The Best Advice in Taroting...

[HearthCricket]

Ever since I became a member on this forum, I have learned so much from a variety of sources. People posting about meanings of cards, history, artwork, reading experiences, you name it. But the best advice I have received has come from two sources. And I want to thank them for it.

Jeannette~In her interview on Tarot Connection, this past summer, who said once you get a deck DO something with it. It doesn't matter what you do. Just "do something". It is so easy to get new decks, look at them and put them back in their box, in a drawer and move on to the next release. I don't do that anymore. I use my decks. I DO something, now. And the experience has been wonderful. I've learned a lot in a very short time from this.

That Dan Guy~In a nutshell, from all his posts and PM's..."Try everything!" Try tarot, try scrying with an oil drip, try reading toothpicks, read in public, trust intuition and learn, learn, learn, and keep practicing and learning more. Be open to just about anything and, if you have time, plant a rosebush. He is too wise, sometimes!

Thus, I thank them both in this thread for teaching me these two important lessons. Keep the advice coming, please!!

So....what is the best advice in taroting you have ever received, be it from here or somewhere else? I would love to hear everyone's stories!

 

[Debra]

The moment that began my slow slog to freedom--freedom from "the" book, and then another book, and freedom from the tyranny of worrying about reversals, and the Celtic Cross, and the "shuffle and cut three times" and and and.... was when a friend read for me using only the majors in the RWS.

"Are you ALLOWED to do that?" I wondered to myself.

Slowly but surely since then I've realized I'm "allowed" to do whatever the hell I please with my cards. Whew!

 

[Imagemaker]

Maybe the best was: say what you see.

Years ago I took a 6-hour class on learning tarot. Rob, the teacher, said what many here have said: Speak out loud what you see in the cards and see what meaning comes to mind.

 

[zhahmi]

The best advice I got was that it's okay to be wrong, in fact, sometimes it's better to be wrong - you laugh a lot more that way.

 

[Sophie]

The best advice I got was to keep it short. It was more in the nature of reading a comment once about a short reading being so good. And then I started reading the short readings - and saw that they were generally much better than the long ones (there are some notable exceptions, and of course it also depends on the spread, and the style of the reader). That's for written readings. Face-to-face will be as long or short as they need to be, since they are conversations.

Mmm, not really integrated the shortness yet

Another good advice I read was - "Anything Goes". See, I don't really agree with it, as a general principle. But I went along with it anyway. I love to experiment with tarot. And I found that though anything doesn't really go, many things do, and you can only find out if you try them - and you will only feel comfortable trying them if you suspend disbelief long enough to say - "Anything Goes". And those things that don't go - well, I let them go .

 

[Kenny]

Trust in yourself was the best bit of advice I was given.

Another I would give is read widely as you never know that book everyone slates might hold a nugget of truth that sets you free--that is not to say buy every book there is out there!

 

[SunChariot]

Something I read on a web site somewhere years ago....I don't remember where or what the site was, but it always stuck with me and made me the type of reader I am today.

It was about how when reading intuitively, it's perfectly normal to feel like you are just making the answers up. And a lot of people feel uncomfortable with that feeling and give up there. But it's precisely when you feel like you must be making the answer up that you are reading at your best intuitively. When it's working it's supposed to feel that way. In fact, that's the sign that it is working properly.

Reading intuitively, at least in the style I do it, means you are pulling answers up from your unconscious mind and making them conscious. Your conscious mind has no idea what is down there, so when it comes up it is seeing it for the first time and your conscious mind has no idea where it came from (as this is the first time it is encountering the info), so it just feels like you're making it up, but that is far from the case. And that you should just keep working at it and like any skill it improves.

I took all that to heart, I still read that way, it still feels like I am making most of it up , and yet my readings done this way have always worked well for me. And it is just magical to see how accurate they were after. It is so fulfilling to me, if I had just given up trying to read this way, for me it would have been a great loss in my life.

Bar.

 

[SunChariot]

"Are you ALLOWED to do that?" I wondered to myself.

Slowly but surely since then I've realized I'm "allowed" to do whatever the hell I please with my cards. Whew!

Yep, that is very important advice alright! So many people seem to post threads asking if they can do this or that. Just do what seems and feel right to you, try anything and keep what works and let go of what doesn't. It's not about what is right for others, but finding what is right for you as an individual. The universe wants to answer our questions if we sincerely ask. It will help us find answers in a wide variety of ways.

The cards are our tools to use as we wish. They are not our masters that we must do as they dictate.

Bar

 

[The crowned one]

HM I did not like my wording and it did not convey what I was trying to say so until I come up with a better way of saying it I am deleting my input.

 

[Moon mind]

The best advice I got was to keep it short. It was more in the nature of reading a comment once about a short reading being so good. And then I started reading the short readings - and saw that they were generally much better than the long ones (there are some notable exceptions, and of course it also depends on the spread, and the style of the reader). That's for written readings. Face-to-face will be as long or short as they need to be, since they are conversations.

Yes, this is what i have learned andit's a great advice!

one more (besides the once were mention) :

"It doesn't matter...."

I learend that from well rehersed tarot reader in my town. He wrote it down for me when i asked how to go about reading for others...