learn Tarot

I may not believe in the things most people do when they think of Tarot Cards, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be useful. I recently bought a deck of cards and following the instructions I found that it basicly gives me the oppertunity to focus on a specific issue. It is like reading your horoscope. You just need alittle direction some times. I think also it is a good conversation topic. I like that if I needed to I could just whip out a deck and read someones fortune.

I bought a deck a while back that I thought would be interesting to learn on. However I didn’t listen to reviews about it saying it was a hard deck to learn on… it’s the Thoth deck. In any case, I’ve decided I’d like to dedicate more time to learning it. Anyone have any good resources on this deck/tarot in general?

Tarot is a living tool, in a sense, and I doubt one truly ever masters it completely. I found with Thoth, a deck very rich in symbolism, the learning curve was short to get to the point of doing competent readings.

The best way to learn tarot is to do tarot, and once you are able to do tarot, you’ve learned enough tarot to get you through. The rest comes not so much from years of study, but from meditation upon the cards, and assimilation into the matrix of your life.

The most important advice I can give is – practice. Read a lot.

I have been reading cards since I was 11 years old. After you learn the basics, the best thing to do is stop using the books, and just start using your intuition. It took me years to quit doing it, but after I finally let go of my crutches, I feel like my reading improved dramatically.

I am still learning. It’s like anything worth knowing, you will never know everything, but will get better every day.

A few tips –
Don’t start out with huge spreads, like the Celtic Cross, use 1-5 card spreads at the most.

Find a deck you like, but don’t worry about finding “the” deck.

Don’t be discouraged if you aren’t perfect in a few weeks, or even a few months. Be patient with yourself, and don’t give up, because it really is worth it.

I am trying to learn to read the tarot cards.I am having trouble putting them together to read,any suggestions?

After more than 7 years study, I still have a lot more to learn about tarot, but I decide to stop here, maybe temporarily, maybe forever. Tarot is not a tool for prediction, but a tool for psychological insights. The psychological reading is a technical job and can be achieved by learning tarot; but predictive reading (I still don’t know whether we really can predict one’s fortune) depends completely on reader’s talent which is unimprovable by learning. Comparing with tarot, for psychologcial reading, there are many more reliable tools in psychology, why not study them? I’m going to study them now.
Still. It’s worth doing it. It’s worth learning. I have been a tarot reader now. I just don’t read any more.

...well, it seems to me that the quickest way to do this is to actually read cards. So I’ve been reading more often, but the difficulty is that I’m reading for myself only. The reason this is difficult is that it’s much easier just to see what I want in the cards…and also to get sucked into the illusion that they are predictive, which I don’t really believe. It’s much more difficult to maintain distance from my own issues and actually examine what symbols are popping up.

Something interesting in my more-frequent readings: I almost NEVER pull court cards. Which is fine, because I actually have trouble with these cards – I’m usually examining circumstances around specific people already, and the court cards often seem to be ‘extra people’ that don’t really fit.

I also seem to pull a preponderance of ‘major arcana’ cards, so anything beyond a 3-card reading seems to be fraught with BIG IDEAS. As if my internal narration wasn’t dramatic enough already…:D

I’m gonna follow Bardolater’s advise and have a tarot journal. Going through one card, and then looking at combinations seems a good idea. I haven’t had much luck with spreads and tend to be overwhelmed, would be nice to have some instant ‘interactions’.

I still have to use a guide, but I’m not dedicating time to memorization. I’d rather take an intuitive approach, with the manuals to act as the guidelines.

It helped develop my intuition and confidence. I still need to work on the Court cards, but feel capable of giving an accurate and complete reading.