Category: Tarot lessons

A Few Tips Before You Start Reading Tarot Cards

An online lesson with a few tips a reader should know about doing Tarot readings.

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Here are a few little tips you should know about reading Tarot Cards that I cover in my book, “Just the Tarot, by Daniel Adair.”  (Available on Amazon.com for less than the price of a bagel at your favorite coffee shop. Just saying.)

LOOK FOR LARGE NUMBERS OF THE SAME SUIT.  The Tarot basically divides our world into four different elements that match the suits of the Minor Arcana.  Wands equal ideas. Cups equal emotions. Swords equal personal power. Pentacles equal money and possessions.

So, if you’re doing a reading and you see that the majority of the cards are pentacles, you can assume that money and possessions are a very dominant part of the questioners life right now.  A majority of wands might indicate someone who is an intellectual or is exploring a lot of new ideas. Cups would show that this is a very emotional time in the questioners life. Swords would show that a quest for power and position or power struggles are very present in the questioners life.


COMBINING THE SUITS – You can also find some clues in combinations of the suits.  Suppose the reading has a majority of swords and cups: you might reasonably assume that there are some power struggles going on in the person’s romantic or emotional life.
A combination of wands and cups might indicate a person who takes a sort of
intellectual approach to romance.  Pentacles and cups could show a person who pairs romance and materialism, like a trophy wife or husband.  Pentacles and swords can show power struggles in the workplace, and so on.

REVERSED VERSUS UPRIGHT CARDS – If a majority of the cards are reversed you can assume that there is a lot going on in the questioners life that she isn’t dealing with on a conscious level.  Look for denial, repression or factors that are hidden from the questioner. If the majority of the cards are upright you can assume that the questioner is fairly aware of what’s going on in his or her life and is dealing with it on a conscious level.

NUMBERS, NUMBERS, NUMBERS – There are schools of thought on the Tarot that assign meaning to the cards based on their numerological ranking.  I’m not personally a big fan of numerology so I’m not going to mess with it here. If you’re curious or numerology floats your boat you can look it up on the internet.

MAJOR VERSUS MINOR – As I’ve said in previous posts, ALWAYS pay close attention to any cards from the Major Arcana.  The Minor Arcana tend to show the little crap that we all put up with every day. The Major Arcana show life changing forces in the questioners reading.  There’s even a method that some readers use where they REMOVE all of the Minor Arcana cards prior to the reading so that they concentrate on the major forces.

On to the next lesson!

“Just the Tarot,” by Dan Adair – A kindle ebook available on Amazon.

How to Shuffle Tarot Cards

A lesson in how to shuffle Tarot cards prior to doing a reading.

“Just the Tarot,” by Dan Adair – available on Amazon

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HOW TO SHUFFLE TAROT CARDS?

In a word, “DON’T!!!!!!!!!”

I talk about this in my book, “Just the Tarot,” and it’s kind of a sore point with me.  You shuffle a deck of cards to make them as random and disorganized as possible. To say the least that is NOT we want when we’re putting together a reading.  We want the specific cards that apply to that question at that point in time. Never, ever shuffle Tarot cards like you were about to play poker.

Another method of selecting cards that gets my hackles up is when the reader pulls the cards out of the deck based on her feelings of what cards are appropriate.  I actually had that done for my very first Tarot reading. The reader was a beautiful, young hippie with long, black hair who dressed in silk sarongs and wore oval sunglasses constantly, even indoors.  Suzanne advertised herself as a witch and would intimate that she had deep psychic powers that she’d been born with and that her incredible sensitivity had spawned a deeply troubled childhood. No mere mortal, after all, could see what she could see.

I sat there, totally enchanted as she she spread the deck, face up, before her and selected the cards for my reading.  Hell, I was 14 years old and I’d have been enchanted if she was peeling a potato. Did I mention she was beautiful?

I really don’t remember the reading and can’t tell you whether it was accurate or not.   What I can tell you at this point is that was NOT a Tarot reading. When a reader selects cards based on her psychic impressions what you’re getting is a psychic reading, not a Tarot reading.  It may be incredibly accurate depending upon the psychic but it is NOT a Tarot reading.

You see, the magic is in the cards, not in the reader.

After all of these years of reading cards here’s what I recommend:  make a mess. Make a BIG mess. Clear a space on a table or a clean floor that’s about 3 feet by 3 feet.  Put the deck of cards in front of the questioner and have him or her spread the cards out – FACE DOWN – in a rotating circle.  Keep spreading the cards until they’re all loose and then keep them flowing in that pile, around and around, until they, “feel,” right or complete to the questioner.  Then have him or her reassemble the cards into a deck and take it from them. Lay out the reading you’ve chosen using the top card as the first card, the next card as the second, and so on.  Once you have the cards in the layout turn them over and begin the reading.

There’s some method in that madness and it’s based on my theory of how the cards work.  You can view every human as an energy field rather than just a body or a mind. We are constantly putting out energy based upon how we feel, what we’re thinking, and what we’re experiencing.  And that energy is magnetic. It draws similar energies to it. It’s a truism, for instance, that negative energy will draw negative experiences and positive will draw positive.

Think of each Tarot card as its own little energy field.  Some of them are positive, some of them are negative, and some of them are in between.  As you handle the cards your energy field magnetizes the cards that are in synch with what you’re going through at that moment and what the probable outcomes are based on your energy pattern.

Soooooo . . . the more that the questioner handles the cards the more probable you are to get an accurate reading.  Don’t put any time limit on how long the cards are touched and moved around. Let them take as long as they like and you vastly improve the probability of an accurate reading.

On to the next lesson!