How To Read Tarot Cards For Yourself
seven tarot cards on a gradient background
📖 Want all your readings at your fingertips when you get that "i miss you" text in the grocery line? Grab my FREE Notion Journal “Reading for Yourself.”
You are your first client. You are your hardest client.
Reading tarot for yourself brings up issues of self-trust. This is even more stressful when we're trying to build our intuition.
Yet reading tarot for yourself can be a way to strengthen both.
Our intuition is a muscle. It grows stronger as we get out of our own way.
Self-trust is essential to reading your own cards. Thankfully, it's a skill you can build.
You may feel like you’re too invested in the issue at hand to sort out your own problem.
You may find that reading your own cards is difficult because you have trouble being honest.
You may feel bogged down by the divide between what you see in the cards and what you wish you saw.
You can choose to think of reading your own cards as practice.
It can be practice for a sturdier trust in your intuition. It can help you practice self-belief.
We all read our own tarot cards. This is true whether you started reading tarot yesterday or have been reading for years.
So here are five easy steps to getting what you want our of reading your own tarot cards:
1. Get clear about your question
2. Prepare to be honest with yourself
3. Read the cards—without your guidebook
4. Write it down
5. Follow up
1. Get clear about your question
What do I want to know?
This question is the hardest one to answer for yourself in tarot.
But it's not just what you wish you knew. It's what you can stand to learn.
Many people fear or burn out on tarot because they ask questions to which they don't want to know the answer.
What that sort of question may look like for you is something only you know.
So instead of asking yourself what you want to know, try this question. What do I need to know right now?
Information overload is real af. There's always a chance that we will receive unexpected answers when we read.
But not ever peek into the future is worth it. If you're a beginner, or in a fragile place, consider staying on a "need to know" basis with tarot.
2. Prepare to be honest with yourself
Yeah, I said it.
People always want tarot to lie to them. We've allllll been there.
If you see a gifted reader (ahem), you'll get read within an inch of your life either way.
But when we read for ourselves, it can be easer to see only what we want to see. This is why it's important to prepare to be honest with yourself.
Because it does take preparation.
If you've in a long-term relationship that's breaking down, you may want to stay. If everything seems to be going great, it'll be hard to hear that trouble could be around the corner.
This is why I recommend only reading tarot when you're feeling well.
Crisis tarot can fuck you up.
If it's feeling very urgent, consider going to a reader, or even asking a friend to pull some cards.
Whomst among us hasn't been startled by a big event in the cards, and shuffled them shits again?
Right.
And that's why we have to prepare to be honest.
Take a bath before you read. Find your calmest part of the day. Pray or meditate before reading.
Or do whatever ritual puts you in the right space to read, and be honest with yourself.
📖 Want all your readings at your fingertips when you get that "i miss you" text in the grocery line? Grab my FREE Notion Journal “Reading for Yourself.”
3. Read the cards—without your guidebook
Some of yous are gunna be mad about this one!
When building your intuition, tarot guidebooks are both your enemy and your friend.
Everybody should have one, but it shouldn't outweigh your intuition.
Which is why you shouldn't have it out when reading your own tarot cards.
You know where to find it if you need it. You can use it to better understand the conclusions you come to.
But you may benefit from trying to intuit without it. I know you know that.
That's because there isn't only one traditional tarot meaning. There are many, written by many scholars, before you and I were even born.
Card meanings are still being made. Tarot is a book that we're still writing with our observations and our practice.
If you're married to the guidebook and not your intuition, how will you find new meanings?
How will you know what the cards mean to you?
It's also a subtle knock at your own intuition.
Reading tarot for yourself is an invitation to greater self-trust. Putting the guidebook away while you pull the cards is what it means to accept that invitation.
4. Write it down
If you're not writing your readings down, what are you doin?
Writing your readings down is a form of accountability to your intuition. You can see for a fact whether what you predicted came to pass.
Make it detailed. Don't forget to include the date, time, and question you asked.
Notebooks work best for analog types. Here's a digital tracker for folks who want access to their readings everywhere.
5. Follow up
Now all that's left to do is follow up.
In three days, or a week or two, or maybe at the end of the year, come back to what you wrote. Were you right?
If you feel there's a big difference between what you wrote and what happened that's ok. Write down what did happen below your initial entry.
Revisit both interpretations when you get a chance.
Don't cross anything out.
Try not to feel ashamed of not getting it right the first time. Practice makes progress, and intuition is no exception.
Tolerating slow progress will keep you from rage quitting your tarot practice.
Reading tarot for yourself can be a gift. It's an essential part of learning tarot and deepening your intuition.
📖 Want all your readings at your fingertips when you get that "i miss you" text in the grocery line? Grab my free Notion Journal “Reading for Yourself.”
hey, i'm cyree jarelle. I run Temperance Queer Tarot. I help queers, feminists, and leftists connect with their intuition using tarot and cartomancy. More on me.