Reading Tarot Cards

If you are just starting to read tarot cards or have never done any work with the tarot, we suggest you start with the Waite-Rider deck, typically acknowledged as the easiest deck to work with for beginner magicians.

The people who created the modern tarot, all of whom were members of the Order of the Golden Dawn, designed the Waite-Rider, Morgan-Greer and Thoth decks. Arthur Edward Waite created the Waite-Rider deck (Rider was the name of the publisher) and Pamela Smith, also of the Golden Dawn, did the artwork for the cards.

Lloyd Morgan and William Greer disagreed with Waiteís approach, arguing that the Waite-Rider deck was too austere, too mental and too intellectual. They created the Morgan/Greer deck by adding fancy symbols, such as vines, to the top half of all the cards in the Waite-Rider deck.

The Waite-Rider, Morgan-Greer and Thoth decks were created by magicians for magic. These decks, and only these decks, can be used for all three magical purposes described above. For instance the Aquarian deck is a beautiful tool for divination if you are used to working with Zen or Hindu concepts, but itís virtually useless for spell work and has no relationship at all to the Tree of Life.

Keying Your Tarot Cards

Because your tarot cards are magical tools (like the wand, athame, chalice and plate), they must be ìkeyed.î Keying is the means of personalizing magical tools for your own use. In this case, keying ties the cards not only to your own personal energies, but also to the Universe at large. This means that when you throw a tarot spread with a keyed deck, the cards not only represent elements, people and concepts in the Universe ñ they are tied to them.

Keying is what allows tarot spells to work. Because the cards are actually linked to physical things in the Universe, when you change or re-arrange the tarot cards, you also change or re-arrange things in the physical Universe.

In the progression of magical studies, the study of tarot cards comes almost at the end. This is because you need the plate, athame and sun candles to key your tarot cards. You need to have studied and practiced with these other tools before you can key your cards.

While it's possible to throw tarot spreads with unkeyed tarot cards, the results will be less accurate than with keyed cards.

Using a Signifier

A signifier is a card that stands for someone or something. The signifier in a Tarot reading poses the question that we want answered. We tie our Tarot readings to specific issues and questions by using keyed signifiers.

Most people who use the Tarot today do not use signifiers. This leads to readings that are both less accurate and less effective. Using a signifier guarantees that the reading will be about the person or thing you want to find out about, and only about that.

As a guide, we choose signifiers for people based on chronological age and sun sign. For instance, children 12 and under are usually represented by pages, teenagers by knights, adult females by queens and adult males by kings.

In the Crowley deck the page has both a male and female card - the prince or princess. The adult male is signified as a knight in the Crowley deck because Crowley said that there are no adult males ñ males never reach maturity!

Next: Real Tarot Card Spreads

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