Liz Worth ~ Tarot

Declaring yourself a tarot reader and officially offering your services can be an exciting and nerve-wracking experience.

Some readers take a long time to come out of the “tarot closet,” as the saying goes, and there can be a number of reasons for that: Lack of support, fear of judgement, or living in a religious community top the list.

But putting your stake in the ground and making tarot a visible part of your life can still be a challenge even if you are supported through the process.

No matter what your beginnings in tarot look like, tarot is a path that will continue to challenge you to define, clarify and uphold your boundaries every step of the way.

It will also push you to realize that you can’t sustain a business off of your social network alone – even if you have friends and family who are eager and excited to support you.

In fact, those close, enthusiastic relationships can bring their own sets of challenges when you start building your profile as...

I’ve recently been inspired by a tarot reader friend who has been doing big, deep-dive readings for himself each week to get a sense of what to prioritize in the days ahead.

I know it’s popular to pull a card a day, but sometimes that can feel like information overload with a lot to take in and not enough time to carry through on all of tarot’s messages.

I like the idea of a weekly tarot pull to set the tone for the week ahead. I find in general that I’m most effective and focused when I start off my week with a clear sense of my top priorities. A lot can happen in the span of a few days, but I can also waste a lot of time if I haven’t clearly identified what I need to be moving forward.

And these days, it feels like there is so much to do: I have new writing projects I want to make space for. I have my new Tarot Study Hall community to build upon. And I have been busy with the little vintage resale business my husband and I started last year.

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One of my most unpopular tarot opinions is that intuition is not enough to be a tarot reader.

I know that goes against so much of the common advice out there when it comes to tarot reading:

“Just trust in the messages that come to you.”
“Go with your first impression.”  
“Listen to your instincts.”

And yes, self-trust is an important component of being a tarot reader: You need to be able to get to a point where you feel confident enough to rely on your abilities as a card reader.

But intuition alone isn’t the only thing tarot readers need to develop if they want to read for others. Whether you are working with paid querents or working up to that by doing practice readings on friends and acquaintances, there are a lot of other soft skills that can make or break the experience for you and your querents.

Here are three essential soft skills to develop as a tarot reader (alongside your intuition, of course):

Listening: Listening seems...

Do you feel like your tarot readings are “chunky,” moving from one card to another rather than synthesizing the full story? 

If you do, you’re not alone: It’s a common thing to get stuck on. There is a learning curve to tarot, and this is one of the bends that can take some time to move through.

The way a lot of us learn tarot is so focused on one card at a time. We learn that this card means this, that card means that. And when it comes time to put together a reading, we pull out a series of cards and try to add them together, only to realize our readings feel like they’re missing something. 

How do you start to summarize what’s in front of you?

How do you start to see the bigger picture of your tarot readings?

How do you stop sounding clunky in your delivery, and start articulating your readings in a way that sounds seamless and unique? 

Part of it starts with a willingness to try: To challenge yourself to push your readings to...

When people talk about learning tarot, the word “overwhelming” commonly comes up.

Maybe you have sat with one or more of these questions over time:

• “I can’t seem to memorize all of the card meanings.”
• “I don’t know if I’m supposed to go with the card meaning, or my intuition, or the imagery when I’m performing a reading.”
• “How do I know if a card meaning is getting in the way of my own intuitive impressions?”
• “Should I be going off the artwork, or the numerology, or the keywords?”
• “Does it matter if a card fell out when I was shuffling?”
• “I know there are a lot of layers to every card. How am I supposed to know which layer relates to my reading?”
• “Do I have to pay attention to the symbols and colours in the cards? If so, which ones are most important and why?”

One of the things I’ve realized is that there is a difference between what we think we need to be...

 Whew! If you are following the astrology of the moment, there is a lot going on.

First, we are in eclipse season: The Aries new moon and solar eclipse occurred on April 20th (or April 19th, depending on your location).

And Mercury is retrograde from Friday, April 21 until Sunday, May 14.

If you’ve followed my work for a while, you might have noticed that I try to bring some balance into the usual planet panic that takes place during notable astrological events.

Horoscopes used to play quite a big role in my life at one time. But the increasing popularity of astrology, coupled with the pressure for content creators to compete with a culture driven by clickbait and merciless algorithms, has led me to a different relationship with astrology.

It seems like every month there is a new astrology column telling people to “buckle up” or “watch out.”

And I know that that the kind of language gets people’s...

If you’re active on social media, chances are good that you’ve noticed there are a lot of fake accounts popping up that imitate tarot readers, astrologers, and others in the esoteric community.

In recent months, I’ve been alerted to new imposter accounts at least once a week that are using my images and content to pose as me.

At first glance, these accounts can be quite convincing. They choose handles that are similar to mine, except they might add a dash or dot between my first and last name. They will have my photos and captions, so they look and sound like me.

And they will start to follow and contact accounts who follow me. As they do so, they send private messages offering readings for a fee that can be sent online.

Unfortunately, I’ve heard from people who have paid the fee. One of them contacted me a few months ago saying, “I’ve been buying readings from you for the last few months, but I realized recently that I’m probably not...

Have you ever had a really good tarot reading?

I’m assuming that since you’re reading my tarot blog, you’ve probably had some kind of tarot reading before – either from another reader, or one you did for yourself.

If you’ve received a reading from someone else before and you loved it, what was it that made it so good?

I’ve had many readings over the years, some better than others.

Some of those readings have been predictive. Some of them were oriented to the present.

Some were introspective and decision based. Others channeled messages from Spirit.

It’s not the approach alone that makes for a good reading, though. Interesting predictions can be exciting to hear. Accuracy and resonance counts for something, too.

But in my experience, what good readings have in common with each other is specificity.

A good reading should feel personal to the querent. It should hit on some kind of specific truth, or a personal dream or desire that is aching to...

When I meet someone new and they learn I’m a tarot reader, they usually get curious – but also sometimes nervous.

“When you read for someone, do you connect to their energy somehow?” They ask.

I immediately get a vision of myself as a multi-tentacled being reaching into my clients’ auric fields to tap into their current states.

Which I imagine is what some people assume happens in a tarot reading.

While that might be kind of cool, in reality I’m not a supernatural being (much to my chagrin), and I’m not tapping into anyone else’s personal, psychic spaces during a reading.

But things do get personal. It can be an uncanny experience to receive a tarot reading that seems to cut through to the heart of your very soul.

And questions about energy between reader and querent go both ways. I’ve often had students in my classes ask, “How do I make sure I’m not absorbing someone else’s energy when I read tarot for...

In my previous post, I talked about working with questions in tarot, and the importance of understanding your intention and focus when posing questions.

But what do you when you are reading tarot for someone who doesn’t have a question?

Or, what if you just want to perform a reading for yourself, but you’re not sure what you want to know? I think every tarot reader can relate to feeling called to sit with your cards without knowing why.

The idea of pulling a few cards “just to see what comes up” is a beautiful one – until it comes time to interpret those cards. That’s when things can start to feel murky.

You might have already heard me say that tarot cards can mean anything, everything, and nothing at all.

Questions help to give shape and context to what we see in those cards. A certain symbol might have a lot of weight in a love reading but might not even be considered in a career context.

Questions essentially give your cards a job to do once...