Past-life and Karmic Tarot by Edain McCoy

 Reviewed by Serena Brink

 Journey back in time, and explore your past-lives using the series of spreads provided in this book.  Past-life and Karmic Tarot is a workbook whose content encourages an active engagement with its numerous and versatile spreads. There are simple spreads as well as complex spreads such as the lifetime convergence spread that will lead you to a thorough and fascinating examination of your past lives and their relationship to your current life. Even if you don’t believe in past lives, this book will provide a series of spreads that can easily be converted to enable you to excavate your past and reveal the way it is affecting your present and creating your future. 

The issue of past lives raises a lot of questions that we usually have no way of answering or exploring. Now through the agency of the tarot and the numerous spreads in this book you can journey back into your past lives, reflect upon the issues raised by the tarot cards, decide whether issues from a past life are still unresolved, and perhaps make new choices that can set your present life on a different course. 

Each spread is accompanied by an example spread to illustrate its interpretation. This is very useful if you are confused by the instructions or don’t know how to go about the interpretation process. The example readings are concise and give useful pointers to key interpretations of particular tarot cards in the context of each past life spread. The author’s talent in summarizing the interpretation of both simple and complex spreads will be of considerable assistance to those interested in developing the skill of summarizing a reading. 

Edain McCoy also includes ways of extending the spreads to enable clarification on issues that arise from the readings, as well as alternatives.  This process can inspire you to develop your own questions and spreads as it presents the tarot spread as an open, ongoing conversation. 

The comprehensive range of spreads provide a way of viewing many different questions such as whether a current life relationship started in a past life and whether it has progressed; which past lives have the strongest influence on your current life; how incidents from your current life have created unresolved issues or karma that can affect your future lives; and how karma will manifest if you keep to your current course. 

Whether you are interested in correcting a karmic imbalance or knowing what lessons you chose during your last life between lives - in preparation for this lifetime, this book will provide a spread that will take you on a journey of self-discovery. 

The author’s approach to past lives avoids the fatalistic view of karma, and provides a perspective that encourages the exercise of free will and choice, as Edain McCoy says: 

‘Remember that the cards tell us the future based on potentials currently set in motion by the energy we are placing each day onto the wheel of existence.  When we change the potential, we change the outcome.  There is no karma that cannot be overcome and there is no past life that can affect your future lives without your consent. Your knowledge is your power over your karma. Put knowledge into action and it becomes wisdom, and wisdom can break the bond of karmic ties.’ 

I tried six different spreads in the process of reviewing this book and found the results intriguing and sometimes unexpected.  I used the Gilded Tarot, a new tarot pack published by Llewellyn, to explore the spreads.  My experience with the Gilded Tarot suggests that the tarot pack used can have quite an important affect on the impression that one gets of a past life. I found the Gilded Tarot to be a gentle and gracious portal into a number of past lives. I also found that the spread designs by Edain McCoy are well conceived and give coherent results that are very thought provoking. 

Apart from the past life and karmic spreads there are two chapters that take the process of exploring past lives into a deeper dimension.  One chapter describes how to use tarot cards as portals into other worlds and times by using meditation, visualization or astral projection.  The other chapter discusses how to do past life regression, using autohypnosis or by having a partner who can guide you through the regression process. 

Copyright © 2004 Serena Brink. All rights reserved.