how many books to interpret your cards?

I've seen here and elsewhere, Tarot readers using 3 or more books to interpret their cards...
how many books do you use?how many are necessary? which books have different interpretations?

Either I'm reading them wrong,or I need other books to help out.The two I mentioned in other posts here come off sounding like fortune cookie sayings or some newspaper horoscopes.
My online readings I've been getting for sometime now, say totally different things than my books say about the same three cards.
I've 3 books from the library,the 4 & 5 star books I mentioned elsewhere here, that all give different interpretations.

gurlevil said:

I've seen here and elsewhere, Tarot readers using 3 or more books to interpret their cards...
how many books do you use?how many are necessary? which books have different interpretations?

Click to expand...

All books have different interpretations. They are after all the author's individual views on the cards and the tarot.

I have a lot of tarot books, and I'm still buying more (to my husbands regrets). I like them for inspiration, for fun, for exercises and for learning other approaches.

But. Recently I stopped using them when reading. Its the cards I'm reading, not the books. And I guess having them piled up and looked into *during*the reading takes my focus away from the cards, and can course a lot of stress and disorientation. I now practice using my own flow and intuition, and I'm getting more than ever before. Sometimes I look in the books after the reading. If I feel the need to. But I seldom do that any more in relation to an actual reading.

Doing a tarotjournal with entries for each reading and each card can be a way to read your own tarot book evolving over the years.

Gazel

I agree, every book will give you something different to think about...& it can be confusing, you need to get to know your deck ~ decide what a card is saying to "you"...how you feel when you see it, what it reminds you of etc etc,. build up your own frame of reference for each card, start your own book if you like, as Gazel suggested, in a notepad or loose leaf folder, I did that & its interesting to look back after a time & see how your impressions of a card change as time goes by..

MM

I have over 300 books on tarot. How many do I use when interpreting a reading? At most one and then that's only if I'm really really really stuck on a card. Usually I don't use any books when interpreting.

Just like the best way to learn to ride a bike is to actually RIDE it (and yeah, you may fall off a couple of times, but you gotta get back on and keep going), the best way to learn to interpret tarot cards it to interpret them.

Yeah, your interpretations might be wrong or even just slightly off, but that's OK cause you're learning. The more you read, the better at it you become.

As Gazel said, those books of interpretations you're referring to are someone else's interpretations of cards. You need to develop your interpretations. The author of the deck you're using may say that such-and-such card means blue. But whenever you see the card it means tree. Guess what? Neither of you is wrong. If the tarot wants the author of the deck to see blue, it will show the author that card. If it wants you to see blue, it won't give you that card but whatever card(s) in the deck that mean(s) blue to you.

Also, 10 different readers, when given the same cards from the same deck will more than likely come up with 10 different interpretations. And that's OK.

Rodney

Well when i first came here a few months ago, all I heard was to put the books away and read them intuitivly, however, unless you have any background knowledge of the meanings to start with, then it isn't easy, you need to get the general gist of things before you can even consider putting the book down, but which book to use and which book to put down is entirely up to you. From personally experiance I would suggest two things, stick to one deck whilst learning and make sure you really like that deck, then find a book that suits YOU, you know what sounds right to you and you'll know when you have found that book.

Paul

thanks for the advice and help, everyone!

Honestly???? I guess just 3. *tomatoes flying at Baroli* All I ever used when I first started was Mary Greer's Tarot For Yourself, Mark Eden's book (sorry, I forget the title) and my journal that wrote in. Other than that,......no books.

Honestly? Only one book and my journal. I have an encyclopedia of symbols that I use to understand some of the symbols that escape my grasp. Otherwise, I've just been doing a card by card examination. I write down exactly what I see, and what I feel it means. I have a pile of books I could use and I will read them at some point in time but for now my study is working great.

Hooked

gurlevil said:

I've seen here and elsewhere, Tarot readers using 3 or more books to interpret their cards...
how many books do you use?how many are necessary? which books have different interpretations?

Either I'm reading them wrong,or I need other books to help out.The two I mentioned in other posts here come off sounding like fortune cookie sayings or some newspaper horoscopes.
My online readings I've been getting for sometime now, say totally different things than my books say about the same three cards.
I've 3 books from the library,the 4 & 5 star books I mentioned elsewhere here, that all give different interpretations.

Click to expand...

None. I don't use books to read the cards. I read a lot of books when starting out, to learn how to be a reader and to develop my personal reading style, but now I never use books to interpret the cards. Yes books give different interpretations which is one reason I stopped using them. If they can't decide amongst themselves that there is a set meaning to a card, then to me I am better off finding the meanings anew inside myself during each reading.

You just can't pin the meanings of a card down very tightly, not tightly enough to write a definitive book on it. Even here on AT, you see threads where people ask what this card means to others, and you see like 25 posts and each person has a different meaning. Imho, there is no end to what each card could have to say in a reading. The meanings can't be set down on a book because there are too many ways it can be understood, and the meanings are not static. Many many things affect and change the card's meaning, such as the position of the card, the surrounding cards, the question, the spread, the reader themselves...etc and so forth.

If you absolutely had to use a book I would use the book that comes with your deck, as each deck is different and that would come closest to the intended meaning of your deck. The cards often just talk to us through the images rather than throught the intended meaning. But again, in my way of seeing things, meaning is something you find/feel inside yourself, not outside yourself.

Babs

I agree it is best to identify what you see in each card and record it in your own book. However, I often find I "see" different things in the same card depending on the situation. That is why I try to record every reading I do. Even within the deck specific books there are often several listed meanings for the same card.

In each reading I record what I see and feel in each card and the reading as a whole. Then I might choose to go back and clarify something using a book if I am unsure. But I never use a book first or do a reading through using book meanings outright. That seems stilted and wooden to me. The reading would not flow at all.