And what should be it content?
Since the beginning of my tarot journey I have kept one. But now that I'm thinking, I think mine was pretty simplistic. I didn't have one with a card glued on a page where I should write next to it the meaning of that card or what I was thinking about it. No, mine was simply having a few spreads created by me, some readings and that was pretty much all. Now I came to the conclusion that a tarot journal should be more than simplistic. It's a good way to learn new things from my experience and not only. I have read somewhere that some readers are afraid to keep a journal because they think they could be mistaken. I am not a afraid of anything (maybe of heights but that's another story) yet I could add this fear as a proof of how disastrous has been first tarot journal. Right?
Do you own one? Feel free to leave your opinions and suggestions for new members and not only if you like.
I had one when I was starting out. After about 6 years of doing it I stopped. I do keep the readings I do for myself online in Evernote, but I got to a point where I felt that I did not need it really as a learning tool. If I learn something spectacular I want remember nowadays I will still save it, but I don't have a journal any longer.
I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as "should" in Tarot. Or put another way you should do whatever calls to you to do. Whatever sounds and feels fun and exciting and joyful as Tarot should be all those things. To make it into work, thinking you have to do something when you are not in the mood, to me robs it of its inherent joy and some of it's fascination.
To me you can't tell someone they have to do something more detailed if they hate doing detailed work. It may bore them enough to make them want to give Tarot up altogether. If they do it in a less detailed but more enjoyable to them way, they will get there nevertheless. At their own pace. it's not a race, the thing is to enjoy the journey, imo,
Mine, when I had one, had anything and everything about Tarot in it, from directions on how to knit a Tarot pouch, to ....anything and everything. It was a joy to keep. But I got to the point where it no longer interested me to do it. Where I had learnt enough that learning was not a full time thing.
IMO, if you feel you might be mistaken, that is all the more reason to keep a journal. And it's not a book that you are publishing that will be out there for all to see for decades to come.
If you are just starting out, it is not a question of if you might be mistaken. At the start you WILL be mistaken for sure. A new reader has a lot to learn. They make mistakes, guaranteed.
One of the best ways to learn is through trial and error. You NEED to make the mistakes to see why and where you went wrong and to self-correct and learn from them. That is where the journal comes in. It lets you do just that. You have a written record of where you went wrong and why. When you know where things broke down you can then accurately design a better way to do things that works better for you.
That is one of the most important parts about journaling for me. I was able to look back over time at old readings that weren't accurate, and see what the cards actually HAD been trying to tell me. I was able to self-correct from that. To understand better how the cards actually do talk to me. And the better we understand that, the better readers we become.
Babs
