The Scoop (and soup) of Reading Cards

78 cards come with 78 meanings. 156 if you're honoring the reverse!! How does anyone manage to keep all of that straight or in their heads at all??

My history with tarot is extremely brief: I started really reading cards in December of 2021 for a neat little project that I was super proud of. Before this, I had spent two decades wishing that I could just read the cards. But the entire task felt impossible- 78 of anything is daunting enough, I'd never be able to do it.

My mental block came from the structure that I had perceived in reading tarot- and if you know me for more than a minute, it's easy to tell that I am just not someone who handles structure very well. While it is true that there are meanings to the cards, it is not as black and white as I had initially believed. The magic of tarot is that they are tools of reflection, a megaphone for that inner voice that so many of us have trouble hearing (or trusting, if you have anxiety- ha), and together, in the context of their spreads, they are characters that tell stories. And that's putting it simply, dusting all the unexplainable 'stuff' I've encountered under the rug for another time.

The thing that made the cards click in my mind, was blending my tarot cards with oracle cards- specifically, an oracle deck that was purposefully intuitive. That element of Intuition was what I needed to kick myself out of the mindset that Tarot was a rigid structure of knowledge, like science, or history, or any other academic field. I hadn't realized that doing a spread immediately put my ass back in school and made me clam up.

Because even science and history shifts and changes the more context we have to build upon the knowledge we think we know.

So, if you're at all like me, and stuck in the soup of meanings, overwhelmed by the booklets, the memorization, the sheer number of things, try starting with an intuitive oracle deck, one that is purposefully intuitive- no booklet or meanings included. Once you're more comfortable with the terrifying idea of trusting yourself, blend the oracle deck with your tarot spreads; it'll help open up the story the cards are telling, giving clarity and depth to your situation or messages.

Start small though. The urge to use every deck you have and paint some incredible, divination masterpiece with them is STRONG, but it will defeat you. Trust me.