Tarot is an ancient divination tool that has been around for centuries. It is a deck of cards with 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana.
Tarot can be used to answer questions about the past, present, and future but it also offers wisdom on spirituality, life challenges, relationships and more!
Tarot for Beginners
Today I’m discussing tarot for beginners. If you’re curious about the cards and how to use them, let me show you what i like to do with my own deck.
With this post, I’m kicking off of a new blog series and site category! I’m super excited as tarot is so interesting, fun and intriguing.
Tarot is a fun tool to get in touch with my intuition.
Tarot cards are not used for telling the future, nor do they have any supernatural powers. They only provide the user with a different perspective, to better tap into their inner voice.
What you can see is: The cards are so subjective. Tarot cards are so personalized that it depends on the card’s meaning for oneself and one’s situation.
First things first: You’re going to need a tarot deck.
The Fountain Tarot deck is the one I ended up going with after reading reviews and watching a few different YouTube videos.
I bought it on Amazon, but in picking a tarot deck you want to choose one that speaks to you, something that calls out to you in some way.
For me, I browsed through different popular decks until I liked this one best. Tarot cards come in many forms. Some are traditional, while others are newer or more modern.
You’ll find all sorts of different drawings on some cards, from simplistic to artsy and meticulous designs.
The one I bought was really colorful but not too delicate, more like modern day fairytales combined with classic art.
So if you are debating which type to get for yourself, just get the deck that grabs your attention and speaks to you the most.
I’m going to first go over how I read tarot cards for myself.
Later, I’ll share different layouts you can do with your cards, such as a one-card spread or a 12-card spread–there are many different options!
So don’t worry about the spreads at this point though, let’s get into having the right mindset.
Step 1) Center yourself.
The best way to get a clear reading from your tarot cards is to take a few deep breaths before consulting them. Some other ways you can do this include meditation or simply clearing your mind.
To avoid distractions, I take three deep breaths to focus my whole being on the subject of my reading. You can use tarot for a variety of things, the most common being exploring your intuition or tapping into deeper desires.
Step 2) While you’re holding onto that intention, shuffle your cards
You can shuffle these cards as you would any other deck of cards or sometimes I’ll scramble it on the table and just mix it around.
Make sure your cards are both right side up and upside down, you will understand why later.
Step 3) Pick a card or cards if you’re doing a multiple-card spread.
Typically I just do a simple one-card spread for the day and so I just pick one card and look at it.
A multiple-card spread is a powerful way to explore the past, present and future. The first card represents the past; it contains lessons you have learned from your experiences that are still relevant today.
The second card is the current situation or what’s going on now in your life. It can represent where you are at right now, or an obstacle coming up soon. Finally, the third card symbolizes something about your future and what lies ahead for you.
Step 4) Look at your card (or cards) and see if you get any immediate, intuitive feelings about your card.
For beginners, it may not be immediately clear what this card represents. But once you see the name and picture of the card, consider if anything cognitively resonates with your intuition after looking at image. To augment how Tarot can work for you, I like to have a notebook where I jot down thoughts or feelings that come up when picking
Looking at your card and seeing what intuitively comes up for you. If you find that you have more than one card in front of you, take note of both cards and see if there is any sort of theme or message coming through.
There are many ways to interpret the symbols depicted on the cards; it’s not just about picking out which ones represent events happening today (although that can still be helpful). Interpretations often revolve around how those events might impact your life as well as various aspects like love, career, financials etc.
Step 5) – Using the Fountain Tarot booklet that comes with the deck,
I will turn to the page with the card and just read through everything they have written out including words or phrases. Notice anything that stands out such as a word, phrase, or feeling. Write that down in your journal.
When you get a tarot card, make sure to read it upright. When the card has been reversed, it means that some of the meaning might be off.
The meaning of tarot cards can be interpreted differently depending on their orientation. If it’s upright that implies the meaning of the card but if it’s reversed it implies a reverse meaning. Not always negative, but it may indicate some work you need to do
Step 6) Look up the meaning of that card on Google.
Usually, I just type in the name of the card I’m curious about and BiddyTarot.com will be one of the first search results to pop up as it’s the most popular tarot website in the world
So I usually like to read their brief description and summary, but sometimes it isn’t very useful and doesn’t help answer my questions or needs; so I need to do more research to try to decipher the meaning of that card that’s applicable.
One card can mean one thing to one person, or it could mean something else entirely for someone else.
So it’s often interpreted through intuition, which means that you can have thoughts come to you naturally. These are what I consider to be intuitive impulses and they’re really personal because every person is different.
And those are the things you want and need to capture because they’re clues to where you should go, clues to what you should focus on.
Eventually, after doing this for a while, ou’re going to start recognizing all the different cards and their meanings.
With tarot cards, there are major arcana and minor arcana.
When one pulls out the major card, it will largely reflect a greater lesson in one’s life as opposed to just focusing on smaller problems.
A tarot reading can be a bigger overview of your life or they may refer to smaller projects in your life. The cards in a Tarot deck are classified into two groups: Major and Minor Arcana. Minor Arcana are small, intricate details with no great overarching meaning.
Major Arcana have a broader, more macro-view of the question that’s being addressed by the reading.
If you’re a note-taker and you really want to learn tarot, it can help you to just jot down all of the different cards in your notes and then write 2-3 keywords per card.
After reading the story behind each card, that might help give you an idea of what the meaning and lesson are for each one.
Anyway, that’s how I’ve been learning to do tarot readings for myself for the past six months or so. I’m not doing it every single day, but whenever I feel lost or need some guidance, I like to come to my cards.
I also have this book by Brigit Esselmont – Everyday Tarot
The 27 additional tarot spreads in this book are all easy to do and utilize cards that you probably already have.
Do you want to know what the future holds? Do you wonder about how your life is going to play out, and if there are any major changes coming up?
Have you ever wanted to find a way of working with tarot that doesn’t require reading cards for hours on end or memorizing hundreds of esoteric symbols?
Are you interested in gaining insight into your personal destiny and making better decisions based on this information when it comes time for big life choices?
This book is a great resource and pretty much essential for anyone intrigued by tarot.
Different tarot spreads
We’ve talked about a few spreads that you can start out with. One is the one-card spread, in which you’ll pull one card and do what it says for your day.
Then there’s the three-card love potion, where you draw three to find insight into someone else. Finally, there’s the five card spread.
One of the simplest spreads you can do is a three-card spread which has cards for past, present, and future. It’s perfect for evaluating any situation in your life. Maybe you want to know where your life is heading, or maybe you just want some clarity on what’s happening.
This simple spread can be applied to the past, any present area and the future. It is perfect for examining life experiences and troubleshooting problems that might arise within our lives.
Decision making tarot spread
I like to do a decision-making spread when I have two or more options and can’t make up my mind. To do this, you literally pull tarot cards for all the options and whichever card shows up means what will happen if that choice is made.
It’s a way to give you more clarity on whether it would feel like the best decision would be to go in these different directions of your decisions.
I try not to do these spreads often because I’m an indecisive person. I don’t want to rely on the cards or anything. I want learn how make decisions for myself and use my cards for guidance.
Yearly tarot spread
Another spread you can do is the monthly tarot spread. Basically, you just pick one card per month of the year and lay it out with all eleven months on display. When you flip the cards over is where things get interesting because each card shows a different theme for that particular month.
This is actually something I’ve done many times in the past. I didn’t just do it with tarot cards. I did it with oracle cards, which are similar but different. But anyway, when I did this exercise for two years, 2016 and 2017. It was really interesting to see how my months panned out.
What I’ve learned from Tarot Card spreads
The Tarot is a complicated tradition where you can never really master it as there is always some new aspect to learn and incorporate into your readings. It can seem like an overwhelming task just to get started, but there are some spreads which are relatively easy for beginners to use right from the beginning.
Also there are numerous Tarot Card spreads you can use, you can even craft your own if you’re so ambitions. Regardless, find and repeat this process and compare your results with what you have done earlier.
Once you pick a card for each goal, the card will reveal what you need to focus on in order to pursue that goal and it might give hints about potential obstacles.
Each card has a different meaning and it’s really cool to see how that can apply to your goals. So have fun with that one.
Pintrest Tarot Card Spreads
When it comes to tarot cards, there are many different types of decks and layouts. I found Pintrest to be an surprisingly good resource for finding spreads you can use.
As for decks, the most popular type is the Rider-Waite deck. However, other common ones include the Thoth Tarot Deck and the Golden Dawn Magical Tarot Deck.
There are also different styles of reading tarots depending on who you ask. Some people read them for entertainment purposes while others do so for more serious matters such as predicting future events or divining information about past occurrences in someone’s life.
Tarot Card reading for beginners conclusion
If you are looking for a way to tap into your intuition, tarot cards may be the perfect tool. They provide guidance and insight that can help those who want it in their lives.
Whether you use them as an educational tool or guide yourself through readings with friends and family, hopefully we have given you some useful information about how to start learning tarot card meanings.
You can start by choosing one card to study in depth for a week, then move on to studying two or three more before you decide which suits you best. Let me know if this has sparked any interest in learning about Tarot Cards!
