Tarot & Oracle Card Reading For Dummies (eBook)

Charles Harrington (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
456 Seiten
For Dummies (Verlag)
9781394329984 (ISBN)

Infos

Learn to divine the wisdom of the cards with this beginner-friendly reference

Tarot & Oracle Card Reading For Dummies gives you the tools and expertise you need to become the savvy card reader you've always wanted to be. Inside, you'll find complete information on the meanings of the 78 tarot cards as well as insights into working with oracle card decks of all kinds. You'll also explore tarot's shift from a playing card game to a deeply engaging tool for fortune telling, psychological reflection and creativity boosting. If you're brand new to card reading, never fear! This book offers a step-by-step guide for understanding your deck, nailing the basics, and divining for yourself and others. With fun and easy to use exercises for interpreting the cards, you'll be able to do it blindfolded! Okay, not blindfolded, but definitely with ease. With this fun Dummies guide, you'll become a master soothsayer in no time.

• Discover the three schools of tarot-Marseilles, Rider-Waite-Smith, and Thoth-and the many varieties of oracles
• Get clear explanations of basic card spreads and how to interpret them for yourself and others
• See examples of how to intuitively connect cards to real-life situations and intentions
• Refine your card reading skills and learn new techniques

This unintimidating Dummies guide belongs in the arcane libraries of beginning mystics and regular people curious about tarot and oracle cards.

Charles Harrington has been reading, teaching, and loving tarot for more than 25 years. He has written several deck guidebooks and given keynotes and workshops at conferences, hosted podcasts, and led meetups in the San Francisco Bay Area. He loves to find new and strange ways to use the cards in pursuit of wisdom, fun, and the occasional free cocktail.

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Chapter 1

Introducing Tarot and Oracle Card Reading

IN THIS CHAPTER

Describing terminology

Understanding the special value of card reading

Considering diverse perspectives on divination

Finding the right deck(s) to work with

In this chapter, I help you start your journey as a card reader at the very beginning with a quick discussion of terminology, a broad look at different viewpoints on card reading, and a few thoughts about which decks you may want to read with.

Defining Some Key Terms

For an exploration like this one, let me begin with a few definitions:

• Cartomancy: To give it its proper name, the technical term for card reading is cartomancy. Carto refers to cards, and the suffix -mancy means “divination by means of.” For example, necromancy originally referred to divination by summoning the spirits of the dead (trust me, stick to the cards). As a person who reads cards, you are now a cartomancer. It’s official!

  Note: Cartomancy sounds very dignified, and you should feel free to use it, but through most of this book I stick to the more common term card reading to refer to using both tarot and oracle cards.

• Querent: Querent is a fancy term used mainly by card readers and lawyers today. Of course, card readers are far more trustworthy. The querent is the person asking for a reading. If you’re reading for yourself, you’re the querent.
• Tarot cards: A tarot deck consists of 78 cards separated into five suits, most commonly the Major Arcana (or trumps), wands, swords, cups, and pentacles. It was originally a card game developed in Italy in the 1400s (and is still played today). In the 1700s, occultists began to use the deck for divination. I briefly explore the complexity of tarot history in Chapter 2.
• Oracle cards: Oracle cards are a broader category of deck specifically designed for use in divination and personal reflection. These decks have no set number of cards, and most of them are centered on a specific theme — for example, angels, animals, deities, and so on. Head to Chapter 11 for more on various types of oracle decks. Most of these decks include the word oracle in their title.

Recognizing the Unique Gifts of Tarot and Oracle Cards

What has kept people enchanted with card reading for more than two centuries? All systems have something to offer, but I think card reading has a few unique characteristics that have helped it grow exponentially in popularity.

Shuffling the fates

Cartomancy falls into a category of divination called sortilege, which means the answer is given by randomly selecting one or more items from a group. This idea suggests a view of the future that isn’t set in stone. Your reading isn’t a calculation; it’s a shifting series of scenes that change their story each time you lay out the cards. One question naturally brings another to the surface, and you can layer a new reading onto the first.

Sparking your imagination

The first readers looked at the traditional images of the tarot playing cards and saw the secrets of the universe encoded within them. Their initial theories have proven to be untrue (I get to it in Chapter 2), but that’s not important. What’s important is the way the images spoke to them and got the wheels of their minds turning.

The cards have sets of traditional meanings, but the real magic happens when your sense of intuition comes into play and those meanings take on a new life as you see your own world reflected back to you. You’ll discover new, personal meanings in the cards that the author and artist never imagined.

Telling stories

The cards are incredibly user-friendly. For more than 100 years, deck creators have found new and exciting ways to convey their ideas through beautiful and thought-provoking artwork. Card reading is filled with incredible mysteries and complexities, but at its core it’s about finding the thread of your story in the pictures. Your brain is wired for narrative, which is why you can look up at a billboard and immediately understand the story the advertiser wants you to see.

Ready to start playing with the cards? This technique — which allows you to tell a story with the cards — is one that I return to a few times throughout this book (and it’s also a great way to become familiar with your cards):

1. Shuffle your deck and lay out one card.

   If you don’t have a deck yet, for this exercise just turn to a random page in Chapter 10 and use the image you find there.

2. Look at the card and start telling the story that comes to your mind based on what you see in the card’s imagery.

   This step works best if you say the story out loud or write it down. Don’t worry about the “correct” meanings; just begin with “Once upon a time, there was a …” and say what you see in the scene.

3. After you’ve told the first card’s story to your satisfaction, lay down a card next to it and continue the story.

4. Place a third card and bring the tale to its conclusion.

   If at any point you get stuck, pick a single object, animal, or other symbol on the card to focus on. Describe why that’s important to the story and you’ll be back on track.

Notice what surprised you about this experience. Perhaps small details in one card took on new significance when you saw a later card. Maybe you felt like some part of this story was really about what’s going on in your own life. You just read a “three-card spread!” You’ll find an exploration of that spread and others in Chapter 7.

Serving Diverse Definitions of Divination

Many definitions of divination insist on using the phrase supernatural means, but I define divination as “asking the universe a question and receiving an intelligible response.”

This broader idea of divination fits better with the varied types of readings you can perform with the cards. In Chapter 4 you explore your personal worldview and how your ideas about the existence or nonexistence of divine beings will shape your practice. Here, I look at the range of ways you can seek answers with your cards.

Predicting outcomes

This is the fortune-telling side of the cards. In this mode, they answer the question “What happens next?”

This aspect of divination has been an essential pursuit for humanity since ancient times because

• Uncertainty is stressful.
• Decision-making can be crippling.
• Having an idea about what’s coming allows you to make choices in the here and now to prepare yourself.

Many people won’t touch the cards because they’re afraid to receive bad news, but forewarned is forearmed. Contained within every disappointing reading are directions for the best choices you can make. If it’s going to rain tomorrow, try to find an umbrella.

Exploring your psyche

In this practice, the cards form a map of your life and your inner self for you to contemplate. They mirror the struggles and challenges you face and point to opportunities for healing and growth.

You’ll find yourself responding to readings with new questions like these:

• In what ways am I like this warrior on horseback?
• What’s in the cup I’m trying so hard to reach?
• How can I wash away the pain of the past like this woman at a pool of water?

This sort of card reading relies more on your intuitive response to the images than the traditional meanings and keywords. However, those traditional meanings can be important because they help you push past personal biases that are ingrained in your worldview.

Kickstarting creativity

Here, the cards serve you as a symbol-rich brainstorming tool that helps you open yourself to new pathways of possibility. If you ever find yourself creatively blocked, the cards will help you by asking

• What will bring more balance to this story?
• What part of this project needs to die to give it new life and freedom?
• How can I reclaim my throne?

This method of divination has been popular with artists, writers, and musicians looking to find new pathways, but increasingly engineers, project managers, marketers, and role-playing gamers are turning to the cards as a font of inspiration.

Pondering the mysteries

Philosophers, spiritual teachers, and mystics find a trove of inner wisdom in the images of the cards. Using this method, sometimes called wisdom reading, diviners wrestle with topics that have eternally confounded humanity. Weighty issues you can consider with the cards include the following:

• What is the soul?
• How do I find union with the divine?
• What’s the purpose of life?

To be very clear: This method is intended to explore your answers to these questions and not to imagine you’ve uncovered the answers to them.

Choosing Your Deck(s)

All you need to get started as a...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 21.4.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
• Schlagworte: arcane cards • beginning tarot • divination cards • how to read cards • how to read tarot • Mind Reading • old style tarot • oracal cards deck • oracle card • Reading Cards • supernatural oracle • Tarot card • Tarot card reading • tarot decks • terot • terro cards
• ISBN-13: 9781394329984 / 9781394329984