How I Read Tarot Cards
Alice Scarlet Death
Every tarot reader has something specific to themselves they put into a reading. Whether it’s to add to the pscyhodrama of spinning any narrative into a relevant one, or doing a huge spread with everything placed on a Qabbalah. Celtic Crosses. Five Elements. All sorts of stuff.
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I’ve been studying qabbalah and trying to understanding the correspondences between it and what the cards generally mean. I don’t have it all memorized. My pack came with a cheat sheet, but I’m getting better. I can just read a few lines, and start making it relevant to the person. Generally, I kind of get a feel for the energy of the particular based on its number and suite. I’m still not the best at explaining trump cards.
Anyhow, I find the best deck for this style is the Thoth deck.
In the booklet it wants you to do a spread like this:
However, I do a 3 card spread. Past, present, future. That’s a fairly typical part of basic tarot readings. However, I do a little something to make it more meaningful. As seen in the picture below. I am shuffling the cards into five separate piles. And I’ll either ask the person to put them back in order, or I’ll hold their right hand with my left hand to get a feel for what energy they wanna work with.
After we collect all the cards together, I ask if they’d like to cut the deck. And then I explain: Cut the deck if you want more emotional responses. Don’t cut the deck if you want more solid, tangible outcomes. I’m considering doing two rounds: one where I do spread tapped, and one not. To kind of bring a sense of balance to the reading. You know, pushing that annoying concept of “as above so below” and new-agey folx being like, “omg duality, quantum realms wut!?”
Point is: balance. Ma’at’s next. Although the Last Jedi stole all our occult ideas about balance, but FINE. Whatever.
I generally don’t get paid to do readings for people, and I’m actually happy to do at least one every few days for someone. I am sick, and feel perpetually exhausted and a tarot involves a lot of emotional labor and holding tons of interconnected ideas in your head.
I’ve had my tarot reading done a number of times, and I always rolled my eyes because I could tell they were desperate to make a connection to my body language, but I had none. I try to focus less on the person (except at first with the hand holding shit, because I pretend there’s an energy transfer, can you believe that!?) And more on the cards in this particular space with this particular energy.
I drew this: yesterday. And here I am having a manic episode, haven’t slept, and it’s 7am. So, seems accurate.
This reading was basically, “you’re going to have fun tonight.” And I did. So, there. the stars are real! No. No. That’s not how it works.
The Thoth deck instruction manual wants you to put 15 cards on the table, and it’s kind of a clusterfuck; however, I do appreciate how detailed it is. I learn a lot from the deck when I do it this way, but it’s too exhausting so I stick with a three card spread most times.
And then you have the reading I did in the process of taking all these other pictures:
Not sure if it will turn out clear on the embed, but if you click the and open on a new tab you can zoom in and see better. This one basically says that today I’m gonna large and in charge. Getting stuff done I need to get done, and it being mostly successful at that.
