Hello Beautiful Blog Readers!
I am back chatting about tarot to kick off your week and am quite excited to do so. I’m specifically addressing intuitive tarot & the push against tarot books and existing info. I want to start by stating that tarot IS an intuitive art, and it does take practice, and it does take finding your own voice. That is one of the key differences between a good reader & a great reader. I am continually alarmed by the amount of tarot personalities calling for intuitive only reading styles though, for a few different reasons. The reasons that have to do with respect to the tradition of the craft & creating a full understanding of the tarot have been covered by other tarot writers, and anyone who knows me knows that I love little more than a solid tarot book or blog post.
What I want to talk about today in regards to intuitive tarot is this: not all of our brains work the same. If you had told me, bibliophile, art history-studying me, at 18 years old that I shouldn’t look up card interpretations and should just intuit them, I would have set down the cards and likely never picked them up again. The longer I read and study tarot the more I DO understand where tarotists who come from a solely intutive place are coming from. I do get it, even if I don’t agree. I still think the language of it this style is as troubling and limiting as telling people to solely learn from books, which some people also espouse.
My personal views for those who are curious are this: both viewpoints are true. Tarot is a mystery tradition, and mystery traditions require meditation, creative writing & other intuitive forms of connecting in order to teach you anything. Tarot IS ALSO an extremely well-studied form of divination who’s writings dating all the way back to the original deck creators will only benefit you. The BEST readings, solely in my opinion, are a synthesis of intuition & learned knowledge.
That being said, this is a blog about intuitive reading. To learn how to read intuitively, a few things are true that I don’t see talked about as much:
Your method of intuition might differ from others. If you’re trying to “feel” what the cards are telling you but you don’t generally intuit messages that way, you’re not going to get very far. Likewise, if someone guides you to visualize what advice the card might offer but you’re not the kind of intuitive person who gets visions, you’re going to question your intuitive ability. So regardless as to how someone posits the expression of intuition, know your own intuition style and stick to that until you have a more firm grasp on some of the others.
Your natural method of expressing intuition might also be different than someone else’s! With tarot, the assumption is that you will think to yourself or speak out loud what the card is saying to you, and certainly in a reading with another person this is most likely true. While you’re learning though, you might do better to write out what you’re feeling or seeing. You might need an activity, like mimicking the action in the card, singing an impromptu song you make up about the card or going on a meditation about it to intuit what it’s telling you. There is a method for every intuitive and learning style, so don’t be shy to break away from the pack to find yours.
If you are struggling with the first tip, you actually might need to learn to strengthen your intuition and psychic ability to enhance your intuitive reading. I strongly recommend Mat Auryn’s Psychic Witch for that, as well taking time each day to just sit with yourself for a few moments to figure out where the intuition is coming from and how it’s expressing itself.
Something I figured out a long time ago because of my art background is that sometimes when people say “just read it intuitively”, they are taking it for granted that you will innately internalize the art on the card. If you do that successfully already, great. If not, guess what? That is part of reading intuitively!
To do this, start by pulling a card and simply describing it to yourself. This was one of my top takeaways from Mary K. Greer’s 21 Ways To Read A Tarot Card and it is unendingly helpful if you get stuck in the tarot. I strongly advise doing so out loud, as both a theatre director who knows we memorize better if we say it out loud, and a tarot practitioner that has just noticed this is helpful for whatever reason. Writing it down is useful for both of these reasons too.
From there, notice any emotions or value statements that come up for you, as well as any actions that may be solutions to quandaries that pop out of your mouth. Think about those emotions, ideals, & actions and take some notes on them, or underline them if you’re writing. Those are most likely get baked into your understanding of the card this way, creating consistency and a truer understanding.Which brings us to this: consistency is still key! One of the biggest drawbacks to reading intuitively without the deeper structure is that it changes your understanding of a card from day to day which makes your readings super dependent on your mood and therefore more likely to be inaccurate. This is why taking notes on the above tips is so important. Over time, you can look back and see what worked out and what didn’t, which will allow you to narrow down your intuitive interpretations to something that is both consistent and more accurate.
Finally, ESPECIALLY when you’re learning, it’s okay if you’re wrong about a card sometimes. It is! We learn by error as much as we do by anything else. This is where your notes on both tarot & your ongoing journey to strengthen your intuition overall come in handy. Figure out where the “wrong” message was sitting in your body and if maybe something else was going on that day that caused some error. You can also just note which cards you’re consistently wrong about, and do some intuitive exercises or meditations on them.
I’ll also say this: sometimes your intuition and your intuitive understanding of the card WAS right, but the card’s message expressed itself completely differently than what you expected. Note it, note it, note it. See if you kind find a pattern if that consistently happens, and from there you’ll probably find a way to more closely predict how the card will express itself.
Hopefully this was helpful to all of you! Wishing you so much luck & love with all your tarot endeavors. Tarot is really such a beautiful tool & I’m so excited to see where your journey leads you as you strengthen your intuition and card understandings.
On a blog business note, I am seriously SO excited about the interview series I am cooking up and I think you will be too, so stick around.
Blessed Be Y’all,
Cassandra Snow
