How to Read Tarot Cards

Tarot cards are a popular, cultural symbol of magic, the occult, and secret knowledge. In fact the very popularity of tarot cards as a symbol has obscured their meaning and their purpose. So let's begin with the basics; what tarot cards are, and how you're supposed to use them in order to divine the answers to questions.

You read that right. Tarot cards divine the answers to questions; they do not tell the future, read your fate, or any other such pseudo-mystical nonsense. This is a major misconception that you should do away with right now. If you use tarot cards believing that they'll give you very specific and very detailed answers about your future and that your future is set in stone, don't bother reading any further. If you can assimilate this purpose into your world view, then the next steps will likely help you become a better reader of tarot.

Each individual tarot card should be thought of like a letter of the alphabet. By itself it has a sound and a meaning. Your first step to learning tarot should be to read up on what each card means by itself if it stands alone. This article isn't about what each one of the 50+ cards means alone; that sort of memorization can be learned on your own. Once you've learned the meanings of all the stand alone tarot cards you've essentially mastered the alphabet, and you now know their sounds and meanings. That isn't reading though... reading is when you're able to put all of those sounds together and to make sense of what you're seeing. This is where we move onto the important concept of tarot card spreads.

If you've ever seen a movie where a fortune teller is laying down tarot cards in a certain pattern then you've seen a tarot card spread. If a tarot card is a letter of the alphabet then you can think of a tarot card spread as a word. Each letter has a meaning when it's alone, but when it's made a part of a word it's that letter's relationship to all of the other letters that determine it's meaning. This is also true of a tarot card spread. And just like how the sound of a letter might change when it's placed in a certain relationship to other letters, so too might the meaning of a tarot card change depending on where it's located and what it's near.

Here's an example to make sense of the above paragraph. Let's say that you want to do a simple, 3-card spread. You will shuffle your tarot cards and concentrate on your question (make sure that it's as specific a question as you can think of... such as what will happen if I decide to propose to my girlfriend?). When you feel it's time to stop shuffling you should stop, and then lay out three cards moving from left to right. These cards represent the past, the present and the future; or in this case before the decision, the decision, and the results of the decision. Let's say your cards are the two of swords, the Tower, and Strength. A simple interpretation would be that the two represents your point of decision about proposing. The Tower, as a symbol of change, represents everything tumbling down. It could mean that whether she says yes or no your life will undergo drastic changes that will rock you to your foundations. Strength represents the fact that you will overcome the changes of the Tower and come out better than you were before you proposed.

Now the cards in the above example have the meanings that they do partially because of the cards themselves, and partially because of where they sit in the spread. If those three cards were switched around into different locations, such as Strength, the two of swords, and the Tower the interpretation would have been that you were strong, you made a decision, and the decision will change your life drastically and tear you apart to your foundations. The meaning of the reading changes depending on where the cards are placed.

At this point all it takes is practice to read tarot well. It's also best if you read for other people, but when you do don't ask them to tell you their question. Simply let them shuffle the cards and tell them to concentrate on a question. Then take the cards from them and lay out your spread. Go from the beginning of the spread to the end of the spread and interpret the cards in order out loud for the person asking the question. After the reading is done you may ask them to tell you their question, and you will be able to see how accurate your reading was. It goes without saying that the better you've memorized the meanings of the cards and the better you've memorized what the positions in the spread mean the better a reader you'll end up being.

As a last note, a tarot reader is only as good as their tools. There are dozens of bogus or questionable tarot decks out there, from the so-called Witch's Tarot (which appeared in a James Bond movie) to the Necronomicon tarot (based off of a series of fictional stories by H.P. Lovecraft). Before you use a tarot deck, check its historical validity just like you would a purebreed dog. The Waite deck is a common tarot card deck used for learning, and the Thoth deck was designed by Aleister Crowley which gives it an impeccable, mystical pedigree.