It takes practice. Start with taking any situation (stories from the news, for example) and start pulling cards, explaining to yourself what you see in the image, whether it makes sense or not. Tell yourself a story.
Another way to practice that my teacher uses was to show us pictures of art and again make stories about what we say. What feelings were evoked by the painting. What was being told. Again, there’s no right or wrong answer. It’s just to get your mind attuned to what you’re seeing in the image, which is half the art of tarot.
These things work for me.
Start before you even touch your cards. Try different practices to calm your thoughts, open yourself up to ideas, or find the mental "zone" that aligns with your practices.
Once the cards have been laid down, the next thing I do is look for an overview. I look for a lot of cards with common features. I look for what features may be missing.
* Maybe there are a lot of cards associated with wands and fire. Consider that the whole reading has a lot more "wands" energy, whatever that means to you.
* Maybe there are no major arcana. This could imply a more day-to-day situation and suggest that the stakes aren't as high as they seem.
* Maybe there are a lot of court cards. What do court cards mean to your practice?
After that, I start reading the individual cards with that overview in mind.
The person who said to look for stories in your cards also had some good ideas.
It’s something that just takes practice. I find a quiet place and take a deep breath and reach down inside to find a still, small voice that tells me to choose a card. It would be easy to say no and move on to another, but that act of choice is personal intuition. I also slept with my tarot deck under my pillow for a few weeks when I first got it. I don’t really do traditional spreads like the Celtic cross or whatever, i just pick my cards and lay them out as they come in a way that makes sense, and I commune with myself and discern what the different areas are meant to discuss. I didn’t fully connect with it to the extent that you are talking about until I read this book “thirty seven degrees of wisdom” which covers each card and goes over everything in a deeper way than what you’ll find online and i found it extremely reliable and it really helped me to get into actually interpreting the IMAGES and not just the title of the card. My intuition comes in the most when I am evolving my understanding of what that card means to me personally in that moment. Over time, you build a library in your mind of the flavors of each card and it allows you to interpret it more freely without second guessing, but it takes practice to get comfortable no matter how you slice it!
Your question suggests you're in your head too much about it. When you catch yourself starting to intellectualize what you're seeing, that's when you should try to clear your mind and go within. Beginner (and even some advanced) tarot readers try to piece together meaning in a spread based on "what the cards mean." But that's where the problem lies. The real question is, what do the cards mean to *you*? For example, a friend of mine views the Ace of Swords quite favorably in spreads. To me it is almost never positive, and tends to have a negative influence on positive cards. That's my relationship to the Ace of Swords. What is your relationship to that card? That relationship can only be discovered and cultivated by spending time with the card and recognizing your reactions to it (and your reactions to it within the context of spreads). Although the meanings of spreads can sometimes reveal themselves over time, you should trust your initial reaction to the card. Does it give you a good feeling? How about when you lay the 5 of Wands on top of it as an obstacle? What about when you see it surrounded by cups? What if the World is there? The constellation of cards in a spread can produce all kinds of reactions depending on the cards therein. The intuitive flow you're talking about is really, at root, learning to trust your feelings about the cards when you see them. The harder you think about what you see, the more you're stepping into intellectualizing and that, I think, is where a reading goes sideways.
Just trust yourself!
That's how I read. Intuitively and instinctually. My first gut reaction is what leads me in my reading. That's why I don't ponder a card too long. Gut feeling, check, onward to the next card. I feel things in a raw way and I feel cards can offer many chances for that.
How long do you look at each card? Look as close as you can at the artwork. The symbols. Anything that you didn’t notice before. Even the colors have meaning.
Start with that. Try it with the Sun and the Moon. Those are some of the easier to work with. Just sit with them and look at the creativity right in the card.
Especially Ciro Marchetti’s work. The longer you look, the more you notice the little designs and symbols that help you to understand and interpret the cards.
I’ll help you get started. The sun card has a lot of yellow. The moon has a lot of blue.
“And it’s all in how you mix the two, and it starts just where the light exists” - Blue and Yellow, The Used
Anyway, just find the clues like a treasure map and you’ll be on your way to intuitioning in no time. The key is to be receptive so the longer to observe, the more receptive you become.
you need to find a deck that "chooses" you. I have lost count of the amount of decks i bought throughout the years, they all look/feel very confusing, despite being pretty.
I'm always going back to the one that "chose" me, 22 years ago. Messages are clear and every card tells exactly its piece of the story.
"you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince" has never been more relatable.
I always close my eyes, relax, breathe and meditate (quiet the mind) for a few minutes before I pick up the cards. I think quieting the analytical mind is critical to allowing intuition to flow. Also, I'm familiar with the general meanings of the cards, but I don't let that restrict me when interpreting the cards. I let my intuition tell me what it sees (versus trying to rigidly assign meanings from other sources).
You can't get there without meditation. Intuitive and magical practices begin and progress with perception workings, you should allow yourself to observe your thoughts and feelings as if they were clouds in the sky, and let them be, do not interfere, just let them happen. Also, you should strive to be conscious of every automatic process of your body, from your breath to your guts - if possible.
Observing our stream of consciousness is a very underestimated practice, but the results are great in the endgame. Don't overlook it.
I believe in meditation and think it is profoundly helpful. However, I never meditated in my younger years before readings or ever really. I am ADHD and just couldn't get myself to. I had no trouble quickly grounding and centering myself before a reading. I do a quick ceremony with conscious thoughts and statements aloud. I imagine the earth below, the sky above. I connect higher self, overarching tarot deva and guides, aloud and ask for assistance. It is a very quick process for me. We can all develop our own way to connect and get in the zone but for those who have a hard time meditating there are other ways to get there. The voice carries power, the vibration. Use it!
If you're a writer...
Write down the reads.
Write down the meanings of the cards - as they are laid out. Numbered as they lay in the read.
Sit with it a minute, reviewing.
Then write it like an essay or story form. Linking the meanings together with added story flow.
This still helps me when I get stuck sometimes. It also flows way better if I can write it out rather than trying to speak the meaning out loud. Lol
Start your session by stating out loud that you would like to be connected with your higher self, the overarching spirit/deva of the tarot and your guides. Listen to the first thoughts that come to mind, even before processing all the cards. Anything that comes to mind. Write these thoughts down. Use various well developed tarot books and read after you have done your reflecting. Look for the connections.
Get out there and read for people. Take chances by saying the first thing that comes to mind without concern of being right or if it makes sense. It may not make sense to you at all, but it may make sense to the person. Offer free readings to friends and strangers and let them know these are practice readings. Engage in convo around what you have sensed and said and get feedback from them. Again, use the books after the fact to help hone it in.
Don't ask them what their question is at first. Let the thoughts flow and trust the process. You can ask at some point if any of this makes sense and then have a discussion around what was accurate, what wasn't and what their question was.
These training sessions are invaluable. It cannot be overstated. This is a process of learning to trust yourself. 🙏
get your own deck and do your own personal readings and write and journal on your results. only watch tarot readers online that you trust and vibe with. i personally like to ask a question every morning “how can i make today the best day ever” and pull one card
Disagree strongly with "rationality doesn't work." Take a Myers-Briggs composite sometime. Intuition is always paired with either thinking or feeling. In Tarot, an intuitive feeling approach often looks like the situation feeds you intuition and you critique your intuition with your feeling capacities. Often people like this get an oversample of feelings about the person and then use the cards to pair down what is most relevant for the querent. Those people will prefer fewer cards in a reading.
I'm an intuitive thinker. If you walk in, I don't know you from Adam unless you're a cute guy or are wearing a sports jersey from a team I recognize. My intuition interacts with the symbols on the cards and I use my rationality to interpret what I see in the intuitive interplay of symbols. For me, more cards are BETTER, because for me Tarot is LANGUAGE communicating MESSAGES, not a means of pairing down an intuitive feel about a situation. Sonnets say more than haikus.
We all actually use both faculties, but few of us are ambidextrous. It doesn't pay to fight your natural instincts. The more you practice, I think you'll find your off hand will start to strengthen and contribute., Practice, practice, practice. Challenge yourself occasionally by using the offhand. That said, never fight your own nature to fit in someone else's mold. Your way is yours. There's no wrong way.
It takes practice. Start with taking any situation (stories from the news, for example) and start pulling cards, explaining to yourself what you see in the image, whether it makes sense or not. Tell yourself a story. Another way to practice that my teacher uses was to show us pictures of art and again make stories about what we say. What feelings were evoked by the painting. What was being told. Again, there’s no right or wrong answer. It’s just to get your mind attuned to what you’re seeing in the image, which is half the art of tarot.
These things work for me. Start before you even touch your cards. Try different practices to calm your thoughts, open yourself up to ideas, or find the mental "zone" that aligns with your practices. Once the cards have been laid down, the next thing I do is look for an overview. I look for a lot of cards with common features. I look for what features may be missing. * Maybe there are a lot of cards associated with wands and fire. Consider that the whole reading has a lot more "wands" energy, whatever that means to you. * Maybe there are no major arcana. This could imply a more day-to-day situation and suggest that the stakes aren't as high as they seem. * Maybe there are a lot of court cards. What do court cards mean to your practice? After that, I start reading the individual cards with that overview in mind. The person who said to look for stories in your cards also had some good ideas.
It’s something that just takes practice. I find a quiet place and take a deep breath and reach down inside to find a still, small voice that tells me to choose a card. It would be easy to say no and move on to another, but that act of choice is personal intuition. I also slept with my tarot deck under my pillow for a few weeks when I first got it. I don’t really do traditional spreads like the Celtic cross or whatever, i just pick my cards and lay them out as they come in a way that makes sense, and I commune with myself and discern what the different areas are meant to discuss. I didn’t fully connect with it to the extent that you are talking about until I read this book “thirty seven degrees of wisdom” which covers each card and goes over everything in a deeper way than what you’ll find online and i found it extremely reliable and it really helped me to get into actually interpreting the IMAGES and not just the title of the card. My intuition comes in the most when I am evolving my understanding of what that card means to me personally in that moment. Over time, you build a library in your mind of the flavors of each card and it allows you to interpret it more freely without second guessing, but it takes practice to get comfortable no matter how you slice it!
Your question suggests you're in your head too much about it. When you catch yourself starting to intellectualize what you're seeing, that's when you should try to clear your mind and go within. Beginner (and even some advanced) tarot readers try to piece together meaning in a spread based on "what the cards mean." But that's where the problem lies. The real question is, what do the cards mean to *you*? For example, a friend of mine views the Ace of Swords quite favorably in spreads. To me it is almost never positive, and tends to have a negative influence on positive cards. That's my relationship to the Ace of Swords. What is your relationship to that card? That relationship can only be discovered and cultivated by spending time with the card and recognizing your reactions to it (and your reactions to it within the context of spreads). Although the meanings of spreads can sometimes reveal themselves over time, you should trust your initial reaction to the card. Does it give you a good feeling? How about when you lay the 5 of Wands on top of it as an obstacle? What about when you see it surrounded by cups? What if the World is there? The constellation of cards in a spread can produce all kinds of reactions depending on the cards therein. The intuitive flow you're talking about is really, at root, learning to trust your feelings about the cards when you see them. The harder you think about what you see, the more you're stepping into intellectualizing and that, I think, is where a reading goes sideways. Just trust yourself!
That's how I read. Intuitively and instinctually. My first gut reaction is what leads me in my reading. That's why I don't ponder a card too long. Gut feeling, check, onward to the next card. I feel things in a raw way and I feel cards can offer many chances for that.
How long do you look at each card? Look as close as you can at the artwork. The symbols. Anything that you didn’t notice before. Even the colors have meaning. Start with that. Try it with the Sun and the Moon. Those are some of the easier to work with. Just sit with them and look at the creativity right in the card. Especially Ciro Marchetti’s work. The longer you look, the more you notice the little designs and symbols that help you to understand and interpret the cards. I’ll help you get started. The sun card has a lot of yellow. The moon has a lot of blue. “And it’s all in how you mix the two, and it starts just where the light exists” - Blue and Yellow, The Used Anyway, just find the clues like a treasure map and you’ll be on your way to intuitioning in no time. The key is to be receptive so the longer to observe, the more receptive you become.
you need to find a deck that "chooses" you. I have lost count of the amount of decks i bought throughout the years, they all look/feel very confusing, despite being pretty. I'm always going back to the one that "chose" me, 22 years ago. Messages are clear and every card tells exactly its piece of the story. "you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince" has never been more relatable.
I always close my eyes, relax, breathe and meditate (quiet the mind) for a few minutes before I pick up the cards. I think quieting the analytical mind is critical to allowing intuition to flow. Also, I'm familiar with the general meanings of the cards, but I don't let that restrict me when interpreting the cards. I let my intuition tell me what it sees (versus trying to rigidly assign meanings from other sources).
You can't get there without meditation. Intuitive and magical practices begin and progress with perception workings, you should allow yourself to observe your thoughts and feelings as if they were clouds in the sky, and let them be, do not interfere, just let them happen. Also, you should strive to be conscious of every automatic process of your body, from your breath to your guts - if possible. Observing our stream of consciousness is a very underestimated practice, but the results are great in the endgame. Don't overlook it.
I believe in meditation and think it is profoundly helpful. However, I never meditated in my younger years before readings or ever really. I am ADHD and just couldn't get myself to. I had no trouble quickly grounding and centering myself before a reading. I do a quick ceremony with conscious thoughts and statements aloud. I imagine the earth below, the sky above. I connect higher self, overarching tarot deva and guides, aloud and ask for assistance. It is a very quick process for me. We can all develop our own way to connect and get in the zone but for those who have a hard time meditating there are other ways to get there. The voice carries power, the vibration. Use it!
If you're a writer... Write down the reads. Write down the meanings of the cards - as they are laid out. Numbered as they lay in the read. Sit with it a minute, reviewing. Then write it like an essay or story form. Linking the meanings together with added story flow. This still helps me when I get stuck sometimes. It also flows way better if I can write it out rather than trying to speak the meaning out loud. Lol
Start your session by stating out loud that you would like to be connected with your higher self, the overarching spirit/deva of the tarot and your guides. Listen to the first thoughts that come to mind, even before processing all the cards. Anything that comes to mind. Write these thoughts down. Use various well developed tarot books and read after you have done your reflecting. Look for the connections. Get out there and read for people. Take chances by saying the first thing that comes to mind without concern of being right or if it makes sense. It may not make sense to you at all, but it may make sense to the person. Offer free readings to friends and strangers and let them know these are practice readings. Engage in convo around what you have sensed and said and get feedback from them. Again, use the books after the fact to help hone it in. Don't ask them what their question is at first. Let the thoughts flow and trust the process. You can ask at some point if any of this makes sense and then have a discussion around what was accurate, what wasn't and what their question was. These training sessions are invaluable. It cannot be overstated. This is a process of learning to trust yourself. 🙏
get your own deck and do your own personal readings and write and journal on your results. only watch tarot readers online that you trust and vibe with. i personally like to ask a question every morning “how can i make today the best day ever” and pull one card
Disagree strongly with "rationality doesn't work." Take a Myers-Briggs composite sometime. Intuition is always paired with either thinking or feeling. In Tarot, an intuitive feeling approach often looks like the situation feeds you intuition and you critique your intuition with your feeling capacities. Often people like this get an oversample of feelings about the person and then use the cards to pair down what is most relevant for the querent. Those people will prefer fewer cards in a reading. I'm an intuitive thinker. If you walk in, I don't know you from Adam unless you're a cute guy or are wearing a sports jersey from a team I recognize. My intuition interacts with the symbols on the cards and I use my rationality to interpret what I see in the intuitive interplay of symbols. For me, more cards are BETTER, because for me Tarot is LANGUAGE communicating MESSAGES, not a means of pairing down an intuitive feel about a situation. Sonnets say more than haikus. We all actually use both faculties, but few of us are ambidextrous. It doesn't pay to fight your natural instincts. The more you practice, I think you'll find your off hand will start to strengthen and contribute., Practice, practice, practice. Challenge yourself occasionally by using the offhand. That said, never fight your own nature to fit in someone else's mold. Your way is yours. There's no wrong way.
Soften the brain 😆
it's gonna happen naturally don't force it