Okay, so I’ve been meaning to get into Tarot for, like, forever, and I finally decided to just do it. I mean, where do you even start? There’s so much info out there! It’s a bit overwhelming, to be honest. My goal today was to put together a basic meaning list for myself, a cheat sheet, you know?
First, I grabbed my deck. It’s a pretty standard Rider-Waite deck I picked up at a local bookstore. I just liked the artwork, simple as that. I sat down at my desk, cleared a space – gotta have good vibes, right? – and shuffled the cards a few times. I’m not even worrying about spreads or anything fancy yet, just getting a feel for the individual cards.
Major Arcana – First Steps
I decided to tackle the Major Arcana first. These seem to be the big, important cards, the ones with the dramatic names like “The Fool” and “The Lovers.” I laid out each card one by one, trying to, you know, connect with it. Okay, that sounds a little woo-woo, but I was basically just looking at the image and seeing what popped into my head.
Then, I started googling. Man, there are a million different interpretations for each card! I mostly stuck to a few simple websites, nothing too complicated. I didn’t want to get bogged down in all the different layers of meaning just yet.
I grabbed a notebook and started my list. I wrote down the name of each card, and then a few keywords or phrases that seemed to sum up its meaning. For example:
- The Fool: New beginnings, innocence, taking a leap of faith.
- The Magician: Manifestation, power, resourcefulness.
- The High Priestess: Intuition, secrets, the subconscious.
- The Empress: Feminity. nurturing, abundance.
Minor Arcana – So Many Cards!
After the Major Arcana, I moved on to the Minor Arcana. Whoa, there are a lot of these! Four suits, just like regular playing cards, and each one has cards from Ace to Ten, plus the court cards (Page, Knight, Queen, King). I decided to just focus on the numbered cards for now, the pips. The court cards feel like a whole other level.
I noticed that each suit seems to have a general theme. Again, I jotted down some keywords:
- Wands: Passion, creativity, energy.
- Cups: Emotions, relationships, intuition.
- Swords: Intellect, logic, conflict.
- Pentacles: Material things, work, money.
Then, I went through each suit, card by card, and added to my list. For example, the Two of Cups, I wrote down “partnership, connection, harmony”. It’s still pretty basic, but it’s a start!
It’s definitely a work in progress, but I feel like I made some good headway today. I have a basic framework now, something I can build on. My next step is to try doing some simple readings, maybe just drawing one card a day and seeing how it relates to my life. Baby steps, right?
