Learning the tarot can be overwhelming for beginners. There are many meanings or supposed meanings to the cards and worse many complicated spreads which seem to be required. This can be a stopping point for beginners as some people feel overwhelmed. That is completely understandable.
There is a methodology that can help in such situations. Furthermore, it is of great use to the anyone serious about reading the tarot from a beginner to the expert. The three card spread is by far the most common practice spread than I have encountered. Over time, practicing the spread can lead to great insight into one's personal life and patterns. After all, reading the cards for yourself is very often an exercise in revealing your own patterns and in that one can find great personal power.
As is my personal pattern, I tend to teach by sharing my own experience. In that process I hold very little back. This attitude arose from a creative writing class I once took in which it was said that the more personal a thing is the more universal. So in keeping with that pattern, I will share a spread that I did Friday.
Preliminaries
I hate to tease you with a header like that but I'm going to cover the preliminaries in another post. I bring them up here to let you know that I will be sharing on that topic soon.
Positions of the Cards
Knowing the import and meanings of the various card positions in the spread the you are using is critical. The positions are vital to understanding the entire spread and even any particular card. Again, the rational behind that will be covered in future posts.
The three card spread is very versatile and therefore many meanings can be attributed to the three cards. For instance, they can be read as past, present and future. They can be the thesis, antithesis and synthesis. They can be many other things. However, those are little bit more difficult to use on a consistent basis. So for the spread, we will use morning, afternoon and evening.
It is important that you clearly define what those terms mean for you. In my case, morning means from rising until noon. Afternoon is from noon until 5:00 PM the usual time I cease my workday. I will even use that definition on weekends or days off because that definition fits within the way I normally think of my day. Evening is from 5:00 PM until I fall asleep. That does not mean to imply when I go to bed. It means when I fall asleep. The reason for that is that periods of insomnia or late night phone calls causing stress would not be included in the reading should I use the definition of going to bed.
Your definitions may vary as they should. You should not hesitate to change them to meet your needs. Though in the beginning I would advise that you stick with consistent meanings over time. Until you become so familiar with the cards and the spread that variations in meaning do not take you out of the proper headspace.
Interpretation
Many beginners get all wrapped up in interpreting their spreads. They read definition after definition on various discussion lists, web sites and books. After dropping the cards, they then try to fit these definitions into what they think the day will be like. This is usually not helpful. It can even be discouraging because the interpretations turn out to be wrong. The art of tarot reading does not use such analytical processes in the beginning.
My suggestions begin with the idea of a writing down your question. The cards will always respond to your direct question. There is a great difference between the following queries. What will today be like? What will my day be like today? The former may result in a tarot version of CNN. The latter will be more pertinent to yourself.
Once that is done, shuffle and drop your cards. How you shuffle and how you select your three cards is completely up to you. I shuffle the deck and bridge them as if I were about to deal a hand of poker. Some tarot enthusiasts would be upset by this method, viewing it as disrespectful to the cards. I do not. However, if you do, you should use a different method. It is important to stay within what you feel is the right and proper way to do things. Otherwise one has the tendency to take oneself out of the proper mindset.
After you've dropped your three cards simply write down how you feel about them. Use words like happy, sad, enthused, fearful, strange, angry, and any other one or two word phrase this seems to capture the feeling you see within the card. Simply write down the card position, that card and those simple phrases. It is also important that you date this record so you know which reading applies to which day. Trust me on this, you will save yourself a great deal of frustration if you get into the habit of dating your readings.
At the end of the day, without looking at your paper, write down your emotional states at various times in the day. They should be things that created the most intense emotions, even if those emotions, only lasted for a moment. Alternatively, they should include emotions that lasted for a considerable period time. For instance you might have had a brief feeling of panic when a car made a left hand turn in front of you on the way to work and have felt a bit lazy for most of your morning. Both of these should be written down. Most of the time, people remember to write down the latter but forget the former, which is why I include first in these notes.
It is very important that you do your best not to find the emotions that match your interpretation of the cards. It is very easy to convince yourself through preconceived notions and subtle forms of personal delusion. It is almost impossible not to but we should all strive to prevent this as much as possible. The more tarot readings you do and thus the more mistakes you make will over time lessen the danger but it never goes away completely. The good tarot reader is an attentive tarot reader, attentitive to the cards and herself.
Using this method on a consistent and long-term basis you'll begin to find your emotional links to the cards.
To Those Who Have Taken My Classes
The above may seem a contradiction as I teach what appears to be a very rigid system of interpretation based upon the Holy Qabala. However these two methods interplay. For instance, if a particular reader has noted that the seven of cups makes them frightful or depressed or lustful and then learned that the Seven of Cups can be interpreted as unifying with one's vices they might gain some insights as to why that particular card elicits those feelings.
Furthermore, many readers do not use a system such as I teach. These readers are purely intuitive in nature or they have been taught without using a system or they have another system. Most methods are perfectly valid approach. They are simply not what I teach in my paid classes. . It is my goal is a teacher to present points of view that are not readily available elsewhere within your sphere.
My Three Card Spread for Friday
Position One, the morning, Two of Wands - the title of the Two of Wands is the Lord of Dominion. It is also a card of Aries. These facts are important for two reasons. First, I expected a friend to come by that morning. This friend and I have a lot of personal history. We are both fire signs and very dominant in our own ways. As dominant as we both are, our conversations have always been respectful but there is always an undercurrent of energies present. He is an Aries. That card may even be his birth card, I do not know. Therefore, it was very easy to interpret that my morning would be dominated by my friend. Indeed, even though he did not arrive until 11:00 AM, I picked up the house a little bit and took care of other tasks so I could spend time with him.
Position two, the afternoon, Five of Disks - The Lord of Worry. This card did not make much sense to me when it came up. I'm not much of a worrier at least at a conscious level. So when nothing came up for me, I didn't worry about it. After all, this is just a daily spread exercise. It turned out that during our conversation my friend and I approached topics that were once of great concern to us and those conversations took place after lunch during the afternoon.
Position three, the evening, the High Priestess - to me this card is the ultimate life mystery or at least I often see it this way. I see it this way because of its placement on the Qabalistic Tree of Life which I am sure I will discuss more in future posts. For now, let it be said that it joins the perfected personality with the highest aspect of the soul. The emotion I associate with this card is that of spiritual longing and often worship. Friday night, I spent time working on healing of another even though I was in a great deal of pain myself. This in turn fits very well into my concept of serving the divine in removing the pain of others. For within divine unity is always healing.
Final Tips
It is a bad idea to strive to be the next Edgar Cayce. Stay within yourself and be willing to learn.
This all sounds very time consuming but it can really take place within five minutes to pull the cards and five minutes in the evening to keep up with your notes. If that doesn't work for you, sit down on a Sunday, pull five spreads for the work week, one after the other. Then each night, fill in your impressions of the day. Don't even look at them. Before drawing your cards on the next Sunday, review the last week.
This should be much more fun than work. Though, some work-like tasks are involved.
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