I've had a few new clients lately who have asked me how I got into tarot.
So when I was a young teen, I would play cards with my grandmother, and after a bit, I could shuffle like a card shark, the cards just flipping through my fingers. One of her friends said I had an affinity for the cards and should learn tarot.
And what teenage girl doesn't want to have magic insight? So I went off and bought the first deck I could find - a Rider Waite Smith pack, and with the little paper booklet, started looking at the cards. It felt overwhelming, but it's really only 78 cards and after a while they became more familiar.
I stumbled across - The 78 degrees of Wisdom, by Rachel Pollack. She has such a deep and intuitive understanding of the tarot, and I learnt a lot from her! I was very sad to hear of her passing in 2023.
I bought other books and many other decks, but really it was Rachel's understanding that underpinned my own knowledge of the tarot.
I soon realized that it was one thing to have a deep understanding of one card, but it was another entirely to see it along side other cards - like knowing one musical note, and then hearing an orchestra, each new note bringing a different depth to the sound. So it's not enough to know the 78 cards, it's seeing how they lie next to each other, how many of each suit, what suit is missing, all major arcana, or all minor cards, each has a different meaning depending on it's context within the reading.
And once I understood that, my readings really took off. I became far more accurate, far more insightful.
I've been reading cards for decades now (this blog was started in 2009 and I was an experienced reader then!) And I always start with the Celtic Cross, which is a layout that just speaks to me. And having seen thousands of them over the years, I still get unfamiliar variations which jolt me, or see the same cards coming to regular clients, even with years between readings. One client always drew the Queen of Wands for herself, and in all our readings together, that Queen always appeared.
So if you want to explore the cards more, I recommend this blog, as well as Rachel's book, and wish you a grand adventure. One caveat - I can never read for myself. I shuffle and look for me and all I get is mud. So if you find you can't read for yourself, don't worry. It's like looking in the mirror. You need a bit of distance to get clarity, and it's very hard to look at ourselves that clearly.
