Comprehensive Introduction To Tarot Divination: Everything You Need To Know In One Article
Introduction
This article will be very broad overview of all aspects of tarot divination that are relevant to the beginner. It is thus a comprehensive introduction to the art of tarot divination. It will include an introduction to the tarot (it’s history and the tarot deck structure, which deck to get for beginners, etc.), a brief look at the idea of divination and useful instructions on performing your first ever divinatory tarot reading (covering preparation, interpretation and common beginner mistakes to avoid).
What is tarot divination?
The word ‘divination’ is often used interchangeably with fortune-telling to mean an attempt to foresee the future, especially of an individual, by supernatural means. Yet it is fairly common for divinatory tarot readers to distinguish themselves from fortune-tellers. I am no exception, using term divination separate from it’s dictionary definitions to mean ‘communication with the Divine’. By Divine, I leave the definition of Divine open to people’s interpretation and hope that people can understand why this might be wise. I say ‘highest concept of Divinity’ because I am assuming Emanationism when I say this, as mentioned on my about page.
What is tarot?
The tarot is a pack of cards which is known to the wider, English-speaking public as a tool for divination and fortune-telling purposes. It is popular both in wider New Age circles and many of the more cliquish Western Esoteric circles. You may know of tarot from media depictions such as Night Tide (1961), American Horror Story (external link) or the introductory credits of Tales of the Unexpected (external link).
Structure of a tarot deck
A typical tarot deck has 78 cards divided into two sections; the 22 Major Arcana (Greater Mysteries) and 56 Minor Arcana (Lesser Mysteries). The Minor Arcana of the tarot are further divided into 4 suits which run from 1 (Ace) to 10 and then Knight, Page, Queen and King. This structure, as you will observe, is similar to playing card decks. That is because the tarot was originally a card game somewhat akin to bridge. Specifically, it was - and is - a trick-taking game; still widely played in mainland Western Europe today.
The tarot pack structure sets it apart from oracle decks which latter have no set structure. An animal tarot deck, for example, will still have the Major and Minor Arcana cards with the animals corresponding in some way to the tarot archetypes. An animal oracle would simply be a card deck themed around animals in some way.
Overview history of tarot
Tarot cards were invented in early 1300s Europe. As mentioned, it was simply a card game akin to bridge. The artwork of the cards was a product of it’s time; the Renaissance era and this is important because it is the artwork that led to tarot’s apparent connection with esoteric ideas.
The cardgame usage of tarot cards largely persisted (except for the odd case of sortilege) basically until Comte De Gebelin mentioned tarot briefly in a vast cultural work. De Gebelin speculated that they were of Egyptian origin and linked the Trump cards (Major Arcana) to the Kabbalah via alleged correspondences (analogies) between the 22 Majors the 22 Hebrew letters.
A few years later, Etteilla (Jean Baptiste Alliette), a French Freemason, published a book on using the cards for fortune-telling purposes. This has led to him being credited today as the first professional tarot reader.
About two decades later, Papus (Gerard Encausse, credited as the founder of Martinism) added his two cents and eventually so did Eliphas Levi (author of Dogma and Ritual of High Magic).
It was 1910 that A.E Waite released his own deck, illustrated by Pamela Coleman Smith (nickname Pixie) and published with the Rider publishing company. As Victorian England was a bit sexist, the deck was called the Rider Waite deck (and outsiders still often call it this today). But in recent decades and especially with the work of scholars like Mary K. Greer, who in particular has studied Pixie’s life in depth, attention has been drawn to the artist and the deck is thus called the Rider Waite Smith deck, after Waite, the publishing company, and the artist. This is often abbreviated to RWS.
The Rider Waite Smith tarot deck.
A handful of French occultists were all in concurrence with Gebelin about tarot’s esoteric origins. A.E Waite, (co-creator of the very popular Rider Waite Smith deck) was more rational about things. In the bibliography of his Key to the Tarot (1910), Waite mocked the idea that the tarot cards were from ancient Egypt, pointing out that there is no evidence for such a theory.
Smith was also passionate about theatre and this enthusiasm seeped into the Minor Arcana cards. Apart from co-establishing what is now one of two main English-speaking traditions of tarot, Waite in particular changed the suits of coins to pentacles and transformed the stage magician into a Hermetic magician. Waite did not think highly of those who use tarot cards for fortune-telling purposes. He was much more interested in mysticism and alchemy, and encoded such symbolism into his cards, although with omissions and veiling to hide occult secrets from the uninitiated.
A more overt example of the esoteric symbolism that made it in is the 10 of Pentacles. This card shows the 10 coins in the pattern of the Kabbalistic tree of life. The Kabbalah was the backbone of one famous magical order’s curriculum which Waite undertook, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. And it was “Book T” written by Samuel Liddell Mathers (later MacGregor Mathers) and his wife, Moina Mathers, which elucidated the esoteric meanings of the cards according to this order’s system. Mathers was a co-founder of the order.
The 10 of Pentacles in the Rider Waite Smith tarot deck (left) and the Kabbalistic tree of life (right).
It is worth realizing that none of these occultists could really agree on what went where in terms of Kabbalistic correspondences. Levi, who was also an initiate of the HOGD, had different correspondences from the HOGD themselves, who had different correspondences to the French occultists, who were themselves divided. Later on, Aleister Crowley (another HOGD initiate, although all but kicked out due to his antics) even swapped Justice and Strength around when creating the Thoth deck. I am not a fan of astray magicians like Crowley since I work by the maxim “know them by their fruits”, and Crowley’s fruits were rather rotten, notwithstanding his overinflated status among some modern popular magicians such as Damien Echols and Lon Milo DuQuette, who both have Thelemic connections. Although Crowley was initiated into the HODD’s inner order (the RR et AC - the HOGD was ultimately Rosicrucian), this was only because Mathers insisted upon it when basically everyone else wanted Crowley out. Mathers’s narcissistic insistence that an unworthy candidate should be admitted to the inner mysteries is, as far as I know, seen historically as a causal trigger for the various schisms which would end up destroying the order.
Today, the idea of tarot being older than the 14th century is fringe, although persistent. Various heterodox opinions exist such as tarot coming from Atlantis (the mythical continent discussed by Plato but deemed literally real by some occultists even today), tarot (in it’s fortune-telling sense) being a cultural appropriation of Romani practises and tarot being traceable to the Chinese. Although sometimes reasonable on the surface, none of these stances have yet been accepted by the scholarly orthodoxy.
There are also now many thousands of tarot decks available, some with very unique ideas. For example, there is a tarot deck which shows the RWS scenery from a different angle, bringing further depth to the card archetypes and several occult orders such as the HOGD just mentioned and BOTA (Builders of the Adytum, an order created by Paul Foster case when he was just 23 years old) have created their own tarot decks as a tool for initiation into the Western Esoteric Tradition. Historically, this trend of initiatory tarot decks is credited as being started by Oswald Wirth whose deck consisted of Major Arcana only. The most famous order to incorporate tarot has to be BOTA, which bases it’s correspondence course in the Western Esoteric Tradition very heavily upon it’s own version of the cards and requires the use of them in at least one self-initiation ritual.
In today’s world of the now mid 2020s, it is possible to create decks using AI tools, thus allowing someone with minimal artistic ability (in the sense of drawing, painting etc.) to create compelling and original designs with perhaps the only minor artistic limitation being that, no matter what you prompt the AI with, it will probably end up looking like something out of a TRON movie! The other issue with AI decks is that the AI companies usually want to keep the rights to the images that you have created so you must modify the AI generated images substantially to be able to technically keep them as your own. This has further implications for not just the commercial sale of AI generated decks, but their initial printing, since tarot deck printing companies require you to hold copyright permissions on any images which you use.
Tarot card usages
Beyond the three main usages of a) the card game (still popular in continental Europe) b) divination and fortune-telling and c) an initiatory tool, the tarot cards are now many things to many people.
The long list of tarot card usages now includes, but is not limited to; channelling and mediumship (the same thing by different names), invocation (calling inwards), evocation (calling forth; summoning), psychic reading, skrying, creative thinking and problem solving, psychological “self-development”, “shadow work” (psycho-spiritual development), self-therapy, “a cheap way of collecting art” and so on ad nauseum.
Some of these usages can become quite dangerous, whether occultic or not. For example, it should be easy to see how administering self-therapy can go about as wrong as successfully summoning an infernal spirit. But we are interested in tarot as a tool for divination, which term we will now expand upon a little more.
What is tarot divination?
Tarot divination is the practise of divination through the use of tarot cards.
What is divination?
Briefly, divination means “communication with the Divine”. In popular usage, “divination” is interchangeable with the idea of “fortune-telling”. For the purposes of the Tarot Apprenticeship course, these two practises are to be distinguished. The main four distinctions (made for our purposes) are; the amount of focus put on future events, the emphasis put on the results of what is happening rather than the reasons behind it, the perception of events within time and the perception of human agency/responsibility.
How is tarot divination unique from other divinatory methods?
Tarot divination is different from other divinatory systems in at least three ways.
Firstly, tarot was originally a card game so it’s divinatory art recently involved with much influence from other uses of cards. Perhaps as a result, tarot does not the leave the same phenomenological impression as something like the I Ching, which is an ancient tool that was designed specifically for divination.
Secondly, tarot divination is a unique form of cartomancy through it’s symbolism, structure and deck size. Tarot decks have 78 cards which is quite a lot relative to something like playing cards (52) or Klipper cards (36) or Lenormand cards (also 36). This is due to the addition of the Major Arcana cards as the fifth suit. The symbols on tarot cards are ultimately based on specific cultural ideas such as the four cardinal virtues (Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance) known largely to Christians. Much of the original tarot symbolism is steeped in other aspects of Christian culture.
Can you predict the future through tarot divination?
The short answer is yes, sometimes you can use tarot cards to predict the future. Consider a hurricane. We know that if a hurricane is forming then it is more than likely to go on a particular path. If that path crosses a beach or a town, we will warn people to get out of the way. Forewarned is forearmed.
Predicting the future through divination works in an analogous way. Like forecasting the weather, divinatory predictions will give you an idea of future possibilities. Also like weather forecasting, local forecasts made about tomorrow will be almost certainly accurate, whilst regional forecasts (e.g. covering the entire UK) about the week ahread will be largely and likely accurate - and perhaps even entertaining if the forecaster manages to pronounce a very long Welsh town (little do they know the locals call it “St Mary’s Church”) - but you probably shouldn’t rely upon it if you’re thinking of going to a Cornwall beach at the weekend. Further, speculation about the month ahead is generally unreliable except in relatively rare cases such as long heatwaves.
This all said, predicting the future is not necessarily wise. There are a few reasons for this and I will make sure to write about them in the future - most likely!
Recommended tarot deck for beginners
It is well worth using a Rider Waite Smith deck of some kind for a few reasons. Firstly, it is suitable for beginners as there are scenic pictures, people and immediately recognizable themes on every card, thus allowing you to get the basic hang of things relatively quickly just by looking at it. Note that contrary to popular belief, this deck was not the first to have scenic pip (Minor Arcana) cards.
Secondly, all of the beginner books and tarot courses are based upon this deck, further adding to the quick learning.
Thirdly, the deck contains a lot of esoteric symbolism hidden in plain sight, thus taking us from merely “quick to learn” to “quick to learn, difficult to master”.
What happens in a tarot divination reading
Online vs in person
A tarot reading involves a reader and a querent. Traditionally, readings were done in person and there was often a stereotype that your fortune was likely to be told by a ‘gypsy’ (now an offensive term) or what we would today call a traveller. This may have been done at a metaphysical shop, fair, party or even in the reader’s home.
Nevertheless, time and space are no issue. Since phones were invented, people have done readings over long disatances without issue. Nowadays, many personal readings are done via livestream on social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Indeed, public YouTube livestreams are how I used to serve my own querents.
There are some differences between in person and online readings that the aspiring divinatory tarot Master should be aware of. But I don’t have space to go into them here. Suffice to repeat that distance readings work fine. Experience convinces me of this.
Reading For Oneself vs Reading For Others
Reading for oneself is still a surprisingly controversial subject. Whilst psychological readers are quite keen on it, divinatory readers are often noticeably hesitant towards the practise. Yet I learnt to read effectively for myself before I ever read for others and I encourage you to do the same. The biases which you overcome here will help you give better readings for others.
Asking the question
The querent may ask a question or may choose to opt for an open/general reading whereby no question is asked.
If the querent does ask a question, many readers will suggest or even insist that it follows certain parameters. Also, a reader may ask a querent to rephrase their question if any such parameters have been broken.
The first of these paramaters is specificity. Many readers will insist that a vague question will give a vague answer. This is not necessarily true, nor is a specific answer necessarily the most wise or useful one to give.
Another parameter is the ethical nature of the question. Common ethical rules for questions include avoiding third party readings (questions involving another person, especially those where the reader is effectively or even explicitly asked to spy on others), questions asking for specific advice that is best given by any kind of legal, psychological or medical professional (including pregnancy questions), questions which seek direct yes/no answers, questions involving the practise of mediumship (alleged communication with the dead) and questions which assume that the divinatory reader is a very gifted psychic who can pick up very specific details such as names, places, exact dates and people’s physical features. The last sort of question also appears to assume fate implicitly. Another no-go topic for many readers is the idea of twin flames as this spiritual belief can easily be misused to detrimental consequences, such as with the Twin Flame Universe cult (that is, high control group).
Card shuffling
The actual reading will be performed by the cards being shuffled and selected whilst one or more parties focuses on the question.
There are three main ways of shuffling (overhand, riffling and smooshing) and, for multiple reasons which would take too long to go into here, they are not necessarily created equal. Out of these three, I would recommend the first two; overhand and riffling. For reasons discussed here, I am not a fan of smooshing.
There are few guidelines for shuffling well. However, any deck which is in a sequential order, usually due to it being newly bought or received, should be shuffled thoroughly so as to avoid card runs like Ace, 2, 3 of Swords.
Apart from that, it is technically correct that divinatory readers also ought to shuffle with the aim of drawing the most appropriate cards based on intuition. That is, rather than with the aim of randomizing them (in this context, randomize is used generally to mean make the order unrecognizable in some way). This may seem like a trivial point but it has various implications. Just one is how you might select cards very quickly between readings when querents are waiting for you in some way, such as when you are on a psychic hotline or have people queuing for you at a fair. For divinatory readers, this is a very interesting question as it may bring up the issue of balancing spiritual interests vs business interests as well.
Card selection
Along with shuffling comes the process of card selection. This can be done in different ways such as pulling off of the top of the deck, letting cards fall out during the shuffling process itself or by fanning the cards out and selecting ones that the selecting party feels called to.
Tarot cards fanned out (left) and 3 cards selected from this (right).
Technically, it is usually preferable that the experienced reader (i.e. one whose intuition is developed), rather than the querent, fans out the cards before selecting them. This is not some dogma but is based on simple mathematical probability. If we pull 10 cards off the top of the deck and lay them out in a spread (say the celtic cross spread, more about spreads anon) then the likelihood that we have ordered all 10 cards in a way which most accurately depicts an accurate message is low irrespective of whether our intuitive connection was established. Whereas if we select cards individually then an activated intuitive connection will guarantee that we have chosen the most appropriate cards for the reading. This is a simple yet important point for card selection.
Card layouts
The selected cards are then often laid out in some particular way. This layout will usually have certain card positions each with a meaning such as “situation”, “problem” or “solution” and will thus be called a spread. Spreads will also sometimes be based on some sort of symbol, such as the pentagram, the celtic cross, the Kabbalistic tree of life or the zodiac wheel.
The “tree of life” spread. That is, a tarot spread based on the Kabbalistic tree of life.
Some readers will lay out the cards without assigning them specific positional meanings by using lines or tableaus. A line is a specific number of cards laid out next to each other and read in a certain pattern. The pattern is often non-linear and will often give significance to the direction in which any Court Card faces. A tableau is a set number of cards laid out in a square or rectangle and read based on several factors. If you think of rows and columns, a tableau may be 3x3 or 5x5 or even the full deck. Interpretation methods for tableaus often include looking at specific sections of the layout such as the corners, centre, top top vs bottom and left vs right. Added to this may be the card details such as directions of human figures, colours, suits, etc.
Tableau examples. 5x5 (top left), 3x3 (top right), 4x4 (bottom left), 3x5 (bottom right).
Generally speaking, those who read things right to left in their native language sometimes to prefer to interpret card layouts in this way as well.
Finally, a reader may use the cards as a literal algorithm. I call this style “reading methods”. A simple example of a reading method is an iterated directional layout (north, east, south, west, centre) used to find a lost object. To explain, this is a spread consisting of 5 positions; the north (top) /south (bottom) /east (right) /west (left) and centre (middle) cards. This spread is then iterated for the building, then the floor, then the room, then, where necessary, the cabinet/couch/bed itself.
Note: reading methods to do things such as finding a lost object are advanced tarot divination techniques. To use them effectively, the reader should learn and develop their vocabulary of card correspondences. For the purposes of tarot divination, the particular correspondence system does not matter (as long as it is logically valid) as much as how adept the reader is at using it.
Interpretation
The cards will then be interpreted by the reader. This is an art form but some commonalities are that the cards will usually be interpreted in pairs or groups at some point rather than solely in isolation. What combinations are used - and how they enrich the interpretation - will depend upon the particular layout as well as simply how the reader likes to communicate.
The reader may also make mention of tarot’s superimposed links to the Kabbalah or Hermetic qabalah but should be careful not to overdo it so as to avoid confusing the querent and coming across as vapid, a know-it-all, or both!
The interpretation may last anywhere from a few seconds to over an hour. The reader may spend anything from no time to very considerable time discussing matters of card meanings, symbolism, psychic impressions, life coaching advice, spiritual teachings and/or other things. Thus, the reading can become a consultation. However, it should not become therapy, unless one is acting as a therapist first. Tarot therapy is a thing but it’s not the same as tarot reading. See below.
Tarot divination vs therapy
This comparison between tarot divination and therapy is not necessarily simple. However, in general, some differences are; purpose, information disclosure, advice giving, session frequency etc.
Purpose. Tarot divination: to receive spiritual wisdom and guidance. Therapy: to solve mental health issues.
Information disclosure: Both tarot diviners and therapists should take confidentiality seriously. In most contexts, the therapist will keep everything confidential unless you are a risk to yourself or others. This includes illegal activities. Tarot diviners, however may share thoroughly anonymized stories of readings with others and may make further exceptions to confidentiality depending on the reader’s personal ethics.
Advice giving. Therapists, especially counsellors, are qualified to give life advice and mental health advice and this usually without judgement. Tarot diviners may give spiritual advice and even with some sense of judgement so long as this has been explicitly communicated in the service description and policies.
Session frequency/repeated sessions: Therapy usually goes on weekly or even twice a week, for at least 12 weeks (e.g. CBT) but may go on for several or even many years, especially if psychoanalytical in approach. Therapists also actively encourage people to explore themselves throughout life, thus making them regular customers.
Conversely, I believe that tarot diviners should do everything reasonable to entirely discourage frequently repeating customers. I personally set a maximum session frequency of 1 reading per month and do not encourage people to become “regular customers” in any way, including through marketing materials.
I also find the idea that a tarot reader makes their income more regular by soliciting repeat clients to be unethical. Indeed, I had at one time considered ending every tarot reading with the phrase “thank you, and may we never meet again” as a humorous way of expressing how I genuinely want my clients to become wise enough to rely on their own wisdom in the end. I do not use the phrase, however, as I serve a distinctly global audience and would never want to be misconstrued in saying it. This is especially true since word of mouth is very useful marketing for tarot diviners who follow the ethical principle of discouraging repeat clients.
A future article on the differences between tarot divination and therapy will be linked here once completed.
Your First Divinatory Tarot Reading
Deciding the reading conditions
By “deciding the reading conditions” I mean how you will read. This is not just about what spread you will use (although that is one condition) but includes various decisions about how you will perform the reading. Conditions are well put in the form of questions as shown;
What spread will I use?
Which deck will I use? Will I use multiple decks? Will I use the full deck or will I omit cards? For example, will I be taking out the Devil and the Tower card or will I be using Major Arcana cards only?
How will I shuffle? Will I cut the deck after shuffling? Will I perform a pre-shuffle?
How will I select my cards? Will I accept jumpers? If so, when?
Will I pull clarifiers? If so, how many will I pull?
Will I use reversals? If so, how will I decide whether a card is reversed or not?
There are plenty more that you will learn through experience. Being mentioned in this article, reading conditions are clearly useful for the tarot diviners from the outset. And they are also used in particular depth by Master tarot diviners when designing reading methods (part of “Advanced Techniques” in Stage III: Master of the Tarot Apprenticeship course)
The main advantage of reading conditions is that the certainty they provide allows you to have full faith in your intuition. This faith is a prerequisite for successful communication with the Divine.
Relaxation
It is important to relax your body and mind before you read. This allows your higher self (incarnating soul) to take over consciousness from your lower self, or ego - the first of two steps to getting divinatory information.
The best way to relax your body is progressive muscle relaxation. This works even if you are one of the rare people who is not very susceptible to hypnotic suggestion (like me). The actual method for progressive muscle relaxation is exactly what you think it would be; relax each individual muscle in your body by focusing on it and softening any tension in the muscles. This is usually done by tensing the muscles, which you should do only if you are medically able. If unable to do this, you may instead concentrate (in a relaxed manner) on each individual part of your body for a few moments at a time. You may experience tingling when doing this, a good sign which means that your blood is circulating well. Daily stretching and regular exercise will also help generally with your ability to relax the body at will.
Relaxing the mind can take much more practise as this actually involves blanking it completely. Yes, this is possible. If you are used to lots of brain chatter, it may just take many months (or a few years) of regular practise. For faster results, I suggest doing this practise in any spare moments of your life in addition to once or twice a day in some dedicated meditation time. You don’t need to be in a quiet environment every time as success is more about your inner peace.
Prayer
Prayer is the second step to getting divinatory information. I suggest praying for wisdom, guidance and protection. You can do this however you like and based on whatever tradition you follow. If you are Christian, for example, then the following Catholic prayer encompasses all of these ideas, even if not explicitly;
“O Heavenly Father, direct all of our actions by Thy holy inspiration and carry them along by Thy gracious assistance, so that every work of ours proceeds through Thee and by Thee and finds completion in Christ, our Lord. Amen.”
There are equivalent prayers in multiple other traditions.
Card shuffling and selection
Shuffling new/in sequence decks
If your deck is new it will be ordered. It is therefore important to shuffle very thoroughly the first time around. After that you shall not need to shuffle thoroughly again, although many people like to do so each time they read.
A pack of playing cards can be shuffled thoroughly from sequence to out of sequence, with some multiple of 7 clean riffles. However, tarot decks have more cards and you might not be able to riffle skillfully. Therefore, you should do approximately 9-11 riffles, plus some overhand shuffling. Do not merely use overhand though because it takes a long time for overhand shuffling to put a deck out of sequence. As previously mentioned, I do not recommend smooshing.
Shuffling in general
The important thing is to stop based on your intuition. If you have prepared well as instructed then all you need to do is have faith. Simple, but not necessarily easy. This might take practise. If it does, then do not become disheartened.
I usually shuffle through a combination of overhand and riffling but you can do one or the other. Again, the important thing is to trust your intuition on when to stop. I have found that I can allow the deck to feel heavier when it is ready. I will then sometimes cut the deck, depending on my intuition. Cutting the deck is a bad habit that I got into before I was my own reader and it is a habit that I have been trying to get rid of since people do it as part of the “randomization” of a deck which is counter to the process of an accurate divinatory tarot reading. Cutting was recommended to me by multiple readers who had not considered why it ought to be done (or not done!). They just took it as “something that people do” and never bothered to question it…
Card Selection
Once you can trust your intuition in knowing when to stop shuffling, then technically the best way to select cards (especially for larger spreads) is to either fan them out or allow jumpers to gently fall out during the shuffling process itself. I emphasize that the cards should “jump” out gently. You can ensure this through both practise and soft, slow overhand shuffling. It may even be that the cards only jut out i.e. that they don’t fully leave the pack. Or it may be that you quickly “open” the deck to reveal an individual card each time and choose any of those that you are drawn to. You can also fan out the pack into a line or horseshoe and run your hands over the cards to pick them. Any of these methods are technically correct for the developed intuition.
What is not optimal is the process (and this again used to be a bad habit of mine) of stopping your shuffle based on intuition and then selecting cards off the top of the pack. This applies especially to larger layouts such as A.E Waite’s classic 10 card celtic cross or 15 card Golden Dawn/Destiny spread. The reason is basic probability; if you select say 10 cards off the top then the chance that they are in order is very slim, even when assuming the existence of the incarnating soul. Now if your spread is only 3 cards, you may well be able to select them off the top. But it is important to be aware of the issue.
Interpreting the reading
Use spreads, at least in the beginning
I recommend using spreads, especially one of the classics, before you branch out to other tarot layouts. The structure that spreads provide will help you to learn some additional tarot divination skills simultaneously.
A good beginner spread is 3 or 4 cards and might look like “situation, advice outcome” or “situation, problem, advice, outcome (if advice followed)”. For those wondering, situation and problem do not merge here. The situation is simply the topic of the reading whilst the problem is what is going wrong. For example, if your car has broken down in an isolated location, the Chariot reversed may be the situation and the 4 of pentacles reversed may be the problem. The advice may be 6 of pentacles clarified by the 5 of Pentacles (ask for help) and the outcome (if advice followed) may be the 6 of Swords clarified by the 8 of pentacles and 10 of Disks; if you plead for help to everyone who comes past, you will find someone willing to help - but it will not be free.
3 card spread with the Tarot De Marseille (Tower, Moon, Magician)
Free resources for card meanings
Some complete beginners to tarot divination will immediately look for a book to buy. But speaking purely of card meanings, there are plenty of good websites out there for the beginner to consult and no good books that I know of. These include:
Due to how tarot divination works, the beginner who does not know card meanings may get accurate (albeit not so deep) divinatory insights by selecting a particular resource to look up card meanings with before they start a particular reading. Setting this intention will make the message conform to language of the card meanings as described by the selected resource and is thus a divinatory process within itself. This makes tarot divination easier to learn.
Apprentice tarot reader mistakes to avoid
Reading with the full deck
This mistake applies to complete beginners and it’s consequence is overwhelm. I suggest starting the practise of reading (which should be for oneself only and not yet on others) by reading with the Major Arcana cards only. This gets the apprentice tarot diviners used to divining in general and will make you familiar with the basic card meanings and process of reading within just a few weeks or months. It has some other benefits as well but we don’t have space to go into that here.
Exaggerated predictions
Mark Stavish, leader of the Institute of Hermetic Studies, has a tip for those who would practise mundane astrology. He says that once you have your prediction, you should temper it a bit. I don’t remember the exact percentage which he cited but it was something like 15-20%. Stavish claims that this simple technique accounts significantly for his accuracy over other mundane astrologers.
As novice tarot diviners have a tendency to see dramatic things in the cards, this idea can also be used by them to good effect.
Asking the wrong question.
This is not so much an ethical statement (although respecting people’s privacy is important) but more one of getting to the root of the matter for the most insightful reading possible. Asking the wrong question, such as a yes/no question about whether we will pass an exam, does us a disservice as it prevents us from gaining wisdom that surrounds the situation and thus being able to prevent problems in the future. The reader should therefore not read regarding people’s feelings for the querent but should talk about the situation as a whole and what the querent may be able to learn from it. This is far more useful to the querent and will be much more appreciated and valued the majority of the time anyway, unless the querent is one of those rare rude and entitled people. Thankfully this will not be much of an issue if you have got yourself a no refund policy.
Going with the example of whether someone will pass an exam, the issue really is how might the person pass the exam, or, if it has already been taken, then one of two things may come to mind; what could the querent do to relieve their anxiety about the result, and/or what might the querent have done differently (or what might they in future do differently) to get a better result. Is it time management, scheduling, overcoming procrastination, asking for help, finding a quiet work environment etc…A discerning reader can pick this up from the cards and such information is far more useful (and valuable) to the querent than merely a yes/no answer which may be done with a few cards.
Speaking about symbols/archetypes/esoteric things too much.
This was mentioned briefly earlier but is worth expanding upon. When you first start reading for others it can be tempting to go on and on about the esoteric symbolism in the cards and their correspondences, especially if you are picking up psychic impressions. But most of this is useless to the reading and only makes you look like an amateur. Make the the effort to be concise in your readings and to explain the practical implications of the esoteric symbolism which is catching your attention. This will give your querents a much more interesting and insightful reading experience.
Doubt.
Even those of us who are naturally psychic/intuitive have doubt in our minds about whether our reading is accurate. But doubt kills the ability to discern knowledge beyond the intellect. Cultivate faith in your readings and your intuition will work more accurately. If you are unsure of an insight, then in my experience the best thing to do is ask questions on it (to yourself and to the querent) so that more information can be revealed. This attitude of curiosity facilitates learning generally but specific to tarot reading it will help you to trust your intuition. It also cultivates an attiude of humility which is never a bad thing when sincere.
I must also mention one common way that doubt manifests for the beginner reader; that of repeating the same question until the desired cards appear. At best this action causes confusion and at worst it leads the beginner reader to a self-deceiving conclusion.
The latter issue is not to be taken lightly. With tarot divination working through the astral light, it is possible that the beginner reader, excited by the fact that tarot is “actually working”, will end up receiving impressions to make this or that dramatic change in their life. This tendency is to be seriously guarded against and it is important to remain very discerning regarding any messages which you should interpret through the cards or receive as psychic or intuitive impressions when using them.
Please take this issue seriously as some unknowing people have been known to make radical life changes when consciously connecting to the astral light for the first time. For example, people have dyed their hair, completely changed their lifestyle or moved to the other side of the world. Whilst these examples given are not bad in and of themselves, it should be obvious that these things are not to be done impulsively based on alluring whisperings from unknown entities dwelling in unexplored regions.
Lack of structure/too much reliance on intuition.
Some readers who are naturally psychic or intuitive want to simply pull cards as they see fit based on the guidance of whatever they believe that they are connecting to. The problem with this approach is that it is putting the cart before the horse. You must master the meanings and correspondences, as well as spreads, reversals and other more structured techniques. It will therefore be around half a decade through your tarot divination journey (at least) before you will be able to successfully start experimenting with more intuitive techniques. I know that this may not be what you want to hear but if your goal is to MASTER the art of tarot divination rather than simply learn it to a decent level, then this advice really is necessary. Patience is a great key to true success in any endeavour.
Reading unethically or unprofessionally.
With the financial pressures on people it is sometimes tempting for people to read professionally before due consideration of ethical and professional issues has been given. This is unadvisable however as it ends up impacting not just the experience of the people being read for but the experience of the reader themselves. The reader will earn themselves a negative reputation and will end up dealing with problematic clients who are obsessed, forming parasocial relationships (where the readings are online/by phone) and various other issues. Conversely, the reader who takes the time to write policies, adhere to the law and conduct themselves professionally at all times, will gradually build up a strong reputation and brand that will eventually result in great abundance of personal and professional opportunity; virtue pays.
Conclusion
This article is a first draft, published for feedback. If you have any suggestions for things to be added to it, or any corrections to make, please contact me via discord at your earliest convenience (username: tarottutor).