Learning by Lecture
Years ago, when I wanted to learn to read tarot cards, I took a How to read Tarot cards class. It was 8 weeks long. We studied the Rider-Waite tarot, and the teacher went into detail about the cards. We looked closely at what all the symbols meant. Now When I started working with a tarot mentor, she spent a year unteaching me what I had learned in class.
The class had been fun and interesting, but it stifled my creative ability to look at the tarot cards and come up with new meanings for each card. Meanings that come in through the intuition, not some lesson or book that says that is what the card is “supposed” to mean. It does help to have a basic definition of each card, but you need to really look at the card and see what it seems to be saying at that moment, not just what it always says it Is about.
When I teach my class, I start with a lecture about what tarot is about, its history and how I believe it works. But most of the class is a workshop where they read the cards themselves.
Learning by doing
I select one person to ask the cards an information question and pull a card. I select another person to try to read the card pulled, answering the question asked. People are often very scared to do this. “I don’t know what I am doing!” they moan. That is excellent! Not knowing what they are doing as a reader means they are open to all possible meanings. I do furnish them will a handout of basic meanings, but by forcing them to really look at the card chosen, they must open up their minds to the Akashic record and sometimes come up with a totally different idea than I had encountered before about that card.
I try to show the selected card to everyone in the class, usually by projecting it onto a screen. Although I pick one reader, everyone has a chance to suggest what they see in that card. People protest that they need more information than what the question asked, or more than one card to see what the answer is. I reply that they have all they need right there. By forcing them to look at only one card, and getting all the information they can out of it, they are challenged to see how each card can be interpreted differently and that there is no one meaning for each card. This is the beginning of opening their minds and using their intuition to see more than what they can see with their eyes and hear with their ears.
The participants gain confidence. I have taught them technique, but by NOT having a lot of rules of how things are “supposed” to mean, they open their intuition and creativity. They play and in doing so, they become the tarot readers they can be.
Looking for a fun idea for your next party or event? Consider Psychic Entertainment by Barbara G Meyer. If you are looking for a new idea for a ladies’ night out? Consider a Tarot class for you and your friends. Either in person or on Zoom.