Getting Started With Tarot Cards

If you just brought home your first deck of Tarot cards and are wondering what you are supposed to do next, the short answer is, "Anything you want."

Seriously, there is no right or wrong way to familiarize yourself with the cards. I can offer a few pointers and suggestions here, but don't let me restrain you. If you have other ways of approaching your cards, go with it.

They are your cards.

First off, it's worth knowing that the 22 'Major Arcana' cards that begin at Zero with 'The Fool' and end at 21 with 'The World' are different in quality and character from the 52 suit cards of wands, swords, cups, and pentacles. The Major Arcana cards represent symbolic archetypes; energies so distinct and powerful that they operate independently of individual human beings.

Archetypes spring from what psycholanalyst Carl Jung called 'the Collective Unconscious,' meaning they transcend individuals and cultures and are to our emotional and intellectual nature what DNA is to our physical nature.

Archetypes are essential clusters of meaning. They form the base on which legends and myths are made, gods and goddesses, parables about right and wrong, life and death, danger and fertility. They are neither human nor inhuman, they just are. If a story was a car, an archetype would be gasoline.

One good way to familiarize yourself with these energies is to separate the Major Arcana cards from the 52 suit cards and sleep with just one each night under your pillow. Record any dreams or impressions you have when you do this. While you are going through this 'sleep with the Archetypes' process, try doing a daily reading with the Major Arcana cards only.

Shuffle the Major Arcana cards only, and when you feel ready pull three out of the deck and lay them face down in front of you. Lay the first one down in the middle, the second to the left of the first, and the last to the right of it.

Now turn them over one by one.

Turn over the first (or middle) card. This is your present situation. Which card is it? Is it upside down or rightside up? Get out your book of card meanings and read about the card. Notice what you avoid or recoil from because this is a meaning that probably applies to you. Also, any 'Eureka!' moments matter.

Now turn over the card to the left of the center card. This card represents your recent past, the background and base of your current situation.

Last turn over the card to the right of the center card. This card represents the direction your current situation is heading if nothing changes. Keep in mind that this is not set in stone. You are always in control; you make choices and ignore or embrace conditions, what you do or don't do determines what happens in your life, not a set of cards with pictures on them.

If you can, try doing Major Arcana readings like this for others as well. You will quickly notice that reading for others is quite different than reading for yourself. While everyone is different and I think it is impossible to generalize, I'm going to do it anyway and say straight up that I believe it's easier to read for others than it is to read for yourself. You will instinctively edit thoughts and outcomes you fear from readings you do for yourself, whereas a third party (someone who reads for you) is more likely to see the bigger picture and point out that what you consider to be scary or negative is actually opening a door to something new that may be very good for you in the long run.

Another really great exercise (and one I keep meaning to actually do) is to compose short stories around each Major Arcana card. Naturally you will want to read as much about the individual meanings as you can first, but once you have a feel for the card, writing a story that invokes the symbolism of the card will bring it alive for you in a way nothing else will.

When you read Tarot cards you are, after all, telling a story. You are literally 'reading' pictures and translating these symbolic images into words. Most societies have longstanding traditions of one on one oral story telling that preserve values, ideals, meanings, and warnings from generation to generation. When you read the Tarot you are engaging in an oral storytelling tradition, one of the few that survive in modern Western culture.

Most people see the cards as a kind of parlor trick or a form of stage magic, but even a brief exposure to them at a personal level reveals that they are much more powerful than that. While there is no reason to be afraid of the cards, I do think it is important to get in touch with and acknowledge the power in the cards so you don't get knocked on your butt by weird experiences and 'gotcha' moments.

Trust me, you will have some big moments. But having those kinds of experiences doesn't mean the cards are magical or possessed or dangerous, it just means that mythic, symbolic material is powerful stuff. We've gotten a bit jaded and detached from that kind of material in modern culture. When you make a committment to learn the Tarot you are diving into the symbolic, emotional universe head first. So you will have some intense moments.

Nothing to be concerned about. You'll get used to them.

I can also share with you some common problems and pitfalls that I have had when using Tarot cards over the years. Most of them are minor, but they do crop up.

Avoiding Reversed Cards Most people who read Tarot cards go through a period of feeling uncomfortable with reversed cards. Some people are alarmed by cards that come up reversed and assume that this is always a bad omen; other people just don't like dealing with reversals. If you feel annoyed or overwhelmed by having to factor in the meanings of cards in their reversed positions, just quit laying out reversed cards until you get comfortable with the upright cards. Once you have been reading upright-only cards for awhile, you will get to the point where you want to the additional information reversed cards provide. And keep in mind that for many cards the reversed meaning is actually more 'positive' than the upright meaning--you have to consider it in relation to the entire spread, so it's just not true that reversed cards are bad and upright cards are good.

Feeling Spooked by the Cards Most Tarot card readers go through one or more periods of the heeby geebies, and this can be made worse by reactive types who beg for a reading then totally freak out when you do one for them. Actually, this happens fairly frequently, but the first time it happens to you you may feel like you are in a Warner Brothers cartoon and you "don't know your own strength!" Tarot cards tap into unconscious energies and emotions and they also interpret symbolic forces with which most people are unfamiliar. One of the reasons religion is so popular is that religion provides a framework that harnesses and explains these unconscious forces in a socially acceptable way. Tarot cards do something similar, but people aren't familiar with it so they get scared. It's fear of the unknown, pure and simple. If you are feeling very spooked by the cards, put them away for a few days. The feeling will pass.

Being Hounded by Unstable People Once you learn to do readings and the word gets out that you can do readings, desperate people will come out of the woodwork to beg you to do a reading for them. You will know by the way that they ask you for this that they are placing way too much importance on outcomes and almost no importance on process, and the whole thing will make you massively uncomfortable. What I have found is that people who approach me for readings often mirror what is going on in my own life. If I look at it that way--if I remind myself that I am doing a reading for us, it removes some of the pressure and helps me let go of the other person's problems. This development is also a great chance for you to create and rehearse your 'disclaimer speech.' Trust me, you will need one. No one will ever pay the slightest bit of attention to it, mind you, but it will help you stay centered and relaxed if you have one rehearsed and ready, and it will keep you from taking on the problems of the world as if they were your own. They aren't.

Overuse Most card readers go through a period in which they've got the meanings down, they've practiced reading enough to know that it isn't all a bunch of hooey, and gradually they find themselves consulting the cards for everything from "where are my keys goddamn it?" to "how on earth can we achieve world peace in this millennium?" You'll know this is happening to you when you find yourself reshuffling and throwing down spread after spread because you don't like what you just read about the Philadephia Phillies and you are losing your temper because the same damn thing keeps coming up over and over again anyway. Give it a rest. Go to the movies or something. We've all been there. You just need a break, that's all.

Once you've gotten somewhat accustomed to the Major Arcana cards, you will still be left with 52 other cards to learn. These Minor Arcana cards are divided into four groups: wands (which correspond to clubs in a regular card deck), pentacles (spades), swords (diamonds), and cups (hearts).

Many historians believe that the earliest Tarot decks were comprised of only the Minor Arcana cards and were basically used like regular playing cards, for games and gambling. Later, when it became obvious that by using the card deck to tell fortunes individual spies could gleen political information from Church officials (this was back when the Church and the State were the same thing) the Major Arcana appeared from, well, nobody knows.

In general, the minor cards have meanings that apply to specific life situations at a fairly mundane level. Wands tend to refer to creative work and ambition, pentacles to physical work and subsistence and security, swords to the intellect, and cups to the heart. The face cards in each suit--a page, a knight, a queen, and a king--almost always refer to actual persons, either the person being read or someone close to the person being read.

The best way to familiarize yourself with these minor cards is to just start doing readings and looking up the meanings for each card that turns up. You will never ever be able to remember the meanings by just reading and memorizing them. You will find that when you start doing readings for yourself, certain minor cards come up lots more often than others, and these cards will reflect the issues that are currently most important for you in day to day life.

One interesting phenomenon that you may experience early on is the fact of the duplicate reading. Sometimes you'll do a reading for yourself and you won't much care for it. So you just lay out another spread. And get the same reading. So you do it again. And get the same reading.

Eventually you quit doing that.

Why does this happen?

Geez, I don't know. But almost everyone notices it fairly early on. So don't torture yourself this way. Just take the first one at face value and move on.

The more readings you do the more you will familiarize yourself with the cards and the deeper your readings will become. Over time I find that reading cards is like having a relationship with some invisible other. Sometimes it's a good relationship, sometimes the other gets on my nerves, sometimes I get fed up. But I think that if you are drawn to the cards, it is a calling, it's not just a parlor trick or a hobby or something stupid you do to put on airs and annoy and frighten Christians, it's an actual calling with responsibilities and rewards.

If this is your first deck, you've started an amazing journey. It will change you, and it will change the people you read.

Bon voyage.

Pretty cool, aren't they?

Lady Guinevere found them in her attic. They look to be based on Aesop's Fables or some sort of medieval morality play. They appear to be quite old, but that doesn't mean they are--they could be reproductions of some sort.

If you have any info on them please do share it!

And thank you to Lady Guinevere for sharing them here!