do you remember...?

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 04 Jan 2005, and now archived in the Forum Library.

contradiction	04 Jan 2005
about a month ago firemaiden, started a thread on "do you still have your sense of wonder with the tarot". it got me to thinking, and i can not let it go. so i have to ask do you remember your first "real" reading, that you did? or maybe another time that just sticks out in your mind as being so spot on that you were amazed, at how accurate tarot can be. i want to tell you about my first "real" reading, and i promise to try to keep it short. i can get long winded. i had only had my deck for a month, (how i got started is another long story), and had only done readings for myself, my roomate, and one really close friend, who agreed to be a guinea pig. he calls me one night and ask if i will do a reading for a friend of his, i say yes. they arrive, introductions are done, then she tells me she had a friend a few years back who did readings. so now i am scared to death, i feel that i have no idea what i am doing and this lady is going to think i am a complete idiot. she tells me that she just wants a general reading, it has been a couple of years since she had one, and just missed having them done. so i lay out a celtic cross, (the only spread i knew), and start going through the cards. i can not remember anything from the "little white book", so i just make stuff up. just whatever thought came to mind on each card. then i go back and try to put everything together into something that makes sense. i still remember this part like it was earlier today. (here is where i could get long winded) i could not look at her until i finished, that is when i noticed she was crying. all she could say is you're right. she was torn between two lovers, one bad for her, the other (possiably right one), married, she was estranged from her daughter, her business was about to go bankrupt, and she was thinking of moving out of state, because of her situation. i was floored. all the readings i had done and seen were for people who knew each other very well, i did not realize until then how much you could know about someone you did not know. it took me a week to realize that the only way to read tarot, is to listen to what it tells you, not what you read in a book. (although the book can be helpful to have in the back of your mind). to this day i still try to look at every reading the way i did that one. and unless my ego gets in the way, i still have that attitude. although i don't think i will ever feel exactly the way i did that night. but i still hope that one day i will. so who else wants to share their experience? and to the newbies, take this as a lesson, you don't have to have years of experience to have ability, just a willingness to listen to the cards, and hold on to the feeling that you now have. it will help you more than anything else. contradiction

Lurea	04 Jan 2005
Great idea for a thread, contradiction! :) I best remember a reading I did about three years ago--one of the first I did for another person. I had read for myself but was very nervous about reading for anyone else. My husband had put up with my cards for years, and he finally wanted me to read for him. He has to travel for business a lot, and he asked me how his flight was going to be. Well, I pulled three cards, the only one I remember now is the 3 of cups, and I told him it was going to be great, on time, and like a party. He was highly skeptical, as he was travelling coach-in the MIDDLE seat- and this flight was usually fully booked and *late* and uncomfortable. The next day he called me. He had gotten miraculously bumped to first class with a bunch of young executives travelling to a sales convention. Champagne was flowing, and they had a party all the way there. :D

firemaiden	05 Jan 2005
I think I haven't done my first "real" reading yet, LOL. So far they've all just been experiments. Although sometimes my experiments have yielded accurate results. I have no idea why. :D

SunChariot	05 Jan 2005
Well, my first reading wasn't as dramatic as that. Of course it was a celtic cross spread too :-) I'll bet a lot of people start with that, if not everyone. LOL It was for myself as I read mainly for myself. I use Tarot as a means of self-discovery. Okay, so my first deck had arrived in the mail. It was the Haindl deck. And I was rather skeptical, but ready to suspend it long enough to try. And I asked a question about my lovelife, and the first card that popped up in the first position was "The Two of Cups". And it was pretty well a revelation. And right away I could see it was too much to be a coincidence that out of 78 cards the exact one describing the issue came up. And I've pretty well been hooked ever since.:-) I know they say you should not read for yourself, but it has always worked wonderfully for me, and I have learnt so much...Maybe I am the exception. :-) BTW, I wanted to add in that I agree totally with your ideas about reading from your heart and soul, not from the book as much. I have always done that too. And I think that is about the best advice that you could give a newbie. I have always given the newbies I come in contact with that advice too when it comes up, although I find some find it hard to listen. :-) THe thing is when you feel like you are making up the answers at those times, like you felt then, you are not. That can be when you are doing exactly what you should be: accessing your unconscious and finding the answers there. Since, of course, you have no real idea of what is in your unconscious, it feels like the asnwers are coming from nowhere but they are not. Actually read that in a book last night. That when you access your unconsicous it is a very common experience to feel like you are making the answers up. In the end you just have to shut your mind a bit and read with your feelings, what things feel like they mean. Great advice, and a beautiful story! Bar

SunChariot	05 Jan 2005
firemaiden wrote: I think I haven't done my first "real" reading yet, LOL. So far they've all just been experiments. Although sometimes my experiments have yielded accurate results. I have no idea why. :D Your experiments have yielded accurate results because Tarot works. And you are tuning into something beyond yourself. I think we are opposites. Since I started in May/04 I am constantly working on one reading or another. LOL Right now I am doing two at once. :-) I was in the middle of a long inner child work one(Ancestral Path Tarot), but I need to look for a new job now, so I put the first aside to come back to, and am doing a work related one (Goddess Tarot). :-) Why haven't you tried you first reading yet? You seem ready and you are getting accurate asnwers already. Wishing you all the best when you do, Bar

Maggie Bell	05 Jan 2005
contradiction All I can say is, "Wow!" What an empowering experience for you! Thank you for sharing it with us! Maggie

Fudugazi	05 Jan 2005
That's a wonderful story, contradiction! Sad for the lady, but wonderful for you. And I agree with your conclusions. Read, study, look into every aspect of the cards in your own time. But when you read for another person, just be there, with the other and the cards. Let Tarot tell you what it wants to say there and then. It's the same with writing. You research and research, then put your research in a drawer, and write. I have a rather funny story to tell, which also finished convincing me that tarot was for real. On the 31st December 1999, I was in Rwanda for work, and me and some colleagues decided to see in the New Millenium as well we could. We all dressed up, did some skits and cooked some goats, made a bonfire, and managed to wrangle some bottles of champagne from the capital. I dressed up as a Gipsy Reader, Madame Merveilleuse, and sat behind a veil (actually a mosquito net) with a little table, putting on a fake Rom accent. I had my Robin Wood Tarot, which looks pretty gipsy-ish. Everyone was up for a reading and no-one took it one whit seriously because we were tipsy, calling in the New Millenium and I was obviously having fun. I read for a colleague from another office, whom I didn't know very well. I looked at the cards and with my fake accent told her what I saw. And her jaw dropped. "How do you see all this?" she asked. "It's here", I pointed (still in my silly accent that would have made Merril Streep proud). In short, I read her entire love life, her dilemmas, how she wasn't sure whether to continue in humanitarian work or marry this guy she'd met back home and settle down, how she preferred romance to domestic life, etc. I'm not even sure I was aware of what I was doing - I just looked at the cards and read. I was nowhere near a tarot book - I didn't have any with me, and as for internet, forget it in a Rwandan small town (at least back then). A couple of days later - she was still in our field office because of travel restrictions - she came to see me and confirmed it. She said I'd really clarified things for her. She continued with humanitarian work and didn't marry the guy, but met another who was in the same line of work and they are happily romancing all over the globe.

firemaiden	05 Jan 2005
SunChariot wrote: Why haven't you tried you first reading yet? You seem ready and you are getting accurate asnwers already. Wishing you all the best when you do, Bar Oh... I've done readings... it's just that I never feel like they are "the first real one". Kind of like love affairs... when is it the first "real" love? I don't know... it's different everytime... what makes it more real? or more pretend than the one before?

Fudugazi	05 Jan 2005
firemaiden wrote: Oh... I've done readings... it's just that I never feel like they are "the first real one". Kind of like love affairs... when is it the first "real" love? I don't know... it's different everytime... what makes it more real? or more pretend than the one before? You don't, perhaps. I did that pretend reading - obviously light-heartedly, though I was "reading" - and it turned out true. It reminds me of what my grandmother used to say :"there's many a true word spoken in jest." I've never forgotten that. One day I suppose I'll look back on my love life and feel the same. The one where I laughed the most and had the fewest dramas will turn out to have been one true love (hopefully I'll have him by my side to laugh at it with me).

stella01904	05 Jan 2005
MM ~ Something else worth mentioning, if you DO remember something from a book, mention it! If not, don't worry about it...Stella

SunChariot	05 Jan 2005
Helvetica wrote: That's a wonderful story, contradiction! Sad for the lady, but wonderful for you. And I agree with your conclusions. Read, study, look into every aspect of the cards in your own time. But when you read for another person, just be there, with the other and the cards. Let Tarot tell you what it wants to say there and then. It's the same with writing. You research and research, then put your research in a drawer, and write. I have a rather funny story to tell, which also finished convincing me that tarot was for real. On the 31st December 1999, I was in Rwanda for work, and me and some colleagues decided to see in the New Millenium as well we could. We all dressed up, did some skits and cooked some goats, made a bonfire, and managed to wrangle some bottles of champagne from the capital. I dressed up as a Gipsy Reader, Madame Merveilleuse, and sat behind a veil (actually a mosquito net) with a little table, putting on a fake Rom accent. I had my Robin Wood Tarot, which looks pretty gipsy-ish. Everyone was up for a reading and no-one took it one whit seriously because we were tipsy, calling in the New Millenium and I was obviously having fun. I read for a colleague from another office, whom I didn't know very well. I looked at the cards and with my fake accent told her what I saw. And her jaw dropped. "How do you see all this?" she asked. "It's here", I pointed (still in my silly accent that would have made Merril Streep proud). In short, I read her entire love life, her dilemmas, how she wasn't sure whether to continue in humanitarian work or marry this guy she'd met back home and settle down, how she preferred romance to domestic life, etc. I'm not even sure I was aware of what I was doing - I just looked at the cards and read. I was nowhere near a tarot book - I didn't have any with me, and as for internet, forget it in a Rwandan small town (at least back then). A couple of days later - she was still in our field office because of travel restrictions - she came to see me and confirmed it. She said I'd really clarified things for her. She continued with humanitarian work and didn't marry the guy, but met another who was in the same line of work and they are happily romancing all over the globe. I loved your story too, it was so cool. That's the way the universe works I guess, when there is something we really need to see it sends us messages so we can see it.:-) I have seen so much of that and even more since I started my Tarot. The woman you read for had something she needed to know and the universe sent her the message through your reading. The time was right for her to see it. It was so cool that it taught you something too.:-) Bar

Milamber	05 Jan 2005
Well, you can let me be the first person to mention a first real reading that was not a celtic cross, though I've done them since. My first reading was a spread called "Dark of the Moon," which I looked up. It's designed to indicate the major energies affecting your life, and give you guidance for life in general, rather than a specific question. Without hunting down my journal, I couldn't tell you the exact results. At first I didn't fully understand it, but after a while of studying it, it clicked. It's a 7 card spread, and four of the cards in a sequence were major arcana. In short, the cards (especially The High Priestess) were giving me a metaphorical kick in the backside, and telling me to quit idling and start acting, because I was going nowhere fast. True, too. SunChariot wrote: THe thing is when you feel like you are making up the answers at those times, like you felt then, you are not. That can be when you are doing exactly what you should be: accessing your unconscious and finding the answers there. Since, of course, you have no real idea of what is in your unconscious, it feels like the asnwers are coming from nowhere but they are not. Actually read that in a book last night. That when you access your unconsicous it is a very common experience to feel like you are making the answers up. That's how I've been thinking about them, personally; one aspect of them, anyway. Especially on one of my readings, I felt that the cards were just sort of organizing my thoughts in front of me. My last reading was like that. They also have a tendency to dig up points that you hadn't considered as well. I had come up with an idea on how to go about something, but before doing so, I decided I should take the opportunity to practice the tarot, and perhaps learn something about the situation besides. I dealt a celtic cross. In short, it spelled back at me what I had been considering about the problem (not the plan, of course, but various considerations about myself those around me), and of all things, told me (via The Magician in position 9, which I read as "how to act" or "how to approach the situation") to go ahead and act!

SunChariot	06 Jan 2005
Milamber wrote: Well, you can let me be the first person to mention a first real reading that was not a celtic cross, though I've done them since. My first reading was a spread called "Dark of the Moon," which I looked up. It's designed to indicate the major energies affecting your life, and give you guidance for life in general, rather than a specific question. Without hunting down my journal, I couldn't tell you the exact results. At first I didn't fully understand it, but after a while of studying it, it clicked. It's a 7 card spread, and four of the cards in a sequence were major arcana. In short, the cards (especially The High Priestess) were giving me a metaphorical kick in the backside, and telling me to quit idling and start acting, because I was going nowhere fast. True, too. That's how I've been thinking about them, personally; one aspect of them, anyway. Especially on one of my readings, I felt that the cards were just sort of organizing my thoughts in front of me. My last reading was like that. They also have a tendency to dig up points that you hadn't considered as well. I had come up with an idea on how to go about something, but before doing so, I decided I should take the opportunity to practice the tarot, and perhaps learn something about the situation besides. I dealt a celtic cross. In short, it spelled back at me what I had been considering about the problem (not the plan, of course, but various considerations about myself those around me), and of all things, told me (via The Magician in position 9, which I read as "how to act" or "how to approach the situation") to go ahead and act! Oooh! How do you do that Dark of the Moon Spread, I would love to try that. I even love its name. :-) If it is not too much trouble and if you don't have to dig up too much stuff to remember the spread :-) My cards too, they tend to dig up things you hadn't thought of before, like talking to a friend.:-) Bar

Milamber	06 Jan 2005
I remember the spread, it's the cards I drew and the reading I made I'd have to look up. ;) It's like this: 1-------4 --2-7-5-- 3-------6 1: Releasing - Things you need to let go of. 2: Retaining - Things you should be holding close. 3: Receiving - New things coming into your life. 4: Surroundings - How your surroundings are affecting you. 5: Giving - What you should be giving to others. 6: Beginning - Something new that will begin soon. 7: Your Lesson - What you should be learning now.

Magi	06 Jan 2005
My first reading was done back in my 3rd year of high school. The only reason I did it was they offered me $3 and I needed to eat lunch.(my family was on tough times financially). after that I did readings to help pay the bills and buy food. I never got much, never more than $4 or$5 a reading. I became really close to my tarot. they were my only friends. but things improved, and now if some one really needs help, I never charge for a reading no matter how lengthy. I became an aid to those who didn't know where else to turn with there problems. That's why I took the name Magi, because that name reflects how I feel about the tarot, & that there is no higher magick than helping those in need.

SunChariot	06 Jan 2005
Milamber wrote: I remember the spread, it's the cards I drew and the reading I made I'd have to look up. ;) It's like this: 1-------4 --2-7-5-- 3-------6 1: Releasing - Things you need to let go of. 2: Retaining - Things you should be holding close. 3: Receiving - New things coming into your life. 4: Surroundings - How your surroundings are affecting you. 5: Giving - What you should be giving to others. 6: Beginning - Something new that will begin soon. 7: Your Lesson - What you should be learning now. Thanks Mileamber, planning to make use of that soon. :-) Bar

SunChariot	06 Jan 2005
Magi wrote: My first reading was done back in my 3rd year of high school. The only reason I did it was they offered me $3 and I needed to eat lunch.(my family was on tough times financially). after that I did readings to help pay the bills and buy food. I never got much, never more than $4 or$5 a reading. I became really close to my tarot. they were my only friends. but things improved, and now if some one really needs help, I never charge for a reading no matter how lengthy. I became an aid to those who didn't know where else to turn with there problems. That's why I took the name Magi, because that name reflects how I feel about the tarot, & that there is no higher magick than helping those in need. That was another beautiful story. And I have to say I especially agree with the last sentence. :-) Bar

contradiction	06 Jan 2005
hey guys, and girls, wonderful stories so far. but, where is everyone else? i know that there has to be more people with stories, that need to be shared. come on let's here them. funny, sad, amazing whatever, if you remember it tell it. firemaiden, when i said "real", i meant one where you were doing more than just trying to learn the meanings, and how to weave them together. helvetica, see there are advantages to being tipsey. milamber- loved the spread, can't wait to use it. magi- that's the way the universe should work. thanks to all who have posted so far. can't wait to hear more.

Milamber	06 Jan 2005
I hope it works well for you both, then. (And anybody else who tries it too, of course. :) ) Since it didn't seem to be listed anywhere on the boards, I decided to post it in the spreads forum for everybody. ;)

The do you remember...? thread was originally posted on 04 Jan 2005 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.