The Occult

Deep symbolism and strange tarot card meanings make the elements for which tarot is one of the most well know arts of the occult. If in the old times people believed them to be very accurate in predicting death, political changes, love affairs, incredible wealth and personal ruin, things are not very much different nowadays, although the symbols are taken a lot more lightly. Tarot card meanings have become epitomes, but when analyzed in context they simply make a combination of elements that could or could not refer to your life or influence it. Although prediction was the initial purpose, entertainment is definitely the main role of this future telling art.

The most striking tarot card meanings and symbols are revealed and interpreted in the cards of the Major Arcana; they also carry the name of trumps. Figures like the emperor, the empress, the magician, the fool, the high priestess, the hierophant, the hanged man, the devil, the hermit and so on, stand for major elements in the spiritual and physical realm. In the Minor Arcana the tarot card meanings are in fact the elements or the instances that relate to common daily life events, and these actually represent the ancestors of modern playing cards.

The four elements of the alchemy stand behind the four suits in the Minor Arcana, and they are just as important as the complex figures designed in the Major Arcana. The cups are designated under the influence of the water element, the wands reflect the passion and courage of fire, the swords get represented by air and the pentacles stay firmly on the ground, tributary to the earth element. Thus, if some tarot card meanings relate to emotional affairs as it is the case with the fire element, the air keeps the interpretation in the realm of logic thinking and the earth brings material reality closer.

Tarot card meanings are often so very stirring and striking because of the evocative nature of pictures and symbols. Images have always been able to convey feelings, emotions and ideas, and we all have a huge picture repository in our subconscious. This is one of the main explanations for the effect tarot card readings have on people; a person who has never seen a tarot deck will be utterly impressed about the prints, the design, the figures and the symbols combined in a very intricate structure. In alternatives, the visual representations become even more striking and the tarot card meanings are all the more important.

Special software programs allow the creation and even the personalized use of printable tarot cards for people who want to develop their divination skills. Lots of online web pages offer either mass produced cards or customized items with the print option included. Why go for the printable version? First of all, it is a lot easier to find the decks you like, and then, you can save tons of time that you’d otherwise waste on searching in all sorts of shops. Depending on the site you access, there are two types of printable tarot cards available: either the classic Rider-Waite tarot or original creations closer to works of art than to series products.

Some sites allow one to create fall the seventy-eight printable tarot cards with complex graphics and all sorts of interesting backgrounds. Users also find it a lot easier to get familiar with the various symbols of the tarot cards when they have the chance to color the decks themselves and prepare the set for printing. Then, another possibility is to get the printable tarot cards from e-books or instructional tarot classes that also include several deck alternatives. Unique deck imagery is also well represented on the Internet in very suggestive formats.

Lots of the printable tarot cards can be personalized to help the user better read the spreads. For those who are more than simply familiar with the meaning of tarot cards, the printable versions available on the Internet may not bring enough satisfaction. Personal digital images, individual artwork as well as collages could be very well integrated in the design of printable tarot cards; one will relate to the deck in a superior way afterwards if the images touch upon a personal cord. As for the technical details of the printing as such, there are some things to consider here too.

Printable tarot cards can be laminated to make them smooth and resistant, and this trick stays valid regardless of whether you glue the pictures onto the cards or you use cardboard to print the decks directly. Thus, the paper comes either in a matte finish variant or with a glossy card coating; other varieties are also available, but the two we’ve mentioned remain the most reliable and suitable for the creation of the tarot cards. Before printing the decks, have a look on various Internet sites to see what suggestions you can find to help you with the downloads.

Little do people nowadays know that the initial original meaning of tarot cards was to hide the secrets of history in a figurative representation form. The other uses we are familiar with today have evolved over the years so that at present the most common meaning of tarot cards touches upon divination. Another tendency is to use the tarot decks for playing card games and even for gambling, and last but not least some even believe that tarot has a role to play in casting spells. The form and the style of the tarot cards have changed from the initial Rider Waite Tarot deck in the sense that we are confronted with a proliferation of styles recently spawned.

The main meaning of tarot cards is concentrated in the Major Arcana; the very word arcana, the plural for the Latin word arcanum means secret or closed. This only stresses out the very occult character of the mechanism behind tarot interpretations, and one often may wonder where all the energies present in the divination spheres come from. To get back to the Major Arcana, the twenty-two cards it includes represent the original form of the tarot deck; the remaining fifty six cards of a modern deck belong to the Minor Arcana.

Symbols contain the condensed meaning of tarot cards; however, symbolism can be interpreted and understood at two different levels. First there is the individual significance corresponding to a certain card, and then there come the collective implications that result from the symbolic meaning of one card related to the context in which it appears. In the reading of any spread, the valuable part is the collective meaning or what the entire layout indicates in answer to a question, dilemma or personal quest. Hence, it is precisely the allegoric nature of this art of divination that separates it from clear-cut real life facts.

The meaning of tarot cards can often be altered when the cards appear reversed; lots of readers actually abandon the reading under such circumstances, while others insist on the resistance problem areas that reversed cards seem to point to. All sorts of situations can appear when creating and reading a spread and sometimes the answers or interpretations one gets are pretty non-satisfactory. This is probably the reason why trusting tarot readings too much could be disappointing, particularly since there is nothing exact in the nature of the prediction.

The meaning of the tarot cards and the decoding of the symbolism can only be achieved through the reading of the tarot spreads. Life sectors like health, work, love and so on are assigned a special position in the spread. The difficulty appears when you have to decipher the meaning of the card and give it a probabilistic interpretation for the future. The reading of the tarot spreads is taught in all basic lessons and tutorials but the skills and the techniques are sometimes built in years of practice. Experts actually speak about the personal call for divination like an innate talent that one can develop in time.

Before reading the tarot spreads, the person for whom the tarot session is performed has to shuffle the cards so that he/she may transfer personal energy to the deck. Usually one seeks answers for a particular life area such as love, work or health, and therefore he or she has to focus on the question that needs a reply. Once the cards have been shuffled, the next step is to lay the tarot spreads. There are various kinds of spreads, some use only one card while the most complex ones require all the seventy-eight in the deck.

Certain tarot spreads bring information on the emotional elements in one’s life while others will indicate various aspects of the relationships with the people around or the career issues. In this direction, the most popular and widely-known of tarot spreads is the Celtic Cross, available with detailed instructions and lots of positions explained online. The card combinations and the pairings affect the meanings and the interpretations of the tarot spreads; yet, one cannot make important decisions based on such readings alone. Tarot is therefore a way to get an idea about the underlying situations in one’s life.

All in all, you can learn about tarot spreads from a variety of sources, but definitely the Internet remains the richest in the category. There are people who have turned card reading and divination into a profession, and they often advertise both online and in local newspapers in the classifieds sections. Most of these tarot gurus will perform the reading you want in exchange for a fee; however, criticism is pretty vivid in what the authenticity of the interpretation is concerned. Many such experts are considered frauds, and the explanation for the attitude comes from the skepticism in the practice of tarot that is shared by almost 90% of people in urban areas.

A pretty popular form of entertainment, online tarot readings have become a real business for some people. There are two service levels available for web page users: there are free online tarot readings and other more special ones for which a fee is charged. Normally, many sites function on the membership basis and if you want to register as a member you have to pay. One may wonder who are the customers, but the truth is that divination has some sort of special attraction from all the other occult arts. There is a simple explanation behind the massive success of online tarot readings.

We are all troubled by various daily problems, and life is anything but simple and easy; there are hundreds of moments in a life time when we long for guidance, and many think that a peek into the future could help. Online tarot readings could bring a bit of clarity into a foggy situation, although the reliability of such predictions is often questioned. Even the sites that perform the online tarot readings include disclaimers that one is not to base his/her decisions on tarot divinations since these function for entertainment rather than for real life purposes.

In fact you can trust online tarot readings as much as you believe in the personal horoscope you read in a magazine. Moreover, taking every prediction with a grain of salt is the safest and most harmless way of dealing with divination as such. One further item here deserves all the attention: most of the online tarot readings are generated by special softwares, and there is not a real person interpreting the deck for you. Thus, what you read is a random card spread with the interpretations corresponding to each card. Superior membership levels on certain sites could bring real-time live predictions, but you do have to pay for the fun.

Online tarot readings therefore differentiate themselves a lot from the face-to-face ones performed by tarot grandmasters. Direct physical contact also involves psychological and energy transfer which is why tarot interpretations could be a lot more relevant in such cases than when performed online. However, the warning we’ve mentioned above about trusting cards too much remains valid. It is false and irresponsible to live your life according to card predictions; take things lightly and you will neither be disappointed nor suffer some personal disillusionment because of faulty choice making.

Tarot card meaning is what gives power to interpretations and predictions; each card has a significance and a peculiar symbolism attached to it. What we often fail to understand is that the full tarot card meaning comes from the spread or the combined explanations of the cards for the question of the life issue you expect to learn more about. In the Rider Waite tarot, there are seventy-eight cards, and the first step beginners have to take is to learn what each of them means. From the Fool to the Queen and the King, the tarot cards can be studied, analyzed and understood depending on the sensible nature of every user.

Tarot card reading has evolved over the years; for people who have a more profound knowledge of the Kabbalah or alchemy, the similarity of symbols could be pretty striking. Thus, all sorts of symbols have been added in time so that the present-day form of the decks is a very complex one. It is also common practice to complicate things even further by personalizing the cards and adding other subtle interpretations to the decks. Thus, many amateur philosophers choose to give their personal explanations to certain aspects from alchemy or the Kabbalah.

The tarot card meaning greatly varies depending on the interpretation; thus, a single card can be given different explanations based on the location of the card in the spread and the meaning of the other cards in its vicinity. Very often, based on the reader’s own common sense and judgment, a tarot card meaning can be discarded as irrelevant for the question that is under discussion. While in the Major Arcana, the figures have very distinct symbolism, in the Minor Arcana the emphasis is on the four alchemical elements to which the cards correspond. Thus, the pentagrams stand for earth, the wands for fire, the cups for water and the swords for air.

In general lines, the tarot card meaning gives one a clue about the way he/she goes through the personal journey: is one on the right path or has one strayed away? This tarot card meaning normally results from the spreads in the Major Arcana where each card matches a certain life aspect: the fool stands for the beginning of a journey, the magician indicates the path towards wisdom, the high priestess indicates the level of self-balance, the empress points to pleasure, wealth and love, while the emperor represents claimed power and authority, and so on and so forth.

People expect predictions and divination revelations from the tarot card reader without knowing that they influence the card interpretations themselves. Although tarot fans are encouraged not to take the card meanings too seriously and merely enjoy the pastime, lots of readers put a lot of energy and belief in the profession. It is actually said that the truthfulness of the reading results from how intensely the persons involved in the process focus on the question they need an answer for. It is therefore imperative that you know well what you are after before you turn to a tarot card reader for an occult answer. The way you process the results of the inquiry is up to you, but it should remain in accordance with the rules of common sense.

Tarot reading popularity has reached such an extent that there are even professional tarot card reader categories certified by a national commission according to various training levels. Presently, anyone can develop such a career if he/she has got the skills and would like to do this exclusively. The variety of teaching materials is incredible, from online courses to books and paper printed guides, but none of them can give the tarot card reader the subtle ingredient necessary for good card interpretations.

It is believed that a good tarot card reader should be well anchored in the spiritual realm with an understanding of the positive and negative energies existent in the visible and invisible world. Cards can only be understood in the vicinity of other symbols and representations, since only in combination they show relevance for life issues and concerns. If you ask for the services of a tarot card reader, ask the question seriously if you want an answer as closest to reality as possible. Even when you do so, the hazard chances remain incredibly high.

One further aspect Internet users should be aware of is that many of the tarot card reader services provided online are software generated. Thus, you draw six cards from the deck and you are given some random interpretations for each card without the implications of the human factor. Such automated web pages are designed for entertainment and they require no charge at all most of the time. The tarot reading is free and so is the information about tarot origins, tarot training courses, further in depth tarot interpretations and so on. Have a look around such sites and decide for yourself whether they are worth using or not!

The fascination of tarot readings seems to have touched lots of people all around the world, and there is no quicker way to see the truth of this assertion than by having a look at the many Internet sites that provide tarot readings for free or as fee-based services. People can also learn to perform their own tarot readings; thus, detailed instructions are available for one spread or another together with the individual distinct meanings of each and every card. Although, divination can be fun, do not trust tarot readings to the extent of leading your life according to what they say: common sense and a balanced judgment are the best guides you can have.

Tarot readings differ according to the position one card or another occupies in the spread. Some cards become interpretation keys for others in a network that only the trained, skilled eye can unravel. People often find the instructions for tarot readings pretty difficult to understand and perform, particularly if they are beginners in the art of divination. Moreover, you will come across all sorts of tips and words of advice about how to preserve the intensity of the meaning or how to relate the beginning with the end of the spread.

Tarot readings can be best performed when the person focuses on the question he or she needs an answer to; an energetic transfer occurs between the reader, the person for whom the reading is performed and the situation in question. The intensity and the depth of the tarot meaning afterwards may vary depending on the above mentioned elements. However, mention must be made that tarot is called the art of divination and not the science of divination. Do not expect real truth exposed or clear ways of action! Do not take card reading as the main way to make decisions about important life aspects.

Books, courses and special training programs are available for those interested in learning tarot readings, and one can choose between independent tarot teachers and tarot organizations. In the United States, you can become a certified tarot reader according to a seven level scale that recognizes the experience according to standardized test results. Thus, one can start as an apprentice tarot reader and move to superior stages such as professional tarot reader, tarot consultant, tarot master, tarot instructor and tarot grandmaster. This type of categorization aims at classifying skills and helping people with tarot interests turn it into something more than a hobby.

No one knows for sure how far the world history of tarot card readings dates back but scholars suggest it goes back at least to the 1400s. The most famous and widely used tarot cards were created in the 1800s; the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. In the early 1900s, Western culture learned of tarot cards, which become extremely popular during World War I. Today, some people believe the tarot cards are an evil symbol associated with the occult, while others believe they can be a psychologically empowering tool to influence one’s personal path and future.

If you were to walk down any big city block, then you may stumble across a glowing neon sign that reads “TAROT CARD READINGS.” Surprisingly, most countries have organizations that offer courses on learning tarot cards, as well as certification programs! The rise in popularity of these “fortune tellers” has led to tarot card readers who work in coffee houses and as private party tarot readers. There are even entire festivals dedicated to the subject. For instance, Montreal holds the “International French Tarot Festival” each year and Lilydale in New York State has a spiritualist community of psychics, fortune tellers and tarot card readers.

There are generally two types of readings you may receive at one of these places: the Question Reading or an Open Reading. With question readings, you ask a specific open-ended question to which the cards suggest an answer. Open readings are recommended for people who are going through a life transition, such as a marriage, graduation or career change, or are suffering with health problems. You can address a general area but your priorities are suggested by which tarot cards come up.

Tarot card readers allow seekers to cut and shuffle the deck as they please and then the cards are laid out into a “spread” for an overall message. There are many different types of tarot spreads: the yin/yang, elemental, a seven card horseshoe, rainbow, spheres of life, a ten card celtic cross, astrological and three card spreads. These variations are just different ways to look at the messages. For example, in the three card spread, three tarot cards are laid out and represent the past, present and future. In the celtic cross spread, there are ten positions with different meanings: the present inner environment, the obstacle, the deeper root cause of the situation, the resolved factor/quality to let go, the goal or purpose, the unresolved factor, you as you see yourself, another’s expectations, hopes and fears and outcome.

The seven card horseshoe spread has positions representing the recent past, the present situation, what is hidden, obstacles/challenges, surroundings, advice and outcome. You have many options, depending on what sort of answer you’re hoping to find, but generally if you approach the tarot cards reading with an open mind, you’ll get something positive from it.

Let’s be honest with each other, okay? Chances are probably pretty good that you check your horoscope occasionally. Checking your daily horoscope is fine but it is a pretty general way of predicting your day or your week. Why not go a little more in depth? You should give tarot cards a try. A good deck can reveal plenty about your current financial situations, your personality and even let you know when to make big decisions regarding your finances. It is a way of getting a little hint at what the future may reveal about you.

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There are many layers of sub-text with a tarot deck. When you are reading the tarot cards, you’re not just looking at the picture on a superficial level. For instance, when “the Death Card” comes up, it doesn’t mean the seeker is about to die! Rather, there are finer points within the card and the series of cards that will paint a broader picture. In fact, the card may even be dealt upside-down, which adds an extra layer of meaning as well. Getting to know your deck of tarot cards is a matter of education, intuition and practice.

Once you have your deck of tarot cards selected, you’ll need to choose a tarot spread, which is the way you lay the cards on the table before you. This spread very much depends on the needs of your seeker who should be thinking of an open-ended question. For example, the popular ten-card “Celtic Cross” spread gives a snapshot of the seeker right now, which can reveal the individual’s emotional make up, as well as a glimpse at their past, present and future.

The “Seven Card” spread can be used to take an in-depth look at a more specific situation, showing all the factors that led to the present and all the options for the future. The “Zodiac” spread will also delve into a particular issue more deeply, letting you know how the year will pan out. The three card “Yes or No” spread can be used to answer the most basic yes-or-no queries. Furthermore, the “Lover’s Spread” or “Mirrors Spread,” will shed some light on romantic fortunes, the “Daily Lessons” spread will give you something to work on for today, the “Mandala” spread will help you grow spiritually and emotionally, the “Wish” spread will help you define what you want out of life and remove obstacles to getting it. As your seeker shuffles the tarot cards, his or her energy will pass through the cards to you to help you get a more accurate reading.

Once you’ve dealt the tarot cards into the specific spread, then you will turn over the first card. First, you must know the significance of the position for that spread. For instance, in the “Mandala” spread, the first card of the tarot deck represents a view as to how the person sees him or herself. In the “Celtic Cross” spread, the first card represents the present situation. To begin the reading, you may turn over one card at a time or flip them all, depending on your style as a reader. Some people have a natural knack for looking at the entire snapshot of the situation and detailing at random, whereas other tarot card readers are best when moving in a linear fashion, describing the spread one card at a time, drawing conclusions later.

When looking at each card, judge the landscape, the imagery, the colors, the shapes, the symbols, the suits and the type of card. The Major Arcanas, for example, signify events, whereas the Minor Arcanas signify emotions. Furthermore, the “Court Cards” show other people that affect the course of the seeker’s life. Always keep the seeker’s question in mind when reading the tarot cards and you may even ask the seeker to describe how a particular card makes him or her feel. If the end card is a Major Arcana, then the outcome is rather fixed. However, if the end card is a Minor Arcana, then the seeker can take actions to alter the path. If the end card is a Court, then the outcome will be affected by others.

You may want to purchase a book by Mary K Greer or Joan Bunning about “Learning Tarot Reversals” to help shine some light on upside-down cards from your tarot deck. Not everyone deals with reversed cards, but there can be many more tarot card meanings by putting these into play. First look at the reversed card’s position in the spread. If you’re doing a Celtic Cross and the first card is reversed, then perhaps they are in a state of looking back at the past or a mixed-up present situation. You may also consider a reversed card to signify untapped potential or energy.

Maybe it’s a delayed project, something from the past that isn’t resolved, a private part of oneself, a refusal to change, something that is lacking, an energy that has been used or developed inappropriately, overcompensation for something that is lacking or something the seeker would like to see fixed. If the reversed card is a Court Card, then that may signify a troubled relationship with someone close to the seeker. For the advanced reader, this additional interpretation of the cards can be very fulfilling and intriguing.

Looking at the daily horoscope has become routine for many people. They use their horoscopes to make major decisions in their lives. There is a problem with this logic. Often horoscopes are too vague to do anyone any good. There is an answer that means a more personalized conjecture about your past, present and future. That answer is in tarot cards. These cards can be easy to learn and you can have a deck right in the comfort of your own home. There is no need to consult a psychic to get a reading.

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