A Crash Course In Tarot For Newbies #1 - All About the Cards

The Tarot is not just a divinatory tool, but it can also be utilized in the appropriately trained hands as a tool for providing counsel and advice with which we can navigate life. It is an antique form of divination that predates popular psychology, but has been shown to have archetypal energies that work well from a Jungian perspective. Tarot becomes a book of wisdom offering you a living parable or myth that reflects your life journey in the hands of the right Diviner. It describes a journey that mirrors your path in life. Usually the story is a direct description of what is going to happen in a particular window of time although talented readers can tell you much more than that from looking at the symbols in the cards! One of the main purposes of the use of the cards is to construct a future narrative so that you can make decisions to change your fate.

The reader shuffles cards and lays them out in a specific pattern usually called a "spread." This can be compared to a snapshot or map of your life. Each card position in the layout of the spread represents a characteristic of the situation in question --what forces are beyond your control, what your particular strengths are in the current or future situation, and what the likely outcome is if you continue as you have been doing. As the cards fall into their positions, meaning is created by the unique placement of the symbolic meanings of each card. Together they weave a synchronistic tapestry that may seem random at first, but in reality is a very careful map which you may follow or not as you wish to bring about or avert the outcome of your reading. Synchronicity is a principle that is not only referred to constantly in psychology, but also in quantum physics. The entire system of Tarot cards can be described as a pictorial or numerological expression of the human condition.

The Tarot cards can be compared to a wise friend who we can turn to when we wish to make a wise decision regarding a relationship or a career. The wisdom found inside the Tarot, is actually the same wisdom that is found inside each and every one of us. The whole purpose of a reading is to tell you what you don't know so that you can use your free will to take appropriate actions that are good for your soul. Now, this does not necessarily mean telling you what you want to hear - but instead what you NEED to hear.

It's hard to believe, but Tarot cards were not originally designed to tell the future! They were first used in the 16th century Paris to play a card game similar to Bridge. As there were no soap operas in those days, the cards were also put to another entertaining use. The face cards, such as the Queen of Cups, King of Swords and so forth were modeled on the personas of popular celebrities of the day. These cards were shuffled and then arranged into scandalous story lines. This parlor game was a source of great amusement for both royalty and peasants alike.

In addition, 16th century poets used the cards to compose poems called tarocchi apporporati. The poems would be constructed about the characters in the trump cards in the deck, such as the Queens, Kings, Knights and Pages to tell a tragic or romantic story.

Tarot cards were not associated with divination until the 1800s, when a secret order of magicians in Venice, Italy found significance in their numbers and symbols. Before that these decorative cards were not used for fortune telling. As these magicians were the Illuminati of their day, their reading methods were kept very secret. The first known records of the divinatory meanings assigned to Tarot cards did not appear until the 1700s in Bologna.

Ordinary playing cards have been connected with divination as early as 1487. The gypsies were adept at reading plain playing cards for centuries before the Venetian magicians got their hands on a French Tarot Deck. It is safe to assume that the Tarot card meanings and spreads that are used today are based on a hybrid of techniques derived from the Tzigani system of reading playing cards, French parlor games and Venetian interpretations of occult symbols!

To understand the Tarot you need to familiarize yourself with the meanings of the four suits and the meanings of their symbols. The cups, coins, disks and wands of the Tarot deck derive their meaning from cartomancy. Cartomancy is the art of reading