Overwhelmed Tarot Newbie: What on earth do I do?

[swt_kiss01]

Hello everybody!

 

I am new here :). In the last few months I have been getting into tarot. So I bought a bunch of books and now I am feeling overwhelmed because I don't know how to start :( :( :(. I bought the following books:

 

* Ultimate Guide to Tarot Meanings- Brigit Esselmont

*Ultimate Guide to Tarot by Liz Dean

* Tarot Unlocking the Arcana- Angelo Nasios

* Fortune Telling with Tarot by Sasha Fenton

* Tarot Plain and Simple by Anthony Louis

* I also bought keyword sheets from etsy

 

I really made sure to buy the best books for me but the thing is that just by flipping through them I can already tell that they differ in meanings. Also, some of them have really in depth meanings that go one for like 5 pages! So my questions are:

 

1) How do I go about studying these books? Do I start with one? All of them?

2) How do I synthesize all of this information?

3) I know that one should come up with their own meanings for each card but what do I do if the books contradict my own meanings?

4) How can I mesh my meanings with the book meanings in order to feel like I am covering all I need to learn?

 

 

I think I got too overexcited and bought too many books :/.

 

I am so sorry for all of the questions. I just feel like I made a mistake and now I have a bunch of shiny new books and I don't know how to get started. Thank you all for the help! :)

[Melissa]

Hello everybody!

 

I am new here :). In the last few months I have been getting into tarot. So I bought a bunch of books and now I am feeling overwhelmed because I don't know how to start :( :( :(. I bought the following books:

 

* Ultimate Guide to Tarot Meanings- Brigit Esselmont

*Ultimate Guide to Tarot by Liz Dean

* Tarot Unlocking the Arcana- Angelo Nasios

* Fortune Telling with Tarot by Sasha Fenton

* Tarot Plain and Simple by Anthony Louis

* I also bought keyword sheets from etsy

 

I really made sure to buy the best books for me but the thing is that just by flipping through them I can already tell that they differ in meanings. Also, some of them have really in depth meanings that go one for like 5 pages! So my questions are:

 

1) How do I go about studying these books? Do I start with one? All of them?

2) How do I synthesize all of this information?

3) I know that one should come up with their own meanings for each card but what do I do if the books contradict my own meanings?

4) How can I mesh my meanings with the book meanings in order to feel like I am covering all I need to learn?

 

 

I think I got too overexcited and bought too many books :/.

 

I am so sorry for all of the questions. I just feel like I made a mistake and now I have a bunch of shiny new books and I don't know how to get started. Thank you all for the help! :)

 

 

First off, take a deep breath! It's going to be okay. [emoji4]

 

I have only skimmed though the Tarot Plain and simple book, so I can not give you any real suggestions with those.

 

The thing about books is, while they are great and help you further your studies, they are exactly what the authors wanted to write. Their meanings are going to mirror what they feel about the cards. Use the books. Read as many as you can if you want, but don't let them be your crutch. I believe the relationship a reader has with their cards is a personal one - and that will take some time, focus, and dedication.

 

You've probably already read this somewhere, but start a journal and start journaling the cards. Write down your first impressions and how that card makes you feel. Then cross reference what you wrote to some books and see how they differ or if they are similar. Don't beat yourself up if what you journal differs greatly from any book. Just because you feel a card means one thing and a book says it's something else doesn't mean you are wrong. Take your time and work through all of the cards like this.

 

Start doing a daily single card draw and journal that too. Do it in the morning and then think about how your day aligns with the card as you go through your day. Or do the draw in the evening to reflect back on your day.

 

Jump in and join one of the reading circles here. They are a great way to get the mental juices flowing and help shed some fears of reading.

 

If you can stomach one more book, I am really enjoying working through Tarot 101 by Kim Huggens. It's filled with exercises instead of just a listing of cards and meanings.

 

[emoji4]

 

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[greycats]

Suggestions

 

1. Put the books away until you learn the basic, simple meanings.  There's 78 of them.  More than enough to learn without books.

2.  Take your chart and deck and read, read, READ the CARDS, not the books. 

3. Give yourself several weeks to a few months to become familiar with the simple meanings before you branch out.  In the mean time doing frequent readings will not only help you learn the cards but will start you developing your own meanings. 

4.  If you want to see how your meanings match up with the average reader for the same style of deck, choose a deck that's fairly close to one of the big three: Rider Waite, Thoth, or Tarot de Marseille.  But give yourself plenty of room because everything affects meaning.  Where the experts are concerned you will want to hit the ballpark, not the individual seat.

 

 

 

[Queen of Nothing]

If you're going to be using a book, pick only one and stick with it. Tryinv to learn from too many will make it that more difficult to learn what each card means. It will provide a baseline to help you as you develop your own meanings. Personally, I use Kitchen Table Tarot by Melissa Cynova. Kt's really casual and beginner friednly, and its a quick short read but still plenty insightful.

 

Personally, I find it difficult to stick with journaling, so I find a way to get some practice in however I can. There are several instagram challenges you can participate that will let you do 1 or 2 card draws a day. I much prefer these to morning daily draws about my day, because it lets you stretch your muscles in ways you wouldn't think to, but won't overwhelm you.

[Ix Chel]

Hello swt_kiss01 I understand your feeling. There is so much information about the Tarot, it is simply too much. And every author has a different meaning. First I would like to tell you that there is no right book in the bookshop. I tried to search it, but is does not exist. But there is a right book and that is you Tarot journal, because it is your book. Everybody learns Tarot in a different way . But your Tarot Journal will definitely help.

 

I tried to master the card meaning by reading a lot of sources (I am a book person) by card, and then write my own opinion and meaning. I did not agree with all the card meanings from a book author, but that is normal and okay, because it has to be your meaning. Then I tried to do Tarot spreads (I really need practise here and do it more often).

 

But if I would give you an advise it will be this: Start a Tarot Journal this is the most important step, do not only read about the cards but also read them. Lay cards for your favourite television show, what will happen with person X in the next episode? Or which sports team will win the next competition? What is going to happen in the book what I am currently reading? The importance from this kind of readings is learning the cards, not to predict the right outcome. A false predicted outcome in this kind of readings does not affect you. A card can have many meanings. Start to associate cards with your favourite movies. Example the Titanic movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslett. The Lovers stands for the love between Leonardo and Kate. The 3 of Cups stands for the party in the Irish class. And the Tower is the iceberg, which made the Titanic sink. And there are many more cards. Once you start to learn Tarot, everything reminds you of a Tarot card.

 

And the most important thing of all is to have fun. You do not make a mistake by buying this books. I did also buy books, it is just a part of the process. Some people need books, other need decks, and some only need the internet. You have to find a way which suits you the best.

[Trogon]

Hi swt_kiss01! You've already gotten a lot of good advice. I will say that, for my way of learning, the journal is my best tool. I actually run a few different "journals"; my main one, with my notes on symbols on the cards and the meanings of the cards is my study journal, then I keep one of the readings I do for myself, then I have one of readings I do for other people.

 

I am actually redoing my study journal. Initially, I was putting information from 2 or even 3 cards on a page. It was a good starting point, but left me little room to expand. I am now in the process of transferring the notes to a new journal where I am allowing a full page for each card. It is mostly meanings that are from my original journal, then additional meanings which have come up over the years during study or in readings.

 

One of the reasons that so many people recommend journaling is because it works for a lot of us. While we all learn in different ways, it is usually the case that writing things down is a very good tool for learning.

 

I know what you mean about the different books often having different meanings. A lot of that depends on whether the book is focused on spiritual work with the Tarot, or divination/"fortune telling". Also, it depends a lot on which deck the author focused on - meanings for a given card can vary a bit between the RWS, Thoth and TdM. Then too, is the author focusing on the basic, accepted meanings, or are they expanding on those?

 

For me, I started with one book and one deck of cards. The deck was the RWS and the book was "The Complete Guide to the Tarot" by Eden Gray. It was an older book even when I started. But Ms. Gray simplified Waite's take on the Tarot and that, along with writing things down got me started.

 

When asked, I personally recommend sticking with one book to start with, preferably a simple one. Give yourself a start on the basics, then you can start expanding more and more from there. I started out with a foundation of the "accepted" meanings of the cards and have built on that for quite a while. For the most part, my understanding of the Tarot is an amalgam of the RWS and Thoth systems, though they are fairly similar.

 

So, as far as the books go, pick one that seems to be easy for you to work with. Use it as your primary study book and work through it as you work through your deck. When you feel you've got a good handle on those basics, use the other books to start expanding your knowledge of the cards ... for further study. I think you will find as you go along, that some of the "differences" in card meanings, are not quite so different as they first appear. That's one of the wonderful things about Tarot ... it encompasses so much of the Human experience, mind, body and soul. Almost every reading I do, whether for myself or someone else, is a learning experience.

 

I hope my ramblings have been of some assistance.

[chongjasmine]

I understand how you feel.

I struggle with the meanings for the cards as well.

Especially the court cards.

My suggestion is, do more readings.

Practise makes perfect.

[Page of Ghosts]

(...)

1) How do I go about studying these books? Do I start with one? All of them?

2) How do I synthesize all of this information?

3) I know that one should come up with their own meanings for each card but what do I do if the books contradict my own meanings?

4) How can I mesh my meanings with the book meanings in order to feel like I am covering all I need to learn?

 

 

I think I got too overexcited and bought too many books :/.

 

I am so sorry for all of the questions. I just feel like I made a mistake and now I have a bunch of shiny new books and I don't know how to get started. Thank you all for the help! :)

 

Welcome to the forum swt_kiss01!

 

I feel your pain - I am a big fans of books when it comes to tarot. Having a lot of them can be daunting for sure, especially when you're new and don't have much experience. I consider myself a more experienced newbie, nor sure if I would dare to call myself intermediate yet. Maybe newb+ or intermediate light? But here is what I do to solve your dilemmas, it includes some personal philosophy on tarot:

 

In general I think of tarot books as learning devices, things to make it easier for a complete newbie to learn tarot than just looking at the cards and getting ideas. It can be hard to do just that when you start out for a lot of people, so having some directions for the general vibe of a card is very helpful. But also I think of them as supplements. It's I who will learn about the cards and experience how they will look like as real life situations, energies, moods and people, doing readings for yourself and/or other people. So now that I've read a few books there are some I prefer to go back to when I'm stuck and don't get those intuitive flashes. I do that to get some ideas and connect the meanings suggested to something happening in my life, but it's still up to me to make those connections. Does this make sense?

 

For now I suggest you stick to one book, the one you like the most and think would be most practical to learn from. Do some daily draws or smaller readings. When you get the card, try to look at it and see what's happening before you look in the book. This was really hard for me to do in the beginning because I was overwhelmed so sometimes I didn't get much! When you feel ready to look what the book says, don't just read it and apply a meaning. Try to think about what about the image of the card suggests this meaning or that. Tarot can be very versatile so a book could suggest multiple meanings for a card. It helps for me to keep in mind the general implications of suits and numbers, I ascribe to the well used swords = air, mental processes, thoughts, wands = fire, passions, creativity, cups = water, emotions and pentacles = earth, the material, physical world. Sometimes the deck can be very literal so try to look out for that as well if nothing else makes sense. See what most closely resembles what you know about the situation. It takes a bit of time in the beginning but after a while it gets easier as you get aquainted with your deck and book.

 

What's important to me personally is my own experiences and thoughts with which I make my own meanings for a card. Reading books is all in good fun and I think of it as adding to my database of possibilities I can draw from when I do readings. So I don't worry if my meanings/what I think of a card contradict what I read in books, because I think of them all as possibilities and I try to be intuitive about it. That takes some work for a book nerd like me but I think it's an important part of reading tarot so I hope to combine book knowledge + intuition + personal experience into my tarot reading skills. Readings are mostly for myself at this time but I hope to get better at reading for others at some point too.

 

The others have also given some great advice so I hope you figure it out! I don't have any of the books you listed so I'm no help in choosing one of them to start with, unfortunately.

[saintsandliars]

My honest advice is to put the books away. All of them. Take out your cards, and maybe the LWB (little white book, or often leaflet) that came with your deck. Sit with each card, one by one, and journal what you see in each card, as well as any keywords that jump out from the LWB. When you start reading for yourself, go back to your notes if you get stuck. If a new or unusual meaning comes up, add it to your notes. Once you feel comfortable with your deck and your card meanings, THEN it's time to hit the books.

 

Why? Because you want to develop your own practice and relationship with the cards. Every book, no matter how good, is a reflection of the author's relationship with the cards, and following someone else's path isn't the best way to develop your own relationship with tarot. When you do get to the books, remember that they're not gospel. Take what works for you and leave the rest behind. The best tarot practitioners have their own relationship with the cards that reflects traditional knowledge but also involves their own intuition and understanding of the cards.

[Ace]

Start by putting all the books aside. Sit down with your deck of choice and play.

 

I know that is too easy. One way I started was to lay the cards out in order and do the Fool's Journey. You make up a story based on each picture and see what it tells you. it will help you start thinking about what the cards say to YOU.

 

Saintsandliers is right, just use the LWB. and Journal.

 

 

Raymond Buckland said it best: read the LWB then throw it away (or at least put it away) and create your own meanings for the cards. Also: if what YOU see as the meaning and what THE BOOKS say  it means, WHAT YOU think trumps every time. Because that means you are getting info straight from the Universe.

 

A NEW meaning for that card is wonderful. Find them and use them.

 

barb