Liz Worth ~ Tarot

I’m excited to announce that the doors to Tarot Study Hall are officially open. 

Tarot Study Hall is not another online course: It’s an ongoing immersion into the art of tarot reading.

As a member, you get access to monthly Q&A calls, live practice sessions, prompts, and more, all designed to give you the hands-on experience you need to start trusting yourself as a tarot reader. 

Tarot Study Hall aims to be a safe space where you can practice, make mistakes, ask honest, open questions about tarot and – best of all – grow as a tarot reader. 

Being a founding member means you are joining the beta launch of this membership. It’s an all new experience that will grow over time, and you will have the opportunity to shape the future of Tarot Study Hall for years to come. 

If you’re looking for an opportunity to be nurtured and mentored in a community that is dedicated to the art and language of tarot, I’d love to see you...

I have a general rule I follow when I’m online:

I don’t argue with strangers.

Not that I don’t argue with friends or acquaintances, either. I know better on all fronts that social media doesn’t often lead to good things when people are in disagreement.

This isn’t to say I’m against dialogue. It’s just that quite often, when I see people arguing, they’re spending more time trying to change each other’s minds than they are trying to understand each other’s perspective.

I find the same thing happens in the tarot community. When I first started connecting with other tarot readers, I joined some Facebook groups to meet other readers and have a dedicated space to share about tarot.

But after a while, I started to feel like those groups were counterproductive to what I was seeking. So often, posts devolved into virtual shouting matches, just like so many other experiences on social media.

And very often, the arguments that I...

This year I’m doing something I’ve wanted to try for a long time: I’m taking a painting class.

When I was younger I used to love drawing, crafting, and creating all kinds of things with my hands. Like many adults, I’ve let some of those interests fall to the wayside over the years and I’ve come to miss them.

There is something incredibly grounding about working with your hands.

I’ve always been interested in painting, but when I’ve tried to paint on my own, I’ve often felt out of my element.

I don’t know if I’m applying too much pressure on the brush. Or how to make an image look the way I see it in my imagination. Or which details to put on the canvas first.

Basically, I don’t know where to begin or what to focus on when I’m on my own.

I know that art can be expressive and fun, and that technique doesn’t have to matter.

But the thing is, it matters to me: I can be creative in all kinds of ways in my life....

To read reversals, or not read reversals…

That is the question – at least for a lot of tarot readers out there.

Questions about what reversals mean, and whether to read them at all, is one of the most common inquiries I hear within the tarot community.

I’ve talked before about my thoughts on reading reversals here. I did work with reversals at a previous point in my tarot practice. I do think they can be an effective technique, but that’s what I always tell people first and foremost:

Reversals are a technique, not a rule. There are different ways to read tarot cards, and as a tarot reader you will gradually develop your own style and approach that incorporates various techniques that you feel are effective. But you won’t necessarily adopt every card reading technique out there.

When I have read reversals, I have looked at them as something that isn’t quite working the way it should, or as a possibility that has yet to grow. There are other...

Uncertainty sends a lot of people to their local tarot readers, or inspires them to pick up the cards themselves.

Sometimes the reasons for that uncertainty are obvious. Someone might be in a precarious situation at work. Or has just gone through some personal upheaval and they’re looking for reassurance that everything will be okay.

Other times, though, uncertainty is driven by our inner selves, rather than external factors. Our culture is so fixated on self-improvement and striving towards (an often vague notion of) potential that it sometimes causes us to live too far in the future.

This kind of thinking gets us so focused on what’s next that we’re not always connected to where we’ve landed, or whether we’re happy with who and what we are in this very moment.

We hear encouraging words to strive for more, to change for the better, to edit out our messes and flaws.

But – and this is a big BUT… it’s important to remember that not...

My tarot students often hear me say this:

It’s the best time ever to learn tarot. It’s so much easier to find information about tarot these days than when I was first introduced to the cards.

There’s an endless assortment of YouTube channels, tarot blogs, tarot websites, and more. And the number of books being published on tarot each year right now is incredible.

And of course, there are a lot of tarot readers sharing tips on social media as well.

But like anything else, not all information is created equal. Just because someone has a big social media following doesn’t necessarily mean the information they’re sharing is accurate.

Even though we have a wealth of information at our fingertips, the popularity of influencers and accounts isn’t always based on the quality of information they share. Instead, it might be because of the way they carefully curate their feed, or the aesthetic through which they present themselves.

Context is also...

Despite living in a time when you can verify almost any piece of information with a few clicks of a button, there are so many myths and misconceptions that persist when it comes to tarot.

One that gets me the most is the myth that you have to be gifted a tarot deck in order to start reading tarot.

I actually get asked this at least a few times every year, and I know I’m not the only one who hears this question. It confirms how persistent and stubborn this belief is.

I can’t remember where I first came across this (wannabe) rule, but I do remember reading about it as a teenager when I was exploring all things occult. Like many other aspiring tarot readers, I took this myth to heart at first.

On one hand, the idea is romantic. There’s something fated about being gifted a tarot deck, as though you’re being chosen or selected to be a tarot reader.

That idea fits with other tarot mythology, such as the belief that the ability to read cards comes through a God-given...

If there’s one thing that gets overlooked most when it comes to learning tarot, it’s this:

Your why.

Why do you want to learn tarot?

What do you believe it will do for you?

What do you want to use it for?

What do you hope to be able to gain from the experience?

There can be any number of reasons to learn tarot. You may have several answers to each of these questions, or just one or two.

There is no right or wrong. There is no ideal reason, no purpose that is better than any other.

But to have a purpose behind learning tarot can really help you to figure out what to focus on, which classes to take, books to read, or techniques to understand.

For example: If you want to read tarot for other people, then it will for you to focus on being able to answer a wide range of questions. I always say that if you read for others, you need to be ready for anything that might come up.

Developing tarot skills that help you be flexible, adaptable, and fluid in your tarot readings is key...

When people ask me how long it took for me to start reading tarot professionally (seven years), I always preface my answer with this:

There is no one timeline or linear path with tarot. It is an ongoing journey where you can always be learning.

Some people take less time than I did. Some take more. There is no right or wrong, and no perfect amount of time to measure your own progress against.

But there are things that held me back along the way that I do believe slowed me down. Not that I was in a rush, but if I could have gotten better a little bit faster, I would have taken that option in a heartbeat.

Some of the things that I got stuck on were:

Mistake #1: Confusing complexity for potency in a tarot reading.

You don’t need to layer your readings with a bunch of techniques – reversals, astrology, numerology, significators, etc.

Solution: Don’t second-guess yourself if a reading feels clear and direct. All you need to do when you read tarot is read the cards in...

Years ago, before I was reading tarot professionally, I used to do a lot of tarot parties for friends to get practice.

I was at a café one night where a friend was having a trunk sale for a jewelry line she was selling. The room was full of my pal’s friends and family, and I didn’t know many people there.

A woman sat down for a reading with me. I laid down my cards. I saw something in them that was so specific: A story about a family inheritance.

Except that’s not what I told her.

Because what I thought I was seeing did not match the meanings of the cards that were in front of me.

I wasn’t experienced enough yet to know how to trust myself as a tarot reader.

So I played it safe.

I gave a by-the-book reading – literally – rather than talking about what I’d initially seen.

And it wasn’t exactly wrong. But it wasn’t exactly right, either.

It was generic, safe, and middle-of-the-road enough for this woman to find something...