MAJOR ARCANA AND THE STORY OF TAROT

Treat tarot like it's a story. When someone asks a question, you put the querant (the person asking the question) as the main character of the story.  The Major Arcana represent are each chapter of the book, and the Minor arcana are all the people and experiences along the way. If a card is reversed, the story is stuck, that's when you provide advice on how to work around it or embrace it.

This story is the only thing you really need to understand well. Once you have you grasp the chapters, you can customize the narrative by reading the minor arcana in between each chapter.

THE FOOL is the time before someone's born, you can be anything or anyone.  It's an exciting time because anything is possible. 

The Magician is the birth; the whole world is manifesting around you and creation of who you are begins.

The High Priestess is your very first knowing. Before language, before logic, you feel things. You sense when something is safe or wrong. It is your awareness and inner voice that comes first. This kind of intuition is about navigating yourself. 
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The Empress is where you meet the person who nurtures you, like a mother, and your natural environment, The empress teaches us that the world is abundant. 
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The Emperor is when you start to explore the structures around you and the person you can rely on for protection and build safety, like a father. The emperor teaches us that the world is reliable. 
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The Hierophant is where you learn the traditions, morals, ethics, and social contracts of your world and where you fit into society. School, religion, culture... someone is teaching you the rules of the game.
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The Lovers is the first time you face a real choice. You've been told who to be, now you feel the pull of who you want to be. It's about desire, values, and the first taste of defining yourself on your own terms. It's deeply personal and meaningful to you. But it also can represent the lasting familial love you can have with a person.
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The Chariot is when you take that choice and run with it. You're driven, focused, and moving forward with sheer willpower. You're going somewhere, maybe you don't know exactly where, but nothing is stopping you!
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Strength is when life pushes back. You meet your first real resistance from the world, or from inside yourself. This card isn't about force; it's about learning that patience and inner courage get you further than brute power ever will.
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The Hermit is the moment you go quiet. All that moving and striving leads you inward. You pull back from the world to find your own light. This is the chapter where you stop looking for answers outside and start searching within.
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The Wheel of Fortune is when life reminds you it has its own plans. Something shifts like a turn of luck, a change of circumstance, and you realize forces bigger than you are at play. Not everything is in your control, and that's generally the lesson. I usually view it as the "what comes around goes around moment. 
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Justice is the reckoning. Cause and effect catch up with you. The choices you made, the actions you took. The story pauses here and asks: are you living in alignment with what you believe is right? This is accountability, fairness, and truth.
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The Hanged Man is the surrender. You can't force the next chapter. You're asked to pause, to see things from a completely different angle, to let go of how you thought things were supposed to go. It's uncomfortable, but it's transformative.
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Death is not an ending, it's a door. Something has to fall away completely so the next version of you can exist. An old identity, a relationship, a belief. You can't carry everything into the next chapter. It's a time for transformation and change. 
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Temperance is the healing after the transformation. You're finding your new balance, blending who you were with who you're becoming. It's a quiet, steady chapter of integration and flow.
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The Devil is where you meet your chains that you put on yourself. Addiction, obsession, fear, or a story you keep telling yourself that keeps you small. This chapter confronts what has a hold on you.
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The Tower is when the structure built on the wrong foundation finally collapses. It's sudden, it's shocking, but everything falling apart was necessary so that you can rebuild something true. 
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The Star is the breath after the storm. Hope returns. You remember who you are at your core... before the conditioning, before the fear. This is renewal, and vulnerability to hope things can be good again.
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The Moon is the deep, murky passage through your own subconscious. Fears, illusions, things you haven't wanted to look at, they surface here. The path forward isn't clear, but you have to walk it anyway and trust in your intuition to navigate it. This kind of intuition is the kind that navigates your external world. 
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The Sun is the emergence into full light. Joy, you've come through the darkness, and you know yourself now. This is the chapter where life feels genuinely good and you're present enough to feel it.
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Judgement is the call to rise into your fullest self. You're being asked to release the last of the old story and answer something bigger. It's a spiritual awakening or a moment of profound clarity about your purpose.
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The World is the completion of the journey. The querant has moved through every chapter, integrated every lesson, and arrived whole.  It's not the end of all stories, but this one is complete. They are ready to step into the next cycle... back to the Fool!

PIP CARDS - THE EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE ALONG THE WAY
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The PIP Cards is how the querant moves through the story and experiences it. When reading minor arcana cards assume the energy is all connected, this will help you see where people are relative to each other, or how the experience is or will play out. Sometimes multiple cards can be read within the same chapter, this is where using you intuition comes in handy when reading. 

COURT CARDS - WHAT THE ENERGY AROUND THE QUESTION IS DOING AND THE PEOPLE WE MEET ALONG THE WAY
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The Court cards represent what the energy of the story is doing based off the suit of the card. That can be a person who embodies the energy within the story, or it can be how the energy moves between chapters.

Some Examples:
Wands represent Drive and Passion, a Page is that childlike energy that one can embody around their passions. What would you say to a child if they were overly passionate and driven? You may tell them to avoid being reckless, or create structure on how to get there. If they aren't passionate enough you may want to encourage them to take chances, and believe in themself. 

Cups represents Emotions and Intuition, a Queen influences the energy, she is the person that connects relationships especially in relation to their emotions and intuition . So what would you say to a woman who was neglecting their own emotions and intuition and pulls this card? You may advise them to be mindful of themself and not lose themselves in other people's affairs.

 DIFFERENT WAYS TO READ
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Tarot uses different methods of reading simultaneously and trusting in your intuition on how to interpret them.  Sometimes you can pull a card right sight up but get a intuitive nudge that it should be flipped over. Sometimes you can pull a card, but it get a psychic vision that makes read that card with a different context. These are the different ways I find create a more detailed reading.

Traditional - This is what the cards mean based on what tarot readers as a collective agree upon which meanings represent different cards. 
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Intuitive - Trusting which part of the card to focus on in a reading, a querant may ask a question about a time, or a direct yes or no, you intuition matters in these readings.
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Symbolical - Interpreting meaning from the imagery on the card or the how the author designed the image. 
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Psychically - Visualizing your mind inside the mind of the querant, or the person they are asking bout, visualize you looking through their eyes and feeling the card make note of any visions or experiences from your past

READING TYPES

Conversational - when you simply ask a question and pull one card, if the card on its own is unclear you pull more cards for clarity. This is the single most effective way to quickly learn tarot; you can do spreads when you start reading professionally. 

Spread - When cards are pulled in a unique arrangement that have been mapped out for specific questions. You can use a Celtic Cross to deep dive into a current situation, a Classic 3 card pull for Past, Present, Future. Or create you own spread that places the energy in such a way that makes sense for the question you are asking. For example, when I do a love reading I do a modified Celtic Cross where I pull 6 cards for each person in a relationships to understand who they are on their own, and then a Celtic Cross for the relationship.

 TIPS
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Always interview a new deck when you get it, ask it it's strength, weaknesses, biases, and how often it needs to be charged so you know how to navigate around its personal energy and see how it influences your readings.

Treat each card like a state of mind, as you navigate the querants questions. If you take it too literally, you'll likely be wrong. Energy connects to us through our emotions so it's critical to feel the card, not look at it literally. 

When reading for yourself, be aware of your personal emotions, if the cards are mirroring your emotions have someone else do a reading for you and be sure to charge your cards.

If you are new to reading, avoid PIP decks, these are decks that lack imagery on the PIP cards and only have the number of the suit on it.  For example, a 2 of pentacles will literally have 2 pentacles on it, not someone holding two pentacles weighing their options. 

Rest your deck of cards on a selenite slab to charge it between readings. This keeps your readings reliable. 

If the energy of your card doesn't feel right, put the whole deck back in order and charge it on a selenite slab or under a full moon.

Store your cards in a protection material to keep a barrier around it from influencing energy. This can be a Leather or Silk bag, or a wooden box made out of a tree who corresponds with protection. If you keep it in its original box, you can also wrap it with a silk scarf or altar cloth.

Keep a dream interpretation book and the guide it came with handy for any psychic visions or unique to that specific deck's imagery.