Notes on Learning Tarot

 One of my commenters on the blog asked me a little while back for advice on learning how to read Tarot cards. It's a question I field fairly often, and it has a fairly straightforward answer. 

There are tens of thousands of books out there on the Tarot, and at least as many on other systems of what is technically known as sortilege -- the kind of divination that involves pulling one or more symbols out of a preexisting set (say, a Tarot deck, or a set of runes, or a set of Coelbren letters, or what have you). Sortilege isn't the only kind of divination out there, but it's far and away the most popular, and it's also easier to learn than most of the others. 

There are also many different ways to learn to read Tarot, or any other method of sortilege. The following is the way I do it. I've learned something like twenty different sortilege systems over the years, starting with Tarot and going on into some fairly odd corners of occult tradition. I don't recommend books for beginners, though those can be useful later on. Here's what you do:

1. Pick a Tarot deck (or what have you) that appeals to you. You'll get better results with a deck if you like the art and find the symbolism interesting to look at. 

2. Go through it slowly, card by card, looking at every image. Then read the LWB ("little white booklet") that comes with it. 

3. Every day thereafter, take one of the cards -- do them in order so you get every card -- and just look at it for some minutes. Notice how the imagery makes you feel, what it reminds you of, what thoughts it wakens in you. Then read the section of the LWB on that card, and think about how the meanings listed there (both upright and reversed) relate to the imagery. Then look at the card for another minute or so before putting it away. This is Part One of your daily divination practice. 

4. Part Two is to cast a simple reading every day. The one I recommend is three cards laid side by side. The first represents you; the second represents the situation; the third represents the outcome. Shuffle the cards, ask them "What do I need to understand about today's events?" and then shuffle them again, cut, and deal out three cards. Again, look at the cards, and see what reactions they awaken in you; then look up their meanings and think about those; then try to tell a very simple story in which the cards provide the plot and your life provides the characters and the setting. 

Write down your interpretation. Of course it's going to be wrong at first; don't worry about that. Just write it down, then shuffle the cards, put them away, and go do something else. 

5. The next day, go back to your reading, compare it to the events of the day, and see if you can figure out what the cards were trying to tell you. This is Part Three of your daily divination practice. You probably won't figure it out at first, but give it time, and remember that the LWB is not a set of stone tablets handed down from On High. If you review your readings every day once the facts are in, you'll begin to figure out what the cards mean to you, which is after all what matters, and then you'll begin to interpret them better the first time. 

That's it. It's probably going to take you several months to get to the point that you understand what the cards are trying to say to you, but it's going to take you that long no matter what you do, so you might as well buckle down and do it. 

Two additional comments that I've found it necessary to make over and over again to students: 

First, as noted above, the LWB is not a set of stone tablets handed down from On High. It's just one person's attempt to summarize what the cards tend to say to that one person. The single most common cause of failure in learning to divine, in my repeated experience, can be summed up in the words "But that's not what the LWB says!" The LWB is a springboard; if you cling to the springboard while trying to dive off it, you're going to end up going nowhere. The important thing is to try to figure out what the cards mean to you, and that need not have much at all in common with what they mean to someone else. When you cast a reading, let your intuition take over; when you try to figure out what the reading meant the next day, approach each card with the thought that it must refer to something you experienced, and pay attention to any connection that comes to mind, no matter how far-fetched. It may not turn out to be far-fetched at all. 

Second, nothing in any reading is as dire as you think it is. Again, nothing in any reading is as dire as you think it is. And one more time, NOTHING IN ANY READING IS AS DIRE AS YOU THINK IT IS.  Seriously. Every beginning Tarot reader I've ever met, myself included, started out reading each card in its most over-the-top sense, and learned through experience (and more than occasional embarrassment) to tone things down to the point that they make sense. OMG, here's the card named Death! (It means that something's going to change in a way that doesn't permit going back to the previous state.) OMG, here's the Ten of Swords! (It means that something is over and done with.) OMG, here's -- well, you get the picture. Over-the-top Tarot reading is a reliable source of drama for those who enjoy being emotionally overwrought, but I can't think of any other use for it, and it reliably yields inaccurate readings. 

So there you have it. The daily practice of divination is one of the three foundations of occult training as I understand it and teach it -- the other two being the daily practice of a basic banishing ritual, and the daily practice of discursive meditation. Five minutes of ritual, fifteen minutes of meditation, and ten minutes casting and interpreting a reading -- that's just half an hour a day, and it will open portal after portal for you.