Learning to read tarot cards – All the things they tell us

The ability to read Tarot cards is a fantastic experience. If you are not familiar with them you might be a bit sceptical and asking – Why should I learn tarot? 

Learning to read Tarot cards will give you a tool for self discovery and reflection. You can do readings for yourself and for others. By going through the process of interpreting the card meanings the cards can invite you to change focus and observe matters from new perspectives. 

There are many misconceptions about Tarot that often create some amount of scepticism around them. I hope I will be able to clear some of the scepticism in this article by explaining what you can use Tarot cards for and how you can benefit from the ability to interpret the cards in your daily life. 

What can I do with Tarot cards?

There is an often heard misconception that Tarot cards are supposed to tell you the future. This unfortunately is very far from the truth. They continue to fail telling me next week’s lottery numbers. 

In reality, Tarot cards act as mirrors to our soul and help us reflect our current position, which direction we want to go and which course of action we need to take to get there.

So instead of telling us the outcome of future events, they help us discover what our inner wisdom already knows. They help us discover our intuition, which will allow us to make better decisions in all areas of our lives. 

In a way Tarot cards are kind of a compass that points out to the direction that our intuition is telling us. 

The great thing is that if you learn to use the cards you can use them in your everyday life. They enable us to find our inner wisdom and bring clarity into solving everyday problems in our lives. Tarot cards can be used for:

• Self-development
• Decision making
• Setting goals
• Consulting
• Planning
• Searching for direction

To understand better how they work, let’s think of a situation where you want to consult Tarot cards whether your current job is the right place for you. The reader interprets that the cards are indicating that changing this aspect in your life could be beneficial for you. 

Instead of running to your workplace and calling it quits, you can take this result and you can reflect on yourself what would be the positives of changing the workplace for you. The card’s statement gives you assurance that it is alright to look at the matter from this perspective. Perhaps you haven’t had the courage to look at the matter from this angle before.

Or to look at another example, perhaps you have visited a reading and asked about your current relationship and should you leave this relationship behind. The cards might indicate that taking this action won’t give you a favourable outcome. This will then give you a chance to reflect on the positives of your relationship and help you see the good things in your partner. You might come aware of the things that you should do to improve in your relationship. 

As you can see the cards offer us a tool to help us see our emotional responses to different situations. They invite us to reflect issues from different perspectives with a focused vision. 

They can be used on yourself or you can give readings for others. There is great satisfaction when you are able to help another person discover their intuition and use their own inner wisdom to reflect on their situation. 

Now that you have discovered what you can use the cards for, you might be wondering if you have what it takes to learn Tarot. 

Can anyone learn Tarot?

Everyone has the capabilities to learn how to read tarot cards. Firstly, you will need to understand what Tarot is and how it works. Secondly you will need to familiarize yourself with Tarot cards and learn to interpret the card meanings in a way that opens new perspectives to the issue at hand. 

Before you begin your Tarot journey you should know that there is no right or wrong way to interpret the cards. If you go and search the internet for Tarot card meanings you will find pages and pages full of interpretations for each card. 

Don’t get discouraged by the abundance of information out there. You don’t need to memorize all of the meanings to be able to read the cards. The card imagery will give away a lot of information to get you started. 

If you are not yet familiar with Tarot cards, here is a quick introduction. 

Most Tarot card decks include 78 cards. The deck is divided into two groups of cards. 22 of the cards are called the Major Arcana, which display different phases that everyone goes through in their life. The remaining 56 cards are called the Minor Arcana and they are divided into four suits: Cups, Pentacles, Swords and Wands. 

Cups represent emotions and relationships. Pentacles represent the materialistic things in life. Swords represent power and rationality. And finally Wands represent ideas and rationality. The numbered Minor Arcana cards represent everyday aspects of life while the court cards represent people and personalities in our lives.  

There is no single meaning to any of the cards and each tarot reading is different with their unique details and rituals. Every person interpreting the cards adds their personal spin to the reading and interpretations. 

How does the reading happen?

In general the reading starts off by shuffling the Tarot cards to a random order by the person giving the reading. While this is happening the person receiving the reading should think of the questions or areas that they would like to seek guidance to. When the person receiving feels that the cards have been shuffled adequately the reading can start. 

The actual reading of the cards happens when the cards are drawn in front of the person receiving the reading in a so-called Tarot spread. The idea of the spread is that each position in the spread has a meaning. There are numerous different spreads depending on what type of reading it is. Usually the reader chooses the type of spread that is used based on his or her experience and expertise, or depending on what type of reading the reader is giving. 

Is it difficult to learn to read Tarot?

All this of course is subjective but I do want to say that most people think it is harder than it really is. As we already went through in this article there is no right or wrong way to interpret the cards. Every Tarot reader takes their personal twist to  the readings. 

You can start using and having fun with Tarot reading fairly quickly. You can look at some of the keywords that are often provided with the deck and use it as a cheat sheet when you practise. A good way is to just look at the imagery of the card and think about what it is telling you. A deck with clear imagery will be helpful here so you might want to take a look at this post about beginner decks. 

Also practising with a simple tarot spread will help you get the hang of it. Probably the most well known spread is a 10 card Celtic spread, but I would recommend to stay away from this in the beginning. Having ten cards in front of you with the positions having their own meanings, it is more beneficial to start off with something easier. Three card Tarot spread will work nicely. Most common three card spread is the past – present – future. 

To become a confident and perhaps even a professional Tarot reader it comes down to the ability to give a coherent interpretation of the cards that is useful for the seeker’s situation. This requires experience. And with all things that require experience there is no substitute to time and to the amount of practise. So if you aim to become a professional, you will need to dedicate time to it.

But whether or not you want to become a professional Tarot reader, I highly recommend you taking a deck of cards in your hands and giving it a try. You might be surprised how connected you feel with them.