A new tarot teacher

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 27 Oct 2003, and now archived in the Forum Library.

sagitarian	27 Oct 2003
yup, that's right, a new tarot teacher has just come out in the open. I work as a professional reader at a bookstore here in town. Our previous tarot teacher has left the shop, and the owner has come to me, to ask me to teach Tarot for her. She wants to start this next month (next month starts on saturday), but when exactly I don't know. Soooo...smiles, I'm all kinds of nervous, and through the nervousness, i'm trying to come up with some kind of rough out line of where to begin. My first thought is most people only take one or two tarot classes, so I asked myself what is the hardest "thing" to learn about Tarot? Some of the major Arcana comes to mind, and court cards too, but then I thought about how hard it is to break away from the book and trust your intuition. So I wrote out a rough draft of a minature manual of how to develop trust and a relationship with this internal voice. I also included some excercises that encourage reading the cards on your own vs looking them up. So I think it's a good starting point, but please, I would love to hear your personal experiences in what you felt was the hardest "thing" to learn about tarot. Please include what helped you through this the most. There could be a whole range of experiences in the students. Some may already be reading, and others may have just bought their first deck before the class starts. This is what makes it the most difficult, that and teaching multiple students at once. I have taught one on one before, and that seemed to go smoothly. So I have confidence that I can teach, but nervous about teaching multiple people at once. The biggest question that comes to mind is "where do I start" but I've answered for myself, and I feel that first I should get a feeling of where everybody is at (usually there's about 1-5 students at a time). If there's any common problem areas then cover those first, but if I have someone who knows NOTHING then I'll start with how to begin to listen to your internal voice. In any case, I wanted to share, and get some more ideas on "how" to do this. thank you all in ahead of time for your comments and help.

Le_Corsair	27 Oct 2003
A Ph.D in Tarotology is available for your benefit, it includes a diploma that you can print out to impress your new students. (Thanks to Rota for finding this link originally.) Just be careful on this website, there are a few spyware boobytraps that will add a toolbar to your browser if you aren't careful. Good fortune and all my best wishes in your teaching endeavor! Bob :THERM

lark	27 Oct 2003
That is a wonderful opportunity and a big responsibility. I have often thought about the beginning of my tarot adventure and wished I would have handled it differently. I was very isolated had no one to ask (didn't even own a computer) so I did what came naturally to me I bought LOTS of books. I read and read and read all about other peoples opinions and interpretations. Now, I wish I would have sat down with my little deck of Hanson Roberts cards (my first baby) a pencil, notebook, and a fresh virgin mind and just went through each card. Just one at a time and wrote down what I saw. What the card spoke to me. I think that would have been the most valuable experiance of all. Even someone who has been reading for awhile could benefit from this. I recently got the Fey tarot and I did this with the cards before I read the book. It bonded me to the cards in a different way. Did this with the Faeries's Oracle too. That's why there so personal to me. Doing it this way allows intuition to start flowing right from the start. You look at what you read later with a more critical eye. It's not set in stone for you. Not that reading books isn't valuable it sure has been for me (125 books later.) But it took me a year at least to connect with the cards on an intuitive level. I was so afraid I might not be getting it right "by the book." If I was going to start at the beginning, or teach tarot myself this would be the first exercise I would want to participate in or the first thing I would teach. That, and picking out a tarot deck. Boy, the money I've wasted buying decks that just didn't click with me. If only I would have had Aeclectic then to give me the real low down on different decks. But your students will be so lucky to have you for a teacher! Good luck and I'm so happy for you. Hope my little ramblings helped. Nameste

Astraea	27 Oct 2003
Warmest congratulations and best wishes, Sagitarian. I think you will make an excellent teacher. I have learned a great deal from you on this forum, and would take your class if we lived in the same town.

MoreMagic	27 Oct 2003
The hardest thing about Tarot when I was a very beginner was developing a meaning for all those different cards! It sounds as if you have a handle on how to introduce that process to your students. The other hard thing, when I had a little more experience and was beginning to read for friends, was learning how to formulate questions and read the cards in an inter-connected way.

Emily	28 Oct 2003
Hi Sagitarian, Congratulations too on your teaching class. I tried to learn how to trust my instincts with a card by taking a card at random and just writing down what I saw. Think this is the method Mary Greer uses. It worked for a while but with me its finding the time to actually study, so I take the easy option and hit the books. Also like MoreMagic I have problems formulating the actual question then finding a spread I like - sometimes I just do the PPP spread although I am starting to like the dreaded CC. Again good luck :)

catlin	29 Oct 2003
Congrats to your tarot classes. Teaching what you like is so much fun. BTW maybe you want to offer classes for absolute beginners and more advanced students to make things easier.

The A new tarot teacher thread was originally posted on 27 Oct 2003 in the Talking Tarot board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Talking Tarot, or read more archived threads.