Concepts
Tarot concepts: learning to read the cards
Tarot concepts are landmarks for reading well: reversed cards, laying out a spread, looking at a single card.
By Thomas Guilhot · updated
5 concepts
To read on your own
- Reversed cardsWhether to read reversed cards: the four readings of a reversal, one card read four ways, and what to do with a card that comes up upside down.
- How to draw the cardsShuffle, cut, choose, lay out: the steps of a tarot reading, and what each layout lets you look at.
- Reading a cardRead a card from its image, its number, and its position in the spread, without a memorized dictionary of meanings.
- Elements and suitsWands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles: the four suits, their elements according to tradition, and how they answer each other.
- History of tarotFrom the Italian card game of the 15th century to the readings of the late 18th century, then the Rider-Waite of 1909: the key stages.