My Tarot Beginnings

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 sliding 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 magical 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 alongside 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 its 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 around here, on 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. 

An interview with a tarot reader...

One of my clients interviewed me for an article she was writing about tarot and therapy.  And here it is! 

I was very pleased to be included in such clever company... 

And in case you only want to read the bit about me (but the other stuff is super interesting too!) or can't open the link,  here is her part about our discussions:-

Liat Silberman, MA, was first introduced to the tarot as a teenager. She was visiting her grandmother, a rummy player. “I shuffled like a card shark,” Silberman recalls. One of her grandmother’s friends told her, “‘You have an affinity for the cards; you should learn tarot.’ And what teenage girl doesn’t want magic powers?” Silberman laughs.

So Silberman bought a copy of Rachel Pollack’s 1980 classic 78 Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness (Weiser Books), and a deck of tarot cards. She studied independently for years, learning that “the interplay between the cards is as important as the cards themselves. You look at what’s present and what’s absent, and how the cards talk to each other.”

Meanwhile, Silberman became a psychotherapist. She worked in both England and her native Australia before moving to the U.S. with her family in 2002; they returned to Sydney in 2016. She has read tarot cards professionally on a full-time basis since 2003. (Full disclosure: Silberman is my tarot card reader.)

Unlike Goldberg and Dr. Rosengarten, Silberman never incorporated tarot cards into her psychotherapy practice, possibly because her readings are often predictive. That said, “I have done therapy sessions where I’ve thought, ‘I really wish I could pull out the cards!’” she admits. “I’ve always said, and I really feel, that a good tarot session can cut through six months of therapy.”

Silberman doesn’t think her abilities are particularly unusual. She likens her aptitude to musical talent, noting that while some people are gifted musicians and others have tin ears, “most people can carry a tune.” Similarly, “I think most people have some kind of psychic ability. I think I’m intuitive, and I use the cards to amplify that.” More importantly, she believes these abilities can be developed: “You can practice your intuition.”

“I think people are searching for stuff in their lives, generally speaking,” Silberman notes. “Some people find it in church or by being busy, and some people find it in a quiet hour… I 100 percent believe ‘one river, many wells.’ I don’t believe that one well is better, I think one well is more accessible to one person than another. That’s how I feel about psychic things—whatever enriches and nourishes you is a good thing.”

What are the odds?

For those more mathematically inclined than me (99.8% of the population) the fact that I use 2 packs when I give a reading raises the question - what are the odds of getting the same card again?

The first time you have a 1/78 chance of any single card appearing. But if you open a second pack, you have already used your 1/78 chance. To get that card again, it’s 1/78 x 1/78 or a 1 in 6,084 chance. So theoretically, your chances of getting a repeat card are quite low. I said this to a client recently, and then gave the caveat that I would say I would get a repeat card in a reading maybe one in every 10 readings, which is way higher than statistically likely. So we deal her cards, and after her second shuffle, not only one but two cards repeat. I told her that was a one in thirty six thousand chance, but having done it on the calculator twice now, I see it’s a one in 474,552 chance. (I told you I wasn’t mathematically inclined) Weird odds.

I can faithfully promise that I haven’t done 400,000 readings. In fact, I can swear that I haven’t done 200,000. But I have frequently (one in every 20? Now I’ll have to keep count!) had 2 cards repeat. This just goes to show, there’s more than face value math happening here. But I knew that anyway, this just impresses the math skeptics amongst us.

The same client asked if there were tarot books I recommend. I’ve read so many over the years, and the various books gave different support – sometimes you want to know more about one specific card, sometimes about how suites and numbers interact, but an excellent all round beginners (and experienced) practitioners book has to be Rachel Pollack’s Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot which has beautifully detailed explanations for every card.