reading tarot for yourself is hard, actually

...and we should talk about it more.

hello, friends. for day two of five days of offerings, we're going to talk about the challenges of reading tarot for yourself — and i'm also going to offer some tips and tricks that can make this work just a little bit easier. but beyond that, i also want to share a discount for anyone who loves the free version of this newsletter and wants a bit more, in the form of more tarot spreads, more resources, and more opportunities to connect with fellow tarot readers. get a discount on your new monthly gold subscription for the next 6 months, and join us in the 3am.tarot discord server to find folks to connect with for reading exchanges, card studies, and daily connection:

now, let's talk tarot reading.

almost everyone i know, including my clients and students as well as my peers and fellow tarot teachers, learned tarot in part by learning to do readings for themselves. and it makes sense — so many of us found tarot because we wanted support, or a tool for reflection, or affirmation via divination, or spiritual companionship. tarot can do so many things, but for a lot of folks, it's primarily a vehicle for readings: i.e. asking the cards a question that we believe they can answer, then pulling cards and interpreting those cards as answers from another source.

and here's the thing that we do not talk about nearly enough: reading tarot for yourself is actually pretty challenging.

it's not impossible! it's not a bad thing to want to do! it's not silly! but it is harder than i think we give it credit for. and i want to talk about that reality, if only to affirm your feelings or your guilt or your challenges or whatever you may be carrying around about struggling to read for yourself, having trouble with certain cards, or other hurdles you may be navigating when you try to have a vulnerable conversation with the tarot.

you're not "doing it wrong" — it's just hard. and i think we do tarot readers of all levels a disservice when we pretend that it isn't.

in general, doing a tarot reading for yourself involves a few key steps:

the first is deciding what you want to ask the cards. what are you looking for? what are you craving? what are you trying to figure out? what do you want insights around? this isn't just about the content of the question ("i can't find my keys") but also about what you want to receive ("tell me where my keys are"). sometimes we want facts or truths or information that we might consider objective ("literally where are my keys?") while other times we might be hoping for deeper insights or perspective on why or how something is happening ("why is it so hard for me to keep track of my keys?").

figuring out what you want to ask the cards is essential, because it's only once we know what we're hoping to receive that we can actually write a proper and effective question. how you phrase and frame your question is impacted not only by what you want to receive (advice, encouragement, insights, truths, support, reminders, or something else) but also by what you believe the tarot is capable of providing.

your beliefs about what tarot is, and what tarot can do, and how it works, and why it works, are essential to this part of the process. and a lot of early-stage tarot readers skip this step, rushing to ask the cards a question without considering what they believe the cards can know or give as an answer.

in a lot of my beginner-friendly tarot resources, including my books, i put a lot of emphasis on this point — because it's only logical to recognize what you think the cards can do before you start asking them for things! if you don't believe that the tarot can predict the future, maybe because you see the future as an amorphous uncertainty that simply cannot be predicted, then you shouldn't ask the cards if a specific thing going to happen for certain. that makes no sense! how would the cards know something that you don't think can be known, or something that you don't believe the cards can know?

and even if you do believe that the tarot can predict the future — do you think you can properly and clearly assess what they're telling you with 100% accuracy? do you think it's your business what will happen? how do you think that hearing the cards tell you that something will happen might impact you? do you actually want to know that?

simply formulating a question to ask the cards requires a lot of curiosity, self-investigation, and honesty, when we do it properly. it is worth recognizing this truth, and also acknowledging how much work goes into this first but critical step.

so maybe you're tired. maybe you opt to make things a little easier for yourself, to not get too specific, to stay general rather than doing a ton of internal investigation to formulate a question. maybe you just decide to ask the cards something general like what do i need to know today? or what's the vibe right now?

regardless of the simplicity of the question, of how general you keep your queries, you've still gotta interpret whatever answer the deck gives you. of course, there are steps in-between the asking and the interpreting too — shuffling and drawing and choosing techniques like reversals, deciding how many cards you're going to pull, figuring out if you want to use a spread or not, etc — but even without getting into all of that, the interpretation is the part of reading that can be really tough to figure out or get comfortable with.

in a reading the tarot is offering you an answer, in the form of a card, using their own language of visuals and meaning and story and correspondence. knowing what the cards are saying to you, what they are trying to communicate in response to your question, is not as simple as having some standardized keywords memorized. that's not to say that the cards aren't ever super straightforward, or that those keywords you know aren't ever applicable. but it is to say that keywords are just a starting point, and that you are the other part of the magical equation that makes tarot readings "work."

interpretation is the part of reading that i get the most questions about, the most requests for resources and support around. and i get it.

you have to be able to assess what the cards are saying to you, in their language, as a response to the question you asked. and while your relationship with the cards matters, your ability to objectively hear and understand and internal that answer also matters. you bring your experience, your insight, your emotions, your intuition, and your ability to translate the messages from the cards into every single reading you do.

no wonder this shit is hard. no wonder we sometimes have readings where we get frustrated or confused, where we get our feelings hurt, where we wonder why the cards can't just be clear, where it feels like it's our very first tarot reading even if it's not. no wonder we might feel like we're "bad at reading tarot" when we're actually just craving something that makes sense. especially if we're feeling tender or scared or anxious, a confusing tarot reading can make us feel worse than before we started.

sometimes we just need what we need, and want the cards to affirm that what we think we need is actually possible, or good, or something. sometimes we just want a little comfort, instead of a whole mess of meanings to untangle.

i could talk about a lot of things right now: about overwhelm, about burnout, about how little time and energy so many of us have, about the challenges of authenticity, about what discernment looks like, about why the prioritization of objectivity is kind of white supremacist ideal, and probably many other things. but i know that what you really actually want to know is:

how do i actually get good at doing tarot readings for myself?

firstly: practice. yes, duh, of course. you gotta try. you gotta play around with questions and formats and techniques and spreads. you gotta give yourself some readings that don't exactly make sense and try not to take it too personally. you gotta keep doing it, again and again, and build up those skills one reading at a time.

but also, building relationships. learning the language of tarot beyond keywords. personal experiences and connections that you tie back into specific cards or groups of cards or elements or cycles or stories. reading for other people, when you can, when they're open to it. letting other people read for you, when you need help, when you're able to receive. journaling and research and looking at lots of tarot decks and reading about how other people interpret cards. using tarot for other shit besides divination.

yes, wanting to read tarot and have the tarot give you answers or advice or tell you you're pretty or that it's all gonna work out is what brought many of us to the cards. and wanting to connect to something bigger, something greater, to use the cards in spiritual relationships or to talk with ancestors or to see the future — these are all super real and powerful ways to work tarot. it's all good to focus on readings, but you can also (and i would argue, should also) do other stuff. the other stuff is also part of building the relationship. you can use tarot for creative inspiration, for personal study, for embodiment, for conversation starters, for building characters or worlds, for crafting playlists or recipes or fragrances, for journaling, chatting with friends, or for whatever else you come up with.

getting to know the tarot, through readings and through just spending time together, takes time, and effort, and energy, and commitment. these are not things that can be sped through or hacked or whatever other productivity-mindset-phrase comes to mind.

ultimately, tarot is not about efficiency. there are methods for receiving fast, easy, crystal clear, guaranteed answers from the tarot — but i personally don't really think that this is tarot's primary or most powerful function. (if your only priority is quick information, i would suggest you check out other tools or other divination systems that are built for yes/no answers and clear timings.) tarot wants us to sit in relationship with it, to have a conversation, to make room for uncertainty and discovery and weird connections. tarot wants us to not know things, to live in questions, and to discover what not knowing something means.

consider that you could pull the same two cards every day for a month and find different meanings in that pair each time. consider that people spend a lifetime studying archetypes and still find new meanings within them. consider that tarot has endless sets of correspondences and associations, and also that you can just make your own. (where do you think those so-called standardized ones came from? somebody just made them up! so can you!)

tarot is ever-changing. it's a constantly moving target. it is always revealing new parts of itself to us. and the better you get at listening, the more fluent you become in its language, the deeper you dive into individual cards through study and curiosity, the more your readings are going to feel clear, true, and accurate.

and, also, reading with and for other people can truly make reading for yourself a little bit easier, without constantly hurting your own feelings with confusing readings.

in my annual reader survey i had so many folks asking for me to host reading exchanges or meetups for people to practice reading together. and it makes sense to crave this — practicing reading for one another is a really practical and useful way to get better at reading tarot, and will ultimately make your personal readings more powerful and clear too.

i am working on a monthly virtual reading meetup that i plan to launch in 2026 — (stay tuned!) but you don't actually need me to host something like this. you can start trying to put something together on your own, right now, if you want to. here are a few suggestions for ways this could look:

-chaos group chat: grab a pal or two and set up a specific text thread on your favorite messaging app that's designated for tarot pulls. everyone should commit to offering to pull cards for your pals whenever it feels good, and talking about what you each see in the cards together when you can. if you're commitment-phobic or don't want to do a consistent thing, this is an easy way to start reading with and for friends, based on when your energy is there for it.

-regular IRL meetup: got an in-person friend or two with similar goals and interests? choose a coffee shop, tea shop, bar, park, somebody's home, or wherever else and pick a weekly (or bi-weekly, or monthly, or whatever) day to meet up and pull cards for each other. readings can be whatever you like, but i would encourage you to keep them simple — everyone using the same spread, or everyone doing a simple three-card reading. collaborate on interpretations, share what you each see, and be open to surprises.

-regular zoom: don't have in-person pals, but know some digital folks who wanna practice and support each other? or, wanna find a COVID-safe, lower-energetic-cost way to do video readings? make a standing virtual date with friends and do readings together.

-reading exchange buddy: we don't all have tarot friends already — which is why digital tarot spaces can be a great way to meet new people. you can find tarot friends on social media, and you can also find tarot friends in my discord server, which is open to everyone with a paid newsletter subscription. (scroll to the bottom for a discount on monthly gold membership for new subscribers!) we've got a channel just for exchanging readings, and you can also post a reading you want help with, ask about specific cards, or offer suggestions to others.

there are many iterations of this, and you can also combine ideas of mine or your own to do something that makes sense for you and your life. you could find a group and pull a card for each person and read them all together; you could create a reading meeting at your local bookshop or library that is open to many, you could have a digital meetup with folks who pair off, literally whatever you want to do! the world is your oyster! the sky is the limit!

my suggestions regardless of format: make sure to keep the lines of communication wide open with the folks you're reading with, and to do your best to be honest and real about what you'd love to do together as well as your capacity. i'll also remind you to to stay flexible, as these spaces or relationships might shift as you read together.

reading tarot for yourself is hard, but it does get easier the more you do it — and the more you find ways to connect with tarot beyond readings themselves.

thank you for reading, for being here, for loving the tarot. i've got lots of free and paid resources on my website, and if you'd love to work with someone one-on-one to expand your tarot practice as we approach the new year, don't forget that i offer personalized mentorships — click here to learn more and apply to work with me.

i'll be back again tomorrow with another essay, offer, and set of tarot spreads, and the in meantime, stay brave and stay true.