What is the purpose of a tarot reading? How can they benefit you? And how can you incorporate a tarot practice into your life? The main ways you can use tarot cards as an amateur, hobbyist, or experienced/professional tarot reader are: doing readings for yourself; and doing readings for other people. Let’s take a look at 6 of the ways and reasons that people conduct tarot readings for themselves and others, or consult professionals for a tarot readings.
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1. Tarot for divination
There’s a prevailing tendency of many people to associate tarot with fortune-telling, and it’s true that there are also many tarot readers and mediums and psychics out there who claim to tell fortunes in a multitude of ways. They may advertise that the cards tell the future, that they’re never wrong, that your path is set in stone. They may promise you specific outcomes and tell you that there’s no getting around it. Or, they may have an answer for everything and always tell you exactly what you want to hear. I know you haven’t asked for my advice, but I’m going to say this anyway: be discerning. Be sceptical! If you want to gain the best you can from this side of life, know what you’re getting into and learn how to spot the potential scams.
>Why You Should Get A Tarot Reading
Whether or not predictions can actually be made with tarot cards is a grey area that can seem complicated to navigate. On one hand there are countless instances of readings that have made accurate predictions and this brings to mind the idea of fate or destiny being involved. On the other hand, there are also readings that predict things that don’t end up coming into fruition, and, if you keep an open mind and not allow this outcome to sway you to disregard divination altogether, it can highlight the importance of considering free will. The topic of fate versus free will is yet another that deserves its own deep dive.
When confronting divination in tarot readings, and also in general, I like to apply the mindset that, much like in quantum superposition, divination in tarot deals with potential, probabilities and unpredictability rather than fixed outcomes. Tarot can present you with the most likely outcome in the moment, but as time passes there is still a possibility that unforeseen variables, including your own choices and free will, can come into play to subtly or drastically alter them.
There may be paths and events that you are predestined to experience, and some may even be inevitable, but there will also always be a degree to which you can change or influence these path and outcomes. Sometimes a tarot practitioner will be able to discern how likely or unlikely an outcome is.
Overall, using tarot for divination can be a very valuable practice if it’s approached with a healthy, realistic and practical mindset.
2. Tarot for personal growth
When I first began reading tarot cards, personal growth was the most significant and rewarding outcome of working with them. This is still true today, and it’s also a vital aspect of developing into a good reader/practitioner.
Using tarot for self-development is the most accessible, practical, and one of the most universally beneficial ways to work with tarot cards. It does not require prior acceptance of esoteric, occult or spiritual paradigms, or belief in any aspects of them. Instead you are encouraged to treat the deck as a therapeutic tool, using it in ways that reflect your psyche back to you for deeper analysis, suggesting alternative perspectives on your experiences, and encouraging self-development by supplying prompts and creating opportunities for self-reflection and introspection. In some senses it’s similar to attending a psychotherapy session (but please remember that it is not a valid substitute for professional therapy).
Tarot for personal growth builds on the mechanism of psychological projection and the personal and collective unconscious. The idea is that the cards cannot tell you what you don’t already know, but they can reflect truths from your unconscious to your conscious self. These truths can reflect aspects of yourself that you may fear, avoid or be unaware of, but that need acknowledgement and integration into your waking consciousness.
What I love about using tarot for personal growth is how easy it is to implement. Something as simple as drawing a single card and using it as a journal prompt can take up no more than 15 minutes of your day, yet be significantly valuable for developing self-awareness and improving mental and emotional well-being. It certainly boosts my own self-care practices.
3. Tarot as a means for guidance
This is how I primarily use tarot in my client readings, and it makes use of various methods and skills to help navigate any aspects of both micro and macro life. This can range from daily living and decision making to dealing with major life lessons and experiences, from relationships to careers, spiritual development, emotional regulation and so much more.
Using tarot to help guide decision making is a common practice, and it may also be thought of as an extension of divination. This is a useful practice because it often provokes a querent/seeker to consider factors in their decision making processes that they may otherwise not have thought about, thus leading to more informed and confident decision making. It’s important, however, to note that while a tarot reading can give you many insights about the choices you have, it cannot make decisions for you.
Tarot as a means for guidance is a great way to address the things in life that you’re not sure how to approach, or struggle to make sense of and don’t know where to turn. A tarot reading with a competent practitioner can be a safe space to find clarity and realign your inner compass when feeling lost or confused.
>What To Expect When Getting A Tarot Reading
4. Connecting with Spirit Guides
I’ve included this section because I sometimes work with Spirit Guides in my tarot practice, but this is not going to be the case with all tarot readers. The topic of Spirit Guides, once again, is fascinating in it’s own right and deserves a dedicated post, so I will only touch on it briefly, for now.
There are a few different ways to perceive, understand and define Spirit Guides. The most obvious is Spirit Guides as Angels, ancestors or other benevolent supernatural beings that exist to provide a helping hand to us when we are feeling uncertain in our lives. Some tarot readers may use the cards as a tool for communicating with Spirit Guides in this form, the idea being that the guides are influencing which cards are drawn in a reading, and thus speak to the querent/seeker through the cards.
Spirit Guides can also be thought of as an abstract concept; a set of characteristics or an archetype, personified as a reference to model ourselves and our characters after. As an example, when I first encountered two of my own guides they presented to me as a monk and a professor. I understood them to represent two separate aspects of myself that needed embodying and development, so the image of the monk and professor became a kind of ideal for me to strive for; to pursue the inner peace I desired, as well as my love for learning and discovery. Over time the message of these guides became clear: that these are two aspects of myself that I value highly and that I needed to find balance between.
Sometimes, in both my personal and client readings (with my clients’ permission or at their request), I keep my mind open and invite any form of Spirit Guides connected to the querent/seeker to help direct the reading and my interpretations of the cards.
>Getting The Right Cards In A Tarot Reading (How Can Tarot Be Accurate?)
5. Question-led tarot reading
Generally speaking, when a querent/seeker approaches a practitioner for a tarot reading, the seeker already has a specific question or issue in mind that they want to address. In these question-led sessions the entire reading concentrates on the topic at hand and all the insights gained are intended to answer the querent/seeker’s particular question.
Asking questions in a tarot reading can sometimes be an art in itself. Knowing what kinds of questions to ask, and how to frame questions, so that you can get the most from your reading, can be a game-changer. It’s also worth considering what the limitations might be when it comes to the answers cards can provide.This is a factor that a reader/practitioner, depending on their own reading styles and preferences, might take into consideration when conducting a tarot reading.
>What Questions Can You Ask In A Tarot Reading?
6. Open-ended tarot reading
In open-ended tarot readings, the parameters created by predetermined questions don’t exist, so a broader range of insights become available for the querent/seeker. This is particularly useful for introspection in self-development readings because it more firmly encourages the querent/seeker to explore all the ways the themes of the cards are reflected in their life. It’s also a fascinating method of conducting readings that are directed by Spirit Guides, allowing for situation in which the Universe can provide you with what it wants you to know rather than it responding to what you think you need to know.
Open-ended readings may sometimes require more developed interpretation skills from the reader/practitioner, depending on the context of the reading, but they’re one of my favourite ways to work with tarot, especially if the goal is self-development and improving interpretation skills.
(Speaking of interpretation skills, there are many different methods that people use to read tarot cards and spreads, and alongside these are all sorts of theories and speculations about why and how these methods work. Many people, regardless of how new or familiar you are to tarot, often feel surprised by how accurate readings can get, and how it always seem like exactly the right cards show up. Online searches could take you down rabbit holes with this stuff, but I’ve got an article that briefly covers most of the more prevalent ways and how’s and whys.)
>Shop Open Ended Tarot Readings
Tarot is whatever you choose to make of it.
There are so many ways that Tarot can add to your life, and become another resource in your toolkit, whether it be for personal benefit or client readings. It’s so much more than some woo-woo practice or eccentric party trick. You don’t need to be occult- or magick-inclined, or a psychic medium, or even take it too seriously if you don’t want to. Tarot is something that can be for everyone.
Featured image & cover photo credit: expandingsapience.com
