefs that may have been passed down through generations. According to epigenetics, we know that what our ancestors experienced can alter DNA and even be passed down generations later.
Ancestral healing often requires a multi-modal approach, which is why adding Tarot into the mix can help be a starting point for you or help you with deeper insight when your healing has stalled.
By understanding our ancestors, we can heal ourselves and break free from cycles that no longer serve us. This process not only brings personal healing but also heals the collective family energy, creating a ripple effect for future generations.
Ancestral healing honors where we came from, allowing us to move forward with a deeper sense of self and purpose.
5 Practices for Using Tarot in Ancestral Healing
1. Using Tarot to Uncover Generational Patterns
Tarot is a powerful tool to illuminate generational patterns, helping you identify and break cycles that no longer serve you.
For this practice, focus on a pattern or struggle you believe may have roots in your lineage, such as a scarcity mindset, people-pleasing, relationship struggles, or even health challenges.
Choose a tarot card to represent the pattern. Pull additional cards to explore how this has manifested in your life and how to heal it.
Exercise: Breaking the Cycle Spread
Card 1: The card you chose that represents the generational patterns
Card 2: How has this pattern manifested your life?
Card 3: What belief, behavior, or person is keeping you stuck in this pattern?
Card 4: What do you need to understand to break free and release it?
Card 5: What new energy or pattern can you embrace to heal?
Card 6: What might you experience if this pattern continues?
Journal about your cards, share your reflection with others, and explore the next steps identified to help you release and break this cycle. Don’t rush the process! This is courageous work.
2. Choosing Tarot Cards to Represent Important Ancestors in Tarot Readings or Rituals
A nourishing way to use Tarot for ancestral healing is by choosing specific cards to represent cherished ancestors in your life.
Choose cards that symbolize ancestors who are supporting you, those who had a significant impact on your lineage, or even those with whom you feel a soul/karmic connection.
You don’t need to know the meaning of the tarot cards to choose. Simply follow your intuition and choose cards whose imagery best represents the essence of your connection to that ancestor.
For example,
You might see the rainbow, the house, and playing children on the 10 of Cups, and think of a supportive aunt where you would go play as a child.
Leaning into traditional meanings, you chose The High Priestess to honor an ancestor who you felt was especially intuitive and perceptive.
Should I choose cards for ancestors who were unsupportive, harmful, or abusive?
You don’t need to engage with the energies of harmful ancestors to heal from them. 💚
But, if you’re here, I suspect you know there still may be impacts playing out in your life.
My recommendation is to choose cards that represent the way that harm shows up in your life—the behavior, belief, or pattern you have presently as a result of the person—as opposed to the actual ancestor. This centers you and your autonomy in the process, but still get insight on potential healing paths.
You can also access an IFS spread later in this blog that can explore the parts of you that took on the harmful pattern from an ancestor.
3. Using Tarot Spreads to Connect with Supportive Ancestors
One of the most direct ways to communicate with your ancestors through Tarot is by using specific spreads designed to invite in their connection. These spreads invite their wisdom, allowing you to receive messages and guidance.
One-Card Connection Practice: If you read cards for yourself, you can connect to the energy of this ancestor and simply ask, “What guidance do you have for me today?” or “How can I honor you today?”
If you want a more complex spread, you can try this one below:
Exercise: Ancestral Connection Spread
As you pull each card, tune into the energy of your ancestors and listen for any subtle messages or feelings that arise.
Card 1: Who is reaching out to me from my lineage?
Card 2: What message or guidance do they wish to offer me?
Card 3: From their perspective, what generational wound needs my focus now?
Card 4: How can I honor my ancestors' wisdom in my life?
This spread can be performed anytime, but notice if you feel called to do it during certain times, such as the full moon or seasonal shifts, or around an anniversary or birthday of the deceased loved one.
4. Using Tarot Cards on Your Altar to Represent Ancestors
Tarot cards can be chosen as sacred items on your altar to honor supportive ancestors and loved ones from the past. By selecting cards that resonate with their energy, you can create a visual and spiritual representation of their gifts.
For example,
The Strength card can represent an ancestor who demonstrated resilience and courage.
The Queen of Pentacles may embody a practical, nurturing relative who ensured their home was always warm and welcoming.
The King of Swords may represent an ancestor who loved to play strategic games—like chess or poker.
By placing these cards on your altar, you call in the energy and gifts of your ancestors, allowing their support to guide you in your spiritual journey. Consider adding additional items on your altar as an offering, such as a candle, their favorite food, flowers, stones, fresh beverages, or an item that represents them.
5. Blend Tarot and IFS (Internal Family Systems) for Exploring Legacy Burdens
IFS (Internal Family Systems) is a psychospiritual model where you explore different parts of yourself—such as protectors, exiles, and the Self—and the ways they interact.
In turn, tarot can represent these parts visually, providing clarity and insight in ways you may not access.
In the context of ancestral healing, you can blend IFS and Tarot to uncover parts of yourself that carry ancestral or legacy burdens or have inherited patterns that you’d like to transform or release.
Exercise: IFS Ancestral Tarot Spread
Card 1: Which part of me carries ancestral or legacy burdens?
Card 2: What is this part’s role in my system?
Card 3: How do I experience this part?
Card 4: What does this part need to experience healing and release?
Card 5: What wisdom does my Self bring to this legacy burden?
Card 6: What ancestral gifts would I like to invite in to support this process?
This spread allows you to identify which inner part is holding on to ancestral trauma and how to approach it with compassion and healing, blending IFS principles with Tarot’s symbolic richness.
Example Reading: IFS Ancestral Tarot Spread
Reading Summary (above)
A young part carries a legacy burden that they are not allowed to experience joy and celebration. (4 of Wands Rx) Thus, this part's role is to reject opportunities or to feel dissatisfied by all the opportunities in front of them. (4 of Cups Rx).The person experiences this part as a way to protect themself from negative feedback from others, but it also keeps them isolated and alone. (7 of Wands)
To experience healing and release, this part may need to bring in a supportive person (advisor) or practice (CBT) that can offer guidance and grounded logic—to help them start to question and break free from the beliefs that perpetuate this pattern. (King of Swords)
The Self is inviting in harmony and balance (6 of Pentacles) —perhaps inviting the part to notice the great opportunities around them that they are scared to take, but to not go overboard in the process. The ancestral gift (The High Priestess) is to invite in deep intuition and knowing.
This person might be able to lean on loving logic (King of Swords) and fierce intuition (High Priestess) to start to unravel the beliefs and fears around experiencing joy and celebration.
Adapt These Practices Beyond Your Ancestors
While I am primarily referring to human ancestors in this blog, many of these practices can be adapted to connect with guides, spiritual figures, angles, or even beloved pets who have passed on,
