How long has it taken you...

[~*Sacred*~]

to learn to "perfect" your Tarot readings? How long have you studied and done tarot readings?

[LisaT4P]

I don't know that anyone would say that they have "perfected" their reading skills. :)

I have been studying since I was 16, a little over 15 years or so... really studying in earnest for about 8 years. But, I am far from an expert.

There is stil much to learn, no matter what your experience.

The way I read has developed over all of those years ranging from:

1. Laying out the cards and reading definitions from the book
2. Memorizing the card meanings and trying to make them fit the spread in question
3. Making up new spreads by myself, but still using the memorized meanings
4. Study many tarot books and adding to the layers of memorized meanings in my head
5. Developing my intuition enough to make leaps of faith when interpreting

Everyone's journey will be different. The best way to learn to read the cards is to read the cards! LOL

[aluokaloo]

i haven't perfected squat.:lol: i personally don't believe in perfect, because i think that even like the grand tarot gurus have their bad days and readings,and find brand new spreads, and cards that they might have to work with a little differently, and of course people too. just my opinion.

[~*Sacred*~]

I don't know that anyone would say that they have "perfected" their reading skills. :)

I have been studying since I was 16, a little over 15 years or so... really studying in earnest for about 8 years. But, I am far from an expert.

There is stil much to learn, no matter what your experience.

The way I read has developed over all of those years ranging from:

1. Laying out the cards and reading definitions from the book
2. Memorizing the card meanings and trying to make them fit the spread in question
3. Making up new spreads by myself, but still using the memorized meanings
4. Study many tarot books and adding to the layers of memorized meanings in my head
5. Developing my intuition enough to make leaps of faith when interpreting

Everyone's journey will be different. The best way to learn to read the cards is to read the cards! LOL
Well, that is why the word perfect was in quotations ;)

I'm like you, well... I *will* be like you. The way I'm progressing my knowledge is like yours. First I read the definitions out of the packlet/book...now I've looked deeper into the meanings behind the words. I have started gathering intuitional feel towards certain cards and one day (when I'm ready) I'd like to buy some tarot books and study those as well.


i haven't perfected squat.:lol: i personally don't believe in perfect, because i think that even like the grand tarot gurus have their bad days and readings,and find brand new spreads, and cards that they might have to work with a little differently, and of course people too. just my opinion.
I agree. I think everyone can have an off day.

[Chaos Hawk]

I've been reading for about 2o years, my mother taught me how and gave me her cards when I was about 10. I wouldn't say I've perfected anything, but I have several decks and spreads that I am very comfortable with.
For me there are a lot of variables involved. There are some people who I just have a hard time reading for, the deck or spread doesn't matter. Some subjects are a bit harder for me. I'm great with interpersonal relationship readings, but so-so on health ones. And like everyone else, I have off days where I'm too tired or too stressed to make any sense of the cards.
The other thing is, is I can't do readings on myself. Any time I have tried the reading is all over the place.

[Against The Tide]

Every time I feel I know enough to ascend to the next level, I discover that there is a level above that. Perfection is an ideal, an unachievable goal that I will ever strive towards.

I have been practicing for 8 years and the only thing I know is that I know next to nothing :)

[LisaT4P]

i haven't perfected squat.:lol: Then it is a good thing we aren't asking you about squatting! :T

[~*Sacred*~]

Then it is a good thing we aren't asking you about squatting! :T:yayah:

[~*Sacred*~]

.

[aluokaloo]

Then it is a good thing we aren't asking you about squatting! :T

oy lis!_wedgie_

[HedwigHarfang]

You never stop learning, particularly with all the new decks on the market.

Louise brought her whole collection with her when she came and she shocked me with some of the imagery on them; so I had to learn all over from scratch and then started to enjoy buying them myself. She didn't have second sight so she had to rely on the tarot for guidance, so she really had a time deciding whether it could tell her directly what was going to happen or not.

While I was scrying on her (let us just say I met her in spirit before she met me in reality) I really wanted to reveal to her why she was constantly dreaming about me as her boyfriend, and not, say, about Brad Pitt. So I had to tell her eventually...so she learned only partially and it was about Christmas last year when she did a tarot spread that was crystal clear - with a pictorial theme deck - and told her we were linked, at least in terms of politics. The spread was based on the King Arthur legends and depicted her as a blockage to my further political ambitions - there are some, I'm not done yet, let us say I am not disappointed with "Volpone" Cameron, he is as useless a policymaker as I expected to be when I hired him as my replacement two years ago - and showed really Excalibur being pulled from the stone, though she was always looking more for a timescale because knowing things were only temporary she could only sit and wait for the conclusions.

Learning to read tarot specifically for her was really trial and error and without switching "on" to second sight there is only so much you can learn from it; though I suspect the angels were keeping her shut, she and I were both very frustrated, not to mention made ill, by the way neither of us could access the information which would at least give both of us the peace of mind and security in timing to be able to pursue other interests for a while before knowing that we should start preparing agendas and campaigns together, like we've been doing most of the autumn.

I learned with the Marseilles (the only ones you could get in the 1960s) then used the RWS in the 1980s and then was reduced to playing cards in the 1990s when I was outed by one of the not-so-reputable Sunday papers who threatened to cause trouble for the government at a problematic time IF I didn't give them up, at least at work (when I got into the cabinet and stopped being a paper-pusher in a ministry and started having to make decisions myself, out came the cards...) and at private parties where I would read for members of Parliament and of the fourth estate.

Call it blackmail, the article was never printed but I had to learn the ordinary cards because it wasn't worth derailing the government over "MH IS A WITCH SHOCKER" (particularly because my background, ethnic Russian/Romanian/Jewish gives me the edge on possible "gypsy" links; it was bad enough when I was depicted as a vampire in cartoons from 1997 onwards and then people realised that my dad came from Sibiu in Transylvania...

So I have really been using the tarot mostly as psychic foci for a talent which evolved in me because of my upbringing - as I said, the Eastern European in me is actually stronger than the Briton because I didn't even speak English properly until I'd been at school a full year, and sometimes I don't even speak it properly NOW...there is a lot that is able to be kept hidden from the public eye, particularly the fact that I gave the eulogy in Russian at my mother's funeral in 2004 and shocked a lot of people who had known me in politics.

So I guess you could also say I've been brought up in this kind of pagan Jewish belief, and not having had the filter of Christianity to inculcate a taboo on witchcraft and "satanism" I've been more accepting of things like second sight, tarot, even magick, white and black (because if anyone is good at giving people the evil eye, it's the local yentl in any Jewish community...they still exist). I still have the moral precepts of a 66-year-old Judaeo-Christian, but the appreciation of the occult is sucked in with mother's milk and any Russian/Romanian, Jewish or Christian, would be perfectly happy with fortune-telling and curses/blessings, so perhaps it's not surprising that I believe. Perfectly respectable Hungarian businessmen saw Louise playing with tarot on a flight back from Budapest last summer - while we were still apart; though I have always been looking in :):);) - and they reassured her that they were "believers" too, so if they can - why not I? I am not alone in government/politics though I suspect some calamities at the moment could have been averted if Labour took as healthy an approach to second sight as we Tories do.

I am surprised this place has not been besieged by journalists or the press looking for evidence of my other witchcraft/"satanism" BUT I am pleased in a way because it has given me a bit of privacy to pursue interests like this. Even mentioning what might still be considered scandalous has caused barely a ripple in the gossip columns but perhaps they are waiting for me to make the first move this time, which is good, because it's given me time to prepare for what I have to say politically without compromising the message by exposure of my private habits. Perhaps we are moving towards a less intrusive world where public figures can have private interests and even private lives, which would really make me happy. Or maybe I'm just not the face that sells newspapers anymore, even under the headline SATANIST!. I don't know.

[aranarose]

I've been reading for a very long time, and consider myself far from perfect. I have bad days where I can't read no matter what I try, and days where I'm spot on no matter what deck I'm using. Luckily, I've been having more of the spot on days lately than the other kind of days :)

[MysticCottageHerbs]

I have been doing this for 10 years and i'm still learning. I love it.