Tarot for Beginners: A Guide to Psychic Tarot Reading, Real Tarot Card Meanings, and Simple Tarot Spreads (The Divination Series: Tarot, Runes and More)

by Lisa Chamberlain

To clear your cards, you can pass the deck through the smoke of sage or other purifying herbs, lay it out under the light of a full moon, or ring a bell or chimes near it to clear out old vibrations. (For best results, remove the cards from the box and/or any other packaging first.) To charge your cards, hold them in your hands and visualize your energy moving through your fingers and into each card in the deck. You may want to see the energy as a blue, indigo, violet, or white light. Alternatively, you can lay the cards in moonlight, which acts as both a clearing and charging agent, or set the deck on a quartz crystal or pentacle slab and visualize each card vibrating with clear, clean, positive energy.

Others like to keep them stored with a specific type of crystal, such as clear quartz or blue sodalite.

if you’re trying to decide whether or not to take a specific action, you can have the card on the left represent what happens if you do and the card on the right represent what happens if you don’t. The card in the middle can represent advice on making your decision.

Morning (or evening) daily reading The dominant energies of the upcoming day Advice for navigating those energies The outcome if advice is followed Understanding a relationship You in the present moment The other person in the present moment The connection between you A self check-in Your physical body Your emotional state Your spiritual/energetic landscape

Smudging the space with sage or other purifying herbs can do wonders to clear the air of “psychic static,” or any unwanted energies that might otherwise be attracted to the opening of one’s sixth-sense receptivity. This isn’t necessary for every single reading, especially in a space that is consistently used for readings, but it can be a helpful enhancement.

designated surface for laying out the cards is ideal. This can be a special cloth or small tapestry used directly on the floor, or a cleared-off table with no extraneous objects (phones, piles of mail, etc.) to clutter up the energy of the reading. Candles and a crystal or two are also a nice touch, but are not strictly necessary.

reader to be grounded and centered before the reading begins. This might involve smudging the reader’s body and the area just above their head, spending a few moments in quiet mediation, visualizing a protective circle of white light around the reading space, speaking words of intention for a successful reading, or a combination of any of these methods.

best to avoid “yes or no” questions,

So, for example, “Will I get a new job this year?” is not an ideal question. Instead, you might try “What is there to know about my career situation in the near future?” or “How might I best go about finding a new job?”

“Who” and “When” questions are often tough (though not impossible) to get clear answers to. By comparison, “How” “What” and “Why” questions can open things up for tremendous insight.

The cards are then inserted randomly back into the deck, and the deck is typically shuffled to “reset” its energy for the next reading.