Ditch the Guidebook: How to Intuitively Read Tarot
When I began my Tarot journey, it was because I thought the Tarot was neat and it might be fun. That is all that anyone needs to begin working with the Tarot. You don’t need to have someone gift you a deck, you don’t need magic or psychic powers, and you don’t need to have a specific goal in mind.
If you get a deck because you think it might be neat, you are now a Tarot reader. Ta-da!
If you are wondering which deck to start with, I strongly encourage you to use the Smith Rider Waite.
I especially recommend the centennial edition, the printing and the colors are the best in my opinion.
It’s the OG deck that has been popularized for over a century and it’s the foundation for most Tarot scholarship.
If you wanted to become a great contemporary artist, you’d study art history to understand the language of artists. Similarly, if you want to read Tarot intuitively, begin with the Smith Rider Waite (SRW).
There are thousands of decks out there, and since the Smith Rider Waite came out, they are all based on what Pamela Coleman Smith did or what she left out.
It’s true that the imagery is very Western and Medieval. There are no people of color and it’s hetero normative. And that’s okay.
If it helps you to feel more inclusive, Pamela Coleman Smith was a black woman from Jamaica, and though it’s not certain, she was very likely a lesbian.
There’s a reason this deck is the OG. It’s clear, each card tells a story, and there’s enough space for interpretation that readers have used it for over a century.
Why not use a guidebook?
When you get a SRW deck, it comes with a tiny little guidebook. My advice is to put that book on top of your refrigerator and don’t revisit it until you have given yourself permission to come up with your own understanding of the cards.
The problem with using the guidebook and keywords is that they are limited, prescriptive, and often contradictory. They also introduce the complexity of reading reversals. This can be incredibly confusing to readers that are just getting started.
Most importantly, they prevent you from trusting your intuition, which is the entire point of Tarot!
If you are looking to understand the universe by plugging rules into equations, I hear algebra has some fans. If you want to explore your connection with Spirit via tarot, you’re going to need to develop and trust your intuition.
If you take a spread that someone has created, plug cards into that equation, and then consult the web or a guidebook to hear what someone else has said those cards mean, adjust the meaning by the variant of a reversal, then try to equate some profound meaning about a question in your life, you are bound to get frustrated and feel like you aren’t an intuitive reader — it’s not an intuitive way of reading!
Additionally, you will only be a true beginner at the beginning!
Your individual discovery of a card is what will give your readings their unique meaning.
Once you know the history, symbolism, scholarship and teaching of a card you can’t go back and unlearn it.
The discovery phase of learning Tarot is one of the most precious stages.
You may be tempted to hear what someone else has to say about a card so you can know if you are getting it “right” but I promise that what you see and what your intuition tells you is absolutely correct.
How to Read Intuitively
There are no Tarot rules. Every reader has their own approach and style. Without question there are many readers who would disagree with my approach. I’m speaking for myself in the hopes that it will serve you as a reader. Take what you like and leave the rest behind.
1) Tarot is a tool to access to your intuition.
That is the voice of your highest self. That voice will never lead you into fear.
Learning to differentiate what that voice sounds like, versus the voice of the thinking mind/ego, takes time and patience. Be kind and generous with yourself.
2) The Tarot is not a tool to predict the future.
Whenever we ask a question about what will happen in the future, there is an inherent fear that something bad will happen.
That is the language of the ego. You will never visit the future or the past. You are always and at all times in the present. Allow the Tarot to meet you and aid you in this moment, for it’s all there truly is.
3) All the cards are for you, and never to you.
If your interpretation is based in fear, it’s based in ego. Spirit will never drop you or punk you. If you pull a card like The Tower or the Ten of Swords, don’t worry. You are not in peril, there are no ‘bad’ cards. Every card offers supportive medicine and wisdom.
4) Similarly, there are no ‘good’ cards.
Just like we all have a rainbow of emotions, our feelings themselves aren’t good or bad. We may prefer to feel happy, but we are not bad for feeling sad.
5) All the cards are for everyone.
If your understanding of a card doesn’t consider that its medicine is for everyone, your understanding is incomplete.
For example, the Two of Cups is often described as a card about beginning a romantic partnership. But not everyone who comes to the Tarot is available for that narrow experience. The Two of Cups certainly can include the experience of new romance, but that is not the core of its gift.
When you ditch the keywords and the guidebook, you’ll naturally gain a truer breadth and depth of meaning to your deck.
Pulling A Card
1) When to Practice
There is no right or wrong way to practice. You don’t need to have a special pillow or light a candle. You don’t need to feel any one way. It’s fine to pull a card if you are really upset, happy, whenever.
I think that most beginning readers start their practice with a daily card pull in the morning. That’s how I started. It’s a fine practice, but it comes with some challenges.
When you are first learning, and especially if you are willing to trust yourself and ditch the book, it can be confusing to pull a card with no context.
It will be difficult to resist going to the guidebook to instruct you on what you should be looking for in your day.
As you go about your day wondering how an Ace of Swords insight might apply to you, you’ll be shoehorning your experiences into someone else’s card description.
Naturally this leads to a future-prediction modality. You may not feel that you had some great truthful insight handed to you from the divine that day, and maybe the exercise left you feeling the opposite of what you were told an Ace of Swords day ‘should’ be.
A natural take-away then would be, “I guess I’m not good at this, I didn’t accurately predict anything.”
Instead, I suggest pulling a card at the end of the day.
By shifting your card pull to the end of your day, you’ll be able to inform the card’s meaning with your own experiences, and that is what it’s all about.
The Ace of Swords would likely feel like a mysterious and possibly ominous card first thing in the morning, but after a full day of interactions and activities, you’ll be able to assign that card some meaning from your empirical reality.
2) Start with the drop-in
A drop in is just what it sounds like. We begin by centering ourselves and dropping into the present moment.
Again, you can do this in your car, on a beach, or in tears in a bathroom stall. You don’t need to be or feel any one way before pulling a card, but you do want to give yourself a moment to adjust your focus to a Spirit-led listing.
Start by closing your eyes and taking some slow deep breaths. When you bring your awareness to your breath you are tuning your listening towards your spirit.
Raise your awareness of your body, quiet the chatter in your mind and just follow the breath.
3) Set your intention
Once you feel grounded and connected to the present moment, gently lift your intention for this card pull. For example:
What card wants to volunteer for my learning and curiosity today?
I feel some discomfort in my gut. What might inform what that discomfort wants me to be aware of?
Is there anything that might contextualize my concern about work?
When you are ready you shuffle the cards however if feels comfortable to you and simply pull a single card forward.
Interpreting Your Card
1) Ignore Reversals
If you are new to the tarot, I encourage you to ignore reversals all together.
Once you’ve created an understanding and a relationship with the cards, then the nuance of a reversal may add context to your readings, but until then, just place the card upright. While you are new, keep it simple.
I will assert that a card in reverse is never the opposite of what it means upright.
I know that goes against what most literature says, but why would a card bring a specific message and wisdom one way and say the opposite, on opposite day? Volumes could be said on this topic, but I’ll leave it there.
2) Look at the card.
What do you see? What are the colors? What is the story of the picture? Does it remind you of anything? What does the name of the card suggest? How does it make you feel? Are there figures? If so, what advice might they give?
3) Record and/or journal your thoughts.
This record of your untainted and intuitive knowing will be a goldmine for you as your practice expands.
I strongly recommend that you keep your notes in a three-ring binder or a disk-bound dot-journal.
When I began keeping Tarot notes I used lots of different journals and notepads, but it was hard to keep track of while I was in the flow of recording my thoughts.
If I had already written about one card, there wouldn’t be enough space on the page to revisit it, so I’d start in a new journal.
When we work with the cards, we don’t work with them in order, so recording your thoughts in a format that you can shuffle around as much as your deck, but still keep organized, will come in handy as your practice grows.
Practice Example: The Hermit
Since The Hermit is the Major Arcana card for our current season of Virgo, I’ll ask The Hermit to be our demonstration volunteer.
Observations:
I see an old man with a long beard in a hooded grey robe. He is carrying a lantern and a long staff.
There are four colors: a blue background, white ground, black outlines, and a yellow staff and star-shaped light.
He is standing on a small spot. It’s white with grey beneath it, so perhaps it’s a snowy peak. He is looking down, but he doesn’t seem afraid of falling. His expression is calm and inquisitive.
Associations:
He reminds me of a lighthouse keeper, or a wizard.
Hermits are known for being alone and reclusive. This figure looks alone, but not lonely. Hermits are know to being mysterious, like witches in the woods for example.
I know that hermits are often perceived as weird since they choose isolation from society, but since this is Tarot, I can assume there is nothing weird, wrong, or dubious about this image.
Since this is Tarot and the figure looks a bit like a wizard, I can go ahead and assume that his wand isn’t just a long cane, but rather a magic wand. That makes sense given that there is a whole suit of wands in the deck.
Interpretations:
If he were to impart some advice, I bet it would sound like something Gandolf or Merlin would say. It might be more mysterious than instructive. He’d want me to think about his wisdom and come to my own conclusion. He would very likely tell me not to run to the guidebook.
Since there is a lantern and the light in it has those lines emanating from it, I can assume that I’m being asked to draw my attention there.
The lantern reminds me of the Statue of Liberty, or again a lighthouse keeper. There is some great truth or principal that requires some tending to safeguard. It’s not a bright sun-beam.
There is a wick and oil and a glass container to keep the fire safe from the elements. It’s enough light to see by, and maybe possible enough light that someone could see from far away, but it’s a little vulnerable too.
Personalization:
I am in the process of promoting my Tarot for Beginners class. I have a good idea what I want to teach, and I know that I have some wisdom that would benefit others, but I’ve also got some trepidation.
It’s more comfortable to stay in my little bubble than to go out in the world and promote myself, but if I don’t bring light to what I am offering, it wont be of benefit to anyone.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed and think that I need to do a ton of different marketing activities all at once, but my wise self knows that I can only take one step at a time. I also know that the class will take place on the first day of Libra season, so if I can stay partnered with the energy of The Hermit during this time of Virgo, I’ll learn something myself.
And there you have it!
You now have an outline of how you can begin to explore the Tarot without any guidebook and with no memorization whatsoever.
In time your practice will benefit by hearing what others have said and learning the formal meanings of the symbolism, but no matter how much you learn, YOU are always the best thing about your practice.
You are unique and what you see in a card is what fills it with meaning.
If you would like to learn more about reading the Tarot intuitively, I will be hosting an in-person workshop in San Fransisco on September 22nd. You can learn more and register here.
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Reading and teaching the Tarot is my joy and my vocation. If you would like to receive a reading from me, I would be honored to serve you. You can read more and book with me, either in-person or remotely at my website here.
