Stop memorising the cards — read the symbols instead

You know the feeling. You turn the card over, you can see it perfectly, you could describe every line of it — and you have no idea what it means. So you reach for the book.

Almost every beginner freezes in exactly that place, and almost every beginner is told the same thing: learn the meanings. Seventy-eight of them. Get them in your head and then you can read.

I have been reading since 1983 and I do not do it that way.

I do not look for the meaning

This is the part that surprises people, so I will say it plainly: I do not think about the meaning of the card.

Every card changes depending on the question, and on where it sits in the layout. If there are several cards out, the one before it or the one after it can influence what it is saying — especially if it is in the middle somewhere. So you cannot look at the meaning. The meaning is not sitting there waiting.

What I look for is the symbolism. I look for the symbols in the card and they give me the guidance part, a little at a time — I look at the symbols, explain what they are, and what they mean in the context of what the card is saying.

I do not use the traditional definitions. I do not define the colours. I let the cards be whatever they want to be at that point, right at that point. I do not know why. I do not really care, not at that moment.

What that looks like in the hand

I pulled the High Priestess cold from my deck, the Sacred Circle, and this is what came off it.

Behind her there is a swan. It is positioned behind her, kind of hiding but not hiding, and its wing is pointing in a direction — that may indicate travel, or the direction of travel. The cards will explain more as you go.

Behind her is Stonehenge. That is her spiritual side; she likes being near it because it gives off certain energies. And there is a full moon, and she is soaking up all of its energy.

That is what I see with the symbols on that card. Right off the bat, without a book, without a definition of what the High Priestess is supposed to mean.

Notice what none of that was. It was not "the High Priestess means intuition and hidden knowledge", recited back. It was a swan pointing somewhere, a stone circle with a feeling to it, and a moon being drawn from. All three are on the card. Anybody looking at it could have found them.

And they do not have to agree with me. What you find in that picture is what the card is saying to you, and that is the reading.

What to do when you freeze

If you are stuck on a card, this is what I would tell you.

Look away for a few seconds. Give it a few seconds, come back, open your eyes and look for any items, any artefact. Do not worry about the main part of the card. Do not worry about the question for that moment either — you have a question, you are working on it, but if you lock yourself into it you become blind to everything else that is in front of you.

Do not worry about what the card is saying. Just look, and see what you think the symbols are telling you at that point. Once you have done that, things come better.

You do not need a book. You can use one if you want to. You do not really need it.

When you get it wrong

It happens. It has happened to me.

But here is the thing about it: at that stage it is just the symbols. It is not the reading. It is the beginning of the connection, the starting bit. If that were all there was, then yes, getting it wrong would be a bad thing.

Because it is only the start, the rest has room to work. As you go through the cards, things start to drop into place. Ninety-nine per cent of the time the cards are correct. I may have missed the mark a little, but the message should arrive by the end of the reading — or a few days later, when it shows up for them.

And if somebody says no, that's not me at all, say this: I have not done the reading yet. This is me looking at the card to see what is around it, so that we can make a connection, and then we move on. Then move on.

Two cards that frighten beginners

Death, and the Tower. Two traumatic cards, and people fear them. When a beginner does not understand the connection between them and they come up together, they freeze — they get stuck. Read them one at a time, not together.

Death does not mean death. It means rebirth: the bad is going out, so the good is coming back in. Now and then it can be a death, or the death of something, but that is rare. It is not somebody dying.

So when it comes out, say so out loud. It is all right. It is not a bad card. It might not be the best card, but it does not mean what people think it means. It does not mean you are going to die. That is Hollywood.

And reversed, Death does not weaken. A reversal does not change what the card is, it moves it. So now it might be getting fired, or it being time to move jobs, rather than the thing the sitter was dreading. A different path, not a weaker card.

If you are just starting, how to read tarot in seven steps is where to begin, and it covers whether to bother with reversals at all yet. And if you have been told that reading is about memorising seventy-eight definitions, that is not learning to read — it is learning to recite.

One thing about my deck

The Sacred Circle has a fixed symbol on the back — a shield with crossed swords and a cup above them. Because that image only reads correctly one way up, you can tell whether a card is reversed from the back, before you turn it over.

I did not design it for that, but it is useful, and it is the only mechanical thing about how I read.

You do not have to do it my way

Just because I am telling you what I do does not mean you have to do it. You can do it your way. You can do it a different way, however you want. With tarot cards there is no right or wrong way to read them.

The book is not the enemy. I am not telling you to throw it out. I am telling you that the meanings were never the thing being read — the picture is, and the picture is in front of you, and it has been the whole time.