A tarot card’s meaning will change and adapt to your readings depending on the focus of your question and the surrounding cards. If your question is about health, for instance, the card’s message will carry a different tone than if you are asking about romance.
In a health-related reading, a card from the suit of cups may indicate that the querent needs to drink more water or suggest possible issues involving bodily fluids. For a love reading, these same cards would indicate emotions that need to be addressed. Keeping this in mind, you will begin to see how the cards always adapt to the question at hand.
When you perform a reading, the meanings and messages will continue to evolve with each new card you draw. Like an unfolding story, the combination of certain cards will bring a clear message into focus.
Let’s say that a querent would like to know more about a man she recently met and whether he is interested in her romantically. The first card you pull is the Magician. This could be read as someone who can bring magic into her life or someone very accomplished at whatever he does. However, if the second card is the Devil, this changes the Magician’s meaning: these two cards together indicate that this man may be untrustworthy or deceptive. If the third card in the layout is the Three of Cups (a card that typically portrays three women dancing), you might suspect that he is seeing more than one woman at a time. This is important information for your querent to know, especially if she has started to develop serious feelings for him.
On the other hand, let’s say that after drawing the Magician, you pull the Ace of Cups and the Ten of Cups. These cards would cast a more positive view on her new boyfriend and the connection between them, and indicate the start of a loving and enduring relationship.
When certain groupings of cards appear, they will clearly affirm or contradict the question being asked. For example, a querent might wonder if his or her daughter is pregnant. In this case, the reader would watch for mother-related cards such as the Empress, the Three of Pentacles (an internment or the start of a new experience), the Queen of Pentacles (a female holding a Pentacle, representing a baby in her arms or womb), and the Sun (usually depicting a small child riding a horse). If the person in question is not pregnant, none of these cards would appear in the reading.
The following is a simple and practical way to obtain the answer to a yes or no question. Once you have received the answer, you can study the cards to see how their message evolves as each card is laid out:
Yes and No Reading
This is a great layout to obtain an instant answer, after which you can go back to get more information. Focus on a question that can be answered with a yes or a no while you shuffle, and then pull five cards from the deck. Count all Major Arcana and all even Minor Arcana cards as a yes. Count all court cards and all odd Minor Arcana cards as a no. Once you’ve determined whether the answer is a yes or no, review each card’s individual meaning for more information about the situation.
For an article on how to get started reading Tarot, check out Tarot 101.
The above is an excerpt from Susyn’s new book, Tarot Prediction and Divination: Unveiling Three Layers of Meaning, which is available at llewellyn.com. Susyn Blair-Hunt (Albuquerque, NM) is internationally known for her psychic Tarot and astrology readings. A professional metaphysical consultant for over twenty years, Susan is a featured columnist for Kajama.com where she provides daily, weekly and birthday horoscopes. She also contributes to Kajama’s weekly advice column, Double Vision. Susyn was recently named one of the top female psychics on the Internet. For information on her readings, select the Reading Options menu at the top of this page.