5 Practices for Perfect Practicing
Once you learn the meanings of the cards (or at least a foundation of the meanings, as most tarotists consider the cards a life-long study and journey), it’s time to put the cards together into a reading.
Making the leap from understanding the cards to weaving them together into a synthesized, coherent reading can be a big one. Students always want ideas for easing from “card meaning” to “whole reading.”
One way is to do as many “practice” readings as you can. This way you can slowly build up your comfort level and confidence.
These ideas can be applied to practicing new techniques, test driving new spreads, or getting to know new decks as well.
1. Read for yourself. This has limitations, of course. Reading for yourself can be challenging simply because it is harder to be objective. Also, I don’t know about you, but often I simply don’t have enough questions to practice on myself that often.
2. Read for imaginary querents. Invent a person with a short bio and a question or read for a fictional character.
3. Pretend a celebrity has asked for a reading and practice on them. This option may cross ethical boundaries for some of you, particularly those who do not believe that you should ever read for anyone without their permission. If that is your case, then obviously this option isn’t for you.
4. Before going to a movie or before the next episode of your favorite weekly show, do a reading to see what will happen.
5. Read for the cards. This technique actually packs a double punch in terms of learning. Use your tarot cards to create an imaginary querent. Pull a court card to represent the querent. Pull another card to represent the situation or question. If desired, pull another court card to represent another person involved in the situation (particularly useful in practicing relationship readings).
What are your favorite ways to practice?
I love these ideas, Barbara. An additional idea is the two-card daily/weekly draw for yourself. It’s a variation on Card of the Day/Week. Deal off the deck until you get a Major. This is the “what”, the main theme of the day/week. Then deal off the deck until you get a Minor. This is the “how”, ways in which you can use or experience the “what” concept. Blend them together and notice what comes up. At the end of the day/week, record your experiences and in what ways they resonate with your two cards. You’ll be surprised at the unusual ways in which your cards were relevant, thereby coming up with a very personal repertoire of personal possibilities of interpretation.
Barbara,
I’ve always been put off by reading for celbreties for the reasons you listed above, butI love method #5! I’ve been relying on daily tarot meditations on a 1 card draw to keep myself sharp between readings. I can’t wait to give this technique a try!
These are all wonderful suggestions. I especially like reading for imaginary people as a way to practice. I did this a lot as I learned to read cards and to prepare for reading at festivals, since at those events I have no information about the querents. So I’d imagine, for example, “a young man, nice-looking, seems nervous and shy.” Then I’d pull cards and go from there to weave a story. It really, really helped me to read for people I don’t know. Thanks for all you do, Barbara.
Fun and useful ideas for practicing Barbara! I view myself as ethical but as a 3 life path I am drawn to the ‘celebrity reading’ thing. 😀 And I rarely bothered reading for myself before either but when I discovered an unbiased way to read I read for myself a few times a week without headache.
Hope it’s okay to mention here but there’s a totally new way of reading the cards for yourself called: TarotSeek. It’s simple and easy to do and most importantly, it’s OBJECTIVE. 😀 I hope tarot readers get a chance to learn the technique. It took years to develop, test, and edit it into a straight forward self-reading method. Much love <3.