Getting the best from your Tarot ReadingsA Tarot Reading does not necessarily require psychic abilities as it is an interpretive skill. The Tarot reader uses a deck of 78 cards known as the Tarot to gain insights into your situation and your potential future. The cards are often used to gain insight to predict and interpret relationships, love, careers, etc. Some, but not all tarot Readers may also have psychic abilities. A psychic Tarot reader will use the cards as a tool to help enhance their clairvoyant insight. Some Tarot readers also combine numerology with their reading. Each card has a particular numerological significance that can relate to special numbers for you such as your birth date or the numerology for your name. Similarly a good tarot reader will have psychic reading as part of the consultation. The tarot cards can also be used for spiritual purposes to and as an aid to meditation. They are often also used for esoteric, occult and divinatory purposes and as a means to predict the future. What to expect from professional Tarot ReadingsA professional tarot reader will know more than the surface meaning of the cards. If you opt for tarot readings as your chosen method of understanding your situation then the reader should be able to do more than just explain the meanings of the cards. A professional reader will also engage his or her clairvoyance that will add to the reading and sometimes give astonishing insights that the cards alone could never reveal. Professional tarot readings should include insights that astonish you. Remember that the cards are just tools. A good reading requires an empathic reader who has clairvoyant insight and spiritual understanding. Getting a ReadingGet Tarot by Phone: Why have tarot readings? Tarot Readings are ideal for readings that require specific answers. The cards can be laid out to ask about a period of time such as a prediction for the year ahead or for a specific question about issues in your life. The symbols express psychological conditions but also have many characters featured who often can represent the people in the life of the person who consults the oracle. In particular the court cards - as well as the major cards – express, through symbols, many of the situations we are likely to encounter in our worldly relationships. For this reason the cards lend themselves as a tool for insight into love, family home and career.
|
Need I be worried about the death card? |
GUIDE TO TAROT READINGS If you like my article please give Google the thumbs up and plus one this page
This site is more than about selling readings. Did you know that we have a massive free community area where you can get fee tarot readings and learn to use the cards yourself. Check out our forums and chat areas. |
Below is a two part article we have prepared about Tarot Readers and Tarot Readings
The next article is by one of our best readers See Stuart: PIN #0930
All About Tarot Readings ...
Read Part one first: Trusting Tarot Readers
The cards chosen will show the client their way forward so that they avoid the next unfaithful, violent, drunk or whatever your choice of abusive character may be. With the addition of the information from the Tarot you are then freed in spirit, mind, heart and body to go about creating the reality you do want and need and in our chosen example here, go about attracting a loving, supportive, healthy individual who is not attracted to you for what they can get, but rather what they can give. Sound good?
Perhaps this explains something of the popularity of psychic reading and fortune-telling now. Perhaps it is that we are coming, little by little to be brave enough to look at ourselves as the architects of our own destiny as opposed to the puppets and playthings of the gods. We are plucking up the courage to accept that all may not be as we would wish it and more importantly, do something about it. The Tarot shows us what, how, why and for what reason or purpose.
Reading the 78 Tarot Cards
All of which makes those 78 little cards pretty amazing really. So how do they work and what actually is the Tarot? The answer here is that the Tarot is 78 pieces of laminated plastic in a cardboard box. It’s not the cards themselves that matter it’s what’s on them. What is on them is really life, the Universe and everything!
There are two ‘halves’ to a Tarot pack, called the Major and Minor. Oddly enough, the Major part of the pack has less cards than the Minor, being 22 to 56 respectively. The Major cards are the ones we all know about, the Fool, the Lovers and yes, Death and the Devil to, but we’ll meet those two chaps in a minute. What we need to realise here is that these Major cards show us what I call the level of the soul, the highest level of our experience and reality. If we put all the parts of yourself together – your actions, feelings, thoughts and motivations – what you produce or end up with is this soul level.
So it is that these cards show us the lessons we need to learn, the turning points in our lives where we can take control and create what we want. They are usually pretty big and powerful situations, circumstances and opportunities. These are the kind of times in our lives where we stand at the precipice, like The Fool in his card at the edge of the cliff, about to take the leap over the edge.
Meanings of Tarot Cards
In this way The Fool is seen as the human being, the spirit within each and every one of us, a Divine Spark, whatever you consider the divine to be. The remaining 21 cards of the Major Arcana (meaning hidden or secret, like the occult) are then the different stages the Fool goes through on his journey or quest to find completion, fulfillment, happiness, enlightenment and peace. These 21 cards can be split into three stages, covering seven cards each. Each of these stages cover the realms or levels of Body, Mind and Spirit respectively. In this way the Major Arcana deals with all aspects of the business of living.
The first of these covers the cards from the Magician to the Chariot and they deal with the physical needs, or the mastery of the body; how we deal with the business of living in a material world and operating successfully in it. Once done we move to the mental world from the Strength card to Temperance. Lastly we have the spirit world, from The Devil to The World, where it all comes together.
Minor Tarot Card Readings
Before we take a quick look at the Minor Arcana let’s pause a while and have a meet and greet with a couple of these cards. I mentioned earlier the famous ones of Death and The Devil and indeed so many clients mention their appearance in a reading, usually to say that they were sure that was bound to happen! I try to point out to them they are not an indicator of bad tidings. One of the chief means of doing this is that Death is not final, it is not the last card in the series. This being the case it indicates a change. A big change, yes and often unexpected and like Death, bound to happen and we cannot argue with it. The Grim Reaper himself is often shown as a gardener, pruning hands, feet and skulls, along with the occasional rose. This is to indicate that we have to change, from the roots and from the core within. Like all good rose bushes, once pruned we free ourselves to produce better and more beautiful blooms next time round.
In the case of the Devil, he often appears in his biblical image of horns, cloven hoof and forked tail. This scary showing conjures for most of us the biggest fear we can have and this is the Devil’s province – fear. The message of the card is that we need to face our fears and come to realise, with the help of the Devil, that ‘there is nothing to fear but fear itself’. Once this is done, the Devil loses his power and disappears whence he came, in a puff of smoke. Nowhere is there an indication of otherworldly nasties of any shape or form, Lucifer or any other devilish entity. The Devil is simply a representation of what we are scared of and so what limits us and holds us back.
So now we know that the Tarot is not what it might seem and that there is indeed more to it than meets the eye, let’s flick through the remaining 56 cards of the Minor Arcana. These are split into four suits which have different names but are really based on the four Elements on which we depend for life, these being Earth, Water, Air and Fire,. In turn these are really the four levels of the human being, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual, in that order. If we take these elements and level we can see that they, like all things in existence, are energies.
Tarot Readings and the Card Suits
We will return to that energy in the next paragraph but for now we can see that the four suits of the Minor Arcana each have ten numbered cards, from one or Ace to Ten and then four ‘court’ cards. Whilst in many packs these are shown as mediaeval characters with knights and damsels, kings and queens, the easiest way to see them is as Son, Daughter, Mother and Father. As such the court cards can represent people in your life, as well as yourself when they turn up in your reading and the type of character or personality they have.
The Minor Arcana cards are then a combination of number and element and when we multiply these together we can get an understanding of their energy or power. When we see the cards as energies we can see the ability they have to predict these possible futures we have and most impressively, give us the chance to change them. As the field of quantum physics has obligingly proved for us now, this energy, whether we call it by chemical formulae or the name of a Tarot card, shapes and creates our reality. Energy exists first, before matter. The Tarot is a map of these energies and that is why and how it can predict our future and help us get what we want.
To give you some idea of why we say what we say when we are reading the cards, it may be helpful to point out that it is not simply a case of memorising what each card means and then spewing this forth in our unfortunate client’s direction! Each card does have a basic meaning we can respond to each time but this is shaped to a large degree by factors such as, perhaps most importantly the question or subject you might give us, along with the cards in the reading and the impressions we receive when we look at the cards, which is essentially, the psychic bit. It is a knowledge of spiritual matters and workings that can add a therapeutic edge to a reading and perhaps even some little wisdom on the part of the reader.
Are Tarot Readings Scary?
Hopefully by now you are seeing that there is nothing scary about the Tarot, it does not lead you to a world of black magic and evil (unless you over eat the chocolates perhaps) and you will not find out that you are going to be run over by the number 59 bus next Sunday afternoon! Instead what you can find out is that you having nothing to fear and that the life you want awaits you. Your chosen psychic can show you how.
So how is it then, that the images of the cards can be so powerful and have such a dramatic effect upon us to give us psychic impressions on the readers’ brains and hearts, as they do. The answer to this lies in the symbols that make up each Tarot cards. Any one Tarot card is really a collection of symbols. Symbols have a language all their own, one that does not involve letters and words but pictures and images instead.
These images or symbols speak directly to our brains and so do not need an explanation or to be put into words. This is a fact well known to marketing experts and corporations the world over and used to its fullest extent. Just consider the symbol (or logo as they call it) linked to such profit-centred companies as McDonalds, Nike and so on. This single image communications to millions of people in an instant every time the tv adverts pop up, the bus goes past and all the myriad other means of advertising take place. The massive amount spent on such escapades speaks for itself as to the worth to these companies, why else would they do it? In short, symbolism works.
Symbols of the cards
So when we consider the symbols and images on any one Tarot card we can see how they all go to form a single concept. It is known in holistic theory that the ‘whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ and the Tarot is no exception to this rule. If you study the individual symbols on any one Tarot card you will find somewhere a link between them that gives rise to the overall concept, or energy, of that card.
The energy of the cards lies in its symbols and when we deal out the cards in a reading, we create an individual or bespoke story of your life, as the client. By adding a detailed study of the symbolism in the cards to the list of requirements given above for a successful and effective Tarot consultation, the reader is able to access this inner energy or power and use it to the advantage and advancement of the client.
Powerful Tarot Card Readings
The power of the Tarot lies in its symbols and it is the job of the psychic, reader, fortune-teller or Tarot Therapist as I prefer to call them, to tell the story of those symbols. How they are impacting and what they are saying is what makes the reading. In this sense the Tarot reader is really an interpreter of a foreign language. The language of the Tarot, its alphabet being symbols.
It is perfectly possible for anyone to set themselves up as a Tarot reader and many have. The Tarot profession is a growing one and with this comes a growing need for regulation, standards and ethics. Thankfully this is slowly becoming the norm and telephone psychic readers are required to undergo stringent testing by some companies before being allowed to operate and then required to adhere to a code of conduct.
We have seen that the image of the Tarot that is portrayed is not quite the wonderful reality we have found. Rather than being the mystical tool of the tyrant of magic or the workings of weird and wonderful dark wizards, we have seen the Tarot for the powerful therapeutic and insightful thing that it is. The Tarot connects the subconscious level of our mind with the conscious, it helps us to face and move beyond our fears, limitations, weaknesses and errors to find trust, power, strength and success. The Tarot has been called a ‘psychic mirror’ and what it reflects is our own image. The Tarot is the story of our lives, which we are each writing as we go. What will your story be?
The article is by one of our best tarot readers See Stuart: PIN #0930
Steve Hounsome is the author of the three part series of books ‘Tarot Therapy’. He has been a professional Tarot reader for 30 years and teaches the Tarot internationally. He is the author of four other books covering Spirituality and Meditation and has produced a range of acclaimed meditation and Development cd’s. He has appeared on tcv and radio and has contributed articles for a wide range of magazines and newspapers. For full details of Steve’s Tarot readings, courses and other works, go to www.tarottherapy.co.uk
Some of out articles about Tarot Readings
Find us on Google Plus
CRAIG & JANE WIKIPEDIA PROFILE