How to Read Tarot Intuitively
Reading tarot cards can be hard. Memorizing all the cards can be even harder. It can make you second guess yourself, make you wonder if you will ever get all the meanings memorized.. No wonder it’s not more common.. this all sounds like hard work. But it doesn’t have to be. You can learn to read tarot cards using your intuition. No, you don’t have to be psychic to have intuition. Everyone has it.. it’s that gut feeling you get. You just have to channel it and listen to it. Let your intuition guide you when you read each card. Below are my tips on how hone in your intuition to help you read tarot.
1. Put down the books
You don’t need them. All you need is your tarot deck, yourself, a quiet place and the person you’re doing the reading for. The more that you use the books, the more your stifle your intuition and reading tarot becomes more like school, more like something that you don’t want to do for fun.
Related Post: How to Choose Your First Tarot Deck
2. Open yourself up
In order to hear your intuition, you need to be quiet. Being quiet can be hard, but you only need to clear your mind and set your intention to ‘go with your gut’. Sit quietly and take a few deep breaths, let the day’s stresses flow out of you and then begin your reading. You will be in a much better place to read the cards if you let go of expectations as well. A short grounding meditation can help here, or even saying a small prayer will sometimes put you in the right mindset.
3. Only learn the basics
By the basics I mean the meanings of the numbers and the meanings of the suits or elements. You don’t need to learn each card, you will be able to know what each card means with that little bit of guidance and your intuition. This type of reading is similar to the way that someone would learn a Marseille Tarot deck, which doesn’t have scenic images on the minor arcana cards. But that doesn’t mean that this method is any less helpful for cards that do have imagery on them.
4. Pull a card a day
Just one.. pulling just one card a day will help you get a feel for tuning into your intuition. Whether it’s the last thing at night (what do I need to know for tomorrow?) or first thing in the morning (what do I need to know for today?) pulling only one card will help you focus on the card and have less stress about the meaning your intuition guides you to. Make sure that you write down your initial thoughts and then go back to the card at the end of the day and note how you saw the energy of the card show up. Keeping a tarot journal can help here.
Related Post: Digital Tarot Journal page Templates
5. Journal about it
That’s right, journal about the card. Write down the meaning that you intuitively read, the symbolism of the number and the symbolism of the element or suit. How does this affect what is going on in your life right now? Why would you pull this card? Writing this down not only helps you go into further detail, it may lead you to deeper meanings. Sometimes I find that I can get lost in though while writing out my reading and then look down only to realize that I’ve written a few pages.
6. Tell the story on the card
Each card tells it’s own story. Everyone’s story is different, even if they’re looking at the same picture because their life experiences have ben different. Just because the story that you see on the card isn’t like everyone else’s doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. It means that you are relating it to present circumstances and your intuition is guiding you to an answer that will be helpful to you or your client.
To read the story of the card, some things you can look at are:
Face- Do they look to be happy? Are they smiling? Are they turned away from you?
Posture- What way is the card facing, to the right or left? Is their back to something? Does their posture look scared, or open and inviting?
Scene- What is going on around the person? Describe the scene in a card as if you were describing a scene in a play to a blind person. What is going on?
Each of these are ways that you can let your intuition guide you. There may be times when you may notice something that you’ve never noticed on the card before, but all of a sudden, it’s super important to your current situation. That’s your intuition guiding you.
7. Look for symbols
When the cards are laid out in front of you, look at all of the cards and see what stands out to you. Does the redness of a hat stand out or does a small object on the bottom of another card stand out the most? Create a link between these symbols and objects. These are what are screaming at you from your intuition that mean something in this reading.
For example: The red feather in The Fools hat is also in The Sun card. If you pulled both during a reading, you may want to look into the meaning of a red feather (vitality).
I hope that these 7 tips are able to help you learn to read tarot without feeling stressed out that you need to learn the 5 page description of the card that someone else wrote. Write your own definition on what the card means to you.