Nan said:
I get frustrated when I have to continually look up meanings. I think I have got some of them and then....
How long does it take before you really have the meanings and all the possible meanings down?
What methods seem to work best? I am using repitition of use I think.
Does learning the book meaning seem to be the best thing to do when you want to also learn intuitive reading?
though reading the interpretations in books is a good way to help you to get to understand the cards, don't try to memorize meanings to read cards. everyone has a different 'idea' as to what the card means to them.
i did read a variety of books with meanings for each card, and i do believe it is a good start. but what you need to do, is look at each individual card and try to determine what it is that YOU see in the card. What does the figure in the card look like? what colors are there? what do these colors remind you of? what is the person in the card doing? how do they look? are they angry? are they peaceful? sickly looking? stern? what animals/plants, etc. are portrayed in the card? what do they generally mean, symbolically? what do they mean to you?
it may take awhile to be able to do this, but this is how you truly read the cards. I have one book that i used mostly. i would read what that author said was the 'meaning' and then I took the same card from my deck out and looked at it. sometimes I could 'see' what the author saw. sometimes i could not. so, i wrote down what I saw on the page of this book, (became my journal book too) and would continually see how I saw it when I did readings. sometimes i came to realize my interp was better then his (at least for me). sometimes i changed my interp to yet another one. sometimes it incorporated his & mine together. sometimes i realized i now see it as he did.
also, read through others readings here on this site, and see if you can tell what they see in each card and if you can see that also. another thing is to refer to the number. aces refer to beginnings, and so, whenever you see an ace appear, think of number one. the start. a beginning. twos are a couple, so think of it as such. threes as adding one more, so, think of threes as a group thing. and so on. play the games, do the exercises and read others readings. you'll catch on before you know it! this is my opinion anyhow. i'm sure a lot of people will have different ideas and disagree with me. but this will be one idea and one way to get started. yes, i do still look through this one book, and I occasionally buy others and read through them too, for ideas. but i honestly try to get the feeling myself of what that card is telling me and i go with that. sometimes I'm wrong. most of the time it turns out right.