Better Practices for Your Practice | Crystal Seed Tarot Blog

Introduction

When we first begin studying and practicing Tarot, there can be an overwhelming amount of information we come across, and not all of it is good. We can be steered in many misguided directions unfortunately, or may be given advice about how to work with Tarot which may more be rooted in superstition than the reality of how energy works. Hopefully, with the right amount of practice, experience, and better guidance, we can find our way to better information and practices, but it takes time, discernment, and development to get there.

Often, we may find that although we adopt certain practices when we first start doing Tarot, they may need some revision after we have gained more experience working with the cards. Once we have worked with the cards for a while, we may find that some things we were told or read when we were first learning may not have been good advice, or doesn’t actually work for us, or make sense, etc. As we grow as Tarot readers, our practice needs to grow and change just as we do in our development. We may need to update our practices to harness a better foundation on which to build the next layers and levels of understanding of how to work with the cards. In all psychic work, we need to develop our discernment in every possible way, including discerning which parts of our practices serve us and which parts may not.

Misconceptions

With that said, here are some common misconceptions I would like to clear up about Tarot which I provide in the hopes that it may help you have an updated foundation for your own practice should you need. If nothing else, it’s important to know that you can adapt and change your practice over the years as needed. To demonstrate this, I will identify what I’ll refer to as “gen. one” (i.e. generation one) practices and “gen. two” (generation two) practices for Tarot. Much like our smartphones and computers need updates, our Tarot practices can need them too, especially when we are in our first few years of learning.

1. Coming into ownership of your deck
Gen. 1 misconception: You must be gifted your deck.
Gen. 2 better practice: You can gift yourself a deck.

If I had waited to be gifted a deck, I never would have started doing Tarot and that was almost twenty years ago now. If you are called to do Tarot, then by all means, DO TAROT! I think the concept of being gifted a deck is an older tradition that doesn’t necessarily apply to our current day and age anymore. I fully believe in taking destiny into your own hands and buying your own deck, and we wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t. Also, now that I do Tarot, people buy me decks all the time.

2. Storing and caring for your cards
Gen. 1 misconception: You must store your cards in a silk cloth.
Gen. 2 better practice: Store your cards in whatever feels best to you.

There are many ways to take care of your cards and store them safely, but I often see people suggest that a silk cloth is best for card storage. I don’t use a silk cloth, and personally could not deal with silk for a few reasons; 1. Silk does not travel well, 2. It’s easy to snag, and 3. It’s not very durable or protective in my opinion.

I have used the same purple, white, and red cotton scarf to wrap and store my cards in for the entire time I’ve done Tarot. I feel like cotton is more durable and breathable for energy, and I often like to use the square shaped scarf to actually do the readings on, that way every ounce of magic that comes through any of my readings is on that scarf, and it can somewhat help hold the energy better for all of the readings I give. I think of the space in which I give a reading as kind of an energy container or portal to the universe, so this scarf helps create that “container” or “portal” in a way. It also adds a protective element so that I am not laying my cards on just a bare table as there could be something dirty or sticky on it (this is especially important to keep in mind if you are doing Tarot out and about, at other people’s houses, restaurants, etc.).

You can also get very nice boxes to keep cards in, and if that is your preference, there’s nothing wrong with that. For me, I like a cozier scarf situation for my cards, as I feel like a wooden box may be rather cold for my cards, but wood does hold energy very well without suffocating it.

3. Bringing your cards with you everywhere you go
Gen. 1 misconception: You should bring your cards with you everywhere you go to become closer to them and allow them to absorb your energy more.
Gen. 2 better practice: Don’t bring your cards with you everywhere you go because you can ruin your cards that way/you won’t always want your cards to absorb the energy going on around you.

I tried this practice when I was just starting out and I would say that after about three years of this, I realized that my cards deserve better and I needed to treat them with more respect. While I did carry my cards around with me in my purse and thought it was so cool to get to do people’s Tarot at any time any place I was whenever the mood struck me, at some point, I realized that I didn’t always want my cards to pick up the energy of where I was at. I started feeling bad for taking my cards to stand in line at the post office, taking them to boring work every day, and taking them to various bars and clubs I would go to back in my music playing days. The last straw was leaving my purse where I thought was a safe location while I was playing an outdoor show during which it rained. I’m sure you can guess what happened: my cards got wet and I had to buy a new deck. From then on, I left my cards at home in a designated spot where they could be happy, honored, and protected.

You don’t constantly need to be around your cards 24/7 to bond with them energetically – you just need to practice using them on many different people to develop your relationship with them. Dragging them around with you everywhere you go can invite bad energy or bad things to happen to them accidentally. We also don’t need them everywhere we go, and should only interact with them when we are ready to actually use them. There is no point in dragging our Tarot deck around with us to various other parts of our lives which have nothing to do with Tarot. We should mix our cards with the spiritual, psychic, healing, meditative parts of our lives, not parts of our lives that may carry a very opposite or unhelpful energy.

4. Letting other people touch your cards
Gen. 1 misconception: You should never let another person touch your cards.
Gen. 2 better practice: You should let other people touch your cards as you want their energy on the cards so that you can read it.

To each his own, and if you prefer not having people touch your cards, that’s fine, but either way, what I know from my experience and practice is that Tarot works best when you allow the other person’s energy to affect the cards. So, whether the other person physically shuffles your cards or just sends their energy to the cards while you shuffle and they tell you when to stop shuffling, their energy needs to be included in the process somehow. Anytime I have gotten a reading or seen another reading done where the reader is the only person who was shuffling or who decided what cards to pull without the other person’s energy invited in somehow, it’s a reading that tends to fall flat and not really resonate the way it should. Inviting the other person’s energy into the reading via having them shuffle or sending their energy while you shuffle and them telling you when to stop shuffling provides the right energetic imprint on the cards that you need there to be able to really give a proper Tarot reading to another person. Without this, the reading is usually disjointed or overly generalized, and doesn’t produce the truly healing results that it should.

The benefits of this are not just that the other person’s energy will show up far greater in the cards, but also that you have now involved the person you’re reading for in their own reading in a very tangible way. I think for Tarot to work to the full extent that it can and should work (and produce mind-blowingly healing readings) you want to invite the person you’re reading for to be an active participant in their reading. The more engaged they are in their own reading, the better you can read for them and they can participate as well, and the better you can set an energetic communal space for the two of you to go through the reading together. As Tarot readers, we should not be the “gate-keepers” of the cards, but rather the tour guides who take their clients along on a beautiful journey to themselves.

Letting our clients shuffle or tell us when to stop shuffling is also extremely empowering to the person you’re reading for, and ultimately helps connect them to their own reading making them much more open to being read. This is also more legit looking to your client and even a bit more mind blowing since they shuffled, and you are now telling them extremely accurate and personal information about their life. If you are the only person shuffling or deciding when to stop shuffling for the other person, the cards run the risk of having more of your energy on them than the person you’re reading for, which makes for a muddled energy that may not translate as well or make as much sense.

5. Resetting your deck
Gen. 1 misconception: You should reset your deck by turning cards all upright before a reading.
Gen. 2 better practice: You should let the cards and the energy go where they want.

While I recall running into this advice when I was first learning Tarot, I didn’t align with it and would only really reset the cards by flipping them all upright if I found that the cards had become heavily reversed for several readings in a row maybe once every few months or so (and even then, I would flip them all upright and would then shuffle them immediately in ways that would reverse a decent portion of them again). I felt the need to honor and accept reversals fully, and felt as though this practice of uprighting all of the cards and then leaving it that way was somewhat of an attempt to control the energy or the cards. I can’t say I continued this practice of uprighting all the cards really and haven’t done that for probably over a decade now, and find that honoring reversals and the energy of the cards the way I do by letting them do whatever they need or want to makes for consistently accurate, authentic, and validating information in readings.

There are many good ways to reset the energy of your cards which don’t involve ensuring that they are all facing one way or another. My preferred method and the one I do before any day of readings is to cleanse the cards (and myself) with Palo Santo by letting the smoke reset the energy of each card one by one, front and back. After I’ve cleansed each card, I drop them at random face down on my Tarot cloth until all of them are clean and the energy reset. After they’re all face down on the cloth, I swirl them at random, until I eventually make them back into cohesive pile again. I would then shuffle them several times also before giving a reading, and would then let the person I’m reading for shuffle them for their reading.

Other ways that you can reset your cards would be to cleanse them with sage or incense, or set them out in the moonlight (preferably on a full moon), but it’s important to do this inside your home through a window and not leave your cards outside and vulnerable to the elements. You can also set them on your altar or with some of your favorite crystals to reset them, and certain crystals can be particularly good for absorbing and resetting energy such as obsidian, smoky quartz, selenite, and quartz.

6. You can flip the cards over in a layout either one at a time or all at once.
Gen. 1 misconception: You can either flip the cards one at a time or all at once.
Gen. 2 better practice: You must flip the cards all at once to give a proper reading and see the bigger picture.

I can understand that perhaps when you’re first starting out, it can be overwhelming to look at several cards all at once, but if we only take them in one at a time, we miss the benefit of what the overall bigger picture of the reading is saying. The cards you pull in a reading are supposed to connect together and weave a cohesive storyline of some kind. When we only flip the cards over one at a time, the meanings become more disjointed or shallow, rather than showing you the overarching connection between all of them together. While you do have to kind of “take in” the cards before you individually in a reading, you then need to look at all of them together to see the “bigger picture” and see what kinds of patterns or what kind of storyline you may see in the reading as a whole. This is what it means to do the art of Tarot – to find that bigger picture and read the energy accordingly in a deep, meaningful, and accurate way.

7. Reversals being viewed as optional
Gen. 1 misconception: Reversals can be optional.
Gen. 2 better practice: Reversals are necessary and extremely important.

I do recall reading when I was first learning how to do Tarot and developing my practice that some people advised that reversals could be optional, and that some readers did Tarot this way. I felt as though this could potentially limit the array of things the cards can mean, as if we don’t work with reversals, we only have 78 potential ways of viewing the cards, but if we let the reversals in, we have twice that amount. What I’ve come to discover in all my years of doing Tarot and working with a lot of reversals is there is a vast array of information we get with reversals, and we need to honor them, however many of them we get in a reading.

Yes, many times I have sat and looked at the entirely reversed reading before me and wished my client had even one upright card in the mix. It may feel like a struggle at first when you get an all reversed reading, but 99.9% of the time I get an all reversed reading, it’s accurate and reflects exactly what that person is going through right then.

The other 0.1% of the time I get an all reversed reading and it feels like it does not fit the energy of the person I am reading for, it’s because that person has such good energy that they made the cards flip and face themselves instead of me. I am not kidding when I say this, and it’s a very interesting thing every time it happens. When I do someone’s Tarot, I have them sit across from me and I always read the cards as they face me, and every once in a while, I will get someone who sits across from me and their energy feels so big and so good, but when we pull out the cards, they’re all reversed. It seems off and I will try to feel my way through the all reversed reading and it won’t make sense to me with the energy I feel from that person. I find that in these cases when I go back through the cards and view them as though they were all upright, it makes total sense with the energy I sense from that person. I will tell them this, that their energy is feeling so good right now, they commanded the cards with their energy to face them instead of me, and they often comment on how they agree that they are, in fact, feeling really good in their energy right now.

If I have but one soapbox to stand on as a Tarot reader, it’s this: Reversals are so important, and absolutely vital to understanding the full breadth what can happen in a person’s life or what is even possible to uncover in a reading. Without reversals, we can’t see what a person has been through accurately. We can’t validate the pain they’ve been in with the right degree of understanding, and we miss subtle shades of different energy and nuance in the reading. You’ll never be able to identify things like narcissistic partners, unhappy marriages, people who are care taking for a loved one with Alzheimers, drug addictions, miscarriages, and many more very real and darker parts of life in a person’s reading without letting reversals come through freely.

Life is not all sunshine and roses, and we need to honor reversals, as many as want or need to come through in order to accurately show us what is going on in a person’s life. Tarot cards are not oracle cards, nor are they positive affirmation cards. They are truth telling, validating, healing cards, and we need to let the energy do what it needs to do to the cards so that we can get to the truth of the matters in our readings.

8. Shuffling via pop out method
Gen. 1 misconception: You should shuffle and select cards by seeing which cards pop out or fall out.
Gen. 2 better practice: Building and harnessing a container of energy and allowing the person you’re reading for to decide which are their cards gives us a more direct energy to read and a better understanding of the boundaries of their energy.

While I do honor the occasional pop out card, I personally don’t think you can get as clear of a reading using only the pop out method for card selection. The reasons for this are many, one of them being that to me this makes for a more scattered energy to try and read from as the cards themselves are scattered. I find that allowing the other person to send their energy to the cards and then having them create that “hard stop” of when to stop shuffling makes for a better cohesive energetic imprint to read from. You want their energy to make a giant splash on the cards as though they have jumped into the Tarot pool with their entire being, not just dipping a toe in the water here and there.

To me, when we’re doing Tarot, we need to make a sort of energetic container to read in. First, we have to set the right atmosphere, attune ourselves and our clients (doing grounding exercise, intention setting, etc.), and we may be using physical items such as a cloth or scarf to lay the cards on, or crystals to help hold certain energies or support them, and of course we have the actual Tarot cards themselves which are both part of the container of energy physically, but are also the thing we’ve built this energetic container for in a way. When you allow the person you are reading for to splay their energy all over the cards in a more contained way and with a “hard stop” shuffling approach rather than the pop out method, it provides another parameter or layer of energetic container with which you can gauge and read their energy as their energy is going to come through a series of however many cards you’re pulling for this reading right in a row in a clear and defined way.

To me it also seems that when a person uses an all pop-out method to select cards, it can result in more of the Tarot Card Reader’s energy being on the cards rather than the person being read for, which can lead to readings that don’t quite make sense or can be overly broad. If you want to use the pop-out method for when you are doing your own reading and not to read for someone else, that could be a bit more applicable as it’s you doing the shuffling and therefore your energy causing the cards to pop out.

Another reason I am not a big fan of the all pop-out method of choosing cards is that if you are trying to select, say, ten cards for a Celtic Cross layout, often when we are doing the all pop-out method we have less control over how many cards may pop or fall out, and we can find ourselves trying to read far more cards than we had bargained for. Also, what do all of these extra cards then mean? If we don’t have a space on the layout to apply a bunch of extra cards for, it’s harder to interpret the meaning or why those cards popped out, or what they have to do in relation to the other cards in the layout.

For me, I honor a pop out when I am reading for myself and while shuffling, a card happens to pop out very directly. I use this as a “bonus card” to whatever layout I am using, and don’t use the pop out card as one of the cards in the layout itself. This bonus card then typically ends up having a great connection to the cards in the reading or somewhat acts like an ambassador of the overall spirit of the main messages of the reading, or signifies the overarching theme of the reading.

If I were to shuffle and say eight cards popped out, I wouldn’t honor that as a pop out, rather, I would consider that a bad shuffle, or that the cards are very “hot” or full of energy and needs to be a bit harnessed.

If I am reading for another person and they shuffle the cards and while they are shuffling a card pops out, I will grab that card to set aside and use as a “bonus card” in their reading. If I am doing Tarot for someone else and shuffling for them and a card pops out, I would use this also as bonus card and would still draw the cards for their layout from when they tell me to stop shuffling.

One last thing to consider on using the pop-out method and why I wouldn’t rely on this solely for card selection is that if you are trying to do Tarot readings back-to-back at a busy psychic fair or if you’ve been hired to do a party or big event, you need a clear, concise, and quick method of pulling cards to be able to read for many people in a timely manner. Also, you may not want to strictly use the pop-out method in scenarios like this as they could land on the floor and who knows what could potentially be on the floor of whatever place you may find yourself at doing Tarot? You may find yourself doing Tarot at a raucous wedding and there could be red wine spilled on the floor for instance, and what if a card landed in that?!

My point is, as we progress in our practice, we may find that there are things that don’t always work or that you have to learn the hard way aren’t a good idea when put in practice 100% of the time. We must learn to adapt our practice as we learn and grow and understand how to work with the cards better and what works best in various situations. My practice now versus my first few years of doing Tarot is quite different, and much more streamlined today.

9. There should be no crying in Tarot
Gen. 1 misconception: If your client starts crying during a reading, you should stop the reading because it’s too intense.
Gen. 2 better practice: Crying happens in Tarot and we need to allow that to happen and provide a safe space for our clients to be vulnerable in.

Truly, if you are a genuine, open, empathic, deep, and talented Tarot reader who people feel emotionally safe with, you will absolutely get some people who cry during a reading. I sometimes joke and say that Tarot is one of the only jobs where if you make someone cry, it means you did a good job. But all kidding aside, crying in Tarot happens when people feel deeply emotionally validated or understood, when you have spoken to how they have truly been feeling, or when the reading provides enough healing for them to be able to finally release their emotions and validate their emotions to themselves. Often people are somewhat in denial about how they truly feel, especially when they are going through an extended rough period of time. We tend to downplay how bad we may be feeling about certain things or situations in our lives, but Tarot will cut through all of our downplaying and denying and call out our true feelings. For our clients, seeing their true feelings reflected in the cards sometimes allows them to finally acknowledge or accept them or allows them to release a lot of things emotionally, which can mean that they might cry. This can be a delicate situation that needs to be handled with grace and care, but should not be a reason to stop the reading altogether. Readings like this can be very healing for our clients and we need to help our clients through the process, even if there is crying, and this is part of what we have signed up for as Tarot readers. In my opinion, the experience of having someone emotionally release and cry in a reading is often a sign of a very healing reading and a sign that you are someone who people can be emotionally vulnerable with and still feel safe around.

With that said, we need to know what our responsibility is in this process. We have helped foster or create a space safe enough for our client to feel comfortable enough to cry in, and we need to keep it safe and focused on them. While we may become affected emotionally to some extent ourselves, or can empathically feel their pain, it’s your client’s space to cry, not yours. We don’t want to add to the crying, or do anything that would make our client cry more, or make things sadder, or too daunting to be able to emotionally process. We are there to help them process, and we will not help them process things by becoming overly emotionally affected ourselves. I have definitely experienced this many times myself, and do tear up at times as I discuss readings with my clients, but I try not to actually let a tear escape while also acknowledging the intensity of the emotion and how I can definitely feel it.

What we should do in these situations is hold space for our client to emotionally process by acknowledging their feelings and what they’ve been through. It’s okay acknowledge that we can pick up on what our client is feeling or how intense it feels, but it’s not okay to turn it into crying with or for our client. It’s their turn to cry, not ours. We can also always go back to the cards to reiterate how they demonstrate and reflect how our client is feeling, or point out the patterns we see in the cards so that our client can maybe work to change their energetic patterns to create healthier, happier, or more supportive lives for themselves going forward, or change whatever situation is making them cry in the first place.

Ultimately, we hope to uncover or learn something in the reading that can help the client and hopefully resolve whatever is making them cry, or find some ways to change the energy that will help them feel better.

I do always keep tissues on hand whenever and wherever I do Tarot as even in the middle of a large happy party, people can cry, and we need to be ready for anything as Tarot readers. I also usually end a reading that brought out some crying by asking if it’s okay to give the person a hug to wrap up their emotionally intense reading with some kindness and a little love.

10. Tarot is fortune telling
Gen. 1 misconception: Tarot should be thought of as “fortune telling”, or predicting mainly a person’s future life.
Gen. 2 better practice: Tarot should be thought of as “now telling”, and a way to read a person’s energy through the various ways a person’s energy is expressed (physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental).

I think Tarot can get a bad rap sometimes as being more concerned with the future or “fortune telling” but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. There are so many past aspects in numerous layouts, and getting to see the past-present-future paints us quite a big picture in which we can see a person’s energetic patterns. If we can recognize these patterns, we can change them if need be, and even have a heads up about things should we continue to repeat bad habits.

Tarot really works from the standpoint of now, which allows us to see where we have come from as well as the next few steps towards our future. Tarot can help us understand where we’ve been and how that’s shaped us, shows us how we got to where we are now, and shows us what may be possible for the future. The future hasn’t been lived yet, so many times, it’s changeable. If we dislike the card we have in the future positions, it can often act as a heads up so that we can be prepared for that or work to change the outcome if possible.

Since the future isn’t necessarily set in stone, Tarot should not be thought of as “fortune telling” or as something we use merely used to predict the future. It’s a life navigation tool among many other things, and has much more to do with our present, while also giving us the empowerment to change ourselves and our lives. It has nothing to do with “doom and gloom” scary future predictions or becoming boxed into a non-changeable outcome.

Crystal Seed Tarot Tips for Best Practices:

-Cleanse cards with Palo Santo, store in a breathable fabric, and use the fabric to do the readings on.

-Connect to your spirit guides, angels, animal guides, ancestors or whoever you feel comfortable with and set your own intentions as the reader to stay grounded, open, focused, to have a clear connection with the client, and ask for help finding the right words to use while you give your Tarot reading. I also like to ask my spirit guides to go speak with the spirit guides of the people I will be reading for to ask them to help bring down whatever is the best information for their readings.

-Create the “energy container” or “portal to the universe” for your readings.

-Attune yourself and your client by taking some deep breaths, releasing excess energy, tap into your own energy, ground your energy to the Earth, and send all your energy up to the Universe and ask to receive whatever is the best information at that time, or set intentions for what information you would like.

-Allow the cards to go every which way they choose (upright or reversed), and do not try to limit or control the energy that needs to come through.

-Allow other people to shuffle your cards or tell you when to stop shuffling; allow their energy all over your cards.

-When flipping the cards over once shuffled, flip over side to side, and not up and down, so that they are flipped the way that they came to you.

-Make Tarot a two-way-street of a conversation between yourself and the client; we can uncover many more deep aspects of a reading if it’s something of a co-creative process.

-Take pictures of your readings for future reference, or ask your clients if they want to take a picture to keep as a souvenir and be able to reflect on it later.