I’ve been trying to understand tarot for years, but every time I tried to learn it, nothing stuck, probably my brain is a combo of Tundra and Aquatic, which means I don’t dislike inherited frameworks.
It’s hard for me to see the framework until I break it down and rebuilt it for my weird brain. So, that’s what I did. I broke it down to first principles and rebuilt it in a language I already understood.
Once I stopped treating the Major Arcana like mystical archetypes floating above reality and started looking at them as stages in a cycle, the whole thing began to make sense.
The same thing happened with the suits. Once I pulled it apart, I started seeing business constraints in each one. Either you don’t have enough infrastructure, you don’t have enough strategic coherence, you don’t have enough connection to the people you’re trying to serve, or you’re simply out of energy.
When I mapped the cards onto those realities, tarot stopped feeling abstract and started feeling diagnostic, like a business tool anyone could use, which got me excited.
So, I built a system, which is what I do, that honors tarot and expands it as a business modality anyone can use.
This is the first time I’ve demoed the methodology live. You can download the whole system, and the digital deck, at: https://www.hapitalist.com/p/tarot
Takeaways
1. If you don’t understand a system, reverse-engineer it. Sometimes the problem isn’t that a framework is wrong. It’s that you’re trying to memorize outcomes instead of understanding mechanics. When you rebuild something in a language you already understand, you stop borrowing authority and start developing your own.
2. Most business problems can be reduced to it’s major constraint. If you can identify which one is actually blocked, you stop throwing effort at the wrong layer.
3. Friction is not failure. Don’t panic just because something feels heavy. You determine whether it’s early, misaligned, or complete. Those are very different states.
4. You cannot integrate what you refuse to release. This is the one most entrepreneurs resist. We will optimize, repackage, and rebuild endlessly to avoid admitting that something has expired. Sometimes the block isn’t effort. It’s attachment.
5. Interruption is underrated. The value of something like tarot isn’t mysticism. It’s disruption. It interrupts your favorite coping mechanism long enough for you to see what you’re avoiding.
