[Help] Advice on tatot cards

[ADiTyA RaJ]

Today I bought my tarot card how should I proceed and what advice people who have practiced tarot can give me? I sincerely want to dive in the world of divi nation.

 

[frater_pan]

At first pick a card a day at random to see what the universe has to tell you. Honestly the approaches to tarot are infinite but your deck is a magickal being and will communicate with you.

 

[MidnightProphet]

Pick up a card and laugh. See what it says back

This is perhaps the most valuable approach to tarot I have ever read.

Post automatically merged: Apr 19, 2025

Today I bought my tarot card how should I proceed and what advice people who have practiced tarot can give me? I sincerely want to dive in the world of divi nation.

As you begin, you must know that the tarot are much, much more than a mere fortune-telling device for parlour-tricks. They are ancient wisdom encoded in symbolic images which represent the total reality we have access to with our human consciousness, and as such, present steps for intentional and controlled evolution of the soul.

Ponder this as well, would the creators of these cards have devised them simply to find out if someone was in love with you? That seems a very, very limited application.

Become a student of symbolism and astronomy, and you will learn everything there is to know.

 

[ADiTyA RaJ]

Quite a advice the best one

 

[Dascent]

It depends how you want to use this tool. As a divination tool, yes, the most popular option for many, it is fun, it is exiting.
As a self-discovery tool...even more useful...
As an interdimensional gateway... that's power because one can expand their awareness and gain insights from the collective.
I use only the major arcana as representative to a very specific esoteric archetype reading system.

 

[MidnightProphet]

It depends how you want to use this tool. As a divination tool, yes, the most popular option for many, it is fun, it is exiting.
As a self-discovery tool...even more useful...
As an interdimensional gateway... that's power because one can expand their awareness and gain insights from the collective.
I use only the major arcana as representative to a very specific esoteric archetype reading system.

Take notes, y'all. Archetypes exist before archetypal conditions.

 

[BMicic]

First, respect them. I keep my cards wrapped in silk and on a shelf above the height of my heart. And when I lay them out, I sit so that the cards never go below the height of my navel—that is, the table I arrange them on is above that height.

 

[Mandrake]

Hi, old thread but I'll try…The only advice I can give you is to not be afraid of ruining the cards; the respect you have for them shouldn't intimidate you. Personally, to study better, I bought another deck (actually more than one) on which I wrote the correspondences and meanings to better master them, and I must say they work well.

 

[Faria]

1. Toss out the book that came with the cards.
2. Get a real Tarot book. Pick one of these:

"Pictorial Key to the Tarot" by Waite
"The Book of Thoth" by Crowley
"Qabalistic Tarot" by Wang

3. Do not go by feelings. Learn how to read the cards. If you can interpret a meme you can read cards.
4. Read #3 again and remember it.
5. Talk OUT LOUD when doing any Tarot work. Translate suspicions and intuitions into audible words. Speaking out loud is as much a part of reading Tarot as looking at the cards.

Avoid all Yes/No questions. Will I? Am I? Does he? All of that.

Avoid asking what you should do. You decide what you should do. The cards tell you what to expect if you do or don't.

 

[neon_trapezoid]

I found Josephine McCarthy's Tarot book pretty helpful starting out. She hosts a free PDF version

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.

 

[Nerone]

Like working with any Spirit, select one deck and stick with it for some time. Don't go from one deck to another, to a third, to a fourth and so on. It takes time to get to know it. Most modern decks are merely stylistic variations of the Rider-Waite deck anyhow, which itself is heavily influenced by both the older Marseille in the Major Arcana and the Sola Busca Tarot in the Minor Arcana.

There are many things, in my opinion, that the Golden Dawn did not get quite right, but the Tarot was one of the few things they did really well.

So the Rider-Waite is a solid contender.

The first thing you ought to consider is the proper consecration of your deck which is the difference between having a set of plastic cards versus a proper magical tool. Given that the Moon in Neoplatonic thought is associated with the World Soul and is said to rule generation and corruption on this our Earth, it falls well to consecrate it under her aegis. Select the day and hour of the Moon (Monday during dawn) and fumigate it with an appropriate incense (such as Jasmine) and utilize either the Orphic Hymn to Selene or the Picatrix's hymn to the Moon while facing the East.

Sleep with it for a couple of days afterwards before taking it into use. The idea, from Daoist Feng Shui thought, is that there is a threefold division of the Qi of Heaven, Man and Earth. By consecrating it to the Moon, you will have imbued your deck (Earth) with a celestial power (Heaven), and now you want to link this deck (Earth-Heaven) to yourself (Man).

Store it accordingly in either a tinbox with some consecrated salt or a piece of silk cloth, as you don't want any unwanted spirits influencing your readings.

Now. Where to start?

With Astrology.

This is important, because you will find a tremendous mountain of books dealing with the "explicit" meanings of the cards, which is to say their history and symbolism. However, by introducing the "implicit" astrological meanings, you are significantly broadening your vocabulary and allowing the Spirit of the Tarot to articulate it's intelligence with you in a much more meaningful and nuanced way.

This likewise goes for any spirits you may ask to speak through the medium.

The Rider-Waite ascribes the 4 elements, 7 planets and 12 zodiac signs to each of the cards of the Major Arcana. They are as follows;

Fool = Air
Magician = Mercury
High Priestess = Moon
Empress = Venus
Emperor = Aries
Hierophant = Taurus
Lovers = Gemini
Chariot = Cancer
Strength = Leo
Hermit = Virgo
Wheel of Fortune = Jupiter
Justice = Libra
Hanged Man = Water
Death = Scorpio
Temperance = Sagittarius
The Devil = Capricorn
The Tower = Mars
The Star = Aquarius
The Moon = Pisces
The Sun = Sun
Judgment= Fire
World = Earth / Saturn

The four suits are divided into the four classical elements;

Wands = Fire
Swords = Air
Cups = Water
Pentacles = Earth

Aces (1) are considered the "root" of the element.
Cards 2-10 are considered representative of the Decans, the subdivision of each Zodiac sign into 3 equal parts of 10 degrees. There is a Spirit associated with each.

Wands 2, 3, 4 = Aries
Wands 5, 6, 7 = Leo
Wands 8, 9, 10 = Sagittarius

Swords 2, 3, 4 = Libra
Swords 5, 6, 7 = Aquarius
Swords 8, 9, 10 = Gemini

Cups 2, 3, 4 = Cancer
Cups 5, 6, 7 = Scorpio
Cups 8, 9, 10 = Pisces

Pentacles 2, 3, 4 = Capricorn
Pentacles 5, 6, 7 = Taurus
Pentacles 8, 9, 10 = Virgo

Austin Coppock's "36 Faces" deals with the description of each Decan very nicely, utilizing sources such as Agrippa and the Picatrix, amongst others. It's a really solid book.

The Court Cards are considered elemental as well;

Page = Earth
Knight = Air
Queen = Water
King = Fire

So a Page (Earth) of Swords (Air) would be the interaction of the elements Earth and Air for example, allowing you to deepen your reading beyond just the superficial meaning of a man holding a sword in the wind - although at times, to be fair, the superficial meaning is indeed the intended meaning.

This is part of the learning process. Often times your cards will be correct, but your interpretations will not, and you will have those "aaaah, THAT'S what that card meant" moments. So do write all your divinations down in a book. You may think that your question is the most important thing in the moment and that you cannot possibly forget it, but life goes on and you will.

My own theory is that the Spirit of the Tarot is a very Mercurial spirit and has a trickster element to it. If you haven't thrown your cards in frustration across the room in utter frustration, you haven't been doing it long enough lol.

It's super adaptable in terms of signifiers and that is it's main strength, in contrast to systems like Geomancy or Horary Astrology, where the signifiers are very fixed. In Geomancy, for example, the first figure is always considered as a signifier of the 1st House, which is to say the querent. Whereas in Tarot, the first card can be anything you please.

Selecting the right signifiers for the Spirit to respond to is really the crucial thing. An example. You do a three card spread. That can represent the past, present and future. Can also represent the person and how they behave publicly, privately and secretly. Or, when you wish to identify someone, how they come across in their Ascendant, how they behave per their Sun sign and how their emotional constitution is per their Moon sign. And so forth. As long as you articulate it out loud to the spirit.

Don't look up fixed meanings online or in books, or have someone else interpret the meaning, because it will be, to a certain extent, catered to your idiosyncratic understanding. Somewhat. It's not entirely subjective either.

And learn a good shuffle. There should be some symbolism behind it too. How many times you shuffle, turn and break your cards. Some spirits, if you use it for that, seems to like for a card to "pop out" to get their message across. I've had a couple of times when I put it back in and continue my shuffle, only for it to appear again as the final card.

But yeah. To summarize. Consecrate. Store properly. Learn the implicit meanings. Be intelligent about assigning signifiers. (A short prayer before you shuffle to get you in the right mindset is a good idea that I forgot to mention). Make your shuffling ceremonially and symbolically meaningful. Note down your readings. Reflect and learn.

And don't see fate as something set in stone, but more like the current of a river that is prone to change