Hey folks!  Now that Mercury is safely direct once again, thought I'd start something NEW. 

For the foreseeable future (pun intended) I will be bringing you beginning readers "Tarot Tips" from time to time.  These tips will be designed for any reader to use and will hopefully help in your studies. 

This week's tip is one of my favorites for beginning students.  All you'll need is a deck of cards with an empty border around the images, and a fine-tip permanent marker in whatever color suits you. 

I recommend completing this exercise with a deck of cards that you are clearly designating as your "learning deck", and definitely NOT a rare or expensive deck.  Why?  I must tell you now that this exercise will involve (GASP!) writing on your cards.  I know, I know.  But trust me, it will be worth it! 

(If you are using a deck that has no border, you may also choose to write on the back of each card instead.)

So here we go: 

1)  Select a card.  (For the sake of teaching you, I have selected a card with great significance to me: the High Priestess card from the Rider-Waite deck.) 

2)  FOCUS on the card.  Decide upon a few key words or phrases that best reflect the meanings of the card to you.  I decided upon "intuition, secrets, hidden realms, mediumship, natural cycles, higher wisdom, the Moon, Persephone, sacred knowledge."  You may also wish to include the elemental connection, astrological association, etc.  Use what works for you. 

3)  Using your marker, and writing as legibly as possible, write those key phrases directly on the card, all along the border.  Allow the writing to dry thoroughly before adding the card to your discard pile. 

4)  Repeat 77 more times! :) 

The purpose of this exercise is to give you immediate access to the basic meanings of each card.  They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and this idea came to me as I was in the beginning stages of learning and grew tired of going from book-to-book in trying to memorize basic meanings for each card.  I thought that if I had the meanings right there on each card, things would make sense a lot quicker.  BOY was this helpful!  


Try it if you're so inclined, and I would love to hear your thoughts afterward :)