Tips on learning please

I am looking for advice on different ways and techniques to help me learn and memorize the images and meanings of each card.

This is just me, mind you. I have used a long winding method of reading books, doing actual readings, spending time with individual cards that puzzled me, posting here for advice, reading more books, doing more readings, and etc, etc. It isn't exactly a 'method'.

I have to agree with alta. I'm certainly no expert, but if there's one thing that I've learned about tarot its that you have to be able to put in the time, and you have to love every second of it Read as many books as you can, and study your main reading deck until every last detail is uncovered. (And of course search the AT forums for answers to your questions that have probably been talked about before-- there's so much great information to be found)

I spent ages looking at individual cards.....Just LOOKING at what was in them....

I have never memorised meanings. I've read up on them - but not done any deliberate memorising.

maybe this will help you

This is the thread i posted this is what i did to help me learn the meanings of the cards and now what im doing to help a friend. Sometimes looking up general meanings can give you an idea so when you look at the cards you can get a better understanding
up in the right hand corner of the screan it says learn its free and explains so much about the cards. Theres many helpful sites once you know general meaning you can branch out from there i can be overwhelming and intimidating to start it was for me i had a deck of cards and no idea what to do so i compiled information and spent time studying the meanings, did a card a day and eventually over time it just clicked and i learned to put the cards together it all went really well. Now i have a whole new understanding but tarot is something you will never fully understand because no matter how much you know, read or discuss youll find down the road once in awhile youll have an instance that you get a head scratcher, mental block on something simple or something unique and will need further understanding.
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=127699

The method I'm using is one I've seen mentioned here quite often.

It involves drawing a card a day, approximately, sometimes its 3 days, anyway...

Draw a card in the morning and think about the card. Blank your mind and see the card. Look up any symbols on the card in a dream or symbols dictionary. Apply the meanings to daily occurrences (what happened today and how could that relate to the meanings of this card?). Then in the evening write down what is discovered.

I say 3 days because sometimes I have to let the symbols percolate before I can write about what they mean.

Maybe this will help!

Enjoy...

Seventy-eight cards is a lot to "memorise" - I haven't even memorised the Periodic Table of Elements yet, or the seven-times-table, and I've had Tarot decks around me since some time in the late 1970s.

If you feel you have to memorise them, you're simply fashioning a rod to beat your own back with. You're just looking to damage your own self-esteem. Love them instead. Shuffle them a lot. Look at them a lot. Imagine. What's happening in that scene? What happened before, and what will happen a bit after? What is happening just beyond the edges of the image?

You'll learn a lot faster just spending time with your deck and thinking about it than you ever will, memorising. Go to the LWB if you really draw a blank on an image, or once you've worked out how it feels for you, to see if it gives you any extra ideas, but don't memorise. Think about one card, then think about an other. You'll get used to experiencing each card as you see it, that way.

For me, it helped to think of the cards within their numerical Tarot Constellation family. Grab all cards that have a number that is or reduces to the same and lay them together. Compare the symbols used and look up objects, colors, etc.

I like the idea to put the Fool with the Aces. (Ravenswing!)
Magician, Wheel, Tens
etc.

Just look.

Easier said than done...

I learned mostly by doing daily draws and readings for myself and for my husband. If you do something with Tarot every day, it just comes to you. Before you know it you know your first deck. It's not so much memorization as it is getting to know them. When you were a kid, did you memorize your favorite story, or did you just hear it so many times that you could tell it in your own words?

I would stick with one deck at the beginning. Get to know that one intimately before moving on to a second. After a few years it will be easier to pick up a new deck and start reading with it, but until you get to know one deck really well, it's not time to move on to multiple decks.

I also think having a good book that goes with your deck, or a couple good general Tarot books, is helpful. So is keeping a journal.