About the Tarot
How was my beginning learning the Tarot?
and a couple of tips that I like to share for beginners.
Hello, lovers and beautiful creatures, for all those who visit my blog continuously, and welcome the new readers who are arriving every week. I recently had an interesting conversation with my friend Andrew via Instagram live, the expert tarot reader, and the next day my friend Carlos José came to me for some advice, I gave him a couple of tips, which I leave you here in addition to the end of the post, and I take advantage of answering here something that I am usually asked in workshops and classes, about how I started in the Tarot, and what methods I know related to it, so take me about 10 minutes to write this, I hope it is useful in some way.
"Remember that each learning and experience process is individual, embrace each step of your own process, and learn at your own pace."
My Background on the subject.
My first Tarot deck came to me through the hands of my mother, although it came indirectly, I was initiated from a very young age in Candomblé and later in Lucumi (Santeria), my mother was initiated into Venezuelan Spiritism in 1996, in Palo Mayombe in 1999, and in Santeria Lukumi, in Cuba, in 2001, shortly before I was also initiated.
In conventional Venezuelan spiritualism, all forms of divination are welcome, they are all respected, but not copied by other individuals, the idea is that each person handles between one to two different methods of divination. Divination I consider that it has always been one of those topics that I am most passionate about, along with the invocations and magic of dreams, it is one of the topics that I read and research the most, so I had all the interest in learning any form of possible divination.
In 2004, my mother bought a deck of cards and started an eight-month course to learn how to read the tarot, and to be a tarot player, or as we colloquially say in Venezuela, a "card reader". After the first five months, my mother decided to leave the course to dedicate herself to other things, and she left her deck of cards lying on the side of the closet, the truth that from the beginning, this was more a whim for her than a real need She is very good at reading snails, bones, and tobacco, so this is not really what she needed, but she is always trying to learn new things, especially in the esoteric field.
Back then I used to sit down to watch TV after school (I was back then at the military school), so when I got home I put a certain TV channel where they covered occult and magic topics every afternoon "De Que vuelan, vuelan" (may they fly, yes they fly), it was a Colombian TV that was broadcast in Venezuela by cable signal, and every afternoon, this show was my moment of privacy with zero interruptions.
In the case previously, I had borrowed the tarot instruction manual, which came along with my mother's deck of cards, because I was really interested in learning, but I didn't have the cards with me, only the manual.
On one occasion in this TV show that I mentioned earlier, they were having an enriching talk about the tarot and the conventional methods to read it, I immediately ran to get paper and pencil and take notes of all their advice, the basic and essential print runs, the order in which the tarot cards should be read, how to identify the symbolism and representations in each card, how to ask the right questions ? etc ...
I wrote down practically everything in this notebook, and a few days later I started practicing with my mother's deck of cards (initially without her permission), so every afternoon I sat down to decipher a letter, and took notes of it in this notebook, after a couple of months my mom came home early, found me with her tarot deck and a notebook, it was all very funny, but far from getting angry I take advantage of this in a good way to attract more customers to the home, but ... It taught me that I was doing something wrong, I was interpreting the letters superficially, but I was not connecting with them, so here came the difficult part of the process.
This is the part that I always mention as "difficult", for me it was not, but I know that most people are so focused on the goal that they do not want to live the process, they want quick results and therefore they do everything wrong, Every time I mention this, I hear an answer "but that's a lot of work", well, I suppose not all of us take things so seriously.
The rigorous ritual
My mother took the letters with her, mixed them together several times, lit a white candle and an incense stick, then said to me, close your eyes and don't ask questions, let the letters speak to you, let them give you the message that you need to receive, instead of just answering the things that you want to know, now, "take a card from the deck", I extracted a letter (Two of clubs), then he made me write an entire page about all the symbolism what I saw in the letter, what I interpreted in this letter, the colors I saw, and every possible detail.
Then he made me compare my notes with what the instruction manual said, to compare, understand another perspective from another point of view of someone with more experience, or at least, the point of view of someone who knows the basic rules of tarot, and this in divination is important.
After this he told me, take this letter now and put it under the pillow, tomorrow you change it for another letter, so you are going to connect with the letter and its energy. I did so, and the next day we repeated the ritual, with a different card, and we continued like this day after day, for almost two months until we had consecrated each Tarot card.
Yes, it sounds rigorous, especially now that we want everything fast and easy, but every time I tried to complain, my mother would tell me, "This is not a game, the people who come to consult with you are trusting you, that you, if you are good enough, you are going to know their secrets, and you are going to see things in the letters that they do not know, or that they know but they don't want anyone else to know, and that takes time, we already have enough phonies out there charging for this work and making us all look bad in the process, so we must do twice as much. ”
So after that "verbal rinse" he gave me, I couldn't debate, and I continued with the process, every time we got up from the table he would extinguish the candle, and the next day he would light it again, if the candle It just ended we lit another one, some days my mom placed a glass of water or an incense stick next to the candle, always affirming "the light is to give you clarity, wisdom, and understanding."
If a letter seemed difficult to understand (the six of cups, death, the hanged), she analyzed it together with me, so she also learned in the process. And he kept repeating to me, especially when I was bored, "what you do quickly is not useful, and what you learn quickly, you forget quickly", or "if you want good results you have to put dedication and heart, this is not something that you learn from one day to the next ”.
So we continue with this ritual, day after day. The letters that he had already read and interpreted, we placed in a separate place, far from the others that were “the unknown”, and so day after day, letter after letter, he began to interpret.
My mother pointed out that one of the big mistakes that many make is that they bought a tarot deck, read the instructions quickly, began to consult, and then made serious mistakes in the process, gave inappropriate advice, or spent too much time watching a letter trying to decipher what this symbolized, instead I was doing it beforehand, besides she always repeated "in the end, you will be so good that you will thank me and you will remember me", and the truth is that it was.
At the end of these intense weeks, I simply started doing readings for my sisters, my mother, my aunts, and little by little my mother began to bring her own clients to consult with me, that way she could take care of the busiest part of her work, such as preparing Cleansing and "limpias" for visitors.
Loading the letters
I have never shared this charging ritual with anyone before, I am writing it word for word from my personal Grimoire.
My friends, Celia, Cynthia, and Alfonso, were also starting in the tarot, I was a little more advanced than them, but Celia and Alfonso read a lot about astrology, so we spent a lot of time sharing notes on these topics.
We organize this brief lunar ritual weeks in advance, prepare a blend of herbal oil with rosemary and basil, moisten some cloth ribbons with the oil, let them drain and dry for a few hours, and on the night of the new moon (the indicated time to start new processes, studies, and projects), we tied (each one his) our card decks with the ribbon, we tied a small knot for them, and we left them on the altar for the following nights, lighting a stick of incense every two or three nights until the full moon, and with the full moon, we untied the knot, and began to work again with the tarot cards.
From that night on (and those who know magic will understand what I mean), the cards felt different, lighter in a way, they moved better in our hands, they were easier to interpret, obviously, we were still studying different books that we later bought, but the letters now felt more attached to us than before, felt less as an instrument of divination and more as an extension of ourselves.
Collecting decks
Over time I am interested in acquiring other decks of cards, not for collection reasons, but for educational purposes, because the more you carefully study a new deck of cards, the more you begin to understand certain details of the deck of cards that already has more time with you.
So I have acquired many others, I even have a small deck of cards just for my meditation and personal research, the one that I use to consult certain questions about myself (the taboo), and to perform some spells with the Tarot, like those that I always recommend in my books, how to tie a letter from lovers to attract love, but the letter of the star in the wallet for money, sleep with the letter of the moon under the pillow to enter more easily the world of the dreams, place the letter of justice on your legal documents to put the judgment in your favor, or on one occasion, burn the letter of the devil and mix his ashes with blood and earth from a nearby cemetery to nullify a hex on a small child he was in serious health in the hospital.
Other tips
I personally do not believe in doing tarot readings during eclipses, or even putting your cards out of place during an eclipse day, we are working with two stars that are dancing with each other, bringing their own omens, and passive energy eclipsing At active energy (literally eclipsing), reading the tarot on this occasion does not seem to be the most indicated, I do not recommend it, but if someone decides to do it, that is a matter of everyone's faith.
Burn a little incense near your cards from time to time, especially if you have been doing many readings in a row, to cleanse your own individual connection to the Tarot and thus dissipate any extra energy from a consultant.
Do not let the consultant touch your cards, many people in different traditions repeat that it is not okay when someone else touches your deck of cards, others consider that the correct thing is for the consultant to always draw a card, I personally do not recommend it, the letters They have a psychic link that runs directly to you, letting someone (especially a consultant with doubts and some fear of the future) touch your cards, it's like giving control of the TV to the neighbor while you are watching a show at your house, then He does not know what to do with it, he does not know what buttons to touch, he does not know how to use it, and he is totally unaware, that same uncertainty that the person has, will soon be reflected in the reading of letters.
Practice with the new moon, it is the best time (in my experience) for solo practice, the energy is renewing, it is a restart process, there is less residual energy in the atmosphere around us, it is a good time to carry Perform these meditations in private with your deck of cards.
Do not be afraid to ask, it is never too much to ask the client about something that you cannot understand in the deck of cards, signs, individuals, numerous, omens, shadows if you see something and do not understand its origin during the reading process, do not hesitate to ask the consultant, their answer can guide your interpretation.
"Remember that each learning and experience process is individual, embrace each step of your own process, and learn at your own pace."
with true love, Elo.
