What is Storyworking?

I throw this term that I made up around like you all know what it means! Occasionally, someone emails me and asks, but I keep forgetting to post the explanation to the site.

Storyworking is my term for a specific way of using tarot cards for storytelling as part of a magickal practice or ritual working. I use it as a ritual working and magickal tool, so I wanted to have a more descriptive name. Hence the creation of the term — storyworking.

In a nutshell, you use your deck of cards with a group of people and each successively takes a card and then continues the story. It’s very organic, and can create a very exciting and intimate bond as the story unfolds. I usually let it go twice around and then have people look at their cards. One is a message for them, and the other is for someone else. they have to decide who the other one is for and give it to them.

The overall idea is that the story created is exactly what we need to hear and learn at that moment.

You can also just do it for fun around a campfire — but I’d just call that tarot storytelling! When I look at decks, sometimes I don’t think they’d be good for readings, but I can see they’d be great for storyworking. I find that using well known decks, like the Rider Waite, doesn’t work well for storyworking because people get caught up in what the card is “supposed to mean” and stop seeing how it continues the story.

If you want to see some of the decks I think would work well for this, search this site for “tarot review.” I don’t publish these too regularly, but there are a few.

If you try this out yourself, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how it worked for you and the group. FYI — leading this is more difficult than you think. The leader usually has to start and end the story, but you can’t force an ending without really throwing the magick out the window.

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