Most people think we only communicate through our words, but there are so many more ways to convey our thoughts, emotions, feelings, and fears. That’s even more true when we are communicating with animals, who didn't go to school and learn the same vocabulary we did, instead largely understanding us based on our tone of voice, our facial expressions, our volume, and our body language.

But as animal lovers around the world can tell you, there’s more to it than that. Every day, people send and receive messages to and from animals without saying a word. It’s a form of energetic communication that transcends species and doesn’t require our voices, yet is still incredibly powerful and lends us to forming remarkable lifetime bonds with our pets.

How does it work? Through the power of telepathy.

Telepathy Explained

Lots of people roll their eyes at the thought of telepathy, but we’re not talking about the kind practiced by Professor X or Luke Skywalker. Telepathy isn’t a make-believe power, it’s a word made up of two smaller words “tele” - meaning over a great distance, and “empathy” - which means feeling someone’s emotions or energies.

There are few people who can say they’ve never had a gut feeling of what someone else is thinking without talking to them, even if they are not in the same room or even in the same country. Twins experience this regularly, as do close friends, siblings, people who have gone through some sort of trauma together, married couples, and more. Call it a sixth sense, intuition, or whatever you want to, but it’s one of the wonderful untapped mysteries of being human.

The Animal Mind

Animals have relationships just like we do, and when we live or work with them, they seek to forge relationships with us. Your animals want you to know when they are hungry, thirsty, or in pain, but they also want reassurance from you, affection from you, and to know that they are loved. In many ways, animals’ minds are just as much of a mystery as our own, since they can’t actually tell us what they are thinking or feeling; everything we know about them comes from third-party observation. Their lives intersect with ours on a daily basis, but they are much different. They have different needs, different instincts, and different priorities. They know things that we will never know, and their senses tell them things that ours cannot see.

Animal Communication

We might have two different viewpoints, but that doesn’t mean we don’t also have a ton of similarities. We don’t typically like to be confused or feel unsafe. We seek solutions to our problems by asking for help. When we are worried or scared or sick, we seek reassurance from those we trust the most. Animals are smart and they pay attention to detail. This lets them know when you are leaving for work, getting ready to get their dinner, or trying to corral them for a bath. They pick up on the little things in your behavioral patterns. You can do the same thing for them. Take the time to know their habits, their expressions, and their sounds. When a thunderstorm is on the way, and your dog gets nervous, take the preventive steps to ensure they are feeling safe - getting their crate out or opening the door to the bedroom so they can lay in the closet. Put away your distractions, like your smartphone or your tablet, and spend real time with your pet on their level, petting them, engaging with them, and observing them. You’ll learn more in 30 minutes of facetime than you could watching 50 YouTube videos about animal psychology. Understand their problems by focusing your energy on empathizing with them, and you’ll soon be able to anticipate their needs, give a voice to their worries, and enhance the bond between the two of you to new heights.

Tarot cards and the people who interpret them professionally have plenty of steep hills to surpass when it comes to pushing past the myths that plague the community. One of the most bizarre in that mix is the oft-repeated, but never true tale that you cannot buy your first set of tarot cards, they have to be given as a gift to you. And if you do buy them, get ready to be cursed.

Wait, what?

Pushing past the immediate logic that if no one could buy their own tarot cards, where did the first decks come from, what we appear to have here is a bad version of the Telephone game you probably played in an elementary school classroom at some point.

You know the one, right? The first person at the first desk tells the second person a sentence like, “The raven landed on the long branch.” Everyone whispers it into the ear of the next person, but somehow by the time the last person in the last row gets the sentence told to them, it’s turned into “Darth Vader puts nacho cheese on his Twinkies.”

The off-the-wall comment about not buying your own Tarot deck could have easily started the same way, given that many people identify them as being very mystical and personal objects. Thus having a deck passed down from someone in your own family who used them well and with considerable talent over the years would certainly be a pleasing situation. But just because someone used a deck well does not mean it will work the same for you.

Building the Best Deck for You

One of the best things about tarot cards is how delightfully different they are. They come in different card stocks, different inks, different styles of artwork ,and with different text on what each card does and what its origin is. When you start to practice drawing and reading from a deck, you’re going to want something that appeals specifically to you, something that becomes more of an extension of your hand than simply a stack of cards with pretty pictures on them. That’s why you really shouldn’t even buy a first deck or any deck, without examining the key points of how it looks, how it feels, and how it reads. If you’re a tactile person like I am, you’re going to love putting your fingertips on the cards and tracing the sensation of their edges. Different tarot practitioners bond instantly to different styles of artwork. You’ll want to find the type of artistry that stirs your imagination and lets you feel that instant connection as the cards are drawn and you begin to plot a path through their various meanings.

Seeking Advice on Your First Deck

If you can’t physically interact with a deck of cards you’re considering, never fear! The Tarot card community is generous and helpful. You can find great recommendations on various message boards and Facebook groups that can guide you to a deck that works best for you - curse not included.

Tell a certain portion of the population that you just came from a Tarot card reading and the reaction borders from shocked to mystified to calling their local preacher and telling him that they need Holy water and an exorcism ASAP.

It’s a frustrating misnomer that Tarot card practitioners deal with on a weekly, if not daily basis. The myths spread across social media, message boards, word of mouth, and in the media. Tarot cards are the work of the Devil, they’re evil, they’re dangerous, and the people who read them are either in league with Satan or scam artists out to rob you of your hard-earned money.

Can you imagine being in a profession where people routinely thought you were either trying to rip them off or were secretly in cahoots with the ultimate evil force in the universe? Talk about a tough way to make a living.

The fact of the matter is that Tarot card reading is a form of self-care that can help you reduce stress, organize your thoughts, and bring your worries, fears, concerns, and problems to the surface. When you can’t adequately cope with the negatives in your life, you wind up burying them deep down until they come welling back up in loud, angry outbursts that can fracture relationships and cause guilt, fear and shame.

So where did these myths come from and how can we dispel them to individuals who hold them up as the truth behind Tarot? Let’s break them down one by one.

Tarot cards are the work of the Devil

If the Devil conjured up Tarot cards to infest the hearts of men and women, he really took his sweet time doing it. The first packs only appeared in the mid-15th century. Some who practice Christianity will specifically point to Leviticus 19:31 in the Bible, which reads, “Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them.” Mediums are people who claim they can talk to the dead. Spiritists do likewise, and also claim contact with ghosts and demons. Using Tarot cards does neither of these things. It uses the cards to gain insight into a person’s past, present, or future by asking questions, drawing the cards, and interpreting them. Crystal balls, cauldrons, and human sacrifices sold separately.

Tarot cards are dangerous

Everything can be dangerous if you use it incorrectly. Dishwashing soap is great for getting the mac-and-cheese stains off your plates, but if you drink a gallon of it overnight, you’re going to wind up in the hospital. Tarot cards require knowledge to use correctly. If someone without the inability to perform proper readings turns over the Death card and decides it means they need to go jump off a skyscraper, that’s not the deck’s fault! Not understanding the nature of the 78 cards is the most surefire way to believe you are getting an ominous reading. Learning to interpret the cards or using the services of someone who does is the only way to really understand, enjoy, and take away positives from a reading.

Tarot card readers are scam artists

There is a small percentage of people out there who are absolutely trying to get something for nothing when they claim to be a Tarot expert. But there’s also a small percentage of car salesmen who are scam artists. The same goes for antique dealers and handymen and chiropractors and pretty much every other individual service profession under the sun. Legitimate Tarot card readers are people who have amazing talents for empathy, compassion, and the skills to read the cards as they appear. Most of them are in the business for the emotional satisfaction of connecting with another person and helping them unlock the answers to life’s elusive questions.