Tarot Card Interpretation

I listen to the songs from these albums often. Their tales of love and sacrifice and heartbreak are the background music to my life at this point considering how often I listen to them. I usually have them playing when I’m writing these blogs. If you do listen to them yourself, and I highly recommend them, I advise minding any trigger warnings.

I have several books on tarot cards that I’ve accumulated over the years. One book I bought prior to starting reading tarot is a good beginners book although the author uses a deck I’ve never owned. It gives a great deal of guidance on what cards mean in the author’s own readings but it describes the court cards solely as people and describes very specific circumstances for number cards with no information on other ways the card may be interpreted or how number cards can also represent people — an example of this is the three of pentacles specifically being a card for home improvement when this card has many possible meanings that have nothing to do with property. When I’m particularly struggling with interpreting a card, it’s still sometimes a book I turn to because it has the most information on interpreting each card. It’s not perfect for me though as the meanings described are rigid so it can be difficult to discern how a card’s meaning, as described, can be applied to a given spread when a court card’s position represents a situation or a number card is representing a person. But mainly, the design on a card face affects the meaning so information in this book about interpreting a spread isn’t always directly applicable to my own readings.

My other books came with their decks. My Shaperatarot deck has a small booklet which provides a list of keywords that are associated with each card and a concise description of what each card depicts. As just discussed, many other sources describe court cards specifically as the type of person that card could potentially represent and neglect to describe other meanings of the card. But the list of keywords in Shaperatarot’s booklet, listed for every card, are so wonderfully descriptive that they can apply whenever that card is drawn, whether the place in a spread represents a person or a circumstance, while also being specific enough that the meaning is straightforward to discern. 

Because this deck I use is based on a work of fiction, many of the card faces depict characters and scenes from that setting. While these were clearly selected to best fit the usual meanings of tarot cards, further context for these scenes bleed into the meaning of the cards. In my experience of using this deck for tarot readings, my familiarity with the source material means I often understand the themes present in a card far more easily than I do with other decks. As an example, I particularly noticed how additional context affects the meanings of my cards with the king of wands. The king of wands encourages looking at the big picture, and as a person typically represents someone objective, a good leader. Shaperatarot’s king of wands depicts the main antagonist, Mary, from one of the musicals. Mary, as she is shown on this card, certainly embodies the qualities described. While the king of wands can indicate challenges, I’ve found that so far this particular king of wands has always been a bad omen. If you have this deck, do you also find the king of wands to be a bad omen in your readings? Or, just in general, are there any cards in your own decks that you find to have unconventional meanings in practice?

Tarot readings are particularly time consuming and so I haven't been able to carry out many readings for myself lately. It takes time to heedfully interpret each card, not just in isolation but specifically in the context of its position in the spread, and how that meaning is affected by the other cards that have been drawn. Because of this, the larger a spread is the more difficult it is to interpret and the longer it takes. Interpreting the results of tarot readings for others is also demanding but someday, when I find the time, I’d love to offer tarot readings because they're fun and it's hugely satisfying when they help people.