How do YOU manage your tarot journal?

[ana luisa]

I think that's the mature decision one arrives at after journalling Tarot for awhile...there's really no point...unless you are trying to compile your observations for the purpose of writing a book or something one day.

Personally, if new meanings are popping up every time you read, there's no point in "capturing" it, unless you want to put it out there for others.

For me, journalling it helps me focus on the process of reading, just a little bit deeper and slower. I write as I read the cards...it sort of slows me down and helps me focus. Most readings don't have a huge impact....but then there's the occasional one that is really epic...I asked the right question at the right time, or really got to the crux of an issue....those are the readings I remember more of....and am likely to go back a year later and look up to see how they panned out or what I was thinking or seeing on that matter back then....or they really change me or rather were instrumental in giving me insight I needed to effect change in my life. Those readings i want to preserve, just because of their significance in my own personal mythos.

That is a FANTASTIC idea! Thanks! Journaling only the unique/special/on-of-a-kind readings is a very good idea! That would certainly reduce the amount of data and make it doable Also, unusual meanings in unusual contexts could be included. I know this is a Tarot thread but I once read the ring in the Lenormand as a Gastric Banding surgery (for the ring). That one should be in my book too

 

[Teheuti]

Yes, I suffer that problem being left handed. The only way I can manage is to remove the pages from the binder to write in them. It's very frustrating!

I never write in my binders. I have a three-hole punch, so whatever paper I was writing on can become binder paper. I can also photocopy pages fromhandwritten notebooks to insert. I have piles of notebooks (literally) but only a few very large binders that contain my most important stuff.

 

[Jeff0253]

I've been just wandering about in Tarot for a couple of months now. I decided to get serious after having some striking synchronicities occur in my "draw a card a day" dabbling. So I looked around and finally decided to buy the Biddy Tarot 31-day course. If you get the whole package they send you a "Companion Workbook," which is, I think, intended to work as a journal to organize everything neatly. But I found that it's a bit too neat for a dilettante of my ilk; there's a way in which software can sort of force your thoughts into a certain pattern. So I decided just to do a running Word doc for now--I can always copy it into the Biddy journal if I decide to go that way. I did want my journal to be word-searchable, so that if I do some future research writing I can find stuff that occurred to me in one of my whacked-out moments of fulsome inspiration, lol.

However, since I think my chief difficulty is going to be that I'm not very creative or intuitive, I do like the Biddy approach to the subject. Working through her course has thus far kept me from getting so distracted by abstruse scholarship and odd bits of knowledge that I can't do an intelligent intuitive reading at all. I have the word doc saved to the cloud and can access it on all four of my devices, so I can jot down stuff that occurs to me when I'm just sitting around or even driving (no worries, I pull over before I edit it)!

This forum is great! So cool to read all the different ways people go at this amazing, fascinating subject

Jeff

 

[Eremita90]

I'm intrigued by the fact of switching to my right hand for journaling. As of now, when I absolutely have to write something and don't have my ipad handy, and I know that it is for me and not for anybody else, I just write from right to left, changing the direction of the letters. But I'll try out that suggestion, although I'm sadly lacking in terms of patience, especially if I know the shortcut (and here my inner Aries kicks in )

 

[Gwenelan]

I've just starting keeping my journal - two journals, actually.
One is handwritten: in it I keep my card definitions, my notes about the history of tarot, and similar "quick reference" things. I chose this way because it's easier, for me, to just grab the journal and flip it at the right pages.
The "hard work" - exercises, meditations on the cards, detailed readings, spreads, quotes from books etc - are kept in a journal on my computer. I use The Journal, by David Mitchell. It lets me put daily readings in a calendar, and also free notes in a more private area. It's really well organized. I prefer this one to handwriting because handwriting for me is too slow. The only problem, for me, is that The Journal is not portable. If I do a reading outside my house, I can only record it on paper. I have heard of Evernote, but... how do you write on it? I mean, I find writing with tablet and smartphones a real pain (again, too slow). Is there a method I don't see? I am not much expert in these kind of techs.

 

[Mallah]

I've just starting keeping my journal - two journals, actually.
One is handwritten: in it I keep my card definitions, my notes about the history of tarot, and similar "quick reference" things. I chose this way because it's easier, for me, to just grab the journal and flip it at the right pages.
The "hard work" - exercises, meditations on the cards, detailed readings, spreads, quotes from books etc - are kept in a journal on my computer. I use The Journal, by David Mitchell. It lets me put daily readings in a calendar, and also free notes in a more private area. It's really well organized. I prefer this one to handwriting because handwriting for me is too slow. The only problem, for me, is that The Journal is not portable. If I do a reading outside my house, I can only record it on paper. I have heard of Evernote, but... how do you write on it? I mean, I find writing with tablet and smartphones a real pain (again, too slow). Is there a method I don't see? I am not much expert in these kind of techs.

Well like I said above, I write journal on BOTH the computer and in a paper journal...dating both. When I write something real deep or profound in my paper journal (which is less often...more the exception to the rule when I write in that) I'll make a note of it at the end of the day, over in my e-journal: "hey, there's a real extensive entry on a reading i did about xxx over in my paper journal for today." That way, if I ever go back to look search for that reading I did on xxx, it comes up first in my computer search, as a "cross reference" to the same day in my paper journal....and I go get it and look it up.

That's the way *I* do it at least.

 

[Mallah]

I'm intrigued by the fact of switching to my right hand for journaling. As of now, when I absolutely have to write something and don't have my ipad handy, and I know that it is for me and not for anybody else, I just write from right to left, changing the direction of the letters. But I'll try out that suggestion, although I'm sadly lacking in terms of patience, especially if I know the shortcut (and here my inner Aries kicks in )

The really great thing I learned about writing w my Right hand is how much smoother it was, and relaxing, once I let myself relax. Allow yourself to be sloppy...and slow down...and let it flow from your shoulder and elbow...not your wrist...and don't grip the pen too tight....

suddenly it starts to click and I'm writing neat cursive with my right hand, after 50+ years of writing only with left.



(Just don't ask me to DRAW with my R.H. yet!)

And one thing about it is you find out how pens are really made for right handers....a ball point is pushed up into the point housing when you write with your left....with your right, the ball is just dragged along...flowing effortlessly...and there's a lot less muscle fatigue with right hand. (Although you may have noticed this, writing backwards, a la DaVinci.