Okay, so people sometimes ask me how I got a handle on all those symbols packed into tarot cards. It wasn’t like I woke up one day understanding it all. It started pretty randomly, actually. I picked up a deck, the classic Rider-Waite one, mostly because the artwork looked interesting. I was stuck at home for a bit, recovering from a stupid ankle injury I got trying to fix the gutter – don’t ask – and needed something to do besides watching daytime TV.
First off, I opened the box and looked at that little white booklet that came with it. Total waste of paper, honestly. Tiny print, weird keywords. Didn’t help much. I flipped through the cards themselves. Lots of pictures, yeah. Kings, Queens, weird scenes. The Fool stepping off a cliff, some guy stabbed with ten swords – cheerful stuff. But none of it really clicked into place. It felt like trying to read a comic book in a language I didn’t know.
Getting Down to It
So, I chucked the booklet. Figured I’d just… look. I spread the cards out on the floor. Took me a while. I started just grouping them by things I noticed. Okay, here are all the ones with cups. Here are the ones with swords. Lots of coins, lots of sticks or wands, whatever you call them.
Then I started looking closer at the Majors, those fancy picture cards. The Fool always had a dog. The Magician had that table with stuff on it. The High Priestess sat between those two pillars. I didn’t know what any of it meant, not really. But I started seeing patterns.
- Water shows up a lot. Sometimes calm, sometimes stormy.
- Mountains in the background of many cards.
- People looking left, people looking right.
- Colors seemed important too. Lots of yellow, blue, red.
I got a cheap notebook and started scribbling. Card name at the top, then just listed the obvious things I saw. Like inventory. Man with crown. Holds cup. Blue robe. River behind him. Didn’t try to interpret, just listed. It felt kind of mechanical, like when I used to inventory parts for my old ham radio hobby. You just list what’s there first, figure out what it does later.
Making Sense of the Pictures
After doing that for a while, maybe a couple of weeks, just looking and listing, things started to feel a bit different. I’d pull a card, say, the Three of Swords – you know, the heart with three swords sticking in it. Yeah, obvious pain, betrayal, whatever the book said. But I also noticed the grey, stormy background. Rain. It felt sad, visually. It wasn’t just an abstract meaning; the picture itself carried the feeling.
Or take the Ace of Cups. Big cup, water flowing out, a hand holding it, a dove coming down. Okay, book says new emotions, love, whatever. But looking at it, it felt like… an offering. Potential. Something starting. The symbols together started telling a tiny story, not just being a list of keywords.
It reminds me of this time I was trying to figure out why my old lawnmower wouldn’t start. Checked the spark plug, the fuel line, the filter. Each part alone seemed fine. But then I realized the gunk between the filter and the carb was the issue. It wasn’t just the parts; it was how they connected, or failed to connect. The symbols on the cards felt like that. They aren’t just random items; they interact.
Where I’m At Now
Look, I’m no expert reader selling fortunes online. Far from it. But I can look at a spread now and the symbols speak to me more directly. I see the water, the mountains, the posture of the figures, the colors, and I get a feel for the card’s energy beyond just some memorized meaning. It’s more like reading visual prompts.
It’s an ongoing thing. Sometimes I still see a card and think, “What the heck is that supposed to be?” But mostly, spending time just looking, noticing the details, and letting the symbols sink in without pressure – that’s what worked for me. Ditching the complex books early on and just using my own eyes was the key step. It’s still just pictures on cardboard, but now they feel like pictures that have something to say.
