Liz Worth ~ Tarot + Astrology

One of the most common questions I get asked in my tarot classes is, “Should I be pulling a card a day for practice?”

I don’t assign daily draws and sometimes that makes people nervous. The practice has become so common that a lot of newer readers are under the impression that it’s a universal habit.

This isn’t to say I’m against daily draws entirely. I, too, was given the advice to pull one card a day, and did for a good long time when I was first learning tarot. I still have journals that I kept from that period, where I would record my daily card and the thoughts and ideas it inspired within me.

But I also came to see tarot differently as time went on. Which is what happens when you do tarot over a long stretch of time. Your relationship to it changes. You start to see new angles to it. And sometimes your old ways of doing things no longer fit the way they used to.

One of the biggest shifts for me came when I stopped looking at my tarot deck as...

How do you know you’re ready to read tarot for others?

How do you know you’re ready to start charging for your readings?

How do you know you’re ready to accept that invitation to read at your friend’s party, or to give a talk about tarot at your local bookstore?

These are all questions that you will likely have about tarot at some point in your journey. When I started learning tarot, I knew I wanted to be able to read for other people. I didn’t know right away that this was something I wanted to do professionally (that came later), but I did want to be able to give readings that were intuitive, insightful, and accurate.

Knowing where you want to go with tarot, even in the short-term, is important, because it gives you a goal to work towards. When you know what you’re aiming for, you can focus your studies and practices in a way that will build towards that result.

But what often happens along the way is that it can be hard to know when...

Tarot and intuition seem to go hand in hand: At least that’s what a lot of us are told when we start working with the cards.

But finding the synergy between an intuitive hit and following the cards as you’ve learned them can be a steep learning curve as a tarot reader.

Maybe you’ve found yourself wondering that very thing: “When should I go with the basic meaning, and when should I go with my first impression instead?”

Sometimes what sits behind this question is the fear of getting a reading wrong by going too off track with your interpretation.

I don’t think there’s a perfect answer or pat solution to this: Sometimes, you just have to be willing to go out on a limb with your interpretation to see if it resonates. Practice, experimentation, and patience go a long way to building your relationship with the cards.

Of course, what works for me may be different for someone else – intuition has its own ways of manifesting within each of us....

One of my most unpopular tarot opinions is that intuition is not enough to be a tarot reader.

I know that goes against so much of the common advice out there when it comes to tarot reading:

“Just trust in the messages that come to you.”
“Go with your first impression.”  
“Listen to your instincts.”

And yes, self-trust is an important component of being a tarot reader: You need to be able to get to a point where you feel confident enough to rely on your abilities as a card reader.

But intuition alone isn’t the only thing tarot readers need to develop if they want to read for others. Whether you are working with paid querents or working up to that by doing practice readings on friends and acquaintances, there are a lot of other soft skills that can make or break the experience for you and your querents.

Here are three essential soft skills to develop as a tarot reader (alongside your intuition, of course):

Listening: Listening seems...

Do you feel like your tarot readings are “chunky,” moving from one card to another rather than synthesizing the full story? 

If you do, you’re not alone: It’s a common thing to get stuck on. There is a learning curve to tarot, and this is one of the bends that can take some time to move through.

The way a lot of us learn tarot is so focused on one card at a time. We learn that this card means this, that card means that. And when it comes time to put together a reading, we pull out a series of cards and try to add them together, only to realize our readings feel like they’re missing something. 

How do you start to summarize what’s in front of you?

How do you start to see the bigger picture of your tarot readings?

How do you stop sounding clunky in your delivery, and start articulating your readings in a way that sounds seamless and unique? 

Part of it starts with a willingness to try: To challenge yourself to push your readings to...

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...

Have you ever had a really good tarot reading?

I’m assuming that since you’re reading my tarot blog, you’ve probably had some kind of tarot reading before – either from another reader, or one you did for yourself.

If you’ve received a reading from someone else before and you loved it, what was it that made it so good?

I’ve had many readings over the years, some better than others.

Some of those readings have been predictive. Some of them were oriented to the present.

Some were introspective and decision based. Others channeled messages from Spirit.

It’s not the approach alone that makes for a good reading, though. Interesting predictions can be exciting to hear. Accuracy and resonance counts for something, too.

But in my experience, what good readings have in common with each other is specificity.

A good reading should feel personal to the querent. It should hit on some kind of specific truth, or a personal dream or desire that is aching to...

In my previous post, I talked about working with questions in tarot, and the importance of understanding your intention and focus when posing questions.

But what do you when you are reading tarot for someone who doesn’t have a question?

Or, what if you just want to perform a reading for yourself, but you’re not sure what you want to know? I think every tarot reader can relate to feeling called to sit with your cards without knowing why.

The idea of pulling a few cards “just to see what comes up” is a beautiful one – until it comes time to interpret those cards. That’s when things can start to feel murky.

You might have already heard me say that tarot cards can mean anything, everything, and nothing at all.

Questions help to give shape and context to what we see in those cards. A certain symbol might have a lot of weight in a love reading but might not even be considered in a career context.

Questions essentially give your cards a job to do once...

You might have noticed that I’ve started a new online tarot community, Tarot Study Hall, to build connection and conversation around the art of tarot reading.

One of the things I’m encouraging Study Hall members to do is set goals for their tarot practices.

But why? What’s the point?

It feels so linear to set a goal: You see where you want to be in the future, and you start working towards it.

Goal setting makes sense in so many areas of our lives. People set goals for their careers, their finances, their health, and more.

But when it comes to goal setting and tarot, it can feel counter to what tarot is all about: Why not just let your intuition guide you on your journey? Why not just feel it out intuitively and organically?

Letting inspiration guide you can certainly be part of the tarot journey. But structure can help a lot, too. Especially if you’re feeling overwhelmed by how much there is to learn about tarot, or you’ve been studying for a while...

A common learning curve that tarot readers share is figuring out how to synthesize the information in their readings.

So many of us learn how to read tarot card by card. A popular piece of advice is to pull a card a day as a way to study each card organically. This can be a useful practice, and one that breaks down what can be an overwhelming 78-card deck into bite-sized actions.

But where card-a-day practitioners end up getting stuck is when they want to transition into bigger readings. That’s where they start to feel unsure about how to combine cards, or find the patterns between them.

Similarly, when we’re relying on guidebooks to build our interpretations, multi-card spreads can end up feeling clunky as we work through them one card at a time.

This can also happen when we’re not sure how many details to work into a reading. Confusing complexity for potency in tarot reading can become a huge block for readers.

You don’t need to layer your readings with a...