I’m a card snob…

This pack ‘Tarot Vintage’ is a version of the Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Coleman Smith deck. It cost me 4.93€ 

The card stock is surprisingly good quality and the printing clear and colourful, the design on the back of the cards not so much so. The glazed finish is a bit difficult to manipulate at first and the fake ageing looks like tea stains , but all in all not bad for under a fiver,

So, how does it compare to the Marseilles pack?…

Been trying out the pack for an hour or so, getting nowhere fast doesn’t have the same feel as the Marseilles which has slightly longer and thinner cards but it’s fresh out of the box and I have found it generally takes time to tune in to a new pack. I will have to persevere and get back to you…..at the moment it’s really not gelling

So, how do I know it’s not working? I spread the cards and there must be something there right? Well yes and no, apart from being really obtuse and saying it doesn’t ‘feel’ right,the best way of explaining it is to imagine a storyboard or a cartoon …now cut it up and mix up all the frames …no story ,the images are all there but it doesn’t make sense.

Which leads to the next question, how can a beginner learn if all new cards need ‘tuning how should they do it?

Respect the cards, keep them in a special bag, buy one or preferably make it yourself
I learnt to also wrap them in a piece of black silk but to be honest I don’t think the colour matters although I would recommend a 100% natural fibre and a colour that resonates with you. keep them wrapped up and in the bag when you aren’t using them
do not leave them lying around on the coffee table for other people to mess around with, make roaches of and spill their wine on.

handle your cards often keep them on you if you can. every now and then pick one out and study it, make up a little story about it, this will help you familiarise yourself with the pack and learn the symbolism. Don’t worry if you can’t memorise them all,start with the major arcana and add the rest later. After all these years I still hesitate now and again on the meaning of a card but I have the memory capacity of an elderly goldfish always have had ,luckily what little memory I have is visual

It won’t take long to tune in to your cards especially if it’s your first pack and the rest comes with practice,practice, practice

it will take time cheat sheets are not technically cheating…make one.

So once you can recognise all your cards even if you don’t remember all the meanings.
Choose a spread, spreads are what give your storyboard/cartoon frame images a narrative ,and helps put them in story form. I suggest the Celtic cross to start with, and stick to it at first, this will give you a sense of how the cards interact and influence each other in a reading.

This is my personal version of a Celtic cross reading

Use the major arcana until you get the hang of it,then add the minor and ignore the reversed meanings until you are more practised .There are enough cards using the upright meanings to give you a reading that very closely approaches one incorporating reversed meanings some people never use the reversed interpretations and get great readings. More on that another day….

Keep a notebook or a tarot card diary, draw the cards if you are artistic (even if you’re not ) or take pics, (I would never have imagined a mobile phone could exist when I started,they were a prediction on tomorrows world years later. what an advantage for a new reader!) note the date and the name of the questioner if it’s for someone other than you and if they tell you the area they want the reading in note that too. You can go back later and I promise you will find things you didn’t notice at the time you will also see the mistakes you made but everything is obvious in retrospect

Keep practising and little by little you will start to see the ‘story’ feel the cards and learn to listen to that little voice that says ….there’s a pay rise there …or that guy is a waste of space there’s another better one on the way, and trust that friend as far as you can throw a cow.

There are flashes and now and again they come out of the blue strong and clear as day. You will know when you get one!!!

Tarot reading etiquette
Make yourself and your questioner comfortable, nothing worse than doing a reading perched on the end of a kitchen counter between the cutting board crumbs and the kettle.

No audiences, a friend or partner peering over your shoulder is not good for your concentration and certainly not for the person you are reading for.

Create a nice calm atmosphere , candles, incense low background music.

Value yourself and your ability, one type of invitation I learned (eventually)
to refuse was

“ hi , I’m having a birthday party Saturday come and eh,,, bring your cards”

I did a reading once years ago for a certain titled lady in London I became her latest craze getting dragged along to all the ‘right’ places invited to things I would never have been invited to otherwise and reading for all her friends ,in the end it got so bad I had to change my phone number.

So, learn to say no, read when and where you want to don’t let people pressure you
as for the where and when.

One of these so called friends lived in a flat opposite Harrods of course I took a friend with me but I had a flash during the reading… the guy made his money from selling weapons whether legitimately or not I was out of there fast.

NEVER go to a strangers house to read alone EVER, never read for strangers alone in your home make sure you have someone with you in the house at all times.

Emotional crutch
We have all had them, emotionally dependant questioners you do a couple of readings for and then they cant choose a Netflix series without your input. They go away having heard, not what you said but what they wanted to hear. They will always do that, you cannot change them.

Never give your personal phone number.
Give them a time scale, i.e. sorry,not worth reading more than once a month (in fact I find this to actually be true in 90% of cases.)
Keep you own schedule what days you can read and days you cant or don’t want to and make no exceptions

you may also come upon those sad individuals and outright weirdos who insist on going into thorough descriptions of their personal and often very private lives
these are the worst! Some do it to watch you squirm others because they really have no barriers and some because they have no one to talk to.

Yes it does happen they are a hazard of this chosen path and I have come across quite a few over the years.. I do not need this amount of information so unless you lean towards this type of reading do not encourage them…No matter how much this may call out to your empathic side , do not let them see they are embarrassing or upsetting you, be professional bring them back to the reading and try and wrap it up as cleanly and quickly as possible. You are not their psychologist, doctor or sex therapist.

whilst there is no client confidentially as such for reading cards, it is very much an unspoken rule so no matter how weird , funny or scary these encounters may be they are not social media material , keep them to yourself !

Psychic reading
You might think you are about as psychic as a black bin liner, don’t be so sure you have been drawn to the tarot after all, you may not see ghosts, vomit ectoplasm or channel Marilyn but eventually you will start to sense certain things in your readings.
I had a scientific background and was pretty sceptical when I started out and it took a while but eventually I started seeing cards in certain sequences come up again and again, against all odds I would have an idea during a reading that seemed unconnected to the questioner so said nothing only to see it clearly happening . Flashes of clear insight came much later and honestly not that often

No stereotypes
There is no stereotypical tarot reader, anyone can read cards, anyone, but to read them well takes practice yes there are some who are naturally gifted but most of us just put the work in and learn to listen to that sixth sense.

I personally love the idea of a gypsy fortune teller with dangly earrings, fringed shall and a crystal ball but we come in all shapes sexes and sizes. And try as I might I have never been able to get a crystal ball to work., although I do have the dangly earrings.

There are no stereotypical questioners I have read for people from every walk of life
middle aged men can be just as intrigued as teenage girls. Never judge a book by it’s cover.

Sceptics
You will hear these little phrases often..so how do I deal with them?

”well I’ll have a go but I’m doing it because my friend/mother/dog wants me to and I don’t want to be rude”

This one really does want a reading but is too embarrassed to admit it. They may prick up their ears once or twice laugh nervously and pretend to be unimpressed but they will be back.

“ I don’t believe in things like this it’s all a con to get money out of gullible people but go ahead prove me wrong”

No matter what the reading says this individual will never admit any part of the reading is accurate you could give them the winning lottery numbers and it would be a ‘coincidence’

“sorry, try if you must but these things never work for me”

Polite form of the above but if your reading is positive they may crack, if it’s negative it’s wrong of course….until it’s right.