Growing up, my mom said I did things with “three-minute fever”, a Chinese saying which means someone who is passionate about things for only a very short period of time.
I jump into new hobbies with gusto. Everytime I start, I am 100% passionate about them but after a while, I’d leave that hobby for another.
I could blame being having Aries as my rising sign for not being able to follow through. But the real reason is that I have unreasonable expectations of myself.
I believed that I would be able to become a master of anything with just a few tries. And if I can’t master it or if it is too hard, it’s not for me.
Is tarot easy to learn? Not if you’re learning it the wrong way.
The vision of myself in the past came to me when a client who was interested in learning tarot asked me, “Is tarot easy to learn?”
Thankfully I didn’t ask that question when I bought my first tarot reference book.
If I had known that there are 78 cards in tarot, each with subtle differences, I might not even have picked up the book.
Luckily the book I started with only had the 22 Major Arcana cards.
I clung to the book like it was a manual to detonating a bomb. When I do a reading, I lay down the cards and reach for the book, and proceed to read the explanation written inside the book.
That was a horrible way of doing a reading. I had no faith in myself while the person getting the reading (my classmates) didn’t take me seriously either.
Trust your intuition
Tarot is hard to learn if you’re too focused on memorizing the meanings or getting the right meanings based on the reference books.
When I teach, I do teach the basic meanings and associated keywords of the cards.
But I also remind my students to trust their intuition. That when they flip a card and realize they have a different interpretation of the card, it is ok to go with their gut feeling.
Why tarot reference materials aren’t always useful
While I encourage everyone to keep learning tarot, I don’t think clinging to reference materials is healthy.
Stopping yourself in the middle of a reading to check on the reference is disruptive.
Sometimes the meanings don’t apply to your specific situation.
You know the details and the background story of whoever is requesting the reading. In this case, a generic explanation written by someone who might have been thinking about a different scenario wouldn’t apply to your reading.
There are so many ways of looking at one card. In the end, you’ll need to trust your intuition when it comes to learning tarot.
Use the reference materials as a guide but not a GPS when it comes to your actual reading.
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