What is the most important thing to pay attention to in a tarot reading?

When people talk about learning tarot, the word “overwhelming” commonly comes up.

Maybe you have sat with one or more of these questions over time:

• “I can’t seem to memorize all of the card meanings.”
• “I don’t know if I’m supposed to go with the card meaning, or my intuition, or the imagery when I’m performing a reading.”
• “How do I know if a card meaning is getting in the way of my own intuitive impressions?”
• “Should I be going off the artwork, or the numerology, or the keywords?”
• “Does it matter if a card fell out when I was shuffling?”
• “I know there are a lot of layers to every card. How am I supposed to know which layer relates to my reading?”
• “Do I have to pay attention to the symbols and colours in the cards? If so, which ones are most important and why?”

One of the things I’ve realized is that there is a difference between what we think we need to be focusing on in tarot, versus what will actually move your tarot practice forward.

It’s so easy to get lost in the weeds when it comes to reading tarot. There is an overwhelming amount of advice out there, much of contradictory.

“Just listen to your intuition!” Some sources say, as though that’s always easy. (It’s not – it is an ongoing practice unto itself.)

“Stick to the meanings!” Others recommend.

It’s no wonder that a lot of people give up on tarot prematurely: It can feel like you’re going around and around in circles just looking for a straightforward piece of advice.

I think it’s important to acknowledge that there is no one way to learn tarot, and no one way – or right way – to read it. That’s one piece of the puzzle that I think is often missing.

Sometimes I think this happens unintentionally. People learn tarot in ways that might be positioned as the “true” way, or traditional way, and so perpetuate those same ideas when they hand down their own knowledge.

But in reality tarot is an ever-evolving tool that, in my experience at least, can feel easier to access when you take away the pressure of established tarot rules and taboos and allow the cards themselves to show you the way.

What might that look like in real-time? Here are a few things I recommend focusing on when you’re stuck in tarot overwhelm:

• Take your time to look at the card’s images. And I mean really look at them. So often, we can get caught up in the moment of a reading and feel pressured to perform immediately as soon as the cards are flipped over. And when that happens, we can default into static card meanings that might not always fit the question. Take your time to see what your cards are doing: What are the figures showing you? Let your reading start with your sight, rather than your memory.
• Stay grounded in the context and questions: What is the spread position you’re working with? What is the question? Get clear about what you’re really trying to answer first, and work from there. If you try to piece together a reading from meanings alone, it can sometimes feel like you’re working backwards, trying to get the question to fit the meaning. The more you stay true to the question at hand, the more your readings will resonate.
• Look at more than one card at a time. There can be a time and place to pull just one card – this isn’t a hard and fast rule for me across the board. But in general, I find that we get more information from a reading when there are at least a few cards on the table.
  
  This can be especially helpful to try if you consistently get stuck, or get lost in the weeds of tarot’s symbolism. Instead of zero-ing in on one little detail, zoom out and see a bigger picture with multiple cards.

These are just a few quick tips to build new pathways as a tarot reader, especially if you’re at a point where what you’re doing isn’t working.

I breakdown these steps in my Tarot Gateways training, which is a step-by-step framework that is available inside my new community, Tarot Study Hall. Everyone who joins gets immediate access to this training that is designed to help you connect with tarot’s visual cues so that you can give specific, unique tarot readings that resonate.

Doors to Tarot Study Hall are opening up again soon – this Friday, May 5. I’ll be taking on a limited number of new members. If you’d like to be notified when spots become available, join the waitlist here.

Until next time,

~ Liz