deepening your tarot practice

hello, friends. a question i've been getting a lot lately is how to make tarot feel more personal: to deepen that relationship beyond the basics, to speak the language of the cards fluently, to have a richer or more expansive connection with the tarot. and while i've been talking a lot about various techniques to connect with your deck and ground your practice over on my CARD TALK podcast, i also wanted to share some of my personal favorite ways to deepen my practice with you.

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now, on deepening your personal tarot practice.

if you want to deepen your tarot practice, i would ask first: what does deepening your tarot practice actually mean to you? what are you looking for? how would your practice, deeper, look?

some folks mean that they want more consistency in their practice: a steady, regular ritual of reading; a reliable routine around tarot that provides daily intimacy and reliable, intentional connection. other times, people want their meanings to be deeper: for their card definitions to go beyond standard keywords or feel more personally connected to their own lives, stories, experiences, and interests. deepening a practice could mean longer readings, using bigger spreads or more cards than they have before. it could mean layering in additional correspondences, using understandings of numbers or planets or gemstones or herbs or music to add new layers of significance to the tarot. and of course, some folks want to go pro, and may feel that a "deeper personal practice" is needed to support their professional tarot work.

your tarot practice is your own, so deepening that practice could look a number of different ways. but as i've been talking about lately (and as my dear friend theresa reed wrote about recently too), the line between beginner and advanced tarot techniques is quite blurry. what feels simple and intuitive for you might feel complex and challenging for someone else — and the reverse is also true. tarot spreads feel rich and engaging for me, but others feel deeply constricted by them, or horribly confused by them. reading reversals is something i've never included in my practice, but i've had readings with plenty of readings who find powerful nuance in this technique, and interpret them in many different ways.

techniques themselves, like clarifying cards, reversals, significators, tarot spreads, correspondence sets, using multiple decks simultaneously, or whatever else, aren't necessarily inherently beginner-friendly or only for advanced readers. it's all in how you use them, which means that any of them can be utilized for deepening your practice.

all of this is to say that the way that you deepen your practice, and the studies or techniques that you use to do so, depends entirely on how you want to deepen that practice.

i've got a few different CARD TALK episodes coming out in the next few weeks that offer various techniques for building personal card meanings, expanding your tarot practice, and making the cards your own. but here are a few of my personal favorite ways to connect with the cards: things that i do in my own practice to deepen my relationship with the deck, explore the cards more intuitively, and strengthen my own capacity for listening to the messages the cards offer.

archetype studies: when i feel disconnected from the cards, when i want to go deep or explore a new direction, i love to do an archetype study. i have different ways of choosing the archetype i work with: sometimes this is tied to a spirit or planet or star i want to work with, other times it's an energy i want to deliberately step into or embody, still other times it's a card that i simply want to understand better. but working closely with a specific, single archetype almost always has the result of drastically expanding my perspective on the card, helping me find aspects of that archetype within myself, and feeling a deeper connection to the deck as a whole.

(psssst: i am planning to bring back one of my most expansive, experiential tarot archetype courses very soon, so if this is up your alley, keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming announcement!)

collaborative readings: i know that the practice of reading with other people isn't for everyone, but whenever i pull cards with my brilliant partner, chosen family, local community, or digital friends, i learn something new. i love hearing how people i trust see the cards, how they interpret combinations, and whatever wisdom they can pass along to me. collaborative readings consistently excite and delight me, especially when they challenge me to look at a card in a completely different or unexpected way. and chatting with folks in our community discord server about cards and questions invariably leads to new resources, new perspectives, and new mindsets, helping me consider aspects of the tarot that i may never have thought about otherwise.

earlier this week, i spent time with my beloved co-hosts from CALL YOUR COVEN, and we pulled some cards together. even though we only read a few cards at a time, there was so much to unpack and explore, so much to discuss, so much to share. tarot readings don't have to be long in order to be meaningful, especially when you're working through them with folks you adore.

and lastly, telling your story: sometimes tarot feels really big, which means that it can feel hard to connect to. archetypes with antiquated names, court cards built around monarchies, even imagery or depictions that don't feel relatable can make the deck feel like it has nothing to do with me, right now, and the struggles that i feel and witness. when this is how i feel, i pick a few consecutive cards (i.e. cards that follow one another in a linear or numerical fashion) and find my story within them. or, i pay attention to cards that have been coming up lately, and use them to tell my story.

what does that mean? lately, the eight, nine, and ten of swords have been coming up a lot for me, both in my own pulls and in collective readings that i listen to. it's happened too frequently to feel coincidental, so i've been sitting with these cards, thinking about what part of me they reflect right now. and while i'm not going to turn this into a tarot journal entry, i will say that i've found a lot of meaning and support in this little mini-study of these three cards: revelations about my own assumptions, my own role as a teacher and perpetual student, and truths that are emerging around what my next big steps are.

for me, deepening my tarot practice means many things. it's not a single study, a single course, a single technique, or a single action: it's a long-term commitment to listening to my cards, learning new things, and challenging my own perceptions.

i would invite you, if you're craving more depth in your own practice, to get really specific about what that looks like for you — and then to be honest with yourself about what practice, resource, or investment might facilitate that growth. journaling, self-study, taking a self-paced course? collaborative readings, creating a study group, joining a tarot-centric community? diving into new techniques, new resources, new perspectives? or going deeper with techniques, resources, and perspectives that are already familiar, ones that might be worth another look?

how can you make your tarot practice truly your own? what does that look like?

thanks for being here! if you love my tarot spreads and writings, don't miss this rare chance to snag a discounted gold annual subscription right now:

and if you want to work with me on a more consistent basis, the best way to do that right now is my joining my signature membership program, the 3am.tarot conservatory. i've just added a brand new resource called card connections, and will also be adding in additional courses before the year ends, so there's never been a better time to join and deepen your practice in whatever way suits you: