Teaching Tarot

[nisaba]

When what actually happened with me was that I studied meanings - yes, other people's meanings - then almost without noticing, the meanings had organically "bent" into meanings which made sense to me, morphed into something quite unique. But it is a long process. And - yes - why not - start with other people's meanings. A sharp mind will question anyway.

I like that.

When I teach, I do not give people 78 meanings to memorise. Most people don't have that sport of capacity for immediate information storage, anyway, and spending every lesson packing in a few cards would be boring as.

I tend to have hands-on activities in every lesson. In my first lesson I usually get the names of everyone who's willing, put them all into a hat (or a jar, usually), pull one out, and do a full reading for them in front of the class so show how I do it. I also spell out that I'm not interested in training up a whole bunch of little Nisabas, but I'm interested in teasing out their own personal style of reading.

I like everyone in teh class to have the same deck. That way, we are looking at the same images. I go around the room, getting people to tell me what they can see in the card/s in front of them, what people are doing, saying, thinking, what the surroundings remind them of. Nob ody is wrong, and I come down quickly and viciously on anyone in the class who says someone else is. I explain that this is a part of developing your own, unique relationship with Tarot. Somewhere (usually in a later lesson) I explain that when you have more than one deck, you will have more than one relationship and they will be quite different - and you'll end up with another relationship later, a relationship with Tarot itself overall, that encompasses all your relationships with single decks.

My students tend to end up happy. To get their Piece of Paper, they need to give me, a classmate, or someone else a competent reading that flows, under my supervision. I'm not concerned with how they read, as a whole, just that they work in a way that is consistent and right for them, and that the client is satisfied. I also don't haunt the client for weeks to make sure everything that is said "comes true".

Someone who is confident and happy with their cards will give good readings, even if they are readings that are very different to what I myself might give.

 

[irisa]

That freefall, touchy-feely, vaguely non-descript technique would have just made me feel even worse.

We're all different
See... I just love that free fall, touchy feely feeling (perhaps it connects me with my inner hippy chick) I couldn't *learn* Tarot without it Well maybe I could but I would have been bored rigid in 3 weeks or less I suspect, but then again being *taught* has never appealed to me.

irisa

 

[sapienza]

My aim is to give them a solid foundation to work from, and the tools to make tarot their own. If you're gonna teach, Teach otherwise what do they want/need a teacher for?

I like this.

I teach workshops, mostly to people who have asked me to do so. As a result most of the people in the group are there because they want some guidance and many of them know my style when they sign up. I always include some (or lots of) history. I think it's really important for people to understand the tradition of the cards and where they have come from and why they have the meanings they do. I always talk about building up layers of meanings. Set meanings are only one layer and we also talk about numbers and suit signs and astrology and reading intuitively from the image as well as building up personal meanings over time. I think once people realise that the process of understanding tarot occurs over time, and in layers, there is less pressure to 'know' it all straight away. I also do workshops that give people tools for working with the cards and building up the meanings over time. I guess, like Le Fanu, I'm not so good with the 'throw out the books and just go with what you feel' type of approach for reasons that I won't go into hear as it will take the thread way off topic.

Ultimately I believe that most people who go to classes or workshops are looking for some kind of guidance. As with all things in life, if we don't like what we hear most people just forget it and move on to something that resonates better. It's exactly the same with books. Some people will pick up Mary Greer's 21 Ways and it will help everything fall into place for them, another person might not make it past the first chapter as it just isn't the right approach for them. Not every teacher is going to have the right approach for every student that comes to them. I teach because teaching is just something that comes naturally to me. All I can do is take what I know and try to deliver it in a way that is helpful for those just beginning their tarot journey. My hope is that I can give students a solid background and the confidence to move forward from there into whatever style is right for them.

 

[CottonCandy]

I think I would like your workshops sapienza & I love what you said as well.

In response to Chickadee's question,

doesn't teaching someone tarot influence the way they read? ......... If you teach someone, you're essentially forming their opinions and their ways of reading/interpreting the cards?

My thoughts are that our opinions (about anything, tarot included) can be & often are influenced by other people, as by anything we read, see, hear or experience.

But I also believe that everyone forms their own opinions about things based on what they already think or know about the subject combined with their own values, experiences, etc. so our opinions truly are our own, regardless of what influenced them.

Every source has the potential to change a current opinion, reinforce a current opinion, or introduce a new concept to form an opinion about depending on what they say.

Similarly to what sapienza said, I think the "right" teaching style might depend on the age or personality of the student & what they expect to get out of a class.

I first became interested in tarot when I was a teenager. If I'd taken a 'learn tarot' class then & the ONLY thing the teacher told me was to use my intuition, I'd have been upset unless the teacher was able to teach me HOW to do that. But anything like "what do you feel" or "what does it make you think of" would've just frustrated me. The book I was learning from said things like that (though it never used the word intuition) & if it hadn't of had card meanings in it as well, I probably would have lost interest in tarot even faster.

However a class like the workshops sapienza described that provides history & "traditional" meanings in addition to encouraging intuition may have helped me actually learn & my interest in tarot might not have faded at all.

I've learned I'm one of those people that needs to develop a foundation from the "traditional" meanings to fall back on before they have enough confidence to trust their intuition.

I think other systems (astrology, etc.) might have been a bit much for me at that time, but now-days, yes please! If I were to take a class or workshop now, I'd want the teacher to show how they do a reading (hopefully by actually doing one ), share a great spread they created, tell a story about an experience they had (valuable lesson optional), teach a useful technique or how to use other systems with tarot, or other such things. Basically a lot of what I come here for

 

[Teheuti]

If you teach someone, you're essentially forming their opinions and their ways of reading/interpreting the cards?

As others here have said, everything influences people! For instance, your economics professor influenced your thoughts about tarot (and other) teachers. And now you are asking us for our opinions (how we would 'vote' on this subject). Not that there is anything wrong with that! I'm all for asking such questions, as the responses are always interesting.

I've been teaching tarot regularly since 1974. I think a person can learn in a couple of classes what might take them years to learn by themselves or through books (although books have gotten better at offering exercises that can accelerate learning). Forums are also a great help—being full of a variety of different opinions on everything.

Committing oneself to going deeply into a system or philosophy has, to me, much greater benefits, in most cases, than having a wide surface knowledge of many things but no depth. It was from the poet Diane di Prima that I first learned the Golden Dawn technique of scrying with cards. It was her opinion that the GD system and techniques plus Buddhist meditation practices and the Thoth deck offered the most powerful method for learning tarot. Her commitment forced me through many boundaries to places I would otherwise not have gone, as it wasn't easy for me.

When I teach, I use a variety of learning styles in the hopes that those who learn best from different styles have a way in, and I offer experiences that stress different tarot reading styles and skills. I've deliberately studied teaching methods and philosophies as I approach teaching itself as an art.

However, when I want to give students the very *best* of myself, then I teach them what I do, understand and love most and have refined to a considerable extent.

In my opinion, it also really helps if somewhere along your path you've learned from someone whose "best" lies in helping you to question, evaluate and find appropriate applications for what you've read, heard and learned. But, then I used to teach 'learning skills' in a college—so I've very opinionated about this.

I've taken a ton of classes from other tarot teachers (far more than anyone else I know), and I've learned something important from each of them, although, occasionally, it was that I don't want to do or follow something the way that particular teacher does. And sometimes that has been a vitally important lesson.

One trick is to take any definitive statement and turn it into a question that I have to answer for myself: "Wands are Fire" becomes "How are Wands Fire?" and "How are Wands not Fire?" and "What other suit(s) could be Fire?"

"Never let anyone else touch your cards," becomes "What benefits are there to never letting anyone else touch my cards?" and "What benefits are there in letting others touch my cards?" (plus many other possible questions).

I often note such things in my class or reading notes for later contemplation and experimentation.

I do try to acknowledge my opinions, attitudes, strengths and weaknesses to my students so they'll know my biases.

 

[Kimberlee]

I like this question, which in my eyes boils down to "If you're teaching, are you influencing?"

Yes, I would think that is at the very core of what teaching is. Whether you use a Socratic method of questioning everything, or a gentle guide leading one through the wilderness of knowledge, or a consistent, rote approach, you are most definitely influencing your students.

Of course, the degree of your influence is up to them, not you. If they want to be affected by your words, then they most certainly will.

 

[starrystarrynight]

I think if I were teaching [what I know of] tarot to a beginner, I would want them to know the very basic, generic, largely agreed-upon "meanings" of each card so that there would be a common ground for future discussion. Then, I would probably segue that into sessions of looking at images and (like psychologists do) asking, "And how does that make you feel?"

However, I don't teach, and I probably wouldn't be that good at it--especially because I feel that so much of reading tarot is personally interpretive and intuitive. I'm not sure how one teaches that end of it, if it is even possible to do so.

 

[Kimberlee]

However, I don't teach, and I probably wouldn't be that good at it--especially because I feel that so much of reading tarot is personally interpretive and intuitive. I'm not sure how one teaches that end of it, if it is even possible to do so.

I would think, to the contrary, that the interpretive part is what would require the teacher's touch. Nowadays, anyone can look up rote meanings online, or in the various books available. But learning how to apply those meanings, within a reading, how two cards interact with each other, I would imagine that to be more difficult, and an area that may require a teacher's guidance until the student grasps the concept enough to venture out on their own, with some confidence.

 

[starrystarrynight]

Oh, I agree, Kimberlee...I just don't know how I would do it...that's all.

My point being: Can one really teach tarot reading? As others have said, an instructor can lead or guide...but in this area, I guess my basic feeling is that while a student can learn how to read tarot, he may not be able to be taught it, per se.

Edited to add:

I haven't given this a lot of thought, but maybe teaching tarot is analogous to teaching singing or art. A teacher can teach the music scales or the color wheel, but the student is the one who has to take those types of basics and put them to work for herself.

 

[Aerin]

I would think, to the contrary, that the interpretive part is what would require the teacher's touch. Nowadays, anyone can look up rote meanings online, or in the various books available. But learning how to apply those meanings, within a reading, how two cards interact with each other, I would imagine that to be more difficult, and an area that may require a teacher's guidance until the student grasps the concept enough to venture out on their own, with some confidence.

That came to me after I could look at one card on its own and get something relating to the question and context ... there are a lot of formal methods that didn't really work for me, the hardest part was discovering what did (and it wasn't other people telling me their method on the whole). Reading lots and lots of people's readings on Aeclectic really helped as did just going with it and getting feedback.

Oh, and finally finding a deck that spoke to me then broke open a sense that worked with other decks too. I don't think it would have been much different if I'd had that deck first though, everything I learnt still needed to be in place beforehand.