Intro to Tarot: Gearing up for a reading

Editor’s Note: Regular participants in this page are familiar with the contributions of Sarah Taylor. For years I’ve been wanting to run a feature on tarot, and when I found out that in addition to being an excellent writer, Sarah is a professional card reader, I asked her to step up — and she did. This is her second article, which looks at organizing the symbols. Future editions will cover how to work with cards on your own, how to choose a deck and specific cards. We will take direction from readers who comment, so please let us know what you think. You can visit Sarah’s website at this link. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

Now that we have been introduced to tarot by way of its use of symbols, we are going to look at how we organise those symbols to form a coherent picture — namely, a tarot reading. But first, let’s recap and expand on what we already know so that we have a solid foundation of understanding.

Not all decks follow these rules, but for our purposes we are working with a standard deck of 78 cards comprising 56 minor arcana and 22 major arcana: two distinct decks within a larger deck.

The minor arcana resemble playing cards and are divided into four suits, each with a particular quality:

Cups (hearts) — emotions
Coins (pentacles, diamonds) — tangible objects, possessions
Swords (spades) — thoughts, mental processes
Wands (rods, clubs) — creativity, spirit, enterprise

There is also an extra court card, often a Knight, in addition to the King, Queen and Page/Jack. (Both suits and court cards differ between decks. For example, in my Thoth tarot deck (also called the Crowley deck) the King and Page are replaced by Knight and Princess, respectively; and in the Xultun tarot deck, coins are jades.) Collectively, the minor arcana represent the people, places and things in a tarot reading. They tend to represent mundane situations, events and encounters.

The major arcana, on the other hand, are the repository of archetypal content: the themes underlying the life of the querent (the person to whom the reading is being given) and the qualities that he or she embodies, both consciously and unconsciously. The minor arcana are to the major arcana what day-to-day life is to the soul: they demonstrate how the inner world is manifested in the outer, physical world.

We now have an idea of what the cards are, and what they represent. But how do we put them together in a way that is meaningful and useful? What makes for an effective reading?

Step one: attitude.

My first tarot instructor, a Jungian analyst, told me that there were two things guaranteed to screw up a tarot reading: doubt and awe.

Doubt creeps in when we question our ability to get things right. Am I shuffling my cards correctly? Am I laying them out in the right way? What if I don’t understand what I’m seeing? We may also doubt the higher organising power behind the cards and its capacity to communicate correctly and with integrity. Is it wise and well-intentioned? Or is it a trickster? Does it really know what it’s doing?

Flip that coin over and we have awe: that no-WAY!-bloody-hell-I-don’t-beLIEVE-it! moment that sends us spinning off into raptures about how amazing it all is… until we realise that we’re not there with the reading anymore. Because that is really what tarot is about: being present. Just you and the cards, communing with the hidden wisdom within. Doubt and awe are steps of separation in that process, the “static on the line” that I referred to in my first article. We need to stay centred, focused, receptive and humble. Not humble in the “I’m not worthy” sense, but rather in the sense of creating a space where it is possible for ego to take a back seat. We are not the authors of the reading; we are its interpreters, and it is our job to make sure that the message comes across as clearly and as close to the intent of its source as possible. So a truly helpful attitude would be one of humility and openness.

Step two to an effective reading: choosing a layout, or spread.

There are as many layouts as there are ways to combine 78 cards. (We will be exploring these in more depth in a later article.) That really is it at its essence. However, some spreads offer clearer channels of communication because, like some decks, they are tried and tested, and that engenders confidence in a reader that the reading will go well. It is the attitude of the reader towards the layout that affects the outcome, not the layout itself, and so the choice of layout is for the benefit of the reader rather than for the sender of the message. Put another way: a map might show many routes to a destination, but it is easier to select the one that we know gets us there, whether it has been recommended by a reliable source or because we know from personal experience. The destination, no matter what method we choose to reach it, remains unchanged. It just makes sense to take the path of least resistance.

However, it also helps to exercise some common sense. If we want a quick answer to a relatively simple question, we go for an equally simple spread — one, maybe two cards. If we’re looking for a response with more depth and more angles of enquiry, it would be better accommodated by a more complex spread. One of the most popular of the more complex layouts is called a ten-card Celtic Cross. It is a particular favourite of mine because it draws on multiple viewpoints to give a fuller picture of what is going on; and it places significant emphasis on the underlying psychological processes, or the unconscious.

Quantity doesn’t always mean quality, though. The clarity offered by a single card can be so striking that it cuts through a querent’s defences enough to help them sit up and take notice. Multiple card readings can muffle a message that prefers its delivery to be swift and have impact. They also call for more discipline and skill on our part as readers: we need to be sensitive to the many threads of a narrative that are asking to be woven together. There are numerous ways to weave that narrative, not all of them of equal value. Sometimes we get sackcloth, sometimes silk.

Many experienced tarot readers also warn against doing multiple readings about the same thing in quick succession — a trap that I suspect many of us fall into when we don’t get the answers we want. (And I’m willing to bet good, hard cash that the majority of these multiple readings have relationships as their focus.)

The first reason for this is that the cards will always give us what we need first time. Second-guessing doesn’t honour this principle. The second reason comes from personal experience: when we start to use readings to achieve the outcome we want, the cards play silly buggers with us in return.

This is not because the core message has been tampered with; remember, the destination always stays the same. It is because our needs and desires create that static on the line to the point where it influences the cards we draw. They are no longer a clear channel: they reflect our confusion. We invoke the trickster archetype. So when we find ourselves on that second, third or fourth Celtic Cross, or laying out additional cards to modify or nullify a card that we don’t particularly like, we must prepare ourselves for a descent into chaos. The cards are speaking and they’re saying, “Enough already!”

Once we have contended with any feelings of doubt and awe, checked our egos at the door, selected the layout that best addresses the subject matter — and promised ourselves that we will accept whatever we are dealt — then we are ready to receive the cards’ messages, feel into their deeper meanings and weave the stories that they are telling us about ourselves and each other.

And this is where the mystery takes over, because, unlike the preparation, a reading itself cannot fully be taught (though we will be endeavouring to give you the basic tools here). The best thing to do is to throw ourselves in at the deep end and simply begin. Something takes over, if we let it. All we need do is quieten ourselves, listen and remember: doubt and awe. Keep these in mind, and we’re halfway there.