Being a tarot beginner or learning how to read tarot cards is hard enough. First of all, you have to learn all the tarot card meanings for 78 different cards and then you’re supposed to try to read them in a complicated tarot spread like the Celtic Cross.
No way! Learning tarot doesn’t have to be so hard. Keep reading (or watch this video) to learn a few simple and easy tarot spreads for beginners.
Want more tarot videos like this one? Click here.
When you’re a tarot beginner there’s plenty to learn. You don’t need to make it more complicated on yourself by trying to learn complicated tarot spreads like the traditional Celtic Cross Spread.
While the Celtic Cross Spread is the classic tarot spread and you will work your way up to it over time, it’s far easier if you start with smaller tarot spreads that only have one, two, three, or maybe four cards.
My absolute favorite tarot spread of all time for beginners, for myself, for professional tarot readers, and for everyone is the simple three card spread.
It’s fantastic for beginners, but there are other tarot spreads that are great for beginners that I love as well.
The first is just a simple one card spread, which there’s only one card I don’t know if you can call it a spread, but it’s really useful as a daily draw.
The daily draw is basically pulling one card a day and then writing it down in your tarot journal some thoughts about what that card is saying. When doing a daily draw, you are usually asking a question like, “what do I need to know today?” or “what is the energy of today?”
Then the next day you do it again, with a different card of course, but you also review your journal entry from the day before and see how that card or the card’s energy played out through the previous day.
It’s a great way to build your tarot understanding of the card meanings, and to really have a regular tarot practice because you’re doing it every single day.
So another great way to read a single tarot card is with a Yes-No question. So you can ask the tarot anything, but come up with a really good question that could be answered with a yes or a no. And then pull your one card and see if that energy of the card feels like to you it’s a positive energy, which reads as yes, or something more negative which reads as no.
And finally, a third way to read a single card spread is to think of binary questions. So the Yes-No one card spread is an example of a binary question. There’s really only two answers, right? There’s a yes and there’s a no. But there are other ways to ask a binary question like, “should I drive to Philadelphia or Boston?”
Draw a single card and depending on what the card is and how it reads, you will know whether you’re supposed to go to Boston or Philadelphia. Well, that’s kind of a terrible example, but just think of binary questions, a single card is a really good way to get some more information and to solve those.
Moving on from the one card spread, we’ll add a second card. So two card spreads are actually really common, too. You can ask it as a one card spread, and then pull the second card later to get more clarification about your answer. Or you can lay the two cards out at the same time.
Some common layouts for the two cards spread include the Them-Me Spread if it’s a relationship, With this layout, you’re looking for information about them, and information about you, or their feelings and your feelings, their background and your background, etc.
Another one is the Past-Present Spread. You don’t need to read predictively to use this spread. You can just look at past and present. But you can also read that as a Past-Future Spread, if you choose to read in a divination way.
Finally, one of my favorites is the Now-Next Spread, because I just love actionable tarot spreads. So one of the cards represents Now, and what is the situation right now. The other card represents a Next Action Step you can take to move forward.
So reading one card is great. Expanding to two cards really helps. But after you get comfortable reading one and two cards together, now you’re ready to go to three cards.
And reading three cards is really where you get to practice finding that “thread” of the story, that narrative line that goes through the story in the cards. And with three cards, you can read the story as beginning, middle and end.
If you are looking for more complicated tarot spreads, searching on Pinterest is my favorite source for finding new tarot spreads. Just search for “tarot for love” or “tarot for writers” and you’re going to get an overwhelming abundance of tarot spreads there that you can practice and play with.
No matter what spreads you’re using, don’t make it harder than it needs to be. Remember that learning and using tarot is FUN, and the more fun you make it, the easier everything will be.