Keeping a tarot journal

Wendy, your handmade ring binder is lovely! I would love to handle it and look through the pages of your journals--but I can see that for myself, it wouldn't work. As soon as I saw it, I began to stress over the fact that it has floppy sides.

I've looked at the 'Tarot Journaling' website's free printable journaling pages, and I like them, but there's a blank space on them for the cards, and if I left them empty it would stress me out, if I tried to draw in them I'd get discouraged because I can't draw! I suppose what I need to do is grab some images from online and sit and make multiple pages of cards from my favourite decks, so that I could snip them out and paste them in. I do that for my Sacred Journey day planner, where you have a spiral spread at every equinox. But I suppose I could also do that for my regular tarot journal. It's a thought anyway. But I will wait until the journal I'm currently using is full before I buy any binders. Maybe I will do a few pages of card images and try pasting them in my journal as a trial run. (I'll have to wait 2 weeks, though, because I've already pre-made 14 pages with the subtitles I listed above, and I can't stand the thought of messing that up!--I told you I was freaky!)

Carla said:

Wendy, your handmade ring binder is lovely! I would love to handle it and look through the pages of your journals--but I can see that for myself, it wouldn't work. As soon as I saw it, I began to stress over the fact that it has floppy sides.

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Is buffalo - very thick leather. Once the paper is in the folder, and I might put a piece of card in at the very back (cornflake packet or something, that I could cover/decorate) it'll be fine.

It gets finished today

You should leave it floppy if you like--it would look wonderful, and be so old-fashioned and charming. It's just for me, the very fact that it wouldn't stand up on the shelf would cause me grief. Silly me.

Ah - won't be standing on a shelf - ever. Whatever form my journal is in - it lives with me. In my bag, on my desk, on the coffee table - just transfer pages out of it at intervals.... It still needs the cornflake packet as something to rest on - more at the front than the back because if I'm leaning on the back section I am obviously also leaning on the stack of paper. But at the front ..... Hey - I can have real fun decorating cornflake packets but leaving them firm enough to be a good writing surface. Blue Peter Rulez

Luckily my bag is an incredibly tactile leather messenger bag and plenty big enough for an A4 ringbinder.

ETA - I actually had some random come up and stroke my bag when I was in the post office the other day. Deeply worrying

Tarot Journaling by Corrine Kenner. http://www.tarotjournaling.com/ provides free printable pages.

ETA: as for everything in life, first you try the recipe provided in the book, then after tasting the result, you follow your inspiration acc your needs.

Like Wendy, I made my own leather tarot journal. I have everything in from when I first started getting serious about it. I've also added clear plastic pockets where I keep cards I'm studying and anything else that I want to keep to remind me of why I'm working with the tarot.

I divided the journal into different sections so I can keep track of all my notes, readings, thoughts, etc...

For me, it was very important to make it very personal and aesthetically pleasing to me. I also like the fact that I can add or take out paper as my needs and interests change. It can evolve with me.

I have a little notebook that is filled with spreads that I would like to try and where I have found them. I always looking for new spreads to try. I'm still learning about my deck. Also I write down my readings and keep them in the bottowm of my box. Soon I have to make a new box due the fact I got feeling that I should get a new deck. Wendy, your journal is very pretty.

I started out with one three-ring binder, and now I have a pile of them! I have one for my notes on the cards, one for readings (including readings I've done for others), one for notes on method (dignities, etc), one for tarot spreads, and one for miscellaneous information (tarot history, tarot creation, copyright, etc). For about ten years, I also tracked every card I drew so I could see how often certain cards appeared in my readings (this was exhausting, but educational!) For each card, I kept a page where I logged all its position meanings in all my readings, and that really helped me understand the cards better, especially when there was some ambiguity in a reading. My readings binder is jam-packed and soon I will have to start another one!

WyrdRaven said:

I started out with one three-ring binder, and now I have a pile of them!

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No buffalo-skin or any other leather for veggies.

I have good old 2-hole binders. My tarot journal, or should I say my own encyclopedia, is made of:
- Mary Greer's Tarot for Your Self (I removed the binding and the glue from every single page, made holes and put them in the binder). It is very practical as I can add my own notes/exercises/readings in between the corresponding book pages.

- Next section for card meanings: I printed many years ago the Robin Wood miniversion (that was available from some website) and glued the cards on some blank "card meaning" form. Also had a grayscale version of each card, glued them into the Rx section of the form.

- Next section is blank reading forms: daily, three-card, Celtic Cross and some notebook pages with my own notes when I didn't have the orinted forms readily available.

- Last section is very much Misc: tarot games, crystals, cool quotes, private library, online stores info.

For the Tarot of the Crone, I have one separate binder with all the info I could gather on it from the Ellen Lorenzi-Prince's websites: http://www.croneways.com/index.html and her newest http://www.queenofghosts.com/index.htm .
First section for Majors, then Minors, then Fool's Journey. Still need to gather my own readings in there. Ellen offers great exercises, feedback and altogether bloody good Crone energy on the Yahoo study group about her Tarot of the Crone.

I also have a slim neat spiral-bounded agenda, for daily cards and musing.

Get creative when you start your own journal.
The biggest mistake I made was to buy gorgeous 2 Laurel Burch journals http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.323520/sc.2/category.2292/.f and leave them unused for fear of wasting them or ruining them with my uninteresting messy babbling.
If you are like me, go for cheap non-intimidating binders, cheap spiral-bound journals, pimp them, draw in them, put stickers, colors, coffee strains LOL

Kissa, I love your idea of deconstructing Tarot for Yourself to put in a ring binder! In fact, your whole tarot journal sounds great.

I'm thinking of calling mine, when I start one, a 'Tarot Organiser', so I won't feel that it needs to be like a journal, one of those fancy blank books like you describe.