waggledance
Lovely feedback guys, thank you so much.
Waggledance
Waggledance
Intuitive Tarot Reading
rebecca-smiles
waggledance said:
With reference to what Umbrae has said on previous threads, it might not be such a bad idea to forget! I have forgotten quite a bit in the short time i have been learning, and yet my readings are better. Also i find getting friends who do not know the cards to tell me what the card says. the stuff they come up with! they have nothing but intuition and its beautiful to see.
SunChariot
waggledance said:
There are many ways to read intuitively. There are degrees of reading intuitively. Some people use book meanings and add in some intuition, some do not use book meanings at all and use only their intuitions. I am one of the second group. I have tried a number of ways as I was learning and I find as soon as I use the book readings my readings go downhill and become less accurate. If I use just my intuition then things are at their most accurate, in fact they have often been called scary accurate by the querents.
In my experience using book meanings don't work as well, at least for me.
What can I say about intuitive reading. Well, intuition is like a muscle, the more you use it the stronger (and more accurate) it gets. Don't expect perfection in the beginning. No one is perfect when they just start out to learn things. Some good adice might be to keep a journal and check back over time to see what was accurate and what wasn't and why. That allows you to modify your technique to read more accurately.
Another thing that I think is very important is something I learnt when I was starting. Basically, just do it. Just trust the process, write down whatever you see as the meaning. Even if, and expecially if, if feels like total nonsense and like you are just making it up.
Two things I learn on this that helped me a lot as an intuitive reader. I live by these, so to speak. It is perfectly normal when reading intuitively to feel like the answers you are getting are nonsense, coming from nowhere and/or that you are just making them up. This is where a lot of people can give up. But when you feel that way it is a crucial point, it means you are in the zone.
I read somewhere, and it has always held true for me, that it is normal to have those feelings when you are reading effectively intuitively. Reading intuitively is a process that pretty well literally pulls the answers up out of your unconscious mind. And of course your conscious mind has no idea whatsoever what is down their in your unconscious.
So there you are pulling concepts from your unconscious into your conscious mind. And your awareness (conscious mind) is like: " Where did that come from, I must have made that up!" But of course you didn't. What you did was connect with a life truth.
I can't tell you how many times I had that uncertain feeling and I made myself go on and the querent told me afterward that it was so accurate it was scary, and that it was like I knew the person she was asking about intimately, that I had used words and expressions they use often.'
It does work, just don't give up and keep trying and it can be amazingly effective.
Yes and one thing I love about reading intuively, there are no book meanings to study ever. All you need to do is learn the technique and it works equally well on any card in any deck ever invented. No more learning of new decks, just pull out the deck, draw your cards, look at the image and there you are. Couldn't be simpler.
Bar
SunChariot
Well in Tarot, there are almost and infinite number of ways to do anything and most will work for someone. We all need to find our own paths, but I can tell you how I read in case it is helpful in some way.
I do not make much use of book meanings. I do have a set way to use Court cards and reversals. I have a general idea of the meanings of the suits and the Majors. And these sometimes enter into the reading but don't usually form more than one sentence about of 1 1/2 pp typed per card.
Other than that, the rest is pure intuition. What I do is just analyse the imagery to find the answers. To do that I look for symbols. Whatever symbols seems relevent on that particular day (different things stand out on different days in the same card)...just notice what seems to stand out to you that day and make note of it: shapes, colours, textures, cirlces, moons, patterns, facial expressions....clothing....
Once you have a list of everything you've noticed its next a question of what each makes you think of instinctively. Very very inkblot test...the very first thing that pops into your mind before you have had time to think. It has to the be the first thing, if you think about it it ruins the process as thinking involved the conscious mind.
And feelings you have that follow that first thought you have in relation to the symbol are relevant as well.
Then the next step is to relate the thoughts and feelings generated by the symbols in the cards back to the question and to interrelate them together to make a coherent story. It's a lot easier than it sounds with practice. Once you get started, the story takes on a direction and you can see how the rest must fit it.
It's like, if you were doing a relationship spread and the question were "How does X feel about me now?", and the character wearing a yellow hat...and was holding a red ball....
Red=something alive, fulfilling
ball=round=completion
yellow=chicken, frightened
hat=covering head, hiding thoughts.
Then then the reading could go something like :"X wants something very alive and fulfilling between you. He wants a relationship that completes him. But something in his thoughts is scaring him and he is currently hiding from it and unwilling to face it. This is currently getting in the way of his forming the kind of relationship he wants. And he will need to face it before he can get there"
Of course at it's intutive and instinctive the same symbols will not have the seem meaning each time you use a card. And you will not be drawn to the same symbols each time either if you use this method. In that way the same card in the same deck never has the same meaning twice, part of what I consider the magic of the cards. They are infinite in meaning.
Or sometimes you see a pattern in a dress in a card that looks just like a dress you remember wearing to see your grandmother one holiday....It can get that personal.
Then it's like:
"Pattern=grandma's at holiday=warmth and love.
Then if the question were the same it would be "X feels warmth and love for me, and as though we were family."
Hope some of this helps...
Bar
I do not make much use of book meanings. I do have a set way to use Court cards and reversals. I have a general idea of the meanings of the suits and the Majors. And these sometimes enter into the reading but don't usually form more than one sentence about of 1 1/2 pp typed per card.
Other than that, the rest is pure intuition. What I do is just analyse the imagery to find the answers. To do that I look for symbols. Whatever symbols seems relevent on that particular day (different things stand out on different days in the same card)...just notice what seems to stand out to you that day and make note of it: shapes, colours, textures, cirlces, moons, patterns, facial expressions....clothing....
Once you have a list of everything you've noticed its next a question of what each makes you think of instinctively. Very very inkblot test...the very first thing that pops into your mind before you have had time to think. It has to the be the first thing, if you think about it it ruins the process as thinking involved the conscious mind.
And feelings you have that follow that first thought you have in relation to the symbol are relevant as well.
Then the next step is to relate the thoughts and feelings generated by the symbols in the cards back to the question and to interrelate them together to make a coherent story. It's a lot easier than it sounds with practice. Once you get started, the story takes on a direction and you can see how the rest must fit it.
It's like, if you were doing a relationship spread and the question were "How does X feel about me now?", and the character wearing a yellow hat...and was holding a red ball....
Red=something alive, fulfilling
ball=round=completion
yellow=chicken, frightened
hat=covering head, hiding thoughts.
Then then the reading could go something like :"X wants something very alive and fulfilling between you. He wants a relationship that completes him. But something in his thoughts is scaring him and he is currently hiding from it and unwilling to face it. This is currently getting in the way of his forming the kind of relationship he wants. And he will need to face it before he can get there"
Of course at it's intutive and instinctive the same symbols will not have the seem meaning each time you use a card. And you will not be drawn to the same symbols each time either if you use this method. In that way the same card in the same deck never has the same meaning twice, part of what I consider the magic of the cards. They are infinite in meaning.
Or sometimes you see a pattern in a dress in a card that looks just like a dress you remember wearing to see your grandmother one holiday....It can get that personal.
Then it's like:
"Pattern=grandma's at holiday=warmth and love.
Then if the question were the same it would be "X feels warmth and love for me, and as though we were family."
Hope some of this helps...
Bar
robinchun
Bar,
Question...if from your intuitive meaning of say The Magician from so and so deck is 'A',do you assign that meaning of The Magician from so and so deck from then on,or does it's meaning change with each intuitive reading?
Robin
Question...if from your intuitive meaning of say The Magician from so and so deck is 'A',do you assign that meaning of The Magician from so and so deck from then on,or does it's meaning change with each intuitive reading?
Robin
SunChariot
The way I read, the meaning of the exact same card always changes, sometimes very drastically from one reading to another. It almost never has the same meaning twice.
I don't at all have set meanings for any of the cards. It isn't, for me anyway, that the Magician meant A... it is more the Magician told me x, y and z today. Tomorrow he might tell me l, m and o. If you know what I mean.
If you were to keep using the same meaning (even if it is a meaning you came up with yourself) over and over your readings would no longer be intuitive. It requires your intuition each time.
I personally don't beleive my cards have any set meanings. They just have messages they need to tell me in answer to my question that day. And no it's not the same message each time. It's kindof like asking a question of a human being, you can't assign a set meaning to a friend and expect her to fit into that mold from now on.
If you ask advice, people (and the cards) just give you info relevant to your question at the time you asked it, and it's your job to decipher/understand it and see what the message is they are trying to give you at that moment.
You can only imagine how much the meaning of the same card varies from deck to deck. LOL With totally different images and symbolism!
It actually does work though.
Bar
I don't at all have set meanings for any of the cards. It isn't, for me anyway, that the Magician meant A... it is more the Magician told me x, y and z today. Tomorrow he might tell me l, m and o. If you know what I mean.
If you were to keep using the same meaning (even if it is a meaning you came up with yourself) over and over your readings would no longer be intuitive. It requires your intuition each time.
I personally don't beleive my cards have any set meanings. They just have messages they need to tell me in answer to my question that day. And no it's not the same message each time. It's kindof like asking a question of a human being, you can't assign a set meaning to a friend and expect her to fit into that mold from now on.
If you ask advice, people (and the cards) just give you info relevant to your question at the time you asked it, and it's your job to decipher/understand it and see what the message is they are trying to give you at that moment.
You can only imagine how much the meaning of the same card varies from deck to deck. LOL With totally different images and symbolism!
It actually does work though.
Bar
waggledance
I was speaking to a lady this evening about attending one of her tarot workshops in the New Year and I was telling her about how confused I had become about the whole subject because of all the books I had read. She told me that she had also had the same problem until a professional reader who was a friend of hers told her to put the books aside, forget the meanings that she had leaned and just read intuitively. She said that her readings were much better after that. She also said that she didn't use spreads at all so was not confinded to positions. She just turned over one card at a time and she found that she flowed much better. I find the concept of this quite liberating. It never occured to me that I didn't have to use a spread.
Waggledance
Waggledance
Jewel
Hi Waggledance,
Starting out is the hardest part. Like you when I first started I was really confused, on top of that I was not all that crazy about the deck I was using (RWS) but since most of the books were about that deck that is the one I got. I was really getting frustrated.
Then one day I got a deck that I had been drawn to and gave the RWS to a friend. I had absorbed more from the books than I had thought I had, but working with images that I liked made it all easier becuase I could connect with the art on the cards.
I am the book type, so I did research and got one I could use as a text from someone I respected (Rachell Pollack - 78 Degrees of Wisdom), and I got a work book from someone else I respected (Mary Greer - Tarot for Yourself). The workbook really got my intuition going as I had to "enter" the cards, and do other exercises that only required me to look at them and describe what I saw and felt. As I worked through this workbook I got more comfortable.
Now days (15 years later) I would say my readings are probably a combination of intuition and what I have learned. But if my intuition tells me something different from what I learned I take the meaning I got intuitively over the book knowledge one. One of the decks I primarily use is one that reads like a dream intuitively (the Fey Tarot).
The key is to stop worrying about if you are doing it right or wrong. Just go with the flow. Remember you are exploring the tarot becuase you enjoy it, if at some point you are feeling things are forced put the cards up and walk away. The more pressure you add to yourself the harder it is. Relax and think of the cards as your friends. Look through them, talk to them, do whatever you want with them.
What you find in books is someone elses way. It may or may not work for you. And that is OK. As someone else mentioned, AT is a fantasitc place to learn and it is free. Everyone here is very supportive, and will answer any questions you might have with pleasure. We like to help each other out, because we like learning and sharing.
Hang in there and don't get caught up in the minutae. Become friends with your deck, and the rest will come.
Starting out is the hardest part. Like you when I first started I was really confused, on top of that I was not all that crazy about the deck I was using (RWS) but since most of the books were about that deck that is the one I got. I was really getting frustrated.
Then one day I got a deck that I had been drawn to and gave the RWS to a friend. I had absorbed more from the books than I had thought I had, but working with images that I liked made it all easier becuase I could connect with the art on the cards.
I am the book type, so I did research and got one I could use as a text from someone I respected (Rachell Pollack - 78 Degrees of Wisdom), and I got a work book from someone else I respected (Mary Greer - Tarot for Yourself). The workbook really got my intuition going as I had to "enter" the cards, and do other exercises that only required me to look at them and describe what I saw and felt. As I worked through this workbook I got more comfortable.
Now days (15 years later) I would say my readings are probably a combination of intuition and what I have learned. But if my intuition tells me something different from what I learned I take the meaning I got intuitively over the book knowledge one. One of the decks I primarily use is one that reads like a dream intuitively (the Fey Tarot).
The key is to stop worrying about if you are doing it right or wrong. Just go with the flow. Remember you are exploring the tarot becuase you enjoy it, if at some point you are feeling things are forced put the cards up and walk away. The more pressure you add to yourself the harder it is. Relax and think of the cards as your friends. Look through them, talk to them, do whatever you want with them.
What you find in books is someone elses way. It may or may not work for you. And that is OK. As someone else mentioned, AT is a fantasitc place to learn and it is free. Everyone here is very supportive, and will answer any questions you might have with pleasure. We like to help each other out, because we like learning and sharing.
Hang in there and don't get caught up in the minutae. Become friends with your deck, and the rest will come.
Sulis
waggledance said:
Hi Waggledance,
If that style of reading appeals to you then I think you should read this book, 'A Magical Course in Tarot: Reading the Cards a whole new way' by Michele Morgan: http://www3.addall.com/New/submitNe...&type=ISBN&location=20100&state=&dispCurr=GBP
http://www.amazon.com/Magical-Cours...id=1162855624/ref=sr_11_1/103-9733896-2778269
There is a thread about it in Tarot Books and Media:
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=59708
SunChariot
waggledance said:
That's what got me started on intuitive reading too. I learnt Tarot on an untraditional deck (the Haindl). I had subscribed to an online Tarot course and it sent me the meanings of different cards to memorize every week. It took me a few weeks to realize that it was not at all helpful because the meanings they sent me had nothing to do with the meanings of the cards in my deck (especially with the Minors). Then I read more and more Tarot books and each gave very different meanings for the same cards. It gave me a healthy disrespect for book meanings.
I actually do that too. I sometimes use spreads, but it's rare. I usually just pick a few cards per question. The cards will tell you what they want to do anyway. I have often pulled three cards in relation to a question and they clearly became a past/present/future reading.
As for it being liberating. You are perfectly free to do whatever you want with your cards at any time. They're your tool to use in any way you want. You are free to invent new ways to use them , whenever you want to. Try them and keep what works and discard what doesn't. Sometimes the best way to learn it experimentation.
Bar
