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Hi @Tarot-Free . I'm new here too and need to spend more time getting to know this community. I'm also working almost exclusively with RWS and am particularly fascinated by the Minor Arcana. I would love to connect to trade ideas with you about the Minors as there is so much humanity in those 56/112 cards. I see the relationship between the Majors and the Minors as essentially musical, powerful Major chords along with movement based, provocative, and sometimes unsettling Minor chords. I keep finding resonance in the fact there are 2.5x the number of Minor Arcana cards than Majors, and see patterns and relationships in the Court Cards that I'm sure others have as well but I haven't seen anyone else talk or write about yet. I take an archetypal/depth psychology centered perspective to tarot which inevitably leads to echoes of the sacred. Send me a message if you'd like to connect.

I've been making spread maps for my preferred spreads for years. I use old art calendar pages to create them; the paper is sturdy, and it's easy to create something nice when you have a colourful background already. Lately, I have used my little laser printer to print lable stickers for card positions. Nowadays, I prefer tailor-made spreads for a specific situation, and creating a spread has become an important part of a reading. However, I'll continue to use my SWOT spread and other old favourites, and having a spread map helps me to do the permutations that I like (moving all the cards clockwise around). I have seasonal spreads that I use regularly: for the solstices, equinoxes and the half-points between them. They are big spreads, and having my spread map ready really helps me jump into them again. They also give visual continuity, and that's important to me because I have been doing these readings for years, and I like to compare them from year to year. I even created a little helper to put my decks back into order since I shuffle and re-sort my decks a lot. Some of my older spread maps look a bit worse for wear by now. I should probably get an old calendar and get going again. Personally, I feel that creating things with my hands helps me build a connection. An imperfect hand-made map is more valuable to me than the perfect bought product designed by somebody else, but that's just me.

Hi @Tarot-Free and welcome! This sounds very interesting, and I hope you like it here!

Hi @Tarot-Free , welcome to our forum! Running a tarot site must give you all sorts of experiences - I hope you share them with us!

Hello @Tarot-Free welcome to the TT&M Family

You can read one card as a past, present and future story, and the picture itself gives you a way in. Many Rider-Waite-Smith scenes have a clear sense of movement: in the Six of Swords the boat is leaving rough water behind (past), crossing now (present) and heading toward calmer water (future). Cards with figures walking, looking back or reaching, like the Eight of Cups or the Page of Wands, are especially good for this. Treat the result as one narrative thread, not three separate predictions, and keep the language tentative about the future. If you want firmer answers, drawing two more cards is a good choice, as already suggested, and you can use the single card story as a warm-up before laying them out. A nice study exercise is to pick one card each day and write three sentences about where it came from, where it is, and where it is heading, then compare with the traditional meaning.

Your three approaches are a good framework, and the Seven of Swords is a great test case. Traditionally the figure sneaks away from a camp carrying five swords while two stay behind, so the card is about strategy, stealth and incomplete plans. As advice, I find it helps to ask which side of the card the situation needs: act independently and think ahead, or stop dodging and be honest. A useful habit is to check the neighbouring cards and the position's wording, because a card of caution next to something open and cooperative, like the Three of Cups, nudges toward the straightforward reading. For study, try writing a short "gift" and "warning" line for every card that feels negative, such as Seven of Swords: gift is resourcefulness, warning is self-deception. Most so-called negative cards carry both, and the advice position is often asking you to use the gift while watching for the shadow.

Reversals can be a lovely extra layer, and you can ease into them gradually. A common method is to treat a reversed card as the same card with its energy blocked, delayed, internalized or overdone, so you only need to know the upright meaning well. Take the Eight of Pentacles: upright, the craftsman focuses on steady practice, and reversed it can point to rushed work, perfectionism or a loss of motivation. Another approach is to read only upright cards while you learn the 78 meanings, then add reversals once the Major Arcana and the suits feel familiar. If you want to test them, try a daily one card draw with reversals for a month and journal what each reversed card seems to emphasize. Reversals are optional, and many experienced readers get rich readings from upright cards alone by using card position and surrounding cards for nuance.

A spread mat is a nice way to build confidence, and the Celtic Cross is a good one to learn because every position has a clear job (the crossing card, the foundation, the recent past, the crown, what is coming, and so on). Besides buying a cloth, you could make a cheap mat from a sheet of paper or felt with the positions written in, or keep a small printed map beside you until the layout sticks. A good study tip is to learn the Celtic Cross in two parts: the cross of six cards in the middle, then the staff of four cards on the right, and to read the central pair as one idea before moving on. Practicing with 3 card spreads like Situation, Challenge, Advice is also useful, because you learn how neighbouring cards color each other without so many positions to juggle. Once the Celtic Cross feels natural, a mat may not be needed at all.

Hi all! I've been around tarot for years and run a small site with free readings and card guides. I mostly read with the Rider-Waite-Smith deck and love comparing how different decks handle the Minor Arcana. Looking forward to learning from everyone here.

Oh, I like the Tower card!

Who needs shiny and new anyway? Some used decks deserve a second chance, and I’m happily volunteering as tribute to give the Babylonian Tarot Kit a new home.

Welcome back @Rachelcat and @BrightEye 😀

I’ll be joining this week with the Tattoo Tarot again.

Hi @fire cat pickles and crew! This week will be Crystal Keys Tarot, a newish offering from Red Wheel Weiser and a new acquisition for me because the payment I got for my reading gig was burning a hole in my pocket. It assigns a crystal to each tarot card. Purple gilded edges. It replaces The Crystal Tarot by Phillip Permutt, Cico Books, in my collection for the silly reason that it has the names of the crystals on the cards so I don’t have to remember them and/or look them up in the book. And the art is nicer, I think. (It’s easier to replace decks when I know I have some tarot friends to pass the replaced deck onto.) Book has about a page and a half of text, an affirmation, keywords (“In a Reading”), and a short meaning for the crystal for each card. I’ll probably look up the crystals in the book sometimes because I don’t know everything about crystals. As you probably know, I made a crystal majors oracle of tumbled stones, Arcana Stones, a while back, so I will be kibbitzing about how the choices for this deck agree or disagree with mine. Interview time! What is your most important characteristic? Seven of Cups, Abalone Shell It’s full of delights to choose from! It contains some animal products and some chemically altered stones. What is your strength? Knight of Wands, Orange Kyanite Knights are depicted as horses. Obviously, wands are all pretty orange. The deck goes forward and gets the job done. Your weakness? Three of Pentacles, Zincite Also an orange stone. Shows the gothic window with the three circles in the point and the shadows of three people. “Zincite is a crystal of prosperity and abundance” according to the book a byproduct produced in the chimney of a smelting plant in Poland. The deck is very RWS to a fault. What can you teach me? The Chariot, Carnelian (My Emperor is carnelian.) Looks like a stylized firebird, going down and to the right instead of upward. The deck can teach me to really move forward and go with what I have. How can I learn it? Five of Cups, Rhodochrosite (My Lovers is rhodochrosite.) It shows a bridge from three spilled cups to two standing cups. By accepting good and bad emotions. They appear together like layers in a stone. What will be the outcome of our work together? Judgement, Septarian Dragon egg with the dragon inside. Name of stone means cracks. Book uses “there’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in” quote. Interesting interp of Judgment. The deck will help me rethink everything and get an idea of how I can move to a higher level. Yeah, important card at the end. We’ll see.

A unique version of Reading Circle for those who would like to work through their collection of decks, participants choose decks from their collections to work with for the week. Some use one deck, others use two or more. Some combine methods: Tarot, non-tarot (e.g. oracle), playing cards, or any other divinatory method is welcome. All we ask is that you use at least one tarot or oracle deck. No collection is too large or too small. The only rules we have are the Tarot, Tea & Me Rules; Be respectful of one other. Please join us! Please post with your choice of deck(s) for the week Chat away about your deck, how you're finding it (or not), etc., it's all up to you Participants may either choose to share their readings here in this discussion thread or opt to have their own journal in the Journals Forum and link it here Yet others may even have an offline journal in paper & pencil/pen form Share as often, as much, or as little as you like. You can drop in and out at any time—reality and life permitting. New to tarot? Long time reader? Come on in! Participants fire cat pickles: Tarot de la Rea Rachelcat: Crystal Keys Tarot BrightEye: Tattoo Tarot Click here for DOTW 485 (10/19-10/25)

No Pip decks, no Marseille decks or Thoth decks, I already have a few but can´t read with anyone of them. I want pictures!

AI decks and Pip decks. I need imagery.

My list is pretty extensive, but all I have time to share for now is I dislike Thoth spin-off or, "inspired" decks. There is one Thoth deck. I've never encountered an adjacent, inspired pack that I like even a smidge.

I’m from Manchester 🥰

Thank you🔮

but the Whimsical Tarot....

Thank you @Misterei and @RaeveTheMad for participating with my question !!