Reclaiming the Heart of the Matter – Tarot’s First Two Cards as Portals to Inner Child Integration

Written by Tania Yorgey, Tarologist

Tania Yorgey is a writter, intuitive guide and long term student of symbolic systems. She has spent over four decades working with the tarot. Not as a fortune-telling device, but as a mirror of archetypal intelligence and deep pattern recognition. The tarot has been her lifelong companion in understanding the inner child's story in search of meaning.

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It was during a quiet meditation that she appeared, my inner child. Not in distress, but with clarity. She had something to share with me.

As a long-time Tarot reader and intuitive guide, I was used to listening beneath the surface and exploring the unseen. But this meditation was different. She smiled as she sat down with me, not as someone needing to be rescued, but as a guide. With her came four simple phrases:

“I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.”

At the time, I didn’t know these words belonged to Ho’oponopono, a sacred Hawaiian practice of reconciliation and emotional purification. I only knew they arrived with deep emotional truth, pure, unfiltered, loving. And they came through her, the child I once was, and still am. I felt so much love radiating from her, which became my mirror to see myself through her.

That moment changed everything about how I approached the Tarot.

For decades, the Tarot had been my compass, a symbolic map of archetypes, insights, and hidden truths. But now, a deeper resonance emerged: the Tarot as a dialogue with the inner child, a space where integration could occur, not through explanation, but through witnessing and exploring the story that was waiting to be told.

I began to look differently at the first two card,s known as the Heart of the Matter, especially in the Celtic Cross. Traditionally, the Heart of the Matter is the present energy and the crossing influence.

But in my readings, they began to reveal something more.

I now see these first two cards as portals into the emotional world of the inner child, the age, imprint, and unmet need that is ready to be seen and integrated.

Rather than interpreting only through symbolism or prediction, I ask:

• What age are you speaking from (or be guided by the numbers on the cards laid out)?

• What emotional truth, through story, is this child still carrying (in a reading, we lay out the story through the four elements and their connection to the story)?

• What loving integration is possible if we truly listen (this is where we bring the shadow into awareness and integrate the inner child’s story)?

Then I gently invite the client to speak the four phrases:

“I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.”

And something always shifts, a smile, a sigh, a release, a softening of the shoulders. Often, a tear. Not from pain, but from the relief of finally being heard.

In that moment, the Tarot stops being a tool for guidance and becomes something else entirely: a mirror for the forgotten self.

A practice to begin

Next time you pull the first two cards in a reading, whether for yourself or someone else, pause. Place your hand over your heart and ask:

“What age in me needs this message?”

“What would happen if I offered them these words now?”

Then say them, slowly, from the heart:

“I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.”

You may find, as I did, that the Heart of the Matter is not just the present issue. It is the echo of a younger voice, finally coming home.

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Read more from Tania Yorgey

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Tania Yorgey, Tarologist

Tania Yorgey is a writer, intuitive guide, and long-term student of symbolic systems. For over four decades, she has worked with the Tarot—not as a fortune-telling device, but as a mirror of archetypal intelligence and deep pattern recognition. For Tania, the Tarot is not a set of answers, but a field of living questions. It has been her lifelong companion in decoding the inner child's story—the part of us still searching for meaning, coherence, and wholeness.