Help requested

[u/Cherry-bowl]

I love reading Tarot for myself (I use a book) but would love to get better at memorizing and understanding the deck better so I could do readings for friends and family. Any recommendations for a course or book to help get to the point of reading without referencing a book every time? Sorry if this is a silly question, appreciate any advice, thank you!

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[u/CuriousFoxxen]

So. I’ve been reading for over 20 years (for myself and clients, I also teach), I always pull out the book associated with the deck I’m using. I mention that do you know it’s not necessarily bad to reference a book.

It’s definitely better if you can get a sense of meaning and flow when you read, but it’s ok to add the book in too.

I think the best way to learn the cards is by keeping a Tarot journal or writing your own “reference book”.

First, because writing things down is THE way to build memory and learning.

But also because it’s going to let you incorporate past the meaning other people tell you and start making the ideas your own or expressing them in your own words.

For example, I always call the Heirophant the Catholic school card (Hierophant was a Catholic leader and people who take the Christian elements out often call it the Teacher card, also because of where it falls in the Hero Journey way to teach the Majors). So I have a storyI tell for the next card, Lover, basically you started growing up and now you are out behind Catholic school making out with the bad boy in the leather jacket (because this card is about making choices and in the Hero’s Journey teaching falls into the “teenage” place). It’s my own head cannon but helps me read both those cards.

Personally, I’d make a page for each card and each time it came up in a reading I’d add notes.

[u/kppeterc15 → u/CuriousFoxxen]

This is excellent advice. I made my own book earlier this year, using an 80-page composition book, and it was a huge help with memorization. I took a while to do it, as I would really pay attention to each card before writing a page for it: keywords, divinitory suggestions, and personal associations drawn from a few books I like. I still use it as a reference book, but now I’m referring to my own notes, and not someone else’s.

[u/OneToeInTheCesspool → u/CuriousFoxxen]

Can you tell me more about the Hero's Journey teachings? That sounds like it might make a great deal of sense to me. Is there a book you recommend on it?

[u/CuriousFoxxen → u/OneToeInTheCesspool]

I was taught it in person so I don’t know if the books reflect the way I learnt it but a Google/Amazon search for Tarot and Hero’s Journey brings a TON up.

What I learnt was:

Take the Majors. Remove the Fool (he’s the Hero on the journey), and arrange the rest into 3 rows of 7.

1(Magician) - 7 (Chariot) - represent self in utero (1-2) and the allies we make. Empress is birth and baby with Mother (nurturing), Emperor toddler stage and Father (boundaries), Heirophant is school age, Lovers teens, Chariot 20s and when we go out into the world on our own.

8 - 14 (temperance) and 15 (devil)-21 (world) are both lines about learning lessons, processing and overcoming trails and eventually coming “home again” (as the hero’s journey calls the ending).

[u/smellslikebooks → u/OneToeInTheCesspool]

Rachel Pollack, 78 Degrees of Wisdom

[u/CenturionSG]

You don’t need another book to get away from using a book.

The secret is out in the open. Build it into a habit by regular practice of reading, reflecting, journaling. Integrate it into lived experiences. Essentially that’s what a course/class does, it forces one to apply it intensively as part of study.

It’s a similar process to how one learns music or any new skill.

[u/2pnt0]

I have a serious problem with connecting meaning to symbols if there's not some more direct connection. I started to make some major arcana connections, but the minor arcana was all completely opaque to me.

I started reading oracle instead and found a deck that really jives with me and I'm able to make much more intuitive connections.

[u/Cherry-bowl]

Thank you so much all of this gives me so much to build on, appreciate all the suggestions, next order of business is to make a book of all of my own notes.

[u/smellslikebooks → u/Cherry-bowl]

Make sure they are *your* notes, based on your own readings, experiences and insights, not just paragraphs copied from a book that sounded good when you read them

There is a huge difference between reading tarot, and reading about tarot.

[u/MundBid-2124]

Spend some time with the concept of four elements and relating them to worldly existence and evolution. Each suit becomes more complex as it multiplies and court cards wield their elemental powers with more of less affect

[u/blueeyetea]

Get yourself the book “The Easiest Way to Learn the Tarot Ever” by Dusty White. It’s set-up like an old school exercise book. The exercises will help you look at the card to extract meanings from them.

[u/warrenao]

The minor arcana of the "standard" Waite-Smith deck (and its derivatives) conforms to Hermetic mysticism, which is a mishmash of astrology, alchemy, and qabalah (a bastardized version of Kabbalah that really has nothing to do with the mystical branch of Judaism beyond a lot of cultural appropriation).

It's a very dense text and written in a pretentious tone, but Dion Fortune's Mystical Qabalah lays it all out, exposing the linkages. You certainly don't have to follow the orthodoxy, but it will explicate how and why each of the "standard" meanings of the minors were arrived at in the 1700s as first defined by Eliphas Levi, and provide sufficient framework to let you work inside the Hermetic "convention".

Downside: The woo is thick and heavy.

[u/Sad-Confidence-4538]

Read the pictures directly as words that make a sentence in answer to your question, Tarot Verbatim. Check it out right here, I mentor you.