So you want to learn Tarot Card Reading, but you aren’t sure how it really works.
This will help you understand what Tarot is, from a ‘Muggle’s’ (non-magical folk) point of view.
Tarot is a form of divination; this can range from having a reading from “Tarot Card Reader”, or you can purchase a deck and learn one of many ways to do self-divination all on your own. Or you can learn to read the cards and mystify your friends and family.
First let’s start with the Tarot Card Deck
There are dozens if not hundreds of different types of Tarot Cards. The thing to keep in mind is that you want to find a Tarot Deck that fits you. Appeals to your sense of art; feel for magic; mythical, magical creatures; time period; ethnicity; beliefs… this goes on and on.
First find a nice witchy shop, pagan bookstore, or occult book shop. Or perhaps find your deck online such as amazon or any online bookstore. I strongly suggest seeing the deck in person, and there are a few reasons why. A Tarot Card Deck is a magical tool. It needs to call out to you, sort of like the wand picks the wizard kinda thing. The deck should fit in your hands comfortably. Some Tarot Decks are monstrously large, while some are exactly the size of standard playing cards.
You need to be able to read the cards. By this I mean, understand what it is that you are looking at. Are the numbers readable? Can you read Roman Numerals?
Can you distinguish the suits? Like the standard: Wands, Pentacles, Cups and Swords.
Or do they instead have: Staves, Clubs, Spades, Chalices, Hearts, Rings or Diamonds?? Are the pictures easy to determine what the suit is, and how many of the objects are on the card (which determines the number of that card in that suit)? Or are they so intricately confusing graphics that you aren’t really sure what you’re looking at?
This may all sound silly… but when it comes to learning and then actually using the cards, simplicity wins out, less is more. This is why the Rider Waite Tarot Cards, circa 1910, are really the Tarot Cards that all other cards are designed to. They are simple in design, easy to read, and very easy to handle. So if you are at odds with what deck to choose… Perhaps this one is the one to learn with. Then save up and get the Headless Gypsy Walking Dead tarot deck later on, when you get good at Tarot Card Reading.
Memorize your cards
The key to learning your deck is a very simple exercise that goes back to learning things like Math and Vocabulary Words back in Grade School. FLASH CARDS! Shuffle your deck good. Draw one card and read what it is. That’s easy enough, right?
Well, first of all, the Tarot is not all that different from the standard French playing cards. There are four suits, that are numbered, these are called The Minor Arcana. Then the trump cards, or picture cards, or in the case of Tarot card – The Major Arcana.
Start with the Major Arcana first for memorization. You should know the Name of the Card, the Number of that card and one of two descriptions (from your instruction book) of that card. If you have someone work with you correcting you as you go, you will learn these all that much faster.
The Minor Arcana is really no different. Same routine. The number and Suit. Which you have to count the objects because there is no number printed on the Minor Arcana Cards. And as before, one or two descriptions about that card.
In just a few days to a few weeks you can rattle off these cards like they were standard playing cards. This is when you start adding more descriptions to each card, a few at a time.
Then, when you think you got all this smarty-pants… you learn the inverse descriptions. This is when the card is drawn or laid down upside-down. There are lots of folks that don’t even pay attention to this additional headache. They leave it for the soothsayers and Gypsies. It was thought that inverse readings were somehow evil, negative or bad – which is nonsense.
All the while you are learning your cards there are various types of Tarot Card Readings that you can do yourself. There is a 3 card draw, single card of the day draw, the list goes on and on. Your instruction manual will have lots of these layouts and Tarot Card Reading varieties to try out.
And just one last word for you Muggles out there that have reservations about Tarot Card Reading.
There is no such thing as a bad reading, or a reading of death, doom or gloom. If you experience one of these, then you were read by a charlatan, a fake!! They want you to be scared so you come back and spend more money!!
Here are just a couple of examples of misinformation used by these Gypsies that want you back:
The Tower Card – is not destruction, death and such. It means shaking up the house and rearranging the foundations of your life.
The Death Card – does not mean someone is about to die. It means the end of one path and the beginning of a new one. Death and rebirth, ending one cycle to begin another. Very positive card.
Tarot, like any divination, is to awaken the one being read, to the possibilities of fulfillment of their desire for positive change. Be it prosperity, love, work or health. A truly good session is when the Tarot Card Reading supports the individual to move in a positive manner. That is why there are so many different descriptions or reads to each and every card. So the reader can determine what single word or two will be just what the client needed to hear.
Always keep an open mind, a joyful heart and listen with two ears and one mouth. You will find that you can transform into a miracle worker for people with your cards, if you remain a light-hearted good listener.
Namaste