Ever Wanted to do a Past Life Tarot Spread?

Have you ever wondered about your past life? Here are some tips for how you can use tarot to explore who you might’ve been in another life!

If you believe that humans live multiple lives, then wondering about one you’ve previously lived is expected. You might often find yourself thinking about who you might’ve been in a previous life, the lives you affected, who you might’ve loved, and of course how you might’ve died. While you might never find all the answers to your questions about your past life, tarot readings can help give you at least some answers! Keep reading to see how you can use a past life tarot spread to help answer questions you might have about one of your past lives! 

Where do I begin?

When doing your own personal tarot reading about your past life it is important that you ask the right questions. Whether you are an experienced reader or you are just starting to learn tarot, you will need to be familiar with how a past life tarot spread works. There are a couple ways you can do a past life tarot reading, but using a six card layout is one of the most popular. 

When exploring past lives through a six card past tarot reading you should keep these questions (or similar ones) in mind to help you get the most out of your reading:

  1. What kind of person/who was I in the past?
  2. What did I do and accomplish in my past life?
  3. What challenges and obstacles did I face?
  4. How did I die?
  5. What lessons did I learn from my past life?
  6. Who did my life impact?

Using these six questions in your tarot reading won’t give you all the answers to what you might want to know about your past life, but they can help lead you in the right direction and give you a place to start. Asking these questions will help you to get a little understanding about one or more of the lives you’ve previously led!  Keep reading to see how you can use each of these questions to find out what your past life was like.


A woman holding her hands over a spread of tarot cards, surrounded by small white candles
Understanding our past lives can help us in our current one! 


1. What kind of person/who was I in the past?

As you reach for the first card of your spread, keep in mind the question of who you were in your past life. While the card might not be able to tell you if you were the president or a movie star, it might give you some insight into what type of person you were. The card can hint at how compassionate you might’ve been, if you were more positive or negative, or what position you held in relation to your job or even family and relationships. The first card won’t give you a full picture of your life right away, so don’t get discouraged if you’re a little confused by the answer.

2. What did I do in my past life?

The next card you pick will give you a look at what you did during your past life. Did you travel? Did you have a family? Were you successful in your career? This card will give you a glimpse at some of the things you might have accomplished in your previous life. At this point you’ll be able to see your reading coming together a little more. Now that you know what kind of person you were, you now know what you did as that person and what you accomplished.

3. What challenges and obstacles did I face?

When you pick the next card, focus on asking what challenges you might have faced in your previous life. When reading this card, try to interpret it in terms of a larger event. This card won’t typically show a challenge as small as being late to work or losing your keys. Rather, this card will represent a major life event that you might’ve had to overcome in your previous life. 

4. How did I die?

This question is probably one of the aspects of our previous lives that fascinates us the most. The fourth card you choose will give you insight into how you died in your previous life. This doesn’t mean that the card will explicitly tell you how you died, but it might hint at what was going on when you died, who it affected, or even maybe that you died at the same time as someone. There are a lot of variables to this question, but the tarot cards can at least show you some of the factors about your death. 


A stack of tarot cards on a table surrounded by three candles in glass jars
Knowing the mistakes you made in your past life can help keep you from making them again. 

5. What lessons did I learn from my past life?

It can be argued that the most important thing we gain from our past lives are the lessons we learn from them. However sometimes we don’t even know what they are in our current lives, and we have to relearn them in this life. The fifth card you pick will help you understand the lesson you learned from your previous life. This can help you in this life by providing an understanding to something you might be struggling with in this life that you also struggled with in your past life. At the very least, knowing what lesson you learned from your past life will help prevent you from making the same mistakes. 

6. Who did my life impact?

The last card you choose symbolizes who was impacted by your past life. This is an important understanding because based on your other card choices, the same people in your life that were affected by your choices might be affected in your current life if you repeat the same mistakes. Maybe the first card showed that you were untrustworthy in your past life, and this card shows a break in a relationship. From those readings you can conclude that you lost a friend or a lover from being dishonest. Knowing that in this life can prevent you from making the same mistake. 

Using the tarot cards to get a peek at your past life won’t give you all the answers or a full look at the previous life you lived. However, understanding our past is important for moving on in the future. If we know nothing about our past, how can we prevent ourselves from making the same mistakes? Understanding our past lives and how we might’ve lived in them can also help us to appreciate our current lives. 

On the opposite side of this, if we know what made us happy and worked for us in our past life, we can try to recreate that in our current life. Everyone looks for a way to be happy, and understanding your past life might help you find happiness in this one. At the very least, getting a look at a life you’ve once lived is interesting and exciting. 

The most important thing to remember when you’re trying to find answers about your past life through tarot is to keep an open mind. The cards won’t give you explicit answers, and you might even find yourself confused by their meanings at first. The first card you pick won’t show you everything about your past life, and it might not even make sense until you’ve revealed all six cards. A past life tarot spread isn’t meant to tell you a story of your entire past life. Rather, the spread will help you see major events and key elements of your past life that you can apply in this one. 


Kaitlyn Harris

Kaitlyn Harris is a professional writer, lover of the arts, and an aspiring world traveler.
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