My Tarot Journey | Accompanied by Five Myths
I ended up at a cutesy, Berkshire-esque bookstore in Vermont called, Northshire. Walking around bookstores has been a love of mine for as long as I can remember, so I’d grabbed a cup of coffee to prepare for what might amount to two hours of casual strolling & navigating. At twenty eight, I perceived myself as a spiritual, holistic, natural sort of woman, but I hadn’t started engaging in many of the divinatory modalities yet. I’d had past life regressions, I’d had people practice reiki & pendulum swinging on me, I’d tried meditation & crystal healing. I loved going to Tibetan or occult shops, but it hadn’t crossed my mind yet to pick any of these things up. In retrospect, they seemed intimidating. I thought, I must have some prior knowledge or some deeply ethereal yet intangible ability to see through the veil. I thought, I don’t have it and you certainly can’t just learn it; it must be passed down. And we arrive at:
Myth 1
The idea that divinatory knowledge must be passed down through generations in order to warrant your ability to practice, is false. When I took a few additional minutes to actually look at the tarot decks being sold in this bookstore, they were just decks of cards, but also guidebooks. Then I looked all around and finally noticed that, I was surrounded by tarot guidebooks; why hadn’t this crossed my mind before? I was pulled to a dope Alice in Wonderland themed deck, bought it, and devoured the book with all the cards splayed out on a giant oak table back at the cottage. I was exhilarated, goosebumps were activating on and off as I read for hours. It just felt, this was the thing I want to spend patient and graceful time learning.
I used the book, YouTube creators, other books, my own notes, and other little habits [like placing one card a night under my pillow to connect to it more deeply]. I learned that there is a whole wide world of tarot practitioners, learners, and lurkers; I quickly became addicted. Inevitably, through the course of my research and [very academic] study of tarot, I noted that unfortunately I wasn’t gifted my deck; I bought it.
Myth 2
The notion that you must be gifted each and every deck that you own. Tarot as we see it today, isn’t as ancient as you’d readily believe and therefore, the rules and regulations around it aren’t as strict as you’d imagine. I came across a plethora of blogs, videos and more from practitioners that were in two camps: gifted decks and non. My opinion is that, particularly with divinatory practices, there is to be ritual but not rules. What’s more important in my view is ensuring you curate your own ritual around working with your cards and not necessarily digesting what every other practitioner does, adhere to the [non existing] universal tarot guidebook, and never feeling instinctual about the practice itself. Ritualizing can be anything that you repeatedly do when you head to your cards, but a few starter points can be: cleanse the decks with palo santo or sage, connect your Tibetan chimes, meditate over the cards, and so much more.
Soon enough, if the cards are your choice of divinatory modality, you’ll become obsessed. Buying multiple decks and books to expand your understanding and have fun with it! They’ll all be encased and stacked on top of each other in a corner of your room with never ending incense flowing. JK.
Myth 3
That you absolutely need: an altar, a tarot cloth, incense, a tarot box, and all the accoutrements to legitimize your practice. The truth is, we all just start somewhere and figure it out as we go. I had a little shelf in my bedroom that housed all my spiritual stuff, like a box of crystals, mono colored candles, five decks, a bunch of books, and all that jazz. Over time, I found a cool tarot box on Etsy, but I still keep a little shelf in my room with all my things on it. I’ve deemed it as special and only I can touch what’s on it because that just feels right! It’s truly all about how you feel and that’s the point really, divination allows you to get closer to yourself and your intuition. So heed it even in little moments and decisions like these.
In your practice, you’ll want to experiment with reading for yourself.
Myth 4
The idea that doing self readings are a no no, is another falsehood! How else are you to learn if you’re not consistent? If you’re like me, your most consistent willing partner is, yourself. Using a journal to accompany each tarot reading you engage in, whether for yourself or others, is really one of the best forms of learning. You can later return to your writings and discern patterns or determine if certain things, mindsets, or experiences did indeed come to pass when you thought you may have read that right in the cards. Reading for yourself gives you the chance to trust more and more in yourself as a reader. All while bearing in mind that, we will always have free will and you must use your discernment [which will inevitably be honed with practice] to recognize that everything you read isn’t cemented in stone.
My altar in Denver 2022
Myth 5
Everything you read in the cards does not necessarily mean they will 100% happen in the way in which you read, you think, or you imagine. An old psychic told me years ago that it’s much more hectic to read cards for those under fifty years if they haven’t found a partner, haven’t found a place to settle, haven’t had kids, and all the rest of the societal norms we expect. This is because when the major crossroads of life haven’t happened to a person yet, the answers to their questions are infinitely endless, cyclical, and are dependent on a wild amount of other things happening in just the right way. So she said, if she did a reading for someone and that person decided in the final moments of the reading that they actually wanted to grab a coffee after the reading at a cafe instead of get back in their car to head home, several points in her reading may be off. This felt sensible to me! Remember that we all have free will and you can certainly take any information you ever receive with a grain of salt, nothing is ever guaranteed.
A little video I made of varying ways to shuffle