Tarot as a conversation with yourself
Move beyond knowing card meanings and work out how they apply to your reading.
Interpret cards in context, ask useful questions and develop the judgement to work through a reading for yourself.
A tarot reading doesn’t have to start with all the answers mapped out.
You can begin with one genuine question.
Pull a card. Consider what it might mean in the context of what you asked and what’s actually going on. Notice what it brings up for you.
Then decide what would be useful to explore next.
Question → Card → Reflection → Follow Up Question → Card → Deeper Exploration
You might investigate a cause, question an assumption, compare two choices, explore something you hadn’t considered or decide you’ve already got enough from the reading.
The reading develops as your understanding develops.
That’s what we mean by tarot as a conversation with yourself.
Learn tarot until you can use it naturally for yourself
You don’t need to become an “advanced tarot reader” before you can use tarot well.
The aim is to develop enough knowledge, skill and judgement to sit down with your cards, begin with something you genuinely want to explore and know how to continue from there.
Empathy Tarot teaches five connected skills that help you develop that ability.
01
Learn
Build your tarot vocabulary
02
Interpret
Work out what a card means in context
03
Ask
Ask questions that help you explore
04
Explore
Follow where the reading leads
05
Converse
Use tarot naturally for yourself
New to tarot? Start here.
You don’t need any previous tarot experience to learn with Empathy Tarot.
Start with the foundations, get comfortable using your cards and learn what you need as you go.
What Is Tarot and How Does It Work?
Understand what tarot is, what’s inside a tarot deck and how the cards can be used as a tool for reflection.
How to Choose Your First Tarot Deck
What actually matters when choosing a deck, without making your first purchase more complicated than it needs to be.
Your First Tarot Reading: Step by Step
Got your cards? Learn how to sit down, ask a question, pull your cards and begin making sense of what you see.
Learn the tarot cards
Traditional card meanings give you a vocabulary to work with.
But knowing that The Fool can represent a new beginning isn’t the same as knowing what the Fool means here – in response to this question, in this situation.
Empathy Tarot teaches tarot card meanings as a foundation for interpretation rather than definitions you have to reproduce correctly.
Learn the traditional foundations, see how the cards can show up in different situations and develop your ability to decide which parts of a card are relevant to the reading in front of you.
Major Arcana
Explore the 22 Major Arcana cards and the themes, experiences and turning points they can represent.
The Fool
Learn the Fool’s traditional meanings and how its interpretation can change depending on the question and context.
Use tarot for the things you’re actually thinking about
Tarot becomes useful when you have something you want to understand better.
Maybe you’re trying to make a decision, work out how you feel about a relationship, understand why something keeps bothering you or make sense of a situation you can’t quite get your head around.
The cards can give you another way to look at what’s going on. A reading might bring up a question you hadn’t considered, make you notice an assumption you’re making, or help you see something from a different angle.
Decisions and uncertainty
Use tarot to explore you options, what matters most to you and anything you may not have considered yet.
Relationships
Explore what’s happening in a relationship, how you’re responding to it and what you might need to understand more clearly.
Work and change
Use tarot to think through dissatisfaction, competing priorities, difficult decisions and what you actually want next.
Self-reflection
Use tarot on its own or alongside journaling to explore your thoughts, reactions, assumptions and patterns.
Tarot as a conversation with yourself
Empathy Tarot is about learning enough tarot to actually use it.
It was created to help you understand the cards, work out what they might mean in the context of your reading, ask useful questions and develop the judgment to keep going for yourself.
Whether you’re picking up a deck for the first time or you already know the cards but aren’t always sure what to do with them, the goal is the same:
to help you become more capable of using tarot for yourself.
Start exploring with three cards
The 3-Card Clarity Workbook gives you a simple way to explore something that’s on your mind using:
Situation → Influence → Insight
It’s an easy place to start if you want some structure without using a large or complicated spread.
Make tarot your own
The goal isn’t to reach a point where you never need to look anything up.
It’s to reach a point where you know how to work through a reading.
You might check a card meaning. You might use a spread because it suits what you’re asking. You might come across a card that makes absolutely no sense at first.
That’s all part of reading tarot.
What changes is that you become better able to decide what might be relevant, what doesn’t fit, what you want to explore next and when you’ve got enough from the reading.
Something is on your mind.
You get your cards out.
And you know how to work through it.
Latest from the Blog
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