How do Tarot Cards & Tarot Readings Work?

Have you ever wondered how tarot cards work or how tarot readings actually work? Maybe you've been warned that tarot is the devil or that you're talking to demons when you use tarot cards. (You can breathe, it is not.) Maybe you've had a tarot reading before and walked away wondering why something you were told didn't actually happen. That's something I hear a lot too, so let's talk about it.

Tarot is a divination tool, but tarot cards actually weren't designed for divination in the first place. They originated in Italy in the 15th century as a luxury parlor game. They were playing cards, some of the earliest decks were beautifully made for wealthy families. Sorry, no demons here! It wasn't until the late 18th century in France that tarot became associated with divination and fortune telling. Over time, tarot developed into the divination system that many of us recognize today. The Rider-Waite-Smith deck, which is probably one of the most recognizable tarot decks today, was first published in 1909 and was created specifically for the modern occult and divinatory tradition. So before we dive into how tarot readings work, there's a little bit of interesting tarot history for you.

So how does a tarot reading actually work?

When I read tarot, I'm looking at the current energy surrounding the question or situation in the moment that the question is asked. That might be a question you're asking for yourself or something you've asked a tarot reader to look into for you. As the deck is shuffled, we concentrate on the question or situation and then the cards are pulled. How many times a reader shuffles the deck is really up to the individual reader. There isn't one specific number of times you're supposed to shuffle before the cards are ready to be read. Different readers have different practices and that's completely okay.

Every tarot card has its own imagery, symbolism and traditional meanings that help guide the reading. So you might have the Sun representing things like celebration, warmth, happiness or clarity. The Wheel of Fortune can represent cycles and change. Justice can bring in themes of truth, accountability and balance. Those traditional meanings are important, but reading tarot isn't just about memorizing the meaning of every card and then repeating it back to you.

A big part of tarot reading is intuition. What are we picking up beyond "The Sun means celebration and warmth" or "The Wheel of Fortune means cycles and change"? What stands out in the card? How does it connect to the other cards? What am I intuitively picking up about the situation? What does the imagery make me notice? That's where the reading starts to become more than just looking up a definition in a guidebook.

I have absolutely nothing against guidebooks either. They're a great reference, especially when you're learning tarot or working with a deck you're not familiar with. But you can't really reduce a tarot reading to reading the little booklet that came with the deck. There is a combination of the traditional card meanings, the imagery, the question being asked and the intuitive information coming through that helps create the reading.

Now let's talk about something that comes up all the time. What happens when you have a tarot reading and it doesn't come true?

Maybe you had a love reading and the relationship you were told about never happened. Maybe you had a fertility reading and things didn't unfold the way you expected. Maybe it was a general reading and you got to the end of the time frame thinking, "Well, that didn't happen."

The reason goes back to what I said earlier. Tarot is reading the current energy surrounding a situation at the time of the reading. That energy can change. People make decisions. Circumstances change. New information comes into the picture. You can make a decision after your reading that changes the direction you were heading in.

This is also where free will comes in, and I think free will is a pretty beautiful thing.

Let's say you have a tarot reading and you see that things are heading in a direction you don't like. You don't have to sit there and wait for that outcome because somebody pulled a card and told you that's where you're going. You can make changes. You can make different decisions. You can choose a different path. Once you do that, the energy surrounding the situation can change too.

That's why I will never tell you that a tarot reading is 100% guaranteed to happen exactly as it was read. No reader can ethically guarantee that because energy isn't static and neither are people. Our paths are always changing. Nothing in life is completely set in stone except death and taxes.

This doesn't mean that tarot is fake if something doesn't happen exactly the way a reading suggested. It means that a tarot reading is looking at what is happening in that moment and where things appear to be heading based on that energy. What happens after that can be affected by choices, circumstances and all the other things that happen in life that none of us can predict.

This is also why I don't recommend getting repeated readings on the exact same question in a short amount of time. Don't go from reader to reader because you didn't like the answer and hope somebody else gives you the answer you wanted. Don't keep asking your cards the same question over and over until you finally get the response you're looking for either. At that point you're not really looking for guidance anymore. You're looking for a different answer.

Give things time to change. Make your decisions and let things play out. If you still need guidance later, you can always come back to the situation with a fresh perspective.

Your own emotions can also have an effect on a reading, which is one of the reasons I think readers need to be clearheaded and grounded when they're reading. If a reader is extremely emotional about a situation, their own feelings can get mixed in with what they're picking up. Anxiety in particular can be tricky because sometimes what you're experiencing as intuition may actually be your own fear or anxiety reflecting back at you.

That doesn't mean emotions don't belong in tarot. They absolutely can be part of what we're reading. There is a difference between picking up on the emotional energy surrounding a situation and allowing your own emotions to take over the reading though. Being aware of that is part of being a responsible reader.

So what is tarot actually doing?

For me, tarot is a tool that helps us reflect on what's happening in the moment. It can give us another perspective when we're stuck or help us see something about a situation that we weren't seeing on our own. Sometimes it gives us advice. Sometimes it confirms something we already knew. Sometimes it tells us something we really didn't want to hear.

I can have a situation in my own life that I don't know how to navigate and pull some cards to get another perspective. That's one of the reasons I love tarot so much. It gives me something to reflect on when I'm too close to a situation to see it clearly. It doesn't make the decision for me and it doesn't take away my free will. It gives me another way to look at what's happening.

It can also tell me that I'm the asshole, which is occasionally information I need.

That's really how I approach tarot. It's not an all-knowing, all-being system that has your entire future written down somewhere. It's a divination tool that can help us look at the energy surrounding a situation right now and use that information to make decisions about what comes next.

You still have a say in what happens.

You always have free will, and that means your choices can change the path you're on. That's not something I see as a problem with tarot. It's one of the things I love about it.