MissChiff
The book Holistic Tarot is excellent.. I wish I had that book when I first started learning..
100% inexperienced
Amanda
Perfect.
That's all you really need...You may confuse yourself... depends on your mental capacity I suppose. It probably won't mess you up. When I started I read for myself all the time. I was doing spreads for everything and just soaking it up. Sometimes that works, because the evidence starts to appear in your life and you have a memory of reading the card to connect to; then the meaning of the card becomes stronger for you internally.
I would stay focused on the mechanics for now. You need to figure out and understand how this is "supposed" to work before your feelings come into stronger play, and then spin off in your own unique direction.
Go watch readers/readings in action in the Your Readings forum. Soak it up and observe.
nisaba
I wouldn't bother. I'd come right here.
Read every thread and every question in "using Tarot cards" and "Talking Tarot", but especially the former. Have your deck with you.
When you're offline, thumb through your deck a lot, looking at the images. Pause here and there. What do the images make you think? Feel? do the colours make any kind of sense, actually or symbolically? Then get back online, ask loads of questions in "using Tarot cards", and read all the other threads.
Best way to learn is to learn, not to hope someone will make it easy for you. Anything spoonfed to you isn't learned by you.
LindaMechele
{Edited to add: Holy tl/dr, Batman! I'd have written you a shorter post, but I didn't have time. 
}
My point is don't make it a chore, don't force yourself if you're not feeling it. That won't work, and will turn you off tarot like it did me.
When I was recently relearning, what helped speed it up for me was to break it up in smaller bites, breaking the cards up into groups to tackle individually - major arcana, suits, courts, and numbers/pips. Tarot Plain and Simple is so very helpful here since Louis gives meanings for these as well as the individual cards.
I stuck to the traditional meanings, but simplified them a lot, focusing not on learning every single meaning, but to get the main ones down that made sense to me since those were easier to remember. I wanted to get to the readings asap since that's the best way to learn - by doing - but not so fast that I had no idea what the hell I was doing. You have to learn and then USE "See Pug run" before you can graduate to "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." (Am I dating myself again with Pug?)
1. Major Arcana first ~ Learning 78 cards seemed so overwhelming, so compared to that learning just 22 major arcana seemed like a cinch, and it was. It still took me a few weeks since I didn't want to push it and turn it into a chore, so some days I'd do one card, other days four, and still other days none if I just wasn't feeling it. Aeclectic's meanings pages, especially the Fool's Journey story and Thirteen's meanings, were incredibly helpful in addition to the books I had.
2. Suits next ~ After I had the majors down, I focused on learning the traits and correspondences for the four suits (things like Swords - air - thoughts, and Wands - fire - actions). Again, learning four general things was loads easier than learning 56 individual ones.
3. Courts third ~ An example of simplifying things: Pages usually mean young feminine energy or people, Knights young masculine, Queens mature feminine, Kings mature masculine. Easy-peasey. Yeah, there's way more to them than that, but that's enough to get you started. Couple that with what you've learned the suits mean and you've got a lot of knowledge right there. Knight of Wands as a person = a young man who charges right into "battle" when faced with a task; rolling his sleeves up, throwing away the directions, and jumping right in before thinking about it. Queen of Swords as advice = objectivity over emotions is needed, use your wisdom gained from experience to lead you instead of your feelings.
4. And finally numbers ~ Again, learning what ten numbers mean and coupling that with what the suits mean is a lot easier than learning forty cards.
And as far as "all different cards being pulled for each session, each time completely different" - if you learn the general meanings for the majors, the suits, the courts, and the numbers, you'll start to see a lot more than just gibberish. You'll start seeing the basic meanings, will be able to even interpret the cards generally but pretty accurately. And once you get an idea of what the spread is saying, you can break out the books to back up what you just saw and refine it.
Also, as has been mentioned before, keeping a record of my readings really helped me and still helps me. When I do a reading I take a photo, upload it to Evernote (their phone app is FAB for this), title it with the date and question, then type in my interpretation focusing on what makes the most sense objectively but including also what I want (positive) and what I'm afraid of (negative), writing/typing out my feelings and thoughts as well. Then I look back on it after some time has passed and see what the real meaning ended up being and how my emotions colored my interpretation, if at all. I don't think I'll ever quit doing this. It's a great way to keep your emotional attachment to an outcome in check.
Something else that keeping a record like this does: it allows you to let go of the fear of not "getting it" right then, that it'll all be lost forever when you pick the cards up if you don't squeeze out every bit of the message. Record it and you can always come back later to glean more meaning from it. That alone helped me relax enough to start "getting it" quicker - I was no longer overwhelmed by the thought that I'd miss something if I didn't get the meanings right RIGHT NOW. Being relaxed and not worrying about that, like McFaire said, helped the interpretations come a lot easier.
}That's a REALLY good book. Out of the 20 or so books I have and the dozen or two I've had but gotten rid of, that's one of the two I reach for first, along with the meaning's pages here at Aeclectic. I also haven't read it cover to cover and doubt I ever will. I just look up whatever I need to know about at the time.
Since you haven't been doing it long, don't worry. It does take time. I've been reading tarot for 20-odd years off and on (much more off than on) and am still learning. You never quit learning really, and that's part of the fun. Main thing - don't force it. Don't turn it into a chore. I did that at first, trying to force the meanings into my brain using the only resource I really had available to me at the time, Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Ugh. No wonder I gave up. There was no internet back then,no helpful forums to get in touch with other readers, and not many really good books. The few good ones there were, like Eden Gray's, I had the misfortune of missing somehow. But enough about trudging through three miles of snow to get to school, uphill both ways.
My point is don't make it a chore, don't force yourself if you're not feeling it. That won't work, and will turn you off tarot like it did me. When I was recently relearning, what helped speed it up for me was to break it up in smaller bites, breaking the cards up into groups to tackle individually - major arcana, suits, courts, and numbers/pips. Tarot Plain and Simple is so very helpful here since Louis gives meanings for these as well as the individual cards.
I stuck to the traditional meanings, but simplified them a lot, focusing not on learning every single meaning, but to get the main ones down that made sense to me since those were easier to remember. I wanted to get to the readings asap since that's the best way to learn - by doing - but not so fast that I had no idea what the hell I was doing. You have to learn and then USE "See Pug run" before you can graduate to "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." (Am I dating myself again with Pug?
)1. Major Arcana first ~ Learning 78 cards seemed so overwhelming, so compared to that learning just 22 major arcana seemed like a cinch, and it was. It still took me a few weeks since I didn't want to push it and turn it into a chore, so some days I'd do one card, other days four, and still other days none if I just wasn't feeling it. Aeclectic's meanings pages, especially the Fool's Journey story and Thirteen's meanings, were incredibly helpful in addition to the books I had.
2. Suits next ~ After I had the majors down, I focused on learning the traits and correspondences for the four suits (things like Swords - air - thoughts, and Wands - fire - actions). Again, learning four general things was loads easier than learning 56 individual ones.
3. Courts third ~ An example of simplifying things: Pages usually mean young feminine energy or people, Knights young masculine, Queens mature feminine, Kings mature masculine. Easy-peasey. Yeah, there's way more to them than that, but that's enough to get you started. Couple that with what you've learned the suits mean and you've got a lot of knowledge right there. Knight of Wands as a person = a young man who charges right into "battle" when faced with a task; rolling his sleeves up, throwing away the directions, and jumping right in before thinking about it. Queen of Swords as advice = objectivity over emotions is needed, use your wisdom gained from experience to lead you instead of your feelings.
4. And finally numbers ~ Again, learning what ten numbers mean and coupling that with what the suits mean is a lot easier than learning forty cards.
Not an odd question at all. It comes up more often than you think. Reading for yourself isn't a mistake or harmful at all imho, provided you can stay objective like Saskia said . Reading primarily for myself actually helped - I had those "AHA! moments" where the meaning just jumped out at me, where I was SURE it was the right one because, like SunChariot said, I know my life better than anyone else's life. But I did have to remain always brutally objective. If I felt like I was led one way and it was positive, I'd explore the negative meanings of the card as well before I really made a decision - same if I was led to a negative meaning, I'd be sure to explore the positive, too.
And as far as "all different cards being pulled for each session, each time completely different" - if you learn the general meanings for the majors, the suits, the courts, and the numbers, you'll start to see a lot more than just gibberish. You'll start seeing the basic meanings, will be able to even interpret the cards generally but pretty accurately. And once you get an idea of what the spread is saying, you can break out the books to back up what you just saw and refine it.
I didn't get those intuitive moments much from just looking at the cards, but once I started reading with them after learning the four things above? You BETCHA. Even thought I'd only learned the basic meanings, I got way more than that from some cards. And I was right more often than not. Maybe it was because I'd been reading off and on for so long and really knew more than I thought I did, but it didn't feel like that. It felt like it came from my gut, not my head.
Also, as has been mentioned before, keeping a record of my readings really helped me and still helps me. When I do a reading I take a photo, upload it to Evernote (their phone app is FAB for this), title it with the date and question, then type in my interpretation focusing on what makes the most sense objectively but including also what I want (positive) and what I'm afraid of (negative), writing/typing out my feelings and thoughts as well. Then I look back on it after some time has passed and see what the real meaning ended up being and how my emotions colored my interpretation, if at all. I don't think I'll ever quit doing this. It's a great way to keep your emotional attachment to an outcome in check.
Something else that keeping a record like this does: it allows you to let go of the fear of not "getting it" right then, that it'll all be lost forever when you pick the cards up if you don't squeeze out every bit of the message. Record it and you can always come back later to glean more meaning from it. That alone helped me relax enough to start "getting it" quicker - I was no longer overwhelmed by the thought that I'd miss something if I didn't get the meanings right RIGHT NOW. Being relaxed and not worrying about that, like McFaire said, helped the interpretations come a lot easier.
These are really great ideas. Like Gregory said, you're not really attached to any one outcome so it gets that out of the way. And if you already know the outcome, you can see it in the cards more readily and learn how that works and feels.
Yep.
Yep, too. Definitely. No need to post. Just read and learn. That's what that forum's there for.
Yep, again. This place really is great.
