Tarot Card Reading for the Initiated: Read Your Cards – Tarotsmith

The same shuffle. A reader on the other side of it.

The draw you just made is honest machinery—a seed, a shuffle, a table of meanings that was written before you arrived. That has been the integrity of Tarotsmith for many years, and it is also where the reading has always had to stop. Zone 31 is the layer above the throw. The randomness is untouched: the same shuffle, the same refusal to steer a card towards what you would rather hear. What is new is something that sees which cards fell, in what order, against the question you actually asked—and speaks to that arrangement and no other. Not a meaning retrieved. A meaning made, once, for the spread in front of it. It runs on a free account, and the account is the point. Signed in, the reading stops being a single event. Zone 31 keeps the thread—what you asked in March, the card that keeps coming back, the thing you said you were done with. Come back in a week and nothing starts over. Ask a second question, and it is answered by something that already knows the first. That is the whole distance between having a fortune told and having a practice.

Take your readings further at tarot.zone31.com →

How to Interpret Cards in Your Readings:

As a picture book of the macrocosm, having a deck of tarot cards is like holding the key to the world in the palm of one’s hand. When doing a reading, the symbolic imagery of the cards can be analysed in the same way that dreams are interpreted. Like a prophetic dream, what is focused upon in the cards during readings can set captives of the subconscious mind free, as in times intuition needs to inform one’s conscious awareness to focus upon something meaningful. Learning tarot is a great way to help transform psychic potential into psychic skill. Intuition gradually develops over time.

Reading can be used to help uncover and overcome subconscious distortion patterns that interfere with a person’s focus in life. At the core, we are creatures of emotion. Emotions are like thoughts, but they exist on a deeper level of consciousness that motivates conscious thought. If conscious thoughts are those of the rational mind, then emotions or unconscious thoughts represent a person’s consciousness on a deeper level: intuition. The interpretation of a reading can indicate more about subconscious patterns that may be hindering their progress in life, like following breadcrumbs that lead back to the source of a problem. How can one break free from an unknown barrier?

The methods on this site allow questions and concerns of every variety. A spread acts as the framework or template for a tarot card reading. Depending on which position a card appears in the layout, the aspects of that card adapt accordingly. Certain rules governing the interpretation of esoteric imagery should be observed. As with dream interpretation, these rules are pretty flexible, as they more or less depend upon a person’s intuition.

Beginning Your Reading

When someone begins reading, an excellent method is to focus on the question or concern they wish to address. The reader should hold this thought in mind, perhaps with eyes closed, to keep this in focus for a moment. To avoid corrupting readings with conscious thought, it is important to flush the mind before drawing any cards. The idea is to ‘blank out’ for just a moment, perhaps envisioning only the colour black or the colour white, to suddenly forget about the question. When initiating a reading in this unbiased, clear frame of mind, it is safe to look at the cards drawn and consider how they apply to the question. This method can help someone who is struggling to understand their readings by stopping them from simply telling themselves what they want to hear. Divination is about locating hidden stumbling blocks to gain more control over life.

Not every deck creator on this site has written lengthy comprehensive text card descriptions for readings because esoteric artists normally believe the messages should mostly be derived from symbolic imagery within the art. Some of us may feel that too many words can corrupt a message, like a story lost in translation. The most important thing about interpreting readings is to ask: ‘What does this card mean to you? And what vibes do you get from its image?‘ With practise learning to trust intuition, the cards come to be understood in ways that words cannot describe.

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