How a Novice May Use the Tarot Cards
The Tarot is a deck of 78 cards that has been used for centuries to help people gain insight into their lives. While the use of Tarot cards can seem daunting at first, with a little practice even novice users can begin to read the cards and gain valuable insights. In this post, we’ll explore how to use the Tarot cards and provide some tips for beginners. So whether you’re just curious about Tarot or are looking for a way to deepen your understanding of yourself, keep reading!
There are several key components to doing a life altering psychic tarot readings for a client. The reader becomes a combination of storyteller, guide, and spiritual advisor to the client. Melding classic and esoteric knowledge of the Tarot with psychic ability, produces a life changing evaluation and assessment of the patterns presently at work in a client’s life and where these energies are taking the client into the future.
How to Read a Tarot Card Meaning
Storytelling
For most of the life of humanity, the telling of stories was one of the most valued gifts in society. Storytelling preserved and passed along the wisdom and experience of the community long before there were alphabets or books. Stories served, too, in the initiation of imagination; children were awakened to the truths of the heart and alerted to the traps of the trickster soul, hearing the deeply psychological stories we today call myths, legends, fairy tales, or folk tales. Stories were told and retold, embellished and adapted, by specialists who combined prodigious memory with a creative sensitivity to the fundamental elements of story.
Laying out several cards can be the perfect springboard to making up stories! You have the protagonist, action, learning and the outcome right before you in archetypal imagery. Like a dream interpreted, every story will be original and profoundly enlightening for anyone who reads it.
Free-Writing and Journaling
You may use the Tarot as a springboard to journaling or free-writing your lives as myths. Myths are about characters in the process of transformation which pretty much describes all of us all the time!
Key Elements of Myth
- heroine/hero,
- ordinary world from which you are beginning,
- the call to adventure,
- refusal of the call,
- your allies, your obstacles,
- finally, your return to the place from which you began – but changed.
When we touch the mythic and archetypal level of the unconscious, it releases immense psychic energy – it may express itself as a call. It offers a more inclusive frame of reference – something much grander than individual existence.
Meditation
Pictures are the universal language. They are the language of the psyche and work beautifully for meditation. Pick a card that attracts you. Let your consciousness move inside the card – see yourself in a 3 dimensional way inside the card. Look around at the scenery around you, the other characters and if you’re confident about performing active imagination, allow a conversation to develop between you and the other characters. Move within the card and note your feelings and sensations and when return to your present reality, journal your experience. I guarantee you will experience insights you will remember for a lifetime!
Body Work
Tarot images contain/create specific vibratory patterns that can be applied directly to bodywork. Certainly the energy resonance between Tarot reader and questioner has a very significant effect on both parties.
One bodywork therapist and Tarotist, Mary Katherine Rose, author of the Children’s Tarot, invites clients to draw a Tarot card to create a theme for a therapeutic massage session. The unconscious awareness of the specific needs of the body are translated into conscious information through the process of selecting a card. In turn, conscious awareness of the image may be translated into synergistic amplification of the energy manipulations achieved through the massage.
Which deck is the right one for YOU?
There are hundreds of Tarot decks on the market today. From the classics, to specialized decks which may represent particular cultures, spiritual beliefs and practices, time periods or studies such as alchemy.
I recommend that you be mindful when choosing your own deck. The symbols on your cards will affirm, validate, and reinforce your unconscious/conscious assumptions, beliefs, and attitudes about yourself, humanity, and transformation. In time you will have several in your collection representing evolving interests and tastes as your psyche evolves with your practice.
People Representations – Inclusivity and its Magic
I always recommend to my initiates that they avoid decks depicting uniquely white people in positions of light and power.
Tarot images of people represent the values and attitudes of the people who have drawn them. The human image is likely the most powerful of all the symbols used in the Tarot because they act as mirrors of us and the people in our lives.
You want to be mindful that your deck isn’t sexist depicting only male images exemplifying a quality of control, command, aggression, or leadership, and female images demonstrating qualities of passivity, nurturing, submission, or receptivity.
The exclusion of other races besides Caucasian reinforces the misconception that the Tarot (which reflects the pattern of life) is only relevant to the white race. Some decks that do include people of color, use their race to symbolize our fears, and pains, our guilt, unknown depths, our uncontrollable urges and our bondage or entrapment; i.e. The Devil, slaves, or The Hanged Man. It is a spiritual and psychological imperative that we conscientiously research the decks we are to employ, watching carefully for the ways in which racism is being perpetuated, either by the exclusion of people of colour or by their inclusion in negative or violent imagery.
Tarot and the Elites
Since ancient times, the Tarot has been used by the ruling class, occult initiates, and educated philosophers. The scholars and nobles that developed the Tarot materials as we know them today, depicted Emperors, Kings, and Popes. They drew on esoteric philosophies, mystical teachings, classical works, and the literature, history, and myths of many cultures. They saw the Tarot as a tool to be used by the initiated or privileged class who had the leisure and education to study and understand the Tarot’s intricate maze of symbolism. Only in the twentieth century has the Tarot become available for use by the general public.
Today we have an opportunity to de-mystify the Tarot. Some authors are presenting interpretations that steer clear of references to scholarly literature and avoid allusion to obscure mythological or philosophical writings. They make clear that the Tarot is a tool that is available to everyone. Many have renamed the cards in an attempt to have the titles describe the meanings of the cards instead of reflecting archaic social structures.
Be Mindful of Subtle Discrimination
Few people have perfectly proportioned bodies. In many Tarot materials, characters that do not represent the ideal in their physical shape or abilities, are included only if they also point to poverty, disaster, or misfortune. Many decks show us somebody’s concept of a perfect person. To remain open and sensitive to the larger universal energy we need to work with a divination tool that projects imagery that is inclusive of all the peoples in the world.
Ageism is another issue that raises it’s ugly head in some decks. Children are the ones depicted as creative and energetically ready to begin life with enthusiasm and faith. Young people are seen as reckless, willing to take a few risks on the road to adventure and experience. Middle-aged people are seen as the sensible, mature leaders of society. Older people are depicted as quiet but inactive sages.
Be mindful of the value judgments that the author/artist has made. You need to look carefully at the cards you choose to work with and examine which of your own attitudes they represent and reinforce.
Criteria for Choosing YOUR Tarot Deck
Choose a Tarot deck containing symbolism that holds meaning for you. Peruse several decks; then notice which one you keep returning to. Pay special attention to the one you think of when you wake up in the morning.
Be practical however, and look for a deck that is a size and shape that you can easily handle. Be open to choosing more than one deck! You may find several decks that appeal to you. You may want to use a given deck for certain moods and questions, and another to explore different issues. After tuning into your own value system, your philosophy, your taste, your intuition, and your hands, choose the decks that “fit” you.
Tarot Course Online
These 5 lessons had been designed for an independent course of study. Following this program, in combination with the recommended supplementary work, you can become a skilled reader.
