Tarot is not what you think it is!
Tarot has been a big part of my life ever since I picked up my first tarot deck four years ago. Even though I’ve only been reading for four years, I have been doing divination since I was a child and read professionally for over a year.
I recently retired from reading tarot for money since it was draining me of my energy. I’m glad I did it though since it taught me a lot. I still read for myself pretty much every day and am always studying the cards and their history.
Since tarot has become extremely popular in the last couple of years, I wanted to address some popular misconceptions about tarot so that those who are beginning their tarot journey or are completely new to tarot, understand the tarot better.
1) Reading Tarot Makes you a Witch
Since the tarot is a very popular divination tool for witches, people who don’t understand tarot or witchcraft assume that reading tarot is synonymous with witchcraft. There are a lot of witches, like myself, who practice magick and also read tarot. But reading tarot doesn’t make you a witch.
Witchcraft is a very complex and involved practice and requires a lot of research and actual spell casting, plus a deep connection to the spirit realm and nature. Being a witch is a lot of work and takes a lot of intent and awareness of one’s craft and spiritual journey. To become a witch, you have to dedicate yourself and choose that path. Simply reading tarot is not going to turn you into a witch.
2) Tarot is Evil or Satanic
This is a popular belief among Christian extremists who think everything is evil except judging others and calling things they don’t like “Satan.” Tarot has nothing to do with Satanism. Tarot began as a card game in the 1400s and later became used for divination in the mid-1700s. The deck of cards you use to play poker and blackjack comes from tarot!
Calling tarot “evil” is like saying French is evil. Tarot is the language of the soul that helps you look deep within yourself or the person you are reading for. A tarot reading can help you make better choices to improve your life, see the root of your problems, and even get some much-needed encouragement. Think of the tarot as a very wise, old friend who gives amazing advice that hits deep every time.
Spiritualist, writer, and cult filmmaker, Alejandro Jodorowsky famously said in his epic film The Holy Mountain, “The tarot will teach you how to create a soul.” That’s exactly what the tarot does. All of the tarot cards represent an aspect of our inner and outer lives so that when we see the cards, it resonates deep within our psyche. The tarot journey is a spiritual journey and has nothing to do with Satanism.
As someone who has experienced childhood trauma, the tarot has helped me work through the pain, depression, anxiety, and anguish that are common for survivors of child abuse. The tarot has helped me so many times during my darkest days. I can say things to the tarot that I can never say to another person because I have issues with trust and feeling vulnerable around other humans.
An evil entity would not help heal a person who has been abused, an evil entity would feed off the pain and make it worse. Tarot is not evil. Quite the opposite, tarot is healing and therapeutic.
3) Tarot is about telling the future and that future is final.
Despite most people thinking that’s what tarot is for, it’s not for telling you your future and that future is not set in stone. The tarot is a guide to help you in the present based on your past and current cycles in your life. If you want to improve certain aspects of your life or see why you keep running into certain problems over and over again, the tarot can help you with that.
Since the tarot is a divination tool, you can use it to see what will happen in the future but some don’t think it should be used in that way. Jodorowsky, who is also a tarot expert, created a tarot deck, and wrote an amazing book about the tarot, is very much against using tarot to tell the future. He said, “The tarot is a language that talks about the present. If you use it to see the future, you become a conman. You are just a charlatan. For me, the tarot was something more serious. It was a deep psychological search. “
I understand why Jodorowsky sees it that way but I still have done future readings for myself and my clients. The thing about the future is that there are an infinite amount of futures and we decide which future we want.
Rather can asking the tarot “Will I become a best-selling author in the future?” a better question would be “What blocks do I need to be mindful of that are currently making this goal difficult for me? What energy do I need to channel more of in order to be a successful writer?”
There are cases when future readings can be helpful. I don’t do them that often for myself but I still do them. The thing I like about doing a future reading is that the tarot sheds light on a highly possible future, based on the patterns of our past, and the patterns we continue in the present. Seeing what can happen if you keep carrying on the way you’ve been can serve as motivation to keep going or serve as a warning to change our course for something better.
The irresponsible thing would be for a tarot reader to tell someone their future and make it a final statement. If they did that, they would be a charlatan and could do a lot of harm, even if the future the reader presents is something positive to the person being read for. In that kind of reading, the reader is taking control of the person’s future and deciding that future for them rather than the person taking control over their own life and deciding for themselves what future they will have.
I present future readings as possible futures that can be altered at any time. If you like the future presented to you, keep going and know you will achieve those goals. If you don’t like what you see, you must take the necessary steps to alter that course. I make it clear that the person I am reading for has control over their future and the reading is meant as a guide, not a final say.
But future readings are just a small aspect of what the tarot can be used for. The ultimate goal of tarot is to show the parts of ourselves that have been hidden and need to come to light so that we are more aware of our actions and our spirituality. By being more aware of how different aspects of our inner and outer lives are affecting us, we have more control over who we are and who we become.
4) You can just pick up a deck and do “intuitive” readings without studying tarot. You can learn tarot in a day or in an hour.
There has been a rise of “intuitive” readers who don’t study the meaning of the cards and make shit up as they go along. This is very disrespectful to the tarot.
Since the tarot is a language, making things up about the cards is like speaking a foreign language based on what the language sounds like to you instead of studying that language. The creators of tarot decks put a lot of time into the symbolism and meaning behind the cards. The cards don’t look that way just because it’s aesthetically pleasing.
There’s a reason why the Magician in the Marseille Tarot is holding a wand in his left hand and a pentacle in his right. The pentacle coin represents the sun, perfection, truth, and a connection to the material world. The wand represents a connection to cosmic forces, creativity, and spirituality. The Magicians is about balancing the material with the spiritual, creativity with physical and emotional labor, balancing your emotions with intelligence, and actively working to improve your skills and talents in all aspects of your life.
So if someone who does not know tarot pulls a Magician card and says the Magician means you’re working too hard and not focusing on the things you need to be focusing on in your life, that person would be completely wrong and disrespecting the Magician and the tarot’s message.
It is important to study the deck you are working with as well as study the history of tarot. It takes as much time and dedication to learn the language of tarot as it does to learn a spoken language like Japanese or French. The longer you study, the better your readings get. Even after studying tarot for four years, I still feel like I have a lot to learn and keep learning every time I read.
Even though there are hundreds of thousands of different tarot decks available, the basic meaning of the cards remains the same. There are some slight changes of meaning and different symbolism depending on the artist’s interpretation, but the meanings between the cards of different decks are more similar than not.
Making up meanings without studying the tarot is lazy and not reading tarot. Real intuitive reading means a reader has studied tarot by reading books and studying their deck and knows the intended meaning and symbolism of the cards.
Once you know the basic language, then you can use your intuition to guide you to see deeper messages that are not in the books, but the message from your intuition works alongside the meaning of the cards, it doesn’t completely disregard them.
Just like writers put words in a certain order to convey a specific message without altering the meaning of a word, tarot readers derive meaning from the card and add their voice to it without altering the meaning of the cards. Tarot is a language and works in the same way other languages do.
5) The tarot can solve all your problems.
Just like talking to a friend can help you see another perspective on a situation, the tarot is there to give you perspective and help you but it will not do the work for you.
The tarot helped me get through some intense depression and anxiety but I was doing other work alongside it. I quit doing drugs, I became a healthier eater, I moved to the jungle, and I got into witchcraft and became more spiritual.
The tarot helped me along with all the other things I altered in my life to improve my mental health and physical health. I didn’t just do a tarot reading and let that be that. I took action on aspects of my life that I wanted to change, I continued doing the work and the tarot helped motivate me, encourage me, and shed light on different things in my life that needed to be seen.
No one thing or person will fix you, you must work on all aspects of your life to make things better for yourself. It takes work, dedication, and lots of self-reflection to turn your life around, especially if you have mental health struggles. The tarot can help but it will not make everything better magically. You must do the spiritual work.
6) Tarot will make you psychic or you need to be psychic to read tarot.
Just like reading tarot doesn’t automatically turn you into a witch, it won’t automatically make you psychic either. Tarot and other divination tools can improve your psychic ability if you are already psychic, but if you aren’t it will help you improve your intuition which is still valuable and important.
You don’t need to be psychic to read tarot but psychics are better at reading tarot since we can see more than what the cards show. That shouldn’t discourage you since non-psychics can still get a lot of benefits from tarot.
Think of it like basketball. Buying a basketball isn’t going to automatically make you a professional basketball player but you can still have fun and get good exercise by playing basketball. Maybe you can become a pro with a lot of work but most people who play basketball will not become pros. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still play if you enjoy it.
Some people have natural psychic gifts and most don’t. But everyone can benefit from reading tarot. We all have hidden parts of ourselves that we need to pay attention to to improve our lives, the tarot can help us see these things whether we are psychic or not.
The tarot helped me improve my psychic ability when I started reading for others. I started having visions and seeing people’s energy as I read for them. It’s something that came naturally and wasn’t forced.
Tarot helped me see that psychic door and helped me open it but I also need to do other spiritual work to strengthen it. Tarot did not make me psychic, I was psychic already and tarot helped me develop that muscle more.
For those who are not psychic, tarot can still open doors in your mind that are currently sealed shut. Tarot helps greatly with spiritual work whether you are psychic or not.
7) You cannot buy a tarot deck and you should only use X type of deck.
I will make a separate article on tips for how to get started with tarot, but a popular misconception is that tarot decks have to be gifted to you and you can’t buy one. This is ridiculous! I was gifted a deck by a friend but that was after I started reading and he knew I was into it. Most people would never be able to read tarot if they had to wait for a deck to be gifted.
You should definitely buy a deck if you are interested in tarot. The most popular deck is the Rider-Waite tarot deck but you do not have to get that deck. I personally hate that deck and think it’s ugly. I am very picky with decks and currently only have two since it is really hard for me to find decks I connect to. Each deck has its own energy.
It’s common to be drawn to certain decks and repulsed by others. If you are lucky to have a bookstore or shop that sells different decks, I recommend going in person and browsing through the decks to see which one you’re drawn to. The bookstores here in Bangkok keep the decks sealed, so you can’t look through the cards. If you can’t go through the cards, then find a deck that catches your interest, and look up a review of that deck on youtube to see if that is the deck for you.
There isn’t a right deck or a wrong deck to start with. Go with what you are drawn to. This is an important first step in learning how to use your intuition. You will be using it a lot when reading tarot.
Once you find the deck you want, buy the companion book for that deck if it has one. The book will contain more detail about the art symbolism, and meaning of the cards. Most decks come with little pamphlets that have some general information and that’s ok to start with, but get the book as soon as possible and start reading it. If your deck doesn’t have a companion book then find a beginner tarot book like “Tarot Wisdom” by Rachel Pollack.
Remember that the tarot is a language and there are many layers to discover in the cards and within yourself. If you are drawn to reading tarot then listen to your intuition and try it out! You will learn so much and that learning journey never ends, no matter how many years you spend with the cards.
