Do daily readings work for you?

[Marina]

I'm posting this here in Tarot, but actually the subject could be related to any oracle.

 

I have been debating a lot the actual usefulness of daily readings. I see them being recommended as a form of practice to get more used to certain oracle and, ideally, I can understand how it works. If you use a language everyday you'll become more fluent, more able to discern subtleties in communication etc. My idea when doing daily readings has always been to exercise that.

 

However... in all my times doing daily readings, past and present, I have found them to be very difficult to interpret properly. The times I got something accurate were also times in which something very unusual happened that particular day, and the cards pointed to that. But when the day is ordinary (which for me is nearly everyday, specially in COVID-related isolation), I find my readings to be...  not as accurate or as relevant as I'd like. Of course, the problem could be mine as a tarot reader - I am too rusty and thus having a hard time grasping the more subtle messages in the cards. It's very possible! But if that's the case, what am I doing wrong and how could I improve this? Because getting inaccurate readings nearly everyday is a bit of downer, lol. 

 

Thus, I'd like to have other people's opinions on this matter. Whether you do daily readings and swear by them, or don't care for them... I'd like to know how it is for you. I think your input can help me see aspects I have not considered before. Thanks in advance!

Edited September 28, 2021 by marinaoracles

[vulprix]

I swear by daily readings for practice and lots of learning in a short span of time! But ultimately I think its downfall is that it can become rote, and therefore boring. After a while I will either be looking too hard at things, which messes with me, or I will just feel like I am not making any progress.

 

But from experience, those are just “feelings”; the progress and improvement is real! 🙂 

[Raggydoll]

I have done daily readings in different phases of my life. I have found two things to be very important to me:

 

What deck I use. Some decks aren't very good for daily readings! Heavy spiritual topics don't come up for me on a daily basis, so I tend to prefer decks that can carry very mundane messages too. 

 

The time that I perform the reading. I think its often better (for me!) to pull cards in the evening, and then reflect on what has happened during the day. Or I will pull a card in the morning, put it aside and contemplate it later in the day. That latter approach is not recommended if you are the person that would get worked up by seeing cards like 10 of swords or the Devil or Death in the morning. For those people I would definitely recommend that you pull cards in the evening to describe and process your day. You could also decide that the card means something and is not a prediction, for example it could be seen as general advice. 

 

Over all, I have realized that I can't do daily readings at all times. I only do it from time to time, and often it has a purpose, like deepening a spiritual practice or communicating with ancestors/spirit helpers etc. 

[smittenkitten]

I've tried to get into the habit of daily readings, but often it just makes me feel confused about the day, especially if there's not a lot going on. I do have an app on my phone that picks a card for me every day but it's not always relevant. 

 

I think what's most useful for me is to pull cards in the evening around a situation that has caused me to feel or that I feel I need to reflect deeper on. I may not need to do that every day. 

 

I often find I want to use my cards but I hold back because I don't feel like I have sufficient reason to reflect on something. It means it takes longer to build an affinity, but makes me consider them a bit more carefully. 

 

[gregory]

I rarely read for myself at all, so I don't use them - also because even if I did, I don't want to - how shall we say - rely on the cards. When I was reading a lot to "get" reading and understand the cards better, I did do them at the END of the day to see if the draw fit the day I had just had. Sometimes I still do that for fun, but I save reading for when there is something I need to know. And then I usually ask someone to exchange, as I KNOW I am liable to "cheat" if I read for myself on something important to me.

 

[stephanelli]

I pull a card every day, but I pick it from a deck that has a very detailed guidebook with a nice piece to read and use the card and the writing as a form of meditation.

It often brings up something relevant to the day, but if it doesn't, it's a nice exercise for starting the day right.

 

My current deck for this is the Witches' Wisdom Tarot, but I've previously used the Mother Mary Oracle or the Herbal Tarot and it's accompanying book (The Spirit of Herbs).

[DanielJUK]

As well as doing exchanges and circles in wonderful forums, the daily card pull was the 2nd most important learning method for me. I am not sure it works for everyone but for me it was revolutionary in my learning.

 

For 2 years I took different cards from different decks (mostly from RWS and I used reversals) at the start of every day and wrote them down in my journal. The task was making them fit the day, like how did the energy actually manifest? Like I got The Tower one day and I knew from the book it was a disaster and I was nervous. Well it turned out that my planned day was completely thrown in the air, a friend phoned in the morning and we completely spontaneously met up and went for a boozy lunch and had a great afternoon! Oh those were the day of spontaneity and not having to plan everything with covid risk to you 😆 . But the meaning played out to me, instead of a boring routine day, it was shaken up out of the blue! She phoned and we instantly decided to do it! So my planned day was ruined but it was wonderful!

 

So the daily reading told me about nuance, the energies can play out in different ways and a negative card can be positive and positive cards negative. I do believe that the card that came up always fitted the day's energy or theme or an event that happened and sometimes I just could not work it out or make it fit but I became really good at it. It's really helped my readings now. So it's a great learning method for experiencing the card's energies. When I went through a really hard year, I switched from the tarot card of the day to a gentle oracle and did a positive thing for the day. I really needed it go through it day by day and then went back to tarot cards of the day.

 

The other fascinating part of it was getting the same card coming up several days or sometimes reversed one day and upright the next, there were patterns! I did them at the start of the day and it can be anxiety introducing but I wanted to know what was going to happen, not review at the end of the day. I would think about the card at the end of the day, how did it play out in the end?

 

These days I am more lazy, an app gives me a card daily, it's strangely accurate. I don't write it down anymore but I do think about the card and the energy of the day, what does it really mean? how does it fit?

The card was always right for the day and I became more accurate at working it out as I did it regularly. Think of as a daily puzzle

 

 

[RosieBlack]

I've already mentioned that I don't find them very helpful. I am either no good at interpreting them as mundane messages, or I'm not seeing where they fit into my day at all. And sometimes they can apply to just about anything! Yesterday I pulled Temperance and I thought, gee, that could really apply to absolutely ANYTHING! 😆One thing I have had a couple of times is a couple of cards seemed to be giving a very literal message so that's something to consider too. I did a 3 card pull for a friend one day (Lenormand cards) and one of the cards was mice. He happened to be sitting in his aviary surrounded by a bunch of mice right around the time I did the reading! Then yesterday one of the cards I got was 3 of cups and in my deck it's a pic of 3 birds sitting on a branch. Again, I thought that could apply to any connection, but last night my friend sent me a picture of 3 pigeons perched on his bike. In these cases I really believe the cards were sending me very literal messages. A few times I asked a question about someone and got the Justice card come up, which, in my deck has a black and a white cat on it. This seemed like a literal message to me too because the person in question has a black cat and a white cat. The Queen of wands from the RW deck also has a black cat sitting in front of her and I have a black cat so when this comes up for me I often take it to represent me. Just something to consider maybe! But as for the usefulness in general of daily readings, considering I find the overall message can vary greatly I don't find them to be very useful when pulled in a general context. One day I got Letter, snake and moon from my Lenormand deck and I thought this could mean messages in relation to an older woman that will bring emotional satisfaction OR messages about difficulties/treachery/rivalry that will bring emotional satisfaction OR deceitful messages about a career opportunity and the list goes on....As you know I'm still very inexperienced, but I don't see much point in daily readings as practice if you can't figure out which definition applies. Even when I look back at the end of the day I can't figure out any scenario that might fit. I am considering just pulling cards to see if I can get used to the meanings and string a message together, accurate or not, without trying to apply it to anything just to help get used to it. But then with me I'm an overthinker and I'd probably start wondering if it really does mean something!! 😄

Edited September 28, 2021 by RosieBlack

[Riimukissa]

When I was learning how to read the cards I used to draw a card every day. At that time I found it useful – not for divination but for the learning purpose. I tried my best to do it every morning but I realised that if I wanted to get something more out of the practise then I had to draw my card in the evening.

 

Personally, I prefer drawing at least two or three cards in stead of one.

[malvina]

Many have mentioned what a great way it is to familiarize oneself with the deck/system, but to me it’s first and foremost a very practical tool to see what’s going to happen that day. I never skip my dailies/weeklies/monthlies. My minimum is three cards, I don’t see how just one can tell you anything specific. I’m also spending most of my time at home these days, so a completely uneventful day would give me a lackluster reading as well. But if there’s something - anything - to cling to (poor air quality, text from a friend, online purchase, phone argument with dad, parcel delivery, etc.), the cards will pick up on it and tell me.

[euripides]

I'm another who has phases of regular drawing and others where I don't. My life is quite mundane most of the time, and really, the cards don't tend to have much to say about it on the whole. But when I'm going through periods of decision-making about work and study, or trying to reorient myself on my spiritual path, then I read more often.  Having said that, though, I often find that the right deck  - those 'wisdom decks' where there are insights about character and relationships - can often help to navigate a day or just offer some worthwhile food for thought.  Most of my decks tend to be rather heavy duty, and I find drawing aimlessly for the day tends to yield nonsense - it's not fruitful. I think if I wanted a 'what is going to happen today' type reading, I'd go for an oracle that lends itself more directly to everyday occurrences, like a visitor, and the arrival of a letter, or unexpected news. 

[katrinka]

On 9/27/2021 at 8:35 PM, marinaoracles said:

However... in all my times doing daily readings, past and present, I have found them to be very difficult to interpret properly. The times I got something accurate were also times in which something very unusual happened that particular day, and the cards pointed to that. But when the day is ordinary (which for me is nearly everyday, specially in COVID-related isolation), I find my readings to be...  not as accurate or as relevant as I'd like. Of course, the problem could be mine as a tarot reader - I am too rusty and thus having a hard time grasping the more subtle messages in the cards. It's very possible! But if that's the case, what am I doing wrong and how could I improve this? Because getting inaccurate readings nearly everyday is a bit of downer, lol. 

 

Ramp down. WAY down.
The more dramatic Swords, for instance, might just be talking about your clothing getting hung on a rosebush when you go outside to get the mail. "Dang it, now I have little holes in my nice new skirt!"

Pay attention to what's affecting you, too. If you're isolating, you're probably taking in a lot of news/internet articles and entertainment like books and movies. Just because something is elsewhere - or even fictional - doesn't mean it can't make us laugh, cry, get mad, or otherwise set the tone for the day. These things can show up in the cards - and why wouldn't they?

Try recording several levels of interpretation and see how it works out.

That said, I never found dailies particularly useful for anything but practice. The more specific the question, the clearer the answer.

 

[katrinka]

3 hours ago, TheThumbPuppy said:

My favourite – which I don't have a clue what it's called, but I learned it from tarot reader on YouTube (Am I allowed to say her name?)

 

We absolutely do name names here. Praise and criticism are both allowed - everyone wants to know where the good (or bad!) resources are.
Besides, it's like reviewing a product that a person produces, which is very different from putting their personal lives on blast. 😉

[katrinka]

8 hours ago, TheThumbPuppy said:

Thank you, @katrinka

 

I've followed Andie for some time and she's probably responsible for re-introducing me to tarot after a long hiatus. She's also become a dear friend and has a wicked sense of humour.

 

Andie has two channels on YouTube:

Tarot by Andie – about the vicissitudes of the Royal family 

Tarot Time with Andie – about celebrities and murder cases

 

I enjoy her style of linking one card to another in an overarching story. At times she surprises me with her interpretations, where even a traditionally positive card may stray onto the dark side depending on other cards on the spread. 

 

Another very entertaining feature of her readings is that she also utilises some Lenormands, Kipper, and other Oracle cards. She often mentions that she's still learning and likes to depart from fixed rules – which is fine with me. 🤠

 

OOOOOOH, celeb and murder readings! What a refreshing departure from those "forecast for the week, pick a pile" things. And she doesn't pile 40 pounds of rocks on her reading table. 😁
I only watched a few, And there does seem to be some major issues with her Lenormand readings, the fact that she reads the cards singly and doesn't combine them. Dog + Fox + Snake + Clouds looks like Meghan is in for a massive betrayal from a false "close" friend. (And I don't put any stock in ANYTHING DT says. He's got a proven track record of delusion and racism. As for the palmistry bit, I can't comment. I don't know Meghan and she may well be manipulative. But the cards are warning her about someone else, a male friend, most likely platonic.) But she's going off a Marcus Katz book - 'nuff said.
She does have the knack, and she's not scared to go out on a limb and predict. And she obviously works at it, and states plainly that she's learning rather than playing Grand Poobah. I like that. Subscribed - and thank you!
 

[MarieBernard]

I sometimes do, but it's usually motivated by a specific concern, something I'm anticipating happening. Even if I do it randomly, I formulate a question that narrows down what I want to know. 

 

"What will develop between X and myself at work today?"

 

"What should I look out for?"

 

"Where is an opportunity for spiritual growth today?"

 

Just drawing a card of the day to meditate on is great for learning and deepening my understanding, but unless I want to know something in particular, they've never leaped off the shelf to tell me anything useful and timely about the day ahead.

[Gypsylady]

Like some in this thread, I struggle with daily readings and interpreting them. When I first started reading tarot (over 10 years ago now), I would do daily readings where I would pull three cards for the day. I would then take a picture with my phone and go through my day. At the end of the day, I would write down the three cards I pulled and see what they represented within my day. I found the readings quite mundane, and unless something significant was happening in my day, I would struggle to understand some of the cards.

 

Now that I've read this though, I am thinking it may be a good habit to get back into...

[Sar]

I never do daily readings nor daily cards, I do a weekly reading of three cards.

[Krislynner]

I find daily draws to be helpful for me to determine the energies at play in my day. I draw 1 card in the morning as part of my daily routine/ritual. It is a way to start my day off in a spiritual mindset and check in with my guides and Goddess. I sometimes do a larger spread later in the day for a specific situation, etc but I don’t do that daily but more like weekly.

[mooshedpotatoes]

I definitely thing mindset and perspective play into this. Daily cards could be useful for a beginner to familiarize themselves with their deck and maybe even get a bit of wisdom out of it!