Remembering the meanings of the cards.

[chrisam-crystals]

hi everyone.

many times i have been asked how the heck tarot readers remember the different meanings of each of the cards, and until now i haven't really ever thought about it.

so forgive me if this has been asked before.......but how did/do you remember the meanings of the cards?

in particular, the minor arcana?

do you use a deck that has good symbolism on each of the cards, or do you just have a good memory? lol

 

[RubyRuby]

I use a little of both. When I read about a meaning, I look at the picture to see what I see in the picture that would make a person think about the meaning as it's written.

Sometimes when I'm doing a reading, something in the card jumps out at me, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the generally accepted meaning of the card, and I'll use that instead. And sometimes, I have my book handy during a reading and I will use that as a reference.

 

[chrisam-crystals]

hi ruby.

yes i get that too when a card jumps out and starts "speaking" about other things! lol

i was once chatting to a pagan friend who had been done a reading for a friend of a friend, and apparently had been called an amateur for using her book during a reading.

this really put her off and she felt that she shouldn't do any more readings because she couldn't remember the meanings of the whole deck.

no amount of soothing from me would sway her back to the tarot, and she still refuses to do readings even for herself.

personally i don't see a problem, and would rather have someone double check in a book than spout out a lot of meaningless rubbish.

 

[zach bender]

I have two decks -- something called the "savage" tarot, in which the imagery is obscure, dark, violent, unpleasant, and essentially meaningless to me, but which nonetheless communicates to me very well, treating the cards as abstract expressions of their "values" per Rider Waite, on which the deck is supposed to have been based (though I usually cannot see how) and the basic Rider Waite, which I acquired partly because the imagery is reasonably straightforward, making the "savage" deck easire to learn. My journal includes quite a number of entries, and even a couple of charts, documenting my impressions of the various cards, but these tend to reduce to simplistic, one note renderings, and I still find it useful to refer to "book" meanings to expand on these. Over time, the cards will talk to you in ways that are rather specific to you, just as any imagery or iconography or logo means something at least slightly different to you than it does to the next person.

zb

 

[gollog]

I found it really helpfull to read one or two books with card meanings for a general idea of the symbolism and meanings. Then take one card at a time and write down what it means to YOU. After that you can again get a tarot book out of which the meanings makes sense to you, and add them to your own meanings in the notebook if they make sense to you.

I repeated this twice over 1 or 2 years with combined with a lot of practice and reading some more books. Now the meanings come easier, old ones but also new meanings that I never thought of before.

I know lots of people on there do not like to get meanings from a book. I found it very helpfull in the beginning to get started.

 

[Sophie]

I have a good memory.

My problem was the reverse. How could I forget the book meanings, and learn to read freely, in situation, using all and any knowledge and/or intuitive leap that came to me, so that the reading made sense to my querent (or to me!). I'm still not sure I am there, though I practice forgetting as much as possible. If something is very relevant - including a book meaning - then we use it unconsciously anyway: but I don't want it to impose itself as the only possible meaning. Reaching to how a card is expressing a situation, today, for this one person in front of you, means emptying your mind of everything. No preconceptions. Well, that's the ideal I am aiming for, at any rate

 

[SunChariot]

How do I remember the meanings of the cards, and especially of the Minor Arcana? I don't.

I read basically purely intuitively. That means to me that no card has a true set meaning. It changes every time I pull out the deck. I do however know and make use of the basic meanings of the suits and what they mean to me, and have a set way I deal with court cards.

For the Major Arcana, I know the very basic meanings and I use them to an extent but it's a very minor part of the reading.

Babs

 

[Clay]

Memory Palace (Method of Loci)

I started out using a Marseille deck (in which the numbered suit cards have pips but no symbolic illustrations), so learning meanings was pretty difficult. I used a mnemonic method whereby you create an imaginary palace full of rooms with one room assigned to each card and then I "placed" meaningful items in the rooms that reminded me of the meaning of the card. I could always go back and modify the items or add to them as I learned more aspects of the cards meanings. After a while, as the meanings became better fixed in my mind, I no longer needed the memory palace and could dispense with the step of visualizing where a card was in the palace in order to retrieve its meaning. This method may not be for everyone, but if you used mnemonic methods of that type in your school days, you may find it a convenient way to remember meanings you get from a book or even the meanings that you come up with for yourself.

Clay

 

[garfield]

yeah i started with marseilles too. and sees nothing symbolic to it compare to rider waite. and honestly how i memorize the meaning. I still havent!! but i try to read my 3 favorite tarot books from time to time. Mostly it is the image that talks to me and my trusting my gut feel.