How To... Tarot! 🔮

I’ll admit, I was exposed to tarot early in my life, but being the super religious boy I was, I didn’t ever explore it.

One of my first memories of tarot was during high school when a friend’s mom had them out on the counter during a sleepover.

I was so intrigued by them and yet kept my distance.

All I could think about was what my parents would say if they found out.

(Disregarding the fact that I was already going to parties with underage drinking… But the tarot cards were the really bad thing… 😅)

I eventually bought my first tarot deck when I was out of college and living on my own and knew I could safely keep it a secret.

The Wizard’s Tarot. It takes all the cards into a wizarding school, which felt perfect for my learning.

But I didn’t exactly dive right into it…

The cards stayed hidden in the back of my closet and got pulled out from time to time, but I never made an actual effort to learn them.

I would do a reading, and then immediately look to the book to see what it meant.

Now don’t get me wrong, doing spreads that way still got me some highly accurate readings.

Spirit will talk to you anyway it gets, and during that time, it was from the book.

It was quite a few years later that I finally committed to learning the cards and developing a relationship with them.

I’d been jealous of my friend’s ability to just know what the cards meant. She was so intuitive and led by example.

Every reading from her had more layers of meaning than I could find in the book.

Because she was listening to her intuition and not just the written meaning of the card, she was able to see things and know things that I was barely aware of.

She was so encouraging while I was in the middle of my learning, especially when I would text her in the morning, trying to figure out what a card meant or how it applied to me.

At one point, we were on the phone while I was pulling some cards at the height of some of my biggest relationship drama.

I pulled the 3 of Swords in reverse and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it.

She told me that, “in this position, the swords are falling out of the heart. Removing the thing that caused the wound, so that the heart can heal.”

I started ugly crying right on the phone. 

That separation process was exactly what I was going through and I needed to hear those words. To know that I was starting the healing process to recover from my broken heart.

Reading tarot is about listening to your intuition.

Your relationship with your cards, your guides, the symbols, and your intuition will provide the best readings possible for yourself and others.

There are no rules other than to trust your intuition.

It doesn’t matter whether you were gifted the cards, if you wrap them in silk, or if you sage them between readings.

The only thing that really matters is you.

You are the magic.

You are the power.

Tarot cards are a tool to help us unlock and listen to the whispers of our intuition.

So trust your magic and pull a few cards.

Time for Tarot

Follow these steps for a quick magical reading.

1. Grab your supplies

   • Tarot deck

   • Pen & Notepad

   • Candle/incense

2. Create your sacred space

   • Light the candle/incense

   • Put your phone on Do Not Disturb or airplane mode

3. Think of a question or issue you’re dealing with while shuffling the cards

   • Open ended questions are the most valuable, because there’s so much you can glean from the cards. Try to make your question open-ended.

   • Some good questions - 

     • What do I need to know about this situation?

     • How can I best learn from this issue?

   • Search your heart and even search online for more

4. Deal out 3 cards without overthinking it and set the deck to the side.

   • You can always choose a spread that you like, but for quick cases, I find that a 3-card reading almost always gives me everything I need.

   • Again, trust your intuition, if you think 4 cards will help or if you only need 2, go with that!

5. Focus on the first card and write down everything that comes to you

   • Notice any symbols that pop out, any emotions you feel, any words that you hear, any colors that stand out.

   • Don’t try to connect anything yet, just get out all the first impressions

6. Repeat this step for each of the cards you pulled

   • When you’re done, you should have a list of all the messages you got for each card.

7. Let your intuition connect the dots

   • What story do the cards tell? Is it past, present, and future? Is it a scale with each option and a decision in the middle? Is it two people and a resolution?

   • How do the cards connect? What are the similarities/differences?

   • Review your first impressions to see what themes are running through them. What message is your intuition giving you?

8. Now check the book

   • This should be done at the very last step, only after you’ve gotten everything out of your intuition already.

   • I keep this as the last step because it allows me to fully trust my intuition first. Then I give it more information to help me next time around.

   • There have been SO many times that I’ve made a connection and then the author has put a quote or a few words that resonate with it. It communicates a message right to my heart that I might have missed otherwise.

9. Make any final notes in your notebook and review any next steps that your intuition is calling you to do.

10. Close your sacred space and give thanks to the Universe

You can use the method with any tarot deck and even with oracle decks.

The whole point is to let your intuition speak to you and then look it up in the book.

Trust your intuition. It’s always going to give you the answer, even if it doesn’t always make sense.

The more you practice, the stronger your intuition muscle gets.

Mix and match the ideas presented here with other things you have learned.

The whole point of the human experience is to learn and to love. Take what resonates and leave what doesn’t.

If you’re looking for some extra support while learning the tarot, then let me know!

The Teach Yourself Tarot coaching program creates a safe space for you to practice your readings with a little bit of 1 on 1 guidance.

If you’re curious about it, text me! (‪602-492-3795‬)
Email works too 🤗 [email protected]