What does it mean to use your intuition when reading the cards?

Hello friends! I'll preface this by saying that I'm a fairly novice tarot enthusiast, so please bear with me.

I have a question that's been nagging at me for a few months. I've always considered myself a pretty intuitive person since I just seem to "know" certain things by gut feeling, without being able to place my finger on why I do. But I'm not sure how to draw on my intuition when needed...I'm not sure how to put it, but from my understanding tarot is an intuitive exercise.

For instance, when I first looked at the Star card, my gut feeling - intuition if you want to call it that - was that the card signified eternal hope, light, replenishment, arcane power, and life. My guess isn't wildly dissimilar from the most common meanings of the Star in the RWS system. But as I thought about it some more, I must have decided the meaning of the card through reasoning. The woman is replenishing water into a pool - water is traditionally a symbol of cleansing/healing and life. Stars have been used as a literal guiding light or a symbol of hope for millennia. It's easy to see how one could reason that the card means hope and renewal purely based on the visual symbols.

What does it mean to use my intuition when reading? Does it mean that you're meant to just follow your heart when you examine the symbols on the cards, instead of consciously reasoning through the symbols? Both? Does it even matter?! Or am I just overthinking things, as usual?

I have been thinking about intuition use too with the cards. I have tended to tend to think of it as being a sudden speeded up process of the brain that instantly accumulates all the conscious and unconsciously gathered information. The affectiveness of this intuitive leap then relates to that. Doesn't really explain the why though

Fifteen years ago, before I was deeply into tarot myself, I had a tarot reading with a local lady. She was able to tell from the cards that I would be involved in a relationship with a man who would have an accent. She guessed he would be English, as she saw his primary language as being English. Now, I don't know which cards were on the table, but the point is, she must have been tapping into some serious intuition! Two months later, I was dating a man who was originally from England.
Wish I could develop that level of connection!

say you are doing a reading and you get the Star card. If you don't use intuition, you might have tarot notes on the card, you might look in books at different interpretations, you might have memorised the card or keywords about it, you might use numerology / astrology/ dignitaries. They are all non intuitive systems really.

If you read the Star card intuitively you might look at the picture very carefully and feel something or any of your senses might trigger something. Sometimes a symbol really jumps out at you or a colour! What do you feel about the card? What do you notice the most in the card? The beauty of this method is that it's different and unique to every reading each time. People with stronger psychic connections even get stronger messages than looking at the picture an what they feel. I sometimes get a clairaudient message when looking at the card. It's random though.

So intuitively you might be really taken by the water flowing in the card for one reading or you might feel emotionally very sad about the card or you might suddenly think about a female presence! note those things, include it in the reading.

Most people use a mixture of both techniques, I do the intuitive take on it first. If you feel something or get something totally crazy, go with it! if you are reading for others, it tends to be much more accurate than the non intuitive takes on it. So get confidence to follow up that even if it's completely different to the traditional idea of the card I try not to give my intuitive take as definite, I say "I think this about this card". I get it wrong sometimes and sometimes it is spot on! it gives much better readings though (my opinion)

If you get to 25 posts RoseNocturnalia there is a monthly reading circle in the reading exchange called ISG (intuitive study group), you try this out with another person. Worth having a go at that circle if you get more posts to practice this. No books or reference is allowed in that circle in readings, it's all intuition

danieljuk, thank you for your explanation! I think I understand it better now. I think for me personally, using a combination of both techniques would work best. But I still definitely want to hone my intuitive skills so I think I'll try practising with a new deck, since that way I won't immediately start consciously remembering the meanings of the RWS symbols.

Also, thanks for letting me know about that reading circle. I'll have to post more.

But Rose, it's the things you know for sure about your deck's symbolism that you can use as a springboard for an awesome intuitive reading. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Get a new deck, by all means----new decks are wonderful. But to practice intuitively, I suggest you try it with your old deck as well. With what you already know, you don't have to struggle. You know right away what your intuition is giving you as opposed to what you already know. (I hope that makes sense---my mind is playing lazy today.) In my experience, the things your mind immediately gives you when you're first looking at a new spread are the things that, no matter how unlikely they seem, are the intuitive flashes that the reading is conveying to you. It's very scary to say something out loud that hits you when you're reading for someone else, but go ahead and do it because it's probably right. They may swear it's not true and could never happen and you may lost contact with them so that you never find out what did happen, but I'm very confident that most of the time, you'll have hit on the right answer. I've had enough experience with this that I know it for a fact.

Now, I'm not talking about what you've gotten when you've studied it for a few seconds, I mean the very first thought that flashes to mind when you see the cards. And don't forget that it's an overall message in the cards that you're after, too. It's not "this card means this, that card means that" as you go through telling your sitter what the reading means. You're not teaching Tarot card meanings, you're giving the sitter answers to the question/questions they have and there will be that overall message in the spread for you to find. Even if this is a person who reads cards themselves, they've still come to you for your reading expertise (even if you feel none ) and the answers will be there for you.

Some spreads will lie there and stare at you and you might not get that immediate flash. When that happens, you'll be relying on what you already know, and the old deck will be easier for you to use than the new one you don't know so well.

And how is that any different from making snap judgements that turn out to be wrong? What's the point of Tarot if you just make stuff up? Isn't the point of any divination to take the process out of yourself in order to gain better results than mere guesswork?

We are all just human, and when a strange-looking, strange-smelling client comes up, judgements are inevitable, and any subjective reading is colored by them. It's called being judgmental, and that, of all things, is being turned into a divinatory sure-fire cure-all. If I ever went to a reader and they told me that they would tell me the first thing off the top of their head, I would leave then and there, simply because I don't need to pay someone to make snap judgements about me, under the guise of some nicely sounding, utterly meaningless words.

I guess snake-oil salesmen just change their tune, but keep selling the same thing. To the OP, in my opinion "intuition" means whatever whoever saying it wants it to mean, probably like the way most people read the cards themselves. It doesn't mean anything at all, a word that has been completely stripped of meaning. I mean, you can even replace the word with anything and it would mean the same (as in, nothing). Instead of intuition, "I read Tarot using bread," "I get flashes of insight when I read Tarot with socialism," "It is easy to read Tarot, just use your hamsters."

I 'teach tarot card meanings' in a reading (if the querent doesnt know them ... for most of my readings nowadays, the querent already knows the meanings).

To me a reading is a joint exercise . Thats why reading for the self is tricky ( with out the 'joint' ) .

Each to their own. But I would never tell people 'how it is' or 'how it is going to be' in a reading. We go through the meanings , and related energies together, on whatever level is relevant, any 'intuitional' aspects are cross referenced by each other (relating to the question and 'vector events') and the meaning of the cards and their relationship to each other.

( Thats just the way I do it ... maybe I am the only one that reads like that ? <shrug> )

If I want pure random, off the top of the head, meaning of the card only, I would get Closrapexa's hamster to pick out the cards.

http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/img-thing?.out=jpg&size=l&tid=109546705

Try all of the ways mentioned...see which suits your abilities best.

Do not be scared off by

Dream Crushers...Most of these have lost faith in trust...

The way this works for me is that, having a basis that's solid knowing what the traditional meanings are, my intuition will flash something into my mind that's in line with what I've learned. Some folks like to stick so tightly to the traditional meanings and not heeding intuition that they can't possibly look as though they're wrong. I don't mind being seen as wrong. It is what it is and it all comes out in the wash.