Relatively new to Tarot

[Itsgottabelunchtime]

Hello all. As the title insinuates I’m a novice with Tarot. However, I have studied the occult since I was in my early teens. It wasn’t a mainstream movement for me but rather from my early childhood I had perceived myself as being separate from my body. The best way to describe it is I didn’t feel like I was me in a material sense but rather a projection of something more expressing itself through matter (matter being my physical body). This is what led me to delving into occult philosophy at such a young age as church did not have the answers. Point being I spent 100% of my energy throughout the years studying philosophy and most notably hermetic philosophy. That being said I neglected a lot of other topics which leads me to this post. I’ve tried to connect with tarot on an intuitive level which should be easy for me sense I’m very intuitive naturally. However, for some reason I can’t seem to string things together with tarot even to a basic level. I’m not really sure how to ask such a cliche question in a way that captures the essence of importance to me but I’ll ask it anyway. What is the best way to begin establishing a solid and coherent reading style? Are there exercises or things that I can do to help forge the qualities involved? Lastly, what qualities should I most focus on to aid in my new endeavor?

I apologize for the length and thank all so much who respond with their personal experience or wisdom on the subject.

Discussion

[LatinBsnDude]

My answer comes from my background as an educator: always be a student! Expose yourself to as many tarot philosophies and pedagogies as you can. One thing that is sure is that your style will continuously change and evolve.

[East_Percentage3627]

As the first reply suggests, read some books.

If you’re not connecting intuitively … but have a background in Hermeticism … you might like Robert Place books. He’s not everyone’s cup of tea but i like his hermetic/alchemy/neo-platonism approach. He’s not necessarily for beginners, but if you already know Hermeticism you’ll find many reference points in his writing.

For straight-up no nonsense card meanings, I like the book Power Tarot by Trish McGregor and Phyllis Vega. I got it used super cheap.

If you like Marseille style, Yoav Ben Dov book *Open Reading* is good and might develop your intuition as it’s completely NON occult and pure visual symbolism.

Lon Milo DuQuette is a great writer although he’s pure Crowley and Thoth based.

If you’re just getting started … you don’t really need to worry about reading or having a reading style yet. Get to know the cards, first.

Good luck!

[34Emma]

No worries, I actually enjoyed reading this and your style of asking. The best way to begin is by trying out all the clishé answers which are usually being given to this question: You’ve tried to string things together intuitively and it didn’t work. Great, that was one experience, and I even suspect you learned more from it than you think. to me anyway, the process of inicially getting in touch with the cards was profoundly spiritually confusing, like it felt super vulnerable, and that was despite of me being wayyyyy less familiar with or drawn to the occult than you seem to be. What they mean by saying everyone is different is that it’s super important to validate your experiences as something that does make sense and you just need to learn to understand, instead of expecting them to fit into a certain box. They probably still do because people are very similar to each other as well as different. But while you’re orienting yourself you won’t necessarily be able to say where you’re at or which label to put on your experience.

So the other two standard answers to your question are to always pick one card (maybe per day) and study it thoroughly. And to find a guidebook which you resonate with (there are so many out there) and focus on the descriptions of the card meanings, memorising them and I’d add already applying your knowledge from the very beginning by doing small readings about matters which you aren’t too attached to^. (You’ll want to learn by practice, but what you don’t ned is intense anxiety because you asked about your long term future plans or your purpose in life and you cannot figure out if the cards are implying that you’re doomed. 🙂 Which usually won’t be what they’re implying, but it takes a lot of practice to discern that.)

How does this land so far? I’d be happy to answer more questions or clarify things.

[coolcrowe]

Others have answered your questions pretty nicely, but I wanted to recommend a book for you. This book is pretty dense and can be tough to work through but it really blew spirituality and philosophy open for me, and it uses the Major Arcana as a framework to explore those things. With each chapter I felt not only that I learned very thoroughly some of the ideas and concepts behind each card, but also the very purpose and meaning of those ideas themselves in a hermetic context. It’s one of the greatest books I’ve ever read, so I hope it speaks to you similarly. It was published posthumously by an anonymous author at his request and is titled “Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism”.