What is Intuitive Tarot Reading?

If you look online, you’ll see that there are multiple listings, websites, facebook pages, shops and a plethora of others offering tarot and oracle card readings and workshops on how to do them. And each one of these has a slightly different way of doing it. So I would like to discuss intuitive tarot reading and the way that I both do and teach this practice. 

When beginning to learn the tarot, one of the things that a lot of people look at is the book definitions and meanings of the cards. Some books and teachers even go into teaching meanings of the different suits, the numbers and their meanings in numerology, history of the cards, and the list goes on. For many beginners, just the book definition part is extremely daunting. Unfortunately, this has led many people to say “I can’t do tarot, its too much to remember”. But with Intuitive tarot reading, the card meanings are more like basic guidelines, and the majority of the reading is done with intuition and spirit, and using the cards as more of a trigger for your psyche. For me, personally, I was “taught” to read tarot by having the book taken from my deck as soon as I opened it and hidden from me for a year until I learned to do it without the book first.  I don’t teach quite that way myself, but I do have minimal focus on prescribed meanings. As I said, I use the cards as triggers for the psyche and what they mean to me in the context of the reading at hand. So, though the cards all have general meanings, the interpretation will vary from one reading to the next. If I were to do a reading for a client and pull, for example, the six of pentacles it could mean that the client is going to be receiving some help or charity, or that they need to reach out to people for that help. But my next client could have that card appear and it mean that they are needing to give more or that they are giving too much. So though they have the same general theme, its not necessarily the same “meaning” in all readings. Another part of intuitive reading and letting the cards speak to you as the reader, is determining what the cards mean to you even if it’s not what is traditionally associated. Let the pictures speak to you. For example, the 7 of swords is, by many readers, considered a card of defeat or accepting losses. For me, however, this card is most often one of winning. The card traditionally shows the image of a man walking away from two swords stuck in (or lying on) the ground behind him and carrying the rest of the swords away. But for me, what I see in this card is he still has 5 swords. So in many cases, when this card comes up in a reading for me, its a sign of potential victory for the client. Or practicing toward the victory. The key here is finding out what the cards and images bring to your mind and let the psyche and “spirit” fill in the rest. The psyche and intuition is where the more detailed message then comes from. There are a ton of “readers” online who charge standard prices or higher, yet the result of the reading is almost direct from the book or a vague overview of card meanings that often fail to give a real individual message. I once paid for a reading where the “reader” literally just sent screenshots of the meaning of the cards from the book and no interpretation or how it applied to me and my question. If that’s all someone wants in a reading, as the phrase goes, “there’s an app for that”. And most of those apps are free. Paying clients need more than that. They deserve more. Why charge someone for something that they can do on google for free? It’s just plain rude. 

But the biggest problem with that way of doing readings, is that when someone has a question that is important enough they want to pay a reader for guidance, they are already emotionally invested and can easily read those book definitions to mean whatever they hope or fear the answer already is. If they’re asking about their future and the reader pulls the 2 of cups and just says that it means “Passion, couple, a toast, union”, they may get excited thinking they’re going to get married when, in actuality, the “union” coming is a company merger at work that will impact their life. So we have to do more than just “by the book”. And that includes using intuition and psychic ability to get a more clear and individual message for the client. This is part of what I do when reading and what I try to help others do when teaching. When I teach tarot reading, I give brief descriptions or generalized meanings to the cards, and have the student keep track of what they mean to them along with a walk through of opening up to receiving the actual messages. That way, though there is still the general idea of what the cards may mean, they are able to determine what it means to them as the reader, and how to get a more specific message for whoever they are reading for. And despite what people try to claim, “psychic ability” is something all of us are capable of. There are many forms and many people who are better at some forms than others, but everyone has the ability. And how “good” or adept one becomes is simply a matter of practice and finding what works for them. Which is what I do and encourage others to try as well. And I love what I do.  So, that’s all I have for now. See you soon.