Tarot can be described as a method of divination a set of cards, decorated with symbols purported to have its roots in ancient Egypt. Usually, tarot would be standardly referred to as “cartomancy.” Typically tarot can be done with many different types of cards but most often it is done with standard tarot cards or with regular playing cards. However, for our purposes, we will use standard tarot cards.
The standard tarot are made up of the major and minor arcana and contains 78 cards. The major arcana is made up of 22 cards, said to represent the journey of the fool towards the goal of enlightenment. The other portion of the tarot is the minor arcana, containing 56 cards which are divided into 4 suits of 14 cards (ace to 10, pages or princesses, knights, queens or kings.) The 4 suits are typically:
-Wands (staves or rods as well)
-Cups
-Swords
-Pentacles (or coins)
The most important part of learning the tarot is choosing a proper deck to use. To choose a deck, one must assess their needs and skill level. If you are a beginner, it is usual that you would start out with 1 of the 4 basic decks:
-The Aquarian Deck
-The Rider Waite Deck
-The Hanson Roberts Deck
-The Morgan Greer Deck
The first 2 decks are the usual beginner standard, whereas the last two are usually easy to understand and do not stray wildly from the basic tarot. However, it is essential that your deck feels correct to you and works with your energy as it were. It is very possible for you to run into a deck that you immediately click with and automatically know you are supposed to work with. If so, jump on the opportunity because you’ve just been given a wonderful gift by your intuition. If not, try a basic deck first and keep checking out other decks- you will eventually click with one and will know it immediately. Make sure that when you buy your deck, you either acquire one with a book of descriptions in it or that you buy the book that goes with the deck. This will become very important and will save you a lot of time and energy.
Before working with the tarot, it’s often best to check out each of the cards and gain some familiarity with them. Shuffle them, organize them and just generally handle them so that you become used to them and your energy becomes attached to them. When you reach a level of comfort with them, you should probably start working with them in a basic fashion for yourself. Generally, the best way to start is to start with a single card reading in which you shuffle the deck, ask a question and draw a card. Usually when doing a reading, I shuffle the card about 10 times (to avoid drawing the same cards as in the last reading), cut the cards, placing the bottom half on top of the other half and draw a card with my right hand. I only ever use my left hand to draw a card if I’m doing a reading in relation to love as the left hand is closer to the heart and therefore is supposed to function better for that kind of reading. Always make sure that you turn your cards over from left to right or right to left instead of top to bottom so that they’re the way they’re supposed to be. This is incredibly important because cards that are right side up generally have a positive meaning, whereas upside down cards typically have a negative and converse meaning to the upright position meaning.
There are many ways to represent a drawn card. You may choose to take the meaning verbatim from the book that comes with your cards or perhaps meditate on the card and the imagery in order to understand its meaning. You may even choose to take apart the meaning of the suit, the card, or the symbols and colors on the card.
Theroretically, each suit has it’s own set of correspondences as dictated by both history and various writings. Corvarrubias once suggested that each of the suits represented the most hurtful and mortal dangers to mankind, namely violence (swords and clubs), drunkeness (cups), and greed and crimes (coins.) Conversely, the suits have also been said to represent the four virtues: justice (the sword), fortitude (the club), faith (the cup), and charity (the coin.) Historically, it has also been said that each suit is meant to represent a geographical region, while each face card is meant to represent a political idea. Traditionally, swords represent the Orient, the staves South America, the cups North America and the coins Europe. Usually the kings represent government, Queens religious belief, knights history and nationalism, and pages the arts and sciences. Some have gone so far as to make historical attributions to each suit and face card, by way of attaching famous historical figures to each. Each suit in the tarot is also associated with one of the 4 western elements, as well as a direction. Wands represent air and the east; cups represent water and the west; swords represent fire and the south while pentacles are indicative of earth and the north. Lastly, each suit may also represent the Hebrew letters that make up the name of God, namely Yod-He-Vau-He, which create the tetragrammation of YHVH. These correspondences are incredibly useful in your reading as they contribute to the overall scheme of the reading and provide possibly interpretations of cards when the meaning may be unclear.
Each suit not only represents an element and direction, it often represents people above and beyond its general meaning. Often, if a card meaning does not work properly within the scheme of the reading, it can be interpreted as a description of a person who is affecting the situation or may come into the situation. However, this only applies to pages or princesses, knights, queens or kings- not to the regular cards within the suit. Wands typically represents the fairest people in the tarot. They are known to have blonde or red hair, fair skin and blue or green eyes. People in the cups suit are the next fairest in the tarot. Usually, it represents people with light brown hair or gray or blue eyes. Swords and pentacles usually represent people with darker coloring than those in wands or cups. Those within swords usually have hazel or gray eyes, dark brown hair and dull skin whereas pentacles usually represent people with very dark brown or black hair, dark eyes and sallow or swarthy looking skin. Within each suit, the cards that represent people can be further divided into ages. Generally, the king and queen represent a male or female over the age of 40, whereas a knight or princess will represent a male or female under the age of 40. Please be aware that if such a card appears in a spread, you or the querant may not necessarily know the individual in question. Often individuals arise within a spread that have not arisen in your life yet. It is also possible that the shown individual is possibly from your past.
One of the other ways a card can be interpreted is by the use of color within it. Generally, the clearer the color, the more positive the meaning and the muddier, the less positive. Below, the most common colors and meanings are listed.
Black: Letting go, the unknown, old sorrows, regrets or guilt. Possibly problems with older people, Black is also universally associated with strength.
Brown: Practical issues, home and family, the earth, grounding, application, implementation and production.
White: New ventures or beginnings, in love and business, Purity or Purity of intention, inner wisdom.
Red: Fertility, Love, survival issues, passion and power. Love, lust and trusting ones feelings.
Orange: Identity issues, energy, vitality, spontaneity, life force, personal happiness, & partnerships whether at work or at home.
Yellow: Spirituality, communication, undeveloped potential, career and travel.
Green: Creativity, regeneration, fertility and productivity, matters of the heart, romance and family.
Blue: Wisdom and clarity. Learning and examinations, interviews and matters of principle.
Purple: Leadership and personal power. Wisdom, the soul and spirituality, religious insights of any kind, The color of Royalty.
Gold (rare): Translating life changing plans into reality.
Silver (rare): Dreams, special wishes and major life changes.
Pink (rare): Reconciliation, friendship and health
Each of the card numbers are also representative of an element of the card. Here are some of the most common meanings:
One- Self reliance, personal ability, one’s own capabilities
Two- Partnership, assistance, peace
Three- Growth, expansion, fertility, creativity, good luck
Four- Practicality, stability, life lessons, working things through
Five- Communication, movement, speed
Six- Love, home, pleasure
Seven- Spirituality, psychism, spiritual aid or guidance
Eight- Intensity, extremity, great success or failure
Nine- Compassion, helping others, group projects
Ten- Completion, unity
One of the most important things about the tarot is the matter of intention. You must be as completely impartial as possible when asking a question, choosing and interpreting cards, otherwise you run the risk of skewing your reading completely. It is very very important not to assert any hopes or wishes in any form whatsoever when doing a reading in order to be completely accurate. If you find it impossible to do this in some cases, it is probably best to have someone else do the reading for you or decline it for the sake of accuracy and truth. Besides a single card reading, the easiest way to learn the tarot is a random spread. This is especially works if you have a good level of intuition and you’re not comfortable with interpreting a regimented spread yet. Start with a general, broad question and draw 15 cards with your right hand, laying the in three rows of five. Begin by picking the first card that catches your eye in the spread and interpreting it, then move to the next that catches your eye. As you do this, compare the card to those around it and assess how the may connect until you’ve completed the whole spread. As you gain confidence, you may choose to let the first row represent the past, the middle present and the bottom represent future.
If the above method does not work for you, start with a one card spread, then move on to the three and six card spreads as outlined in the basic tarot section. Later, move on to the celtic cross spread which is more of an intermediate level spread until you feel ready to move onto the more advanced spreads.
As you learn the tarot and get better at it, you may choose to start doing readings for other people. If so, proceed as you would normally, taking their question instead and talking them through your reading as you see it. You may wish to let them shuffle and cut the cards in preparation for the reading in order to gain some of their energy to read but this is not necessary and may even be repellant to you. There are many people who read tarot who do not like their cards handled by anyone else which is perfectly acceptable. If you so choose to do readings for other people, you may not want to charge them money. Often, certain provinces and states require you to acquire a license in order to be able to accept money for divinatory services. Please do yourself a favor and find out if this applies to you before you end up doing something illegal and getting called on it. If you can’t afford the licensing fee etc, it is perfectly acceptable to make it known that you accept donations for your services. However, if you can, it is always best to only provide divination for free.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me and I’ll try my best to answer them as fully as possible.
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Pictured above: "Magic" card from the Goddess Tarot by Kris Waldherr (the deck Brigid uses)