The Complete Tarot Reader: Everything You Need to Know from Start to Finish [Paperback]

Teresa Michelsen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 8, 2005

Teresa Michelsen's self-study programme helps students develop a long-lasting, intuitive approach to Tarot reading. Instead of memorising standard card meanings and spreads, readers are encouraged to use their own life experiences and knowledge to craft a personal understanding of the cards. Included are study goals, progress activities, and easy exercises for exploring the suits, court cards, major arcane, and a variety of reading techniques.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Teresa Michelsen is a tarot reader and instructor with more than 25 years of experience reading tarot. She is well-known on the tarot e-mail lists under her reading name of Thrysse, and has published many articles on tarot on the worldwide web and in ATA publications. Teresa teaches on-line tarot courses for beginning and intermediate readers, and has published her first book on Designing your Own Tarot Spreads in 2002. Her award-winning tarot website, www.tarotmoon.com, is a favorite destination of tarot readers who come for her lessons and articles on tarot, her examples of completed tarot readings, and beautifully laid-out pages on tarot cards and readings. Teresa lives near Seattle, Washington, and in addition to her tarot work, has home-based businesses in environmental consulting and mediation.

See Teresa's website below for more information on her online Tarot classes!

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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Intuitive Tarot Reading Study Goals 1. Become familiar with the appearance of each card in the deck. 2. Identify important symbols on the cards that contribute to their meanings. 3. Develop concepts and keywords for each card using your intuition.

Once you have become acquainted with the basic meanings for the tarot cards, it is helpful to go deeper into the cards and peryour understanding of them according to your own intuition and life experiences. It is one thing to read and mema list of keywords, and another to firmly root these ideas into your subconscious so that you don't have to struggle to rethem during a reading. Also, some of the meanings you find in books may not work for you, and you will want to add ideas of your own. Each person is unique, and in a sense, our minds act like translators. Information is being conveyed through the tarot reading, using the tools, or the cards, that we have available. Because this information is presented to us in the form of symbols, both our conscious and subconscious minds are involved in interpreting the information. Therefore, our own personal associations are important in how we read our cards.

Every tarot reader does not need to learn the same card meanings or use the same decks or spreads. Three tarot readers could ask the same question, and might choose difspreads and receive different cards in the reading, and still get the same answer. The cards that each reader receives will be appropriate for his or her own personal assoand, with experience and practice, will lead to the right answer. The tarot itself will also teach you over time what its symbols represent-you will notice that certain cards appear in certain circumstances, and your list of associations and meanings will expand as you begin to see these patterns.

One of the most basic rules in tarot reading is to have confidence in your own assowith the cards. Do not let anyone else tell you that you have to interpret a card a certain way. Use your own ideas, along with everything else you learn from others, and you can feel certain that you will receive the right cards for your own mind to draw the appropriate interpretations. In working through the exercises in this chapter, try not to be concerned about whether your thoughts are wrong or right. There is no wrong. Even if you later decide to use a different set of meanings for a card, it is important to know what your subconscious mind spontaneously associates with the images you see on the cards, to know what filters you may be applying to your interpretations. One of the reasons this chapter comes before the other chapters that provide more systematic information, is that intuitive associations come from the subconscious and are easily overridden by conscious learning. In order to hear your inner voice more clearly, it is better to try this while you are still relatively free of what you think the cards should mean.

Also, it's a good idea to remain flexible as you learn more and more. It is okay to leave behind previous ideas if you decide they no longer fit your understanding of the cards. You will also encounter new ideas from time to time that you will want to incorinto your interpretation. As you continue exploring the tarot, you will discover many interesting related areas, like astrology, numerology, psychology, alchemy, mythol. . . there is a never-ending realm of ideas to encounter and new things to add to your understanding. Keep things simple as you get started, but never limit yourself to just a few keywords for each card, or you will be missing out on much that the tarot has to offer. You may also find that your ideas and keywords for each card vary from deck to deck.

This chapter provides some ideas on how to develop intuitive card meanings. The rest of this book will give you a great deal of information on the underlying structure of the cards, such as the meanings of the numbers, suits, cycles represented by the suits and trumps, symbols you may see in the cards, astrological and elemental associations, and other things that provide you with a deeper understanding of the cards and the relabetween them. However, most experienced tarot readers agree that the first step in learning a new deck is to put away your books and look closely at the images-so we'll start there.

Free Association For the exercises that follow, clear your mind of whatever you have already learned and set aside your books and notes. There are no right answers, and you will have plenty of time later to study what others have to say about the cards. Use the cards only in their upright positions. Since the reversed meanings of the cards generally follow from their upright positions, we will discuss those once the upright positions have been mastered. Use your tarot journal to record your observations.

exercise 1: getting to know the cards Shuffle your deck thoroughly, and then take the cards out and look at them one by one, always in an upright position. Without thinking too much about it, write down your first impressions of each card. What thoughts or emotions does the card immediately evoke? Next, look closely at each card. Notice all the details in the card-the background, any people in the card, or any animals, plants, buildings, symbols, colors, and expresHow do you think they relate to the meaning of the card? Do they support or change your first impressions? You may want to take note of any unfamiliar symbols, or anything in the card whose meaning...(Continues)

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Llewellyn Publications (April 8, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0738704342
• ISBN-13: 978-0738704340
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #395,999 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Teresa Michelsen is a tarot reader, author, and teacher with more than 25 years of experience reading and teaching tarot. Teresa is the webmistress of the ComparativeTarot discussion list, teaches on-line tarot courses for beginning and intermediate tarot readers, published her first book on Designing your Own Tarot Spreads in 2003, and published The Complete Tarot Reader in 2005, both with Llewellyn. Teresa lives in Olympia, Washington, USA and in addition to her tarot work, has home-based businesses in environmental consulting and mediation. She loves traveling, blogging, reading, gaming, cooking, birding, kayaking, and is interested in organic foods and sustainability issues, microlending, and health care reform.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent addition to the tarot literature, March 20, 2005

By 

Dr. Suz (Watertown, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Tarot Reader: Everything You Need to Know from Start to Finish (Paperback)

This book is a valuable resource and a delightful read as well! The author writes as she teaches - engagingly and openly - in a friendly, down-to-earth way. The book itself is invitingly organized and is paced nicely, plus its appendices reveal aspects of cards i'd never considered before. On my shelf, it will join Mary K. Greer's books (Tarot for Your Self, Complete Book of Tarot Reversals, and Understanding the Tarot Court - with T. Little), Bunning's Learning the Tarot, and Kliegman's Tarot and the Tree of Life.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the best!, May 23, 2007

By 

taaj (VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Complete Tarot Reader: Everything You Need to Know from Start to Finish (Paperback)

I have been a card reader for 28 years. This book is by far the best thing I've come across in all that time. It is simple to understand and clear. It covers important basic aspects with depth. What more could you want?

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect, April 24, 2011

By 

Azreala - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Tarot Reader: Everything You Need to Know from Start to Finish (Paperback)

This book is perfect for me. It is casuing me to really think about the meaning of the cards and to go beyond the basic meanings. Before this book I did give readings and I did look up the basic meanings but when i put everything together to get the whole answer i very rarly went by only the basic readings. I may be under 20, but this book is very helpful. Some of the exercises are long but its worth it. This book is a must have in my opinion.