How to Practice Tarot Reading

Marisa Mohi
5 min readNov 4, 2022

One of the best ways to learn more about tarot cards is by practicing your card reading skills. But you may not know how to practice tarot reading. Luckily for you, it’s a lot easier than you think.

Before you dive into practicing tarot, I recommend finding yourself a good beginner tarot deck. That will make the process of learning tarot so much easier. Plus, you’ll find yourself learning the meaning of a lot of the cards just by looking at them.

Of course, some of the cards aren’t going to resonate with you all the time. And having some books on tarot card meanings at the ready will always be super helpful. And if you’re super new to tarot, these tarot books for beginners are a great place to start.

So, with the tarot reading essentials out of the way, let’s talk about how to practice tarot reading.

How to Practice Tarot Reading

There’s no right or wrong way to practice tarot reading. So when you have your deck out and you’re ready to learn more, do whatever feels right. I have some recommendations to get you started.

Free Tarot Reading Practice

The easiest way to learn tarot is also the free way. Instead of paying for classes or books, get out your deck and simply look at it.

The images on the cards are designed to convey a message. Each card has a scene, and by looking at the scene, you can figure out what it means.

The meaning you come up with will be different than anyone else’s, and that’s totally cool. We all bring our own life experience into it. I talk about this a little in this how does tarot work post.

Pulling a card a day and journaling about it is a great way to learn more about the deck. But if you’re looking for more creative tarot exercises, think of the cards as part of a story. Pull a few, and see what story emerges as you look at the images on each card.

This is a fun way to see how the cards can play off one another when you pull them in the same spread.

Practice Tarot Reading Online

If you’re looking for a digital option, there are tons.

Because the tarot is old and people are constantly generating more information about it, you can find blog posts that explain tarot card meanings. You can find free online courses. You can download an app to your phone and use it to pull cards throughout your day.

For me, I don’t necessarily recommend the online reading method. There’s something about the tactile feel of the cards and playing with them that make reading with an actual deck different. But to each their own. Plus, I understand that the free option of a lot of online resources is important.

So, when it comes to finding an online tarot resource, don’t dive in without doing some evaluating first. Check out the site or app and see if it feels good to you. Not all tarot resources are the same, and some of them may use toxic language or give information that doesn’t feel right to you.

You’re the boss in your tarot journey, so find resources that feel good to use.

Tarot Practice Questions

If you’re building a daily tarot practice, it’s good to come up with some tarot practice questions. This post on creating a good morning tarot spread has some great questions you can ask your deck.

With those questions, you can ask a few to create a spread, or you can ask one question and pull one or multiple cards to find the answer. Remember, there are no real hard and fast rules when it comes to tarot. So pull as many or as few cards as feels right to you.

A lot of new tarot readers want to know how to do a tarot reading on yourself, and it’s as simple as asking questions and pulling cards to represent the answers. Part of learning tarot is learning the questions that make sense for you to ask. I like to ask broad questions like:

  • What energy should I embody?
  • What am I being called to pay attention to?
  • What more can I know?
  • How can I approach this situation?

These questions, in context with others I use in a spread, are a good way for me to get a vibe about something. It’s never a direct answer, and I think that’s important to remember. If you’re looking for some tarot spreads for beginners, I have this post on easy spreads for a personal tarot reading. It’s a great resource to help you get started reading tarot for yourself.

A Note on Learning Tarot

Some people can learn tarot reading fast, and some people take a bit longer. That doesn’t mean that you weren’t meant to read tarot, nor does it mean you should throw in the towel.

For me, tarot reading didn’t necessarily come naturally. I got my first deck from a weird aunt at the age of 10. I didn’t care much for it, and I never really tried to learn. But later, in my thirties, I got a deck and learned by journaling and pulling cards daily and skimming tarot books.

There’s obviously a big difference between being a fourth grader and an adult with a fully-formed frontal lobe. So tarot was a lot easier with tons of life experience and knowledge about symbols. I credit my ease with learning tarot to reading tons of fantasy novels and studying literature in college.

You don’t have to do those things to be a better tarot reader, but learning about symbols and stories and the structure of stories in western culture really helps to interpret the meanings of the cards.

How Do You Practice Tarot Reading?

What’s your favorite way to practice tarot reading? Do you have any tips for beginners on how to practice tarot reading? Are there any spreads that helped you learn the tarot? Drop your book recommendations in the comments!

Originally published at https://marisamohi.com on November 4, 2022.

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Marisa Mohi
Marisa Mohi

Written by Marisa Mohi

novelist, blogger, and tarot reader | former tech writer, college instructor, and instructional designer | black coffee or GTFO | https://marisamohi.com

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