This course is for anyone who is interested in reading tarot cards, or even just playing with them. The tarot is a valuable tool for thinking, brainstorming, inspiration, and insight. It can also be used as a method, a meditation, or a ritual.

Learning how to read the cards takes time and practice. There are several different methods and schools of thought when it comes to tarot. With agnostic tarot we are starting at the most basic element, numbers or ranks.

What I have done is assigned a keyword, one word to each rank. This is the starting point for reading. The word is not negative or positive - just a neutral word. These words are based on numerology.

Once you have your keyword, there are different ways you can expand your story. This guide will show you some of those ways.

The meanings I use for the tarot are all down to earth, practical, and based in the real world. I have purposely avoided religious, spiritual, new age, or psychology associations. In this guide the focus is on getting practical experience with the cards.

I think it is a barrier, at least for beginners, to attach a bunch of mystical, magical, religious and psychological meanings to the cards. It makes an obstacle for the reader. It adds mental and emotional noise that isn’t helpful. And you don’t need any of those things to use the tarot to good effect.

The keywords are like the first brush stroke on a blank canvas. They are a jumping off point to get moving. An easy way to break the inertia. A blank page will block your thinking. But once you start, even just one step, the blockage is removed.

You can use other keywords or meanings if you want. Your own meanings will eventually take over for the keywords as you learn. Tarot is like a living language, it changes along with us. I encourage you to make your own keyword lists, anytime you want to. I often find myself tweaking my keywords as my thoughts and feelings change.

Use my keywords or another simple set of keywords just to get experience handling the cards. Every reading will show you something new. I chose ranks/numbers because to start because it is a good base which can be used to build on. After numbers I would choose elements and then astrological associations - but those are more complex than numbers, in my opinion.

In time, after using the cards over and over again they will hold lots of meaning for you. But the keywords will always be there to get you started if you want to use them.

Links

Supplies needed to follow this guide:

Tools of the Trade

Basic structure of a tarot deck:

Learning the Cards