Learning Tarot

I have been using tarot for a while now but I still struggle with it in more ways than one. I have struggled in learning the cards, having confidence and most of all I struggle with the court cards. Simply put the courts drive me absolutely crazy. I struggle so much with trying to discern if they are supposed to be a person, an attribute, or an event of some description. Corresponding cards and fixed spread positions often confuse me more when relating them to courts.

In regards to learning methods: I keep a journal and use it like my own personal bible. I didn't much care for the card a day method, it felt too slow. I made flash cards which temporarily made it worse so I inevitably threw them out. I read the books that came with the decks I own and still get stumped because they give so much information on each card that I tend to feel overwhelmed by the possibilities. I have perused websites and articles on tarot reading. I have wondered if perhaps I just overthink everything (whichI tend to do in my normal every day life in general) and lack the confidence and conviction in my readings and my thoughts.

To make a long story short, I guess, I was kind of wondering how others have learned the tarot cards (methods, practices, and so on) and how others decipher the messages laid out by those crazy court cards since they are what usually causes me to stumble. Any help, thoughts, comments, feedback of any variety would be helpful. Please and thanks, tarot friends!

Also, please forgive me if this goes somewhere else. I read the thread divisions and it seemed like the best place to put it...

<softly> It takes years. It really does. I've been using Tarot since some time in the 1970s, and I'm still wearing L-plates. Don't give yourself a hard time that you don't know everything, and that you can't make every spread tell a clear story. It gets better with time and experience (and with something about the aging process in your own mind too!). Gradually it will get easier and easier, until one day you'll have some cards spread in front of you, and you'll suddenly think "Two years ago, five years ago, this wouldn't have made sense to me, but it's starting to make sense now."

I'm particularly good at one skill within Tarot: the skill of being able to match whatever I perceive as the meaning in the card, with the positional meaning in the spread to make something significant for the person's life. Yes, it's just a small part of Tarot, but it's what I do particularly well, and can't for the life of me explain to students *how* I do it. So frustrating!

Don't struggle. It's a bit like quicksand - the more you struggle, the faster you sink. As for all the added (by some people...) extras (elements, decans, astrology) - leave them till you FEEL like looking into them !

Chill from the "learning" bit for a while and try making a story around the card you hold in you hand; take another and carry on the story. And also - for people in your position - try Lynda Cowles' book: The Tarot Playbook.

You'll play and get to know your cards in all sorts of new ways - and at least you will have FUN.

Thanks for the help guys. I know it takes years upon years upon years to really be able to get an easy understanding of the cards. I wasn't expecting to learn it all in the first couple years, but I was expecting a more comprehensive understanding of the courts in particular. I struggle less now with the Majors than I did and numerically the minors don't trip me up like they used to, but those courts, man. Lol. I see courts come up in a reading and I just sigh to myself because I know I am probably going to stumble on it.

And thanks for the nudge in the direction of that book. I am gonna go check it out and see if that can help me.

Thanks again you guys. You all are so kind and so helpful and supportive, I am so glad I stumbled on to this forum community back when I did.

How do you know you are stumbling ? Maybe that confusion or whatever you feel is part of the message...

nisaba said:

I'm particularly good at one skill within Tarot: the skill of being able to match whatever I perceive as the meaning in the card, with the positional meaning in the spread to make something significant for the person's life. Yes, it's just a small part of Tarot, but it's what I do particularly well, and can't for the life of me explain to students *how* I do it.

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I understand you perfectly. That was a genuine epiphany for me when it started happening with every reading. It's not always - as the saying goes - "as easy as falling off a log" (and where does that strange expression come from?), but it always comes. I would add being able to string these discrete revelations together into a coherent story. There's no accounting for - or over-estimating the value of - intuition and creative imagination in this regard.

Regarding the court cards and otherwise the question of whether or not a card represents an actual person, this is what I do: I ask the card.

I ask if it's a person, or the querent, even if the querent is myself. I just whittle away --old/young, male/female, etc., and I always get an answer.

BeccaBoo said:

I have been using tarot for a while now but I still struggle with it in more ways than one. I have struggled in learning the cards, having confidence and most of all I struggle with the court cards. Simply put the courts drive me absolutely crazy. I struggle so much with trying to discern if they are supposed to be a person, an attribute, or an event of some description. Corresponding cards and fixed spread positions often confuse me more when relating them to courts.

Click to expand...

Don't worry. I "struggle" with the courts all the time Sometimes they get some extra thinking but I trust my intuition. I try to not overthink. Just relax and do your thing

There's a book you may find helpful if you haven't looked at it yet- Understanding the Tarot Court by Greer and Little.

Each Court card above the Page/Knave/Princess covers three Decans of the Zodiac, and the Knaves cover nine. Add to this the elemental associations, and you almost get information overload.

However, many readers protest: "I don't do it that way; I go by intuition."

So?..........