If you could start over

[ilweran]

There are decks I wouldn't have bought (Gendron,  Londa among others), decks I would have bought sooner (Greenwood mainly, though the price I paid seems reasonable now  :bugeyed:)

 

Mainly though I think I'm good with how things worked out. I could say I wished I put more effort into learning when I was younger, but then I would probably have missed out on some excellent books.

[Guest libra]

There are decks I wouldn't have bought (Gendron,  Londa among others), decks I would have bought sooner (Greenwood mainly, though the price I paid seems reasonable now  :bugeyed:)

 

Mainly though I think I'm good with how things worked out. I could say I wished I put more effort into learning when I was younger, but then I would probably have missed out on some excellent books.

  :bugeyed: :bugeyed: :bugeyed:  I mean like if you want Londa off your hands, I would happily oblige, out of the kindness of my heart, of course.

 

(totally kidding but like that's like one of my dream decks and doesn't go anywhere for less than like a hundred and fifty bucks and I just caaaaan't.)

[ilweran]

The Londa is worth money now? If I still had it you could have it for what I paid for it*,  but I think I gave it away to my sister along with a bunch of other decks well over a decade ago  :eek:

 

*I have previous form for this. My husband thinks I'm mad :think: ;D

[MysticMonkey]

I'm pretty happy with my tarot journey.  If anything I could say I should read more as I don't feel like I've learnt that much compared to the amount of time I've been reading for (over a decade) but I'd rather not force it or it may stop being enjoyable. 

[DanielJUK]

For a while I have thought like PleiadesHag[/member] said about I wish I had paid more attention to the cards rather than other opinions about it. But I have come back around in a circle in my thinking and realised that I learnt the way I did and no regrets. Like Esk[/member] said there was a time for each part of my learning, I do think my journey was destined in many ways, it played out as it did in a difficult time in my life to help me and I found a new direction in life and new skills :)

 

These were my greatest mistakes that I learnt from.....

 

- I do wish I had started learning tarot seriously earlier. I "messed around" with the first deck I bought in my teens and always looked up the meanings in books but didn't get serious until my 30's. It's opened up such a part of myself with intuition that I repressed. I think it did come into my life at an important (maybe destined?) time but still I wish I had happened sooner. I would have had more years back on AT :)

 

- I was so worried when I was learning that I didn't have every single possible meaning of a card when I read for someone and in combinations, I must learn every single combination with every card and that was my biggest fear in learning. But it was such a mistake on my part, you cannot know everything that comes up, often you have to just let it come to you and interpret cards in clever ways that fit the situation. After one year of learning I have never found this a problem ever, I always can get a combination or meaning.

 

- I saw someone write some years ago that they wish they had learnt tarot entirely intuitively, like you pick up a card and you make your own ideas about it. For ages I had regrets that I had learnt the widely accepted meaning of each card from multiple authors from books and websites online. The idea that if you had a completely blank idea of each card, it really comes from you. But I realise now that I am glad to have the foundation of that generic idea, I could not interpret them without it. Even if I only use intuition. The reference meaning for me is a foundation, a basic framework and I build on it. Tarot really taught me about analysing symbols, I use that in many other places now apart from divination, like art, dreams and often in every day life. But I am not sure I really did it before learning tarot.

 

- Everyone has different methods, views, ways of dealing with the cards. Now I sometimes read for tarot friends and we see things so differently but every interpretation is right if it fits or works. We all have our own view of looking at it, based on many factors like how we learnt and our life experiences.

 

- I wish I had been braver and less afraid to fail, I got readings wrong and my skills have really improved with years of practice. My early readings are so awful and one poor person got a reading they totally could not understand but I just kept on and that is the secret! Reading for lots of different people is the biggest thing that improved my skills, not reading books or theory but the practical aspect. Using it!

 

- My stupidest learning mistake of all and I laugh about it now was comparing myself to other readers on AT when I was inexperienced and they had experience. I was in a newbies circle with someone with a lot of experience and omg they were good! But you know they could understand my reading and it had a message for them but their readings were so good, I was so intimidated. They had a lot more learnt knowledge than me and knew so much more than me. I was really comparing our readings and talked to them about it and then I found out they had 40 to 50 years experience with tarot and about 30 years reading professionally. I was 18 months into it  ;D I was just at a different stage of my journey.

 

All in all, It's easy to have regrets with hindsight but I am glad I found all these things out now! But really don't worry too much about other meanings and opinions, find your own place with it, your own ideas and own methods that work best for you. That has helped my readings the most  :heartz:

[Thoughtful]

If l could start over l would definitely not have sold so many of my decks. l do regret getting rid of some of the beauties that are now OOP.  l had no idea then that some decks would mean so much to me later.

Act in haste, repent in leisure,  that was me  :rolleyes:

 

l also would not have got rid of tarot boxes. l threw them away as l was eager to house the cards in lovely new velvet bags.

[McFaire]

I think I would focus less on outcome-oriented spreads which I used a lot over the years.

[Barleywine]

I would do a lot more public reading than I did. Face-to-face dialogue is one of the best ways to sharpen your presentation skills. You quickly find out what works and what doesn't.

[Lefty28]

I regret not being born into it ,with grandmas and learning traditional stories handed down, how great would that have been ! Before college I had the rohrig deck and the rider Waite pictorial key , ya confused and lost . We didn’t have things so easy back then .

[Guest]

The main thing I would change would be to keep a journal much, much sooner. It has helped so much. I had things like flashcards for rote learning to start but didn't start putting it into a formal note system until much, much later. I think that's really the only thing on my tarot journey I regret.

[chongjasmine]

If I could start over, I would be more diligent in my tarot studies.

[zedekiel]

This is a really great thread to read as a newbie! I'm reading all the comments and taking mental notes from you guys on possible regrets in the future so thank you for having them so I might be able to avoid them 😁 (jkjk)

[Katie]

I should not have started using the Toth. It was the only I could afford as 13 ys old. I should have started with RWS. But I was also negative towards RWS because "everybody else" had that. It's never too late of course...

Katie

[Barleywine]

46 minutes ago, Katie said:

I should not have started using the Toth. It was the only I could afford as 13 ys old. I should have started with RWS. But I was also negative towards RWS because "everybody else" had that. It's never too late of course...

Katie

I'm a living example of "never too late." I read with the Thoth exclusively from 1972 until 2011, then picked up the RWS. What I realized right away, though, is that it's very good for some things (like public reading) but a little too shallow for some of my other purposes.

[alyce]

Starting over again, it would be wise to never have bought the Ludy Lescot. That deck only brought disaster luck into my household, what with its box (east asian character for death but with one stroke missing) and perhaps content. I got rid of it not a moment too soon.

Edited August 17, 2019 by alyce

[Swanhild]

I really don't think so. While my first deck is less than ideal as beginner deck, it was what drew me to Tarot, and maybe memorizing a truckload of meanings because the images told me zilch, was not such a bad way to start. At least I bit my way through it and knew Tarot was indeed "the thing" for me.

 

I wish I had a broader variety of literature available and more opportunity to exchange with other tarotistas. It was a long time before forums or before I could read English properly though, so me going back in time would not fix this unleass the internet tagged along, too 😁

[Eric13]

There's two decks I would like to have back that I gave away.

The Centennial Pixie deck, in the tin can.

A Thoth deck, not the Crowley one, the French one.

Oh, and there was a well known reader in the Bay Area when I was there many years ago I had a chance to meet but gaffed it off. Big mistake.

[JustPeachy]

If I could start over again, I'd have found a great mentor at the same time I found my first deck back in the late 80's, instead of only a small little white sheet of keywords that I had no real way of connecting. A book on meanings or even a little history of the cards would have been helpful!

[euripides]

I think I wasted a lot of time browsing ebay and trading forums for decks, and purchased a few I don't like. I'd like to have recognized sooner what suited me and just kept working with those in a more focused way. I also spent an awful lot of time chasing down obscure TdM symbolism. The reality is that greater minds than mine have spent years digging into that stuff, and I'm not sure that it was time well spent. Though I've always done a lot of following after obscure stuff.

 

I wish I'd journaled more consistently, and also, had kept a journal of the more substantial posts I wrote on AT. I think I sometimes had useful stuff to offer. I'm always torn between writing as conversation and contribution to community, and the fact that it's something I no longer claim as mine - nobody who wondered what I'd done in my life would connect all that thought with me. One of the downsides of the digital age. No letters.

 

I wish I'd stayed on the path.

[Lady Butterfly]

I am a firm believer that everything happens at exactly the right point it should, so my reasons for coming back to tarot at this moment will probably only become clear down the line.

 

That said, if I were to go back and start over, I would want to learn on a more standard RWS deck. My first, and for a long time only, deck is the Faery Wicca Tarot, so the naming of the cards etc is very different from the more traditional decks. It left me struggling to connect the 2 in my mind.

Also, I would have put more effort into learning from the word go.

 

But, after all that, I am learning now, and I have already learnt so much more about the Tarot, and myself, so I am guessing this is in fact the perfect time for me.

[c r y p t i d]

On 9/13/2019 at 5:19 AM, Lady Butterfly said:

That said, if I were to go back and start over, I would want to learn on a more standard RWS deck. My first, and for a long time only, deck is the Faery Wicca Tarot, so the naming of the cards etc is very different from the more traditional decks. It left me struggling to connect the 2 in my mind.

It's very interesting to me how starting from different points will shape how we feel about our learning journey, because while I certainly understand your reasoning here, I started with the standard RWS deck (because it seemed like everyone said I HAD to) and I think one thing I'd want to change if I were to start over would be to choose a different deck that I liked a little more -- now that I'm trying to branch out more, I find myself having to unlearn a lot of things because I relied too heavily on doing things the "right" way: the "right" deck, the "right" meanings, etc. Which maybe isn't necessarily the fault of the deck (I still do occasionally read with my RWS because it does come easiest, being the one I've spent the most time working with, and I don't HATE it by any means) but I think I probably would've approached learning from an angle that was more natural for me and had less of a rigid mindset right off the bat if I'd chosen a first deck that came with less "baggage" tied to it.

 

Not to imply that RWS is a bad deck for anyone else to start with, I just think it wasn't right for ~me as a very first deck.

 

I think, in that same shade, I would've relied less on books / other people's interpretations of the cards in the beginning. Not avoid them completely, but I definitely used to look up a card meaning, compare it across multiple sources (confusing myself with information overload in the process) and only THEN after I'd boggled my own brain with all that would I attempt to come to my own conclusion about a card, which was a very academic approach that might work for some people but certainly wasn't the way for me. Starting over, I'd do it the other way around: take a gander at interpreting a card myself first, and then cross-reference that with the LWB and maybe ONE other source and only bring in more sources to build off that once I was comfortable with what I already knew. I really feel like I shot my intuition in the foot starting off the way I did XD

[loveheartlight]

I enrolled in two beginner Tarot reading classes. The first one just basically taught me how to charge for energy exchange and be defensive towards abusive clients. Anything else about the cards I could have learned elsewhere or better on my own. I regret taking that first class. The second class taught me to read intuitively and meditatively. I wish I only took this second class.

[MollyCat]

I don't regret anything about my Tarot journey.  It helped me to deeper knowledge of myself and a higher understanding.

There are so many beautiful decks.  I think I'd be more discerning about what I purchase now.

I'm more meditative about cards and that's a lovely aspect of my Tarot use.

[Carla]

I don't understand 'start over' questions. Unlike most people, I guess, I don't want to go back and do anything over. It was a big undertaking the first time, who wants to do that again. I don't regret anything that happened to me in my tarot journey, or I guess in my entire life...literally, I cannot imagine doing things 'differently'. What happened is what happened, je ne regrette rien.

[Myakka_Fire]

I'm returning to reading after about a three year hiatus. Including the break, I've been reading cards for about 12 years now and there is a few things I wish I had done earlier. 

Journal early on and often. Having a strong connection with one deck (Hanson-Roberts, for me) and using it daily gave me a strong understanding of how the cards played together. Writing down my cards and how what I noticed in readings in my life was my best way to learn. I did a lot of that.

Also, what I would have changed....more person-to-person readings. I only tried a few times to engage and was disappointed, overall with my reader or teachers lack of skill. It's been quite awhile since I've paid for any type of reading or classes, however, I still think there is great value in these things. For sure, it's something I would like to do more of! Not paying for it, just the person-to-person reading circles would be a wealth of knowledge I have not tapped into yet.

 

I see a few mentioned books, I totally agree. I'll be revisiting some of my favorites from Pollock and Greer, absolutely!