How did you learn Tarot?

[nisaba]

and for those of you that are experts, how did you learn Tarot?

I got a deck, started pulling cards and really looking at the images. Looking hard and often.

How did you improve your intuition?

I stopped doubting it. And I started noticing that in other areas lf my life every time I quashed my gut feeling and went with my intellect, I got penalised for it later.
You don't improve your intuition as such: you improve your ability to listen to it, and to trust it. It's there all the time, all you have to do is take note.

And I guess the biggest question I have is how did you learn all the different meanings of the cards?

Time. Time, and patience. I'm still learning new things about the cards now, and I started in the 1970s.

 

[Ace]

DON'T memorize the meanings of the cards. DON'T.

When you are reading, look at the pictures. Think about what the picture tells you. Maybe only a part of a picture. (I know someone who used the Handl tarot because it is so abstract. But she can find a message in a shadow or a streak of color.) The message you free associate will be more appropriate to what you want to find out than the "meaning" of the card.

If you insist on each card having one meaning and only one meaning, you will block the messages the cards are trying to give you.

barb

 

[rubyalison]

Learning how to read all 78 cards without having to look at a book can seem overwhelming at first. If you are patient and dedicated though, you will get there.

Here is my advice and opinion:

Basically it is a combination a matter of spending time with the cards (almost) every day, reading books about tarot, journaling about tarot, and doing meditation, exercises or whatever else suits you.

It is also a matter of the coupling the knowledge gained from reading several books and opinions with your own intuitive reading of the pictures and symbols of the cards.

Personally I pull a card a day and that is probably the most recommended piece of advice.
I also like to carry a deck around with me and whenever I have a few minutes, pull it out and just turn cards over and see what I can come up with to say about them. I do 3 cards spreads for myself a lot, but I also do 3 cards spreads for practice - as in, if this spread was for a client, how would I read it to them.

If you make tarot a part of your day to day life, then eventually you will get to where you want to be. Although learning tarot is a lifelong process and there is always always more to learn, which is cool.

As far as the rest - where you read, what rituals you use, what deck you use, how you store your cards, if you have crystals or candles or cloths or anything else - all that is entirely subjective and up to you. Ask 100 tarot readers, you'll get 100 different answers on what their personal practices are.

For me personally, I'll read anywhere - in bed, in the living room, on the floor of the bedroom, in a park, at my desk at work, whatever.
I have some reading cloths I use sometimes but not all the times. I keep my tarot decks in bags, and I keep a couple crystals in each (a labradorite and a clear quartz).
I don't do this when I'm just practicing, but when I am doing my daily draw and when doing real readings for myself or a friend, I wrote a few lines I like to chant in my head while shuffling to help center me and connect with the cards.

Best of luck and enjoy the process!!

 

[Tanya.Y]

I a newbe too. Thanks for bringing this subject up.
Michael S mentioned "... to do a daily single draw ..." and "... having a journal ...". I am agree here. Both of them are good tools today learn Tarot. I usually leave some room for each card and spread to add later on some comments towards what's happened / influence.
On YouTube I found a lot of useful videos.
Thanks again.

 

[Sharla]

Two simple letters AT

This site is better than any book, well i think it is anyway.

 

[SunChariot]

Hello everyone,

I'm new here and new to learning Tarot. I'm curious how everyone got started in Tarot, and for those of you that are experts, how did you learn Tarot? How did you improve your intuition? I'm wondering if I should find someone to have 1:1 lessons from. And I guess the biggest question I have is how did you learn all the different meanings of the cards? I did a reading a few days ago for myself and had 3 different books going at the same time.

Nothing complicated really.

I looked through AT at all the decks and ordered my first one from amazon. (my first was the Haindl Tarot)

Then I started here. http://www.learntarot.com/

I took the online course from that site. And even bought the book verson of it. That was the start for me. Unfortuneately it was a bit confusing but it was a start. Mainly confusing and it was a RWS based course and my deck was Thoth based at the time, although I did not know it at the time and had not yet heard of either RWS OR Thoth yet.

From there I read as many books as I could on Tarot. Something like 35 in a row. LOL I found that many contradicted themselves, both in methods and in card meanings. Some books said you MUST do something a certain way, others said you must never do it. Some books gave the exact opposite meaning for the same card as other books gave.

The more I saw that, the more I was confused at first.

Of course I was very active at AT as I was learning. I was here all the time asking questions. That helped a lot.

All the contradictory information was what I needed to open up to Tarot. It gave me what you could call a healthy disrespect for the "rules" or Tarot. It made me who I am now as a reader and I would not have it any other way.

I learnt to disbelieve that there are any rules or any specific way that you NEED to do anything in Tarot. It made me open to trying and inventing new methods as I went. Now many of the methods that work best for me are ones I invented myself.

Tarot automatically opens your intuition. You need it to read, you can't figure it out in your mind, imo. If you can see two different possibilities, or more, to what something could mean....you have to FEEL which is the right one. You can't work it out in your mind. There is just no other way to get answers.

After a while, I then got Brian Froud's The Faeries' Oracle. Even though it is not a Tarot, it opened up my intuition to a huge extent, that affected all my Tarot readings rom that point forward.

I worked hard on the book that came with the deck. It is adamant that faeries are real and if you follow the directions in the book they can communicate with you. I was always one who is able to suspend disbelief and try something new to see. So I did. And it worked. My intuition went into overdrive at the time. It was just as the book said, and they were communicating with me

I started to get messages, a lot, through all of my senses, and signs in my everyday life. When it started it was happening A LOT. Many many times a day. Until I learnt to accept this as a normal part of life. (Althuogh it initially scared the heck out of me, as it was not part of my belief system on life, but I talked to many others with the same experience and came to accept it in time. Now it is one of life's most beautiful aspects to me).

So as for me, my intuition really opened up as a result of working on Brian Froud's book fully. It all opened up at that time for me. And it made me believe that faeries, or something of a spiritual nature, was able to communicate with me, and was in fact doing so. Things, magical things, were happening WAY to often to be mere coincidence at that time.

Later, thanks to the Lovers' Path Tarot by Kris Waldherr and another similarly magical situatuon, I came to believe in angels as well. And to take on my current believe that they are the ones who send me the answers through the cards when I read (and help me understand the answer in the intended way, when I turn off my mind and just sense what that answer is).

So that was more or less how I learnt. I started by reading everything I could on the topic. That, of course, was an essential part. What I saw at that time was A LOT of very contradictory info which as first seriously confused me but then enraptured me with the beauty that is Tarot.

It meant to me that we are FREE to follow our hearts and souls and find the best ways to read that suit who we are deep inside. If there is no set way to do anything, then WE have that freedom, to do things our way,

That started a period of experimentation for me. It was basically jsut TRYING things that called to me from different sources I had read. I figured if something doesn't feel like it appeals to you, it's not going to be a good way for you to read...just like in school we always do best at the subjects we enjoy most.

Then as I was reading all those books, tried whatever called to me. I kept what worked well as part of my repetoire and let go of or changed what didn't. And invented a number of my own personal ways to do things as I went. As this went on, I developed a larger and larger repetoire of things I knew worked well for me. That allowed me to play with that and try to fit them together in different ways.

BTW, I never did any of those daily draws really. Tried it once or twice and it kindof bored me personally. A lot of people seem to think they are a necessary part of learning. But there are really no rules. For me I had so many real questions that I just worked on those. My favourites have always been on the nature of life, Like what is destiny and how it works, how our thoughts affect our future....those have always been the most fun questions for me.

Also many people think you have to start with a RWS deck. I did not. And I am extremely happy with how my learning process went. Having that RWS based course and learning on a Thoth based deck, created what I call that "healthy sense of confusion" that taught me to feel free to let the rules go and to invent my own. All the contractory books I read made me say inside: "IF they can't decide amongst themselves, then I am just going to follow my heart and find out what is the right way for me." And that was huge in my learning process. The experimentation process and willingness to try anything, even things I made up in my own head, in order to find what works best for ME. I get it that what works best for each of us can vary. We are all individuals inside. Tarot touches and works with our heart and soul. So it seems natural that the best methods for one will be different from the best ones for another.

I do very must believe you do have to learn the rules in order to learn to read, but nothing forces you to stick to any of them if and when you find things work better for you using different methods.

So, I just kept doing all that and then one day, I was where I am now. I do now read professionally and am working on writing a Tarot book as well

Babs

 

[SunChariot]

DON'T memorize the meanings of the cards. DON'T.

When you are reading, look at the pictures. Think about what the picture tells you. Maybe only a part of a picture. (I know someone who used the Handl tarot because it is so abstract. But she can find a message in a shadow or a streak of color.) The message you free associate will be more appropriate to what you want to find out than the "meaning" of the card.

If you insist on each card having one meaning and only one meaning, you will block the messages the cards are trying to give you.

barb

I have to say this is really true to me too.

Once you memorize something, it's not that easy to unmemorize it. Those meanings will always come to mind automatically then, And that can slow you down.

Now I am a very intuitive reader. I read mainly through the card images. It is so important to me that I see the cards each time in a clear fresh way that I have 117 decks now and use them all. I want to ensure that each time a card comes up in a particular deck that I have no memory left of what that card image told me before last time. Then I can read fresh with no previous memory of the card coming to mind.

I do have my set meanings for each card of course, but they are very simple and short. The amswer comes from me mainly from the image. But the less preconceived ideas you have about any given card going in, for me to, the better....

Babs

 

[ficbot]

Babs, I am finding that too. I was looking at a book the other day (at the store, I didn't buy it) that claimed it had all the secrets if the Rider-Waite deck. I read quite a bit of it there in the store and thought no, I don't agree with that! I felt a little wrong to disagree with the 'experts' (I am a rules-follower type) but on an instictive level, I just kept thinking 'no, I don't think so.' And there was another book I saw where it had little paragraphs for if the card was in this position, it meant this and in that position, it meant that. And my overwhelming impression was wow, they are just making this stuff up, you know?

The explanations for the cards which have most reasonated with me have been the story-based ones. I have a great book by Liz Dean which has this for all of the cards. she does give little keywords after, but first there is a little story. Like, fr the nine of swords, she describes it as the '3 a.m. card' where you cannot sleep and are plagued by worries. I find that when I check this book for cards I am not familiar enough with, it cements the meaning for me. I remember it next time without needing to check.

 

[SunChariot]

Babs, I am finding that too. I was looking at a book the other day (at the store, I didn't buy it) that claimed it had all the secrets if the Rider-Waite deck. I read quite a bit of it there in the store and thought no, I don't agree with that! I felt a little wrong to disagree with the 'experts' (I am a rules-follower type) but on an instictive level, I just kept thinking 'no, I don't think so.' And there was another book I saw where it had little paragraphs for if the card was in this position, it meant this and in that position, it meant that. And my overwhelming impression was wow, they are just making this stuff up, you know?

The explanations for the cards which have most reasonated with me have been the story-based ones. I have a great book by Liz Dean which has this for all of the cards. she does give little keywords after, but first there is a little story. Like, fr the nine of swords, she describes it as the '3 a.m. card' where you cannot sleep and are plagued by worries. I find that when I check this book for cards I am not familiar enough with, it cements the meaning for me. I remember it next time without needing to check.

I tended to be a rules follower kind of person too, before Tarot. It made me uncomfortable to not know what the rules are. It took me time to adjust to that. LOL

What I came to understand is that if so many sources gave different rules, then there ARE no rules. No one can tell you what the rules are if there are none. Nothing you absolutey have to do for it to work.

Which actually makes a lot of sense, when you think that the answers are NOT in the cards, they are deep within us. The magic is not in the cards, but inside us. The cards are nothing more than a tool to help us access what is already there in us.

In that sense we are not so much reading cards as we are reading and connecting to what is already inside us (our inner wisdom). And since each of us is an individual, the path to get to what is inside of us, is naturally not identical for each person.

Also, I read this early on and i totally believe it: that any given card can have almost an infinite number of meanings. Each can have enough to fill a 500 page book or more, given al the things it COULD mean in different readings. NO book can give all the meanings that could come up, so the correct meaning for a card in a reading may well be one not found in any book.

We are all free to have our own different variations on cards. Interestingly, your 9 of Swords card meaning is pretty much the same as my 10 of Swords one. LOL Which is fine, as long as we all find the way that works best for us and makes us who we want to be as readers.

Babs

PS Almost forgot. My Tarot Journals were a huge part of my learning. I wrote reams of them at the start. Of any methods that interested me that I did not want to forget.

Also important for me, I saved ALL my readings I did in the beginning. Especially the ones that made no sense at all and I had no clue at all what the cards were trying to say. Those readings were some of my best teachers. I kept them all and reread 2-3 months later, the ones that made no sense. By then the events had already played out. THEN I come see, in retrospect , exactly what the intended message had originally been. That taught me to understand in more depth how my cards talk to me.

 

[SunChariot]

You don't improve your intuition as such: you improve your ability to listen to it, and to trust it. It's there all the time, all you have to do is take note.

That right there is just beautiful nisaba. And SO SO true.

Babs