About the Tarot
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Using the Tarot for A Reading
Every psychic seems to have their own way of preparing the cards for a reading. Some want their clients to shuffle, while others like me, prefer not to have anyone touch their cards.To prepare the cards for an actual reading, I will ask the client to give me their favourite number and then I will use this number to determine how many times I shuffle the cards. Then I will ask the client to cut the cards in three parts. I pick the cards up from the bottom cut and then lay them out.
Spreads, Card Lay-outs Click on the link for some useful Tarot cards spreads and their descriptions.
Reading the Cards
This is where things get tricky – and fun. Mary-Anne and I have often wondered why, in the ten years and more of working together, we have written about everything BUT the Tarot. Yet the Tarot is the tool we use most frequently for readings both for clients and ourselves. I think the reason that we have been so reluctant to write about it is that working with it is such a personal process. That, and the fact that scholars of the Tarot have dedicated whole life-times to understanding the intricacies of the cards and the symbology contained within them. It has always seemed a bit presumptuous for us as simple readers of the Tarot to try to talk about what it means.
Still, our years of experience with these magical cards counts for something… We can at least talk about how we work with the cards. One of the fundamental principles of working with the tarot is the process of objective noticing.
Funny, I've been using the Rider-Waite deck with clients for some 30 years now, and they never cease to amaze me. No matter how often I look at those cards, I can see something different in them with every reading. This is because I have developed the Art of Noticing – that ability to look deeply into the cards and allow them to speak to me of their own accord… without interference from my ego, without allowing any judgment to cloud my insights. This is what I mean by "objective noticing", letting the cards do the talking….When you first lay out the cards, you should notice a story. The cards should somehow relate to each other and as a whole the layout should relate a kind of story that has an opening, a body and a close.
Look for The Story
I always suggest that readers take a moment once they've laid out the cards to simply focus on the cards in front of them, to kind of breathe them in and let the story arise. Once you have a feeling for the overall story or message in the reading, you can start reading the cards, one by one beginning with the first position and following these around.The cards need to be read in context, based on what's around them and how they are sitting in relationship to other cards in the reading. As you proceed through the reading, there should be a consistency in the information that is coming from the individual cards.
As you read and focus on the cards, your subconscious mind and your soul self will be triggered by the ancient signs and symbols imbedded within the Tarot – derived from numerology, astrology, the archetypes and elements, the Tree of Life and more. To really understand and make the most of your work with the Tarot, you will want to study also all of these symbolic systems.
Notice and Trust, Say What You See
To become a good reader, you must learn to notice, not only what attracts you in the cards, but what words and images fly through your mind, what you hear in your heart and feel in your body, what you sense in the air around you… and then you must trust what comes up…
Years ago, at lunch with a friend, our conversation triggered me to tell a story of something that had happened to me some years earlier… I was barely into the story when my friend burst out with "how did you know? You always seem to know exactly the story to tell, how do you do it?" "know what?" I was puzzled, the story seemed to have come out of thin air. But, I had hit a button, a problem that she'd been struggling with… my story provided the very answers she'd been praying for. I didn't realize it but my psychic self was in operation in that moment, and that was the beginning of a pattern that I soon learned to recognize and accept.
In a reading I will often be drawn to tell some odd story from my life or someone else's, just because it comes to mind… and invariably, it turns out that that particular story came to mind for a good reason in that specific moment.So, learn to say what you see, trust what comes to mind in a reading, trust that whatever it is, it will have some value and may even contain some insight that can change a person's life.
The Key Signs and Symbols, the Archetypes
Tips for Working with the Tarot
Send us your tips, ideas and experiences on working with the Tarot.
