"How did you learn to read tarot?"

A lot of reading, googling questions like "2 of wands VS 3 of wands", watching educational videos and listening to podcasts, looking at how other people read cards, and of course practicing reading my own cards.

    Some books I like:
  • Radical Tarot by Charlie Claire Burgess
  • Red Tarot by Christopher Marmolejo
  • Tarot Court Cards for Beginners by Leeza Robertson
    More books I haven't gotten around to, but the praise is overwhelming:
  • Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom by Rachel Pollack
  • Any book written by Mary K. Greer
  • Holistic Tarot by Benebell Wen (This book is ridiculously thick)

We also have loads of different tarot systems.

There is the most popular Rider-Waite Smith (RWS), the Thoth, and the Marseille. I would look around those three first so you can see how the way the cards speak changes depending on the system. The aforementioned decks heavily center on archetypal imagery, astrology, and numerology respectively. There are also deck creators who invent their own system entirely and you just have to use it a lot to get a grasp on it, but those aren't as common.

The way you read can be affected by the art of the cards. This is how I prefer to read and why many of us will own multiple decks. If you see one that interests you, try opening YouTube and type "[name of deck] tarot flipthrough". You're bound to find a video where they show you the cards. See how it speaks to you. Does it look like you could understand it, does it follow a culture you're familiar with, is it too busy, or is it too minimalist?

You might see a lot of people say you need a copy of the classic RWS deck to learn the cards. This isn't necessarily true. I didn't do this because I found the cards gaudy, boring, and difficult to parse because of the linework in the art. Not to mention that the images of gender conformity, heteronormativity, and royalty ended up feeling more confusing and limiting than educational. I ended up doing a better job learning tarot through anthropomorphic cats.

Unfortunately while I have a wealth of resources, I'm going to say the best ones are the ones you click with. Look around YouTube or google and see what really resonates with you. There's a limitless way to read the cards and you have to experiment and see what really intrigues you. and of course, practice makes perfect. The cards will be affected by the type of questions you ask it and will not always be 1:1 with the resources you're reading. For example, I don't find yes/no questions very effective, even though you may see people do these.

For me, my readings involve tackling conformity. I am also constantly reading and researching ways to shift the perspective of the cards. I also think of the cards in context to the stories and myths I enjoy. Maybe this intense amount of research and questioning the norm of the cards isn't for you, and that's okay. It's why we value all the readers we have, everyone has something different to bring to the table.

I can genuinely talk about tarot all day, but this is just a page to get you started on learning.