BTP71: 3 Simple Steps to Learn Tarot From Day One

Stop letting your Tarot cards collect dust, and learn Tarot from day one.

People often tell me they are waiting to read Tarot or open a new deck. It's usually out of fear – either fear of what others will think, or fear of what the cards will tell them, and sometimes fear about “getting it right” and memorising all 78 cards.

I was talking to a friend about this recently, and I shared with her an easy way to get started with her new deck.

And that's what I'm sharing today to help you get started too.

In this episode, here's what we'll cover:

• Getting to know your Tarot cards
• Daily practice, with an easy One-A-Day spread
• Tarot basics to help you better understand what each card represents

Podcast Transcript

You’re listening to the Biddy Tarot Podcast, and this is Episode 71: 3 Simple Steps to Learn Tarot from Day One.

Welcome to the Biddy Tarot Podcast, where you’ll learn how to connect more deeply with your intuition and live an empowered and enlightened life with the Tarot cards as your guide. Listen as Brigit and her guests share their very best tips and strategies to help you read Tarot with confidence. And now here’s your host, Brigit Esselmont.

3 Simple Steps to Learn Tarot from Day One

Welcome back to the Biddy Tarot Podcast. As always, I am so excited to be able to speak with you about Tarot today. In fact, today we’re talking about how to start learning Tarot from day one.

Now, before we get into today’s episode, I want to say a huge thank-you to everyone who sent in their reviews and feedback via iTunes. I’d love to share with you just this short but very sweet feedback from JessTheEmpress who is in the U.S.

She says, “I adore this podcast. Thank you so much for sharing your insight and connections to the Tarot community. You're such a gift.”

That is such a gift, and I really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much, JessTheEmpress.

Now, of course if you are loving this podcast, I would love for you to leave your feedback and your reviews at iTunes, and just search for “Biddy Tarot Podcast,” and you can drop in your review right there. While you’re there, if you haven’t done so already, make sure you subscribe to this podcast and recommend it to your friends, and do all that good stuff.

Let’s get into today’s episode.

I wanted to start with a story. Recently, I was having a chat with a new friend, someone I had just met. We started talking about Tarot, and she mentioned that she had a deck of Tarot cards, but it was from ages ago. It was a deck of cards that she had received almost 8 or 9 years ago, but she had never been brave enough to actually open it and start reading. You see, she had this beautiful deck, and it had been gifted to her by a really close friend of hers, but every time that she went to pick it up, she was like, “Oh my gosh! I can’t do it! This is too much to learn. It’s too complicated and too complex.” She just never got into these Tarot cards, and she was telling me about this, and she still hadn’t opened the deck.

I said, “Oh my goodness! You’ve got this gateway to the soul right here, and you're not using it.” We started then talking about how do you start learning to read Tarot from day one? How do you pick up that Tarot deck and go, “Right. What are we doing with you, Tarot cards?” And how do you do it in a way that avoids all of that confusion or overwhelm that you get when you go, “My goodness. I’ve got to learn 78 cards! I’ve got to learn spreads! I’ve got to learn how to do a Tarot reading! I’ve got to learn how to deal with people.” All sorts of things.

That’s what I’m going to be talking about today. How do you start learning Tarot from day one? And how do you do it in a way that feels really good to you and feels comfortable and energising, instead of feeling confusing or overwhelming?

As you buy your first Tarot deck, or maybe get into your drawers where you’ve got that unopened deck from 10 years ago, I want you to follow these 3 very simple steps. This is what is going to help you learn your Tarot cards from day one.

Let’s get into it.

STEP 1: Crack open the deck.

Take all the plastic wrapping off, get it out of the box, and then I want you to get to know your Tarot cards. How do you do this?

Firstly, just go through your cards one by one, and spend some time with each card.

Flip over the first card and just gaze at the images in this card. What do you notice? What comes through to you? What do you see first? It might be a symbol. You might hear something. You might feel something in your body. You might start to see almost a story coming out through that particular card.

Now, you don’t have to do anything with that information. This is just about connecting in with each of your cards.

So you’ve done that with the first card. Just spend three or four minutes with each card. Just really drink it in, take in the imagery, the energy of the card, and just become familiar with those cards. Then pick up the second card and do it all again, until you’ve started to work your way all the way through your deck.

Now, of course you might not do this in one sitting, because that could be a very long time, and you might do this over a few days, but it’s really important that you’re looking at each and every card, but without thinking, “Oh my gosh! It’s the Fool. What do I do with the Fool? What does that mean?” Just look at the card and bring it into your mind, into your awareness, into your consciousness. That’s all you need to do in this step.

Now, even once you’ve gone through the deck once, I want you to go through it twice, three times, even four times, until you feel really confident that if you were to draw any card from the deck, you’d say, “I remember that one!”

I tell you what, when I was first reading Tarot, I had done the same and looked through the deck, but I’m not kidding you – probably about a year or two later, I think it was the Five of Swords came up in a reading, and I said, “What is that card? I’ve never seen that card before.” It was bizarre. It had not come up in my readings, and I hadn’t really paid attention to it until that point in time, and I thought, “Did someone slip an extra card in my Tarot deck? This is weird!” Maybe I should have done this get-to-know-my-Tarot-cards step in a little bit more detail, and it wouldn’t have come up as such a surprise.

That is your step one. Go through each card one by one, and just drink in the imagery and the energy of those cards, and that’s it.

STEP 2: Do a daily one-card Tarot reading.

Now, you might be thinking, “Holy moly, Brigit. What are you talking about? I’m not doing readings before I know what these cards mean.” Don’t worry – we’re doing this at the same time. You’re doing a reading at the same time that you’re learning about the card, and the reason I want you to be into that reading mode is because, well, Tarot reading is all about reading Tarot, so that’s what you want to be doing from the get-go. You want to be learning how to read the cards, not just learn what they mean, but how to read them as well.

Here’s how you do a daily one-card Tarot reading.

Certainly if you just got a new deck and you’ve been through it card by card, you want to shuffle your deck like crazy. I always get a little bit paranoid about needing that deck to be randomly shuffled as best as possible. You might do normal shuffles. You might get it into really big messy piles, smoosh it all around, bring all the cards back together. You want to be really confident that your deck is well shuffled before you start reading with it. Maybe that’s just my rational or pedantic mind coming into play, but that helps me to feel confident that I’ve got a nice randomly shuffled deck.

That was your very, very first step. Now, it comes time of doing the actual one-card Tarot reading.

Before you even get into choosing a card, I want you to first clear your mind and create the space for this beautiful thing to happen.

You might just close your eyes, hold the deck in your hands, and just take in a really deep breath, and then just breath out, letting go, letting any of your thoughts from the day go, any feelings in your body, just all letting it go. And then on that second breath, you’re breathing in, and then you're breathing out again, and you're allowing yourself just to be really present in this moment right now. And then on that third breath in, and when you're breathing out, you’re just opening your heart and your mind to receive whatever you need to receive in this moment in time. You’re probably feel great and energised and all that oxygen flowing through your body. When you’re ready, you can open your eyes, and you're reading to do the reading.

Now, very simple question to ask for your one-card reading is “What do I need to know today?”

Ask that of your cards, and channel it into your cards. Think of that as an energetic question. “What do I need to know today, Tarot?” It channels through, into your cards, and then you can start shuffling, and as you’re shuffling the deck you're thinking. “What do I need to know today?” And when you feel that it’s time, you can stop shuffling, and you can choose one card. It doesn’t matter if it’s off the top of the deck, under the bottom, in the middle. I don’t care – choose one card.

Now, flip that card over, and as you’ve got the card in front of you, just gaze at it. You don’t need to be thinking about “What does this mean?” I just want you to gaze at the card and allow your intuition to do the talking.

What comes up intuitively? Think about what kind of picture in the card is getting your attention. What do you see? What do you notice first? Do you feel any sensations in your body? Do you feel any feelings or emotions as you're looking at this card? Maybe you might even have a taste or a smell as you're looking at the card. You might even hear things. Maybe a word pops into your head, a sentence, a phrase, a song even. Just check in with what comes up intuitively.

And again, don’t be thinking, “Oh my gosh! I’m starting to think of Pink and her party song. How is that going to be a Tarot card meaning? Pink and her party song? I don’t think so.” But allow it to happen, because this is your intuition talking. Pay attention to what comes up intuitively as you gaze at that card.

Then – and only then – after you’ve done the intuitive connection, you can read about the Tarot card meaning.

Grab your favourite book. It might be The Ultimate Guide to Tarot Card Meanings, which you can get at BiddyTarot.com. It might be something else. Goodness knows why you would need anything else! Or you might jump onto your favourite website, like BiddyTarot.com or any other website as well. Learn about the card.

When you're learning about the card, this isn’t about going, “OK, what does this card actually mean? Was I right or was I wrong when I was doing it intuitively?” This is about adding just more information to what you already know about the card. You’ve already picked up a lot of things intuitively. Now what you're doing is just getting different perspectives. Every time you read a book or a website about a particular Tarot card, what you're getting is that particular author’s interpretation of the card. It’s not the only meaning to the card. It’s not the “right way” of reading the card. It’s just one interpretation of the card, and you add that to your repertoire of interpretations for the Tarot cards.

At this point you’ve checked in intuitively with what you're getting from the card, and you’ve started to learn a little bit more about some more traditional meanings of the cards or other people’s perspectives of what the cards mean.

Make sure you note down all of this.

I really do recommend having a Tarot journal or just simply a notebook, and write down what’s come up intuitively and what you’ve learned about the card.

That’s the start of your day.

Now, go through your day just like normal, and you might think about those insights from the card throughout your day, and then when you come through to the end of the day, grab your journal again, and write down what you experienced today that related to that card.

Let’s say, for example, you choose the Four of Wands, and intuitively you pick up “There’s something pretty fun happening here. It’s a bit of a celebration.” And then you read. “This is about a homecoming or spending time with family.” You go about your day. Maybe you had to go to work. Your sister rings up and she says, “Hey, let’s go out for lunch!” “Oh, I get it. That’s the Four of Wands.” And then you go out for lunch with your sister, and you have fun, and you’re talking about good times, and all sorts of things.” Then you come back at the end of the day, and you write, “My personal experience with the Four of Wands was having lunch with my sister and enjoying that time together.”

Now, you’ve got an intuitive connection to the card, you’ve got more of this rational connection by learning what the card means, and you’ve now got a personal experience that you can link to that Tarot card.

When you’re doing this each and every day for a few weeks – a few months, even – you start to build up your very own Tarot card meanings book, and that is what’s going to help you. When you’re doing a full Tarot reading for someone, you can reflect on “Oh, the Four of Wands! I remember that feeling when I was chatting with my sister, and it felt amazing.” That will come into your reading, and that will help you read more intuitively when you're doing your reading, and it also just makes the whole process so much easier and more fun and enjoyable.

That is the daily one-card reading, and that is such a valuable exercise, and that’s what I’m suggesting for you as step two. It’s definitely the one exercise that helped my understanding of the Tarot cards go up to that next level. It personalised them for me, and it also meant that I was reading Tarot cards from day one, which was perfect. I was learning as I went. I didn’t have to memorise card meanings at that point, because I was making these personal connections to the cards. Definitely get that started, if you haven’t been doing it already.

STEP 3: Learn the Tarot basics.

This daily one-card reading that you have been practicing is great for learning individual cards and getting that intuitive connection, but with step three, I want to you go back to basics, get that foundational learning in place.

Here are the things you might want to be learning when you're looking at the Tarot basics.

Read up more about the Major Arcana cards. What do they mean collectively? What do each of the cards mean? What’s the Fool’s journey through the Major Arcana cards? What do the Minor Arcana cards mean? As a collective, what do they signify? What do the suits signify? What do the courts signify?

You might also then start to tap into some of the different systems that sit behind the Tarot. For example, learning just what each of the four suits mean and what the numbers mean from an Ace (which is a 1) to 10, that actually gives you access to 40 card meanings. When you know the suits and the numerical meanings, you start to understand the 40 numbered cards in the Tarot deck. That’s pretty cool, right? That’s way better than having to memorise 40 different Tarot card meanings.

Now, there are other basics that you can learn around Tarot card combinations and how to bring cards together, the symbolism in the Tarot cards, and so on. There are really some fundamental aspects of Tarot that once you just understand these, and you can understand it at a personal as well as a book level, it makes learning Tarot that much easier. That’s certainly what I recommend as your third step when you're trying to learn Tarot from day one.

Let’s just do a quick recap:

• Step 1: You’ve opened your deck, you’re ready to go. All you need to do is familiarise yourself with each card. Go through one by one and really just drink in the imagery of each card – nice and simple. That way, you’ll never be surprised. You’ll never flip over a card (like I did) and go, “What? What is that?” You’ll know what is in your Tarot deck.
• Step 2: Start reading straight away, and do the one-card daily reading. It’s going to support your learning of the card meanings, but more importantly, it’s going to get you reading straight away and getting you in touch with your intuition, because that’s what I believe is the whole idea of Tarot, to get you in touch with your intuition.
• Step 3: Learn the Tarot basics. Learn the systems that sit behind the Tarot – things like what the suits mean, what numbers mean, the difference between Major and Minor Arcana cards, and so on. Nice and simple.

If you are new to Tarot, then I hope that these 3 simple steps will help you to start using your Tarot cards from day one and avoiding all that feeling of overwhelm and “My goodness! What do I do with these 78 cards?” Instead, you’ll say, “Yes! Let’s play, little Tarot! Let’s play.”

Now, of course if you want to go deeper and learn how to truly master the Tarot card meanings, then you're going to love my Tarot training program. In my online Tarot course, which is Master the Tarot Card Meanings, I’m going to show you how to build a personal connection with the Tarot using simple yet powerful techniques for interpreting the cards. I’ll teach you the must-know systems that sit behind the Tarot cards that make learning Tarot super easy, and together we’re going to walk through all 78 Tarot cards so that you can master each and every one of them, once and for all. I’ll also let you in on a few insider’s secrets from my 20 years’ experience as a professional Tarot reader.

By the end of the Master the Tarot Card Meanings program, you’re going to know how to build a deep and personal connection with the Tarot cards, and intuitively and confidently interpret the Tarot cards without ever having to memorise the meanings. Ultimately you’re going to be a more confident and intuitive Tarot reader, using the Tarot to transform people’s lives and make a real difference.

Sound good? Well, you can learn more over at BiddyTarot.com/MTCM. Head on over there, and you can learn more about the program. In fact, the doors to this program are opening in May 2017, so you can jump on the waitlist right now so that you are the first person to know when the program is open. Jump on the waitlist – it’s over at BiddyTarot.com/MTCM.

We cannot wait to open up the doors to this program. It’s been completely revised and updated and refreshed so that there is so much juicy content in here to help you also learn Tarot from day one. I hope you’ll join me inside of that program.

For now, I want to say thank you so much for listening, and I am so happy to be part of your journey with Tarot. Bye for now.

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