The Number One Mistake Most Tarot Beginners Make

And What to Do Instead to Build Confidence and Intuition

I remember when I started tarot, about seven years ago I was pregnant with my daughter, Ginny.

I was in Barnes & Noble in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and found myself in the mystical section of the store. I’ve always been interested in tarot, but it wasn’t until I was pregnant that I felt like I really needed a sense of direction. On the threshold of becoming a first-time parent, I felt really lost.

And what I didn’t know about the tarot is that not only is it a fantastic tool for divination and magick, but it helps you strengthen your own intuition with yourself. The tarot doesn’t tell you anything you don’t already know, so it’s a practice that allows you to get to know yourself as you learn the different symbols, numbers, and suits of the deck.

I think that everyone should do tarot—whether you pull one card daily as part of your morning ritual or just ask the cards when you have a question for your higher self.

But the number one thing that most beginners do while they’re learning tarot is pull a second card when they don’t like the reading they get.

I get it. We all want the cards to give us supportive messages, but sometimes we pull the Tower card every day of our pregnancy. The tarot doesn’t tell us what we want to know, it tells us the truth of a situation.

Pulling some cards for my neighbor Judi during a summer soiree last year.

But in the beginning, when you are learning to trust yourself it’s easy to just say, “Hmmm, I don’t know what that means. Let me just pick another card to clarify.”

Instead of picking a new message, here is my hack for beginners: give yourself space between the card pull and looking up the meaning. So, after you pull a card, before you run to your browser or book to look up what it means, sit with it for at least 5 minutes. Go walk your dog, make some coffee, get dressed. Do something—anything—in between your card pull and looking up the meaning of the card.

Sitting with the discomfort and really digging deep into the meaning of the card will give you an opportunity to find its meaning to you.

Just today I pulled the Ten of Swords for a client. It’s an awful card where a person is face down on the Earth, surrounded by ten swords (two in their back). One can interpret this card in a lot of ways—betrayal, doom, a misstep—but when I tuned into my intuition, it was telling me to tell the sitter not to get “stuck” in her patterns here on Earth, that she might feel overwhelmed with responsibility and need to find ways to let herself be free.

There was a deeper meaning to the card than its first glance. Give yourself permission while you are starting to read the tarot to not know a card.

Let it linger, let it unwind, and let the mystery reveal itself to you.

What do you think? What’s your tarot practice like and how do you make space for the magick? Let a comment below— free for a readers!

With love from Under the Moon Gate,

Erin
Intuitive Medium & Documentary Filmmaker
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