Liz Worth ~ Tarot

I remember how disappointed I was when I got my first tarot deck.

I went in with big expectations. I’d always thought of myself an intuitive, perceptive person. I felt spiritual.

And I wanted that connection to something greater – be it the universe, deity, or my higher self.

I was so excited, and a little bit nervous, when I shuffled my cards and started turning them over. I wondered: What would I learn? What would I see in my reading?

I went from excited to crushed pretty quickly. As soon as my cards were laid out, I felt…nothing. Well, that’s not entirely true: I didn’t get any visions or insights because I had no idea what to make of the cards in front of me.

But I did feel a mix of disappointment, confusion, and insecurity. That insecurity was directed towards myself: What if I’m not the spiritually connected, intuitive person I thought I was?

What if I’m just not cut out for tarot?

I know that sounds dramatic, and it is. I had gone...

When I read tarot for my clients, I rarely use tarot spreads anymore.

Moving away from tarot spreads has been one of the biggest transformations in my tarot practice since I started reading full-time.

When I first started out as a professional reader, I used to put so much time and energy into my tarot spreads: I would create custom spreads for each client, based on questions and topics they sent me in advance.

I thought they were absolutely amazing.

But once those spreads were put to use, I soon realized they weren’t always as helpful as I thought they would be.

Why? Because tarot readings are conversations, and like any other dialogue, they flow in new and unexpected directions.

Which meant that once my readings started, sometimes my querents would say, “I think I have some different questions I need to explore instead.”

Inevitably, many of my big, beautiful, customized tarot spreads would go out the window in order to accommodate a more organic tarot...

A lot of people talk about tarot through the filter of it being a "gift." Which implies there is some kind of raw, natural talent or ability inherent within a tarot reader from birth.

While raw talent is real, I see the same way I do music, writing, art, carpentry... any kind of skill, really.

Which is that it is a skill, and even raw talent benefits from some practice, polish, and knowledge of the canon in which it resides.

When I reflect of my own path as a tarot reader, I also have to acknowledge that a lot of what it took for me to get this far with it happened through a willingness to work on myself.

People skills are a big part of tarot reading.

I've met a lot of people in this world who claim psychic ability and strong intuition, but when you sit down to talk to them they have terrible listening skills, or say things that rub the wrong way.

Being honest with yourself, keeping your ego in check, and reflecting on beliefs or behaviours that aren't serving you - or others -...

Have you ever been in the middle of a tarot reading when, suddenly, an unexpected message pops into your head?

Or maybe you’ve been trying to answer a question, but the reply the cards are offering feels like a slight detour. It is an answer – even an acceptable one – but you’re not quite sure how it fits with the querent’s situation.

It's not uncommon to feel compelled to deliver a certain message that, to you as the reader, might feel a bit odd or unusual. Not because it’s irrelevant to the sitter (ideally, it should still relate to the context of the reading), but because you’re not sure how fits into the context of your querent’s life.

Tarot readers often have a limited view and understanding of their querents’ situations. Unless you’re reading for someone you know very well, you don’t have much to go on when it comes to the background of a question that’s been posed.

You also won’t necessarily...

I’ve shared this story a lot before, so if you’ve heard it already, I hope you’ll humour me for a moment.

When I got my first tarot deck, I had very skewed expectations about what would happen when I opened up that card pack.

I had (wrongly) assumed that as soon as I flipped over a few cards, I’d somehow know exactly what they were telling me.

Even though I had no idea what exactly I was hoping to find out. Nor did I consider what kind of messages tarot might even give me.

I had a vague idea that I’d get a glimpse of the future. But I was also in high school at the time, keeping a relatively routine schedule between going to a co-op in the morning, classes in the afternoon, and a part-time job after school.

What kind of big reveal was I hoping for? I had no idea. My life was pretty predictable at the time.

But I wasn’t questioning myself at the time, or thinking much about the how or why of tarot.

And unfortunately, the pressure I’d put on...

One of the most common questions people have about reading tarot is, “How do I connect to the energy of the person I’m reading for?”

From my experience, there’s nothing special you need to do when you’re reading cards for someone else. Your tarot deck contains all kinds of answers and information.

Knowing how to read your cards is what’s important. You don’t need to psychically reach into your sitter for answers that are already present in a reading.

If you were doing a purely psychic reading, however, without any divinatory tools involved, the answer might be different.

But if your aim is to read cards, then that’s where your focus should be whenever you are interpreting a message.

When you are giving a reading, you don’t need to “connect” to someone else’s energy as though you’re hooking into them – all you need to is a listening ear and a willingness to communicate. Just like any other...

Do you ever feel like you look down at certain tarot cards and feel stuck for new things to say about them?

It used to happen me to all the time. I’d spent so much time carefully memorizing card meanings and keywords that it started to get in the way of my growth as a tarot reader.

Why?

When it came time to sit down and do a reading, I realized I was blocked from coming up with my own interpretations because my head was so full of other people’s tarot meanings.

On one hand, I had to give myself credit: I’d set out to learn the card meanings, and I’d succeeded. But I didn’t realize that it would end up getting in the way of putting tarot into my own words.

I also didn’t realize that card meanings are just jumping off points with the cards. There are so many layers and aspects to tarot that meanings alone can’t fully capture.

Yet there’s so much emphasis on learning those meanings, as though they are a means to an end.

In reality, they...

Have you ever pulled out a few tarot cards, looked down and them, and felt that they just didn’t want to be read?

Maybe the cards that showed up weren’t the ones you were expecting to see.

Or the cards didn’t seem to fit the question you asked, so you took it as a non-answer.

Or you just felt totally disconnected as soon as the reading started.

These things can and do happen when we’re reading tarot. And it’s easy to assume there’s something wrong with the reading. Or that the timing is off. Or there’s no connection between you, the cards, or the sitter.

But I actually think that tarot always provides an answer. No matter what cards are pulled, and no matter how you might feel during the reading, there is information right there on the table.

I know my perspective on this isn’t one that everyone holds. But I’ve yet to meet someone I couldn’t read tarot for.

Have I pulled sets of cards that were challenging to interpret,...

A few years ago, I was hired to teach a few private classes to someone who had just started reading tarot. She had bought her first deck a few months before she booked on for some lessons.

After our fourth lesson together, I got an email from her: “I forgot to ask you something in our class today,” she wrote. “How much do you think I should charge for my readings?”

I was surprised.

Our lessons at that point only totaled up to about four hours of study. This student had also only ever read tarot for herself.

Given what we’d covered in our classes so far, I knew she still had a lot to learn.

I wrote back an honest response, telling her it was way too soon to worry about charging for readings. “Focus on learning how to read tarot first,” I said.

Practice, practice, practice is always my mantra with new students.

This wasn’t the first instance I’ve had this question, and it wasn’t the last.

There are a lot of reasons why I...

“I love reading tarot, but I don’t always know how to connect to my querent’s energy. Sometimes I feel like all of the messages in the cards are actually for me. How do I move past this?”

This is a problem I hear quite often.

Sometimes readers deliver a reading that doesn’t land with the querent at all, but instead sounds like it might apply to one of their friends instead.

Or the cards seem to be directing their messages to the reader themself, rather than offer any personal insights for the querent.

So what’s going on when this happens?

There’s a popular narrative out there suggests the cards are in charge of the reading. That somehow, a tarot deck has such a powerful consciousness that it knows what everyone’s friends and neighbours are up to, without being prompted. Or that cards act as though they have a mind of their own, deciding to derail a reading and ignore the querent entirely.

Let me challenge this for a moment:

Tarot...