Reading tarot cards is an almost universal skill in modern witchcraft. This method of divination has become so widespread that for many people, tarot is actually their introduction to the craft! Today, we’re going to talk about why you might want to learn this divination skill and how to go about learning to read the cards with ease, even as a complete beginner.
Is Tarot Necessary For Witchcraft?
Tarot is not strictly necessary for witchcraft, but divination as a whole has several big benefits for your witchcraft practice. First, it gives you immediate access to a whole realm of psychic and spiritual information without having to develop your psychic senses. Obviously, developing your psychic senses is definitely encouraged, but that learning curve can take time. Using divination can give you access to spirit communication and psychic information while you are learning those subtler skills.
It also helps you learn to do magic more effectively. Now, a lot of beginners don’t realize this, so they use their tarot decks to give them daily readings or to get information about life situations, but your cards can tell you all kinds of things about your magic! Will that spell give you the result you want? Did your spell succeed? Do you need to change or add anything to your spellwork to see results? What’s the best magical strategy for you to accomplish your goals? All of these questions and more can be answered by your tarot cards, making them an invaluable tool for any witch.
Of course, tarot is not the only form of divination available to us as witches. There are oracle decks, scrying, playing cards, pendulums, and so much more that can be used for divination, but tarot has one big advantage over these other methods: it’s incredibly widespread. Tarot’s popularity means that there are an almost unimaginable number of decks for you to choose from, as well as many, many resources available to help you learn. From the classic Rider Waite tarot to fanciful novelty decks, from books to classes, to YouTube tarot readers, there is no shortage of options and help available to the new tarot reader.
Getting Started
Now, this article could do what every other article does and dive into an explanation of the major arcana cards and minor arcana cards, suits, court cards, etc., but we’re not going to do that. You can find that information in thousands of other places. Instead, I’m going to address exactly what you should do, step-by-step, to begin reading tarot without any of the fluff that just serves as a distraction. The truth is, you don’t need to know anything about the suits, the numbers, the major and minor arcana, numbered cards, or what the heck a celtic cross is; you don’t need to have anything memorized or know how many cards are in a typical tarot deck. None of that helps you actually read your tarot cards. Let’s dive into what will.
1. Choose a deck
Your choice of deck can make or break your learning process. If the deck you choose has confusing imagery or images that are not related to the meaning of the card in an intuitive way, you can find yourself trying and failing to read the cards through rote memorization forever. I have seen so many new tarot readers trapped in an endless cycle of trying to learn the cards while using a deck that is not doing them any favors. A lot of people will recommend you start with a typical Rider-Waite deck, and you can do that; the imagery in those decks does relate to the traditional meanings of the cards. If you just want an easy choice to just check the box and ensure that you’re getting a deck that works well, go ahead and use that deck.
If you want a different kind of deck, I would suggest choosing a deck with people on the cards, not animals, not cat characters, not abstract art. You want actual people on the cards and spend a little while looking at the imagery of the cards and relating it to what you know of the meanings of the cards. If you have to look these up as you’re perusing the deck, that is totally fine. See where you can draw parallels between the imagery on the cards and the meaning of the cards. The more you can look at a specific card and understand the scene that is playing out in the imagery of the card, the easier your readings are going to be and the faster you’re going to get to the point where you can read your cards without having to have a tarot guidebook on hand for every single reading.
I also suggest choosing a deck that you actually like the look of. A lot of people, like I said, suggest the traditional Rider-Waite deck as the standard tarot deck, but if you look at the Rider-Waite deck and you think it’s super ugly, don’t get that one. Just because it’s the recommended default does not mean it’s the right deck for you. Choose a deck that you like, choose a deck with art that you connect with because when you do that, you will enjoy using your deck more, and when you connect with the art in that way, you will be able to learn those intuitive associations between imagery and meaning so much faster.
My final suggestion is not to spend a huge amount of time trying to pick the exact right deck. I get it, you want to make a good choice, you want to ensure that you’re getting a good one, but as long as you follow the guidelines that I’ve laid out here, you are not going to go wrong. Most tarot readers collect a variety of decks over time, and you will likely do the exact same thing. You may stick with your first deck for a couple of years, but eventually you will find other decks that speak to you, and every deck will bring out a different kind of personality in your reading. So don’t place a huge amount of emphasis and stress on making the exact right choice right up front. It’s okay if this doesn’t end up being your favorite deck long term. You can always buy other decks as you find them and experiment with those. You will eventually find a set of cards, or multiple sets of cards, that feel completely natural for you to read. But when you’re first starting out, no deck is going to feel that way, so just buy something that appeals to you, that has good imagery on it, and allow yourself to start reading rather than putting it off until you find the perfect deck.
2. Just start reading
This brings us to the next step in getting started: you have to actually start reading your cards. One of the biggest hurdles that new readers face is the feeling that they have to figure something out before they start their first reading. I get it when you’re first beginning, it’s confusing trying to learn this entirely new skill, but if you spend all of your time reading books and watching other people read tarot, and you never actually pick up the cards yourself, you will never learn to read the cards. The only way to learn is to practice, so break out those new cards and just start doing readings. It’s fine if you have to use a book for every single reading. It’s fine if it doesn’t feel very intuitive. It’s fine if you have a million questions. In fact, when you start reading, your questions will become a lot more productive! When you do a reading, you will find out exactly what questions you need answered, and then you can go and find those answers. If you stay in the waiting phase, hoping that at some point you’ll feel ready enough, you will never find out where those actual gaps in your knowledge are, and you won’t be able to progress into actually being able to read tarot, so throw caution to the wind and just start reading your cards.
It’s fine if you feel like you suck. It’s fine if you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s fine if you finish a reading and you still feel like you have no idea what you just got out of it. You’re learning right now, it is allowed to be messy, it’s allowed to be difficult, and it’s allowed to be fuzzy and unclear at this point. Let yourself be a beginner and just start getting that practice in.
3. Refine your understanding
This step is all about practicing and allowing yourself to learn through whatever means feel best to you. Technically, this process never ends. You will always be learning more about the tarot. But in the early stages of learning, this is when you want to start reading books, taking classes, talking to other readers, playing with different tarot spreads, and doing lots of tarot card reading. Do free tarot readings for your friends. Play around with asking specific questions vs more broad or open ended ones. Pull a daily tarot card. Start a tarot journal. Learn how tarot card meanings can change and take on a different meaning when the particular situation you’re reading about changes. Over time, this is a great way to develop your understanding of the cards, develop your style of reading, and learn how to tap into those intuitive threads of knowledge that the tarot can bring us.
If you want to learn tarot in a way that doesn’t require loads of memorization and want to start reading without having to rely on your books and without having to memorize a million cards, my class, Master The Tarot, is a great starting point. This class is perfect whether you are an absolute beginner or if you’ve been reading for a little while and just want to really get yourself unchained from the guidebook. The class focuses on giving you a framework through which to understand the cards so that you can stop looking up every single card and really learn to understand the stories and messages that are playing out in the cards in front of you.
4. Allow your interpretations to be fluid
Finally, in order to be a good tarot reader, you will eventually need to develop your own style and understanding of the cards. When we get too attached to rigidly holding to tarot guides and other people’s interpretations of the cards, we can disconnect from our own intuition and sense of the cards. Tarot is a skill, yes, and there are absolutely functional things you need to learn about the meanings of the cards. There are so many possible interpretations of the cards for a reason though! They are designed to allow you to tap into your intuitive abilities and pull out your own interpretations to reflect different aspects of your life. Eventually, you will want to be able to connect with your cards and your readings from an intuitive place that allows you to access the psychic information that the cards are channeling to you. The more you allow yourself to lean into this more fluid, intuitive style of reading, the faster you will develop that sense of yourself as a reader and of your own abilities as a diviner.
Reaching this stage takes time, but you can begin developing this sense of yourself as an intuitive reader by simply giving yourself a chance to look at your tarot readings without referencing the guidebooks and the technical meanings of the cards first. Give yourself five to ten minutes to just sit with the reading and see what comes to you. What narratives play out? What do you notice in the cards? What pops into your head when you look at your reading? Allow all of this to come into your mind, maybe take some notes, and then when you feel ready, you can reference the books and compare and contrast with what you felt.
Over time, as you do these readings, you will be able to see how your readings match up with reality. You’ll be able to see how what you have predicted comes to pass in the material world, and you will learn to connect what you are seeing and feeling in the cards with what happens in the real world. For now, just give yourself the opportunity to experience this natural intuition through your tarot cards and let it be fun. Let it be exploratory. This doesn’t need to be high pressure. You don’t need to push yourself super hard to memorize every single card. Just get started, enjoy the process, and know that with time and practice, you will become a confident, accurate tarot reader.
