Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Are You Ready to Do Your First Tarot Reading? it’s Easy with My Quick Start Tarot Guide!

After teaching tarot for twenty-eight years, I asked myself, “What is the one thing I would say to a brand-new tarot reader?” If you’re a brand-new tarot reader, if you’ve just brought home your first deck, or if you want to return to beginner’s mind with the tarot, start here! Do your first tarot reading with Joy’s Quick Start Tarot Guide!

About the Tarot

What is tarot? The tarot is a set of cards that uses images to form stories that reflect our truth, guide our choices, and inspire our lives.

What can I use tarot for? Predictions * Advice * Wisdom * Study * Meditation * Magic * Initiation * Games * Brainstorming * To Know Yourself

How do I learn tarot? Get to know the images. Ask the five questions to understand the card. Then tell the story by finding the action in each card.

Ask the Five Questions

  1. Who is the character?
  2. What are they doing? The action, expressed as a verb, is the most important because it gives the plot.
  3. Where are they?
  4. What props and decorations are in the scene?
  5. What is the mood or atmosphere?

Tell the Story

  • Plot and Character are the most important elements of stories.
  • Plot is the action, or sequence of events.
  • Character is the people involved, their how and why.
  • Plot is the most important because life is composed of actions.
  • The actions we take determine the outcome of our story.
  • Action = verb. Things we did, are doing, will do or could do.
  • When we look for the action in each card, the spread provides a to-do list of steps to reach the outcome we want.

Getting to Know You

Do Your First Tarot Reading with Joy's Quick Start Tarot Guide! A winged elf in the cup of a pink flower leans her head in her hands and gazes out contemplatively, with two cute insect-like creatures below.

The tarot wants to speak to you. The tarot is your subconscious (or higher self or guides or Spirit) communicating
with you. So it’s not trying to confuse you or use vocabulary you don’t understand.

Trust yourself and the process. This helps you understand the cards.

The tarot will grow with you. Just like a good friend, it will get to know you and you will get to know it. Over many years you will learn all about each other. Your discussions will get deeper and more soulful.

I wish you a long and fulfilling relationship with the tarot!

Download Joy’s Free Quick Start Tarot Guide and Do Your First Tarot Reading!

My free Quick Start Tarot Guide includes all the information in this post, plus a tarot spread worksheet complete with interpretation guidelines. It makes doing your first tarot reading a piece of cake!

There are three options to get the guide:

  1. Click the image below to open the 4-page, full-color pdf. You can download and print it.
  2. Enroll in my free Quick Start Tarot Guide online course. You get the pdf and also a video of me doing a sample reading using my interpretation guidelines.
  3. Enroll in my Quick Start Tarot Kit online course. It includes everything mentioned above, plus a 1-hour video tutorial, 30-page workbook, mp3 meditation, tarot reading worksheets and spreads, four elements coloring pages, and more! The course is only $15.
Click the image to download the Quick Start Tarot Guide! This free 4-page full-color guide includes my best advice for a first-time tarot reader, a tarot spread worksheet for your first tarot reading, and detailed interpretation guidelines.

How Did It Go?

Did you do your first tarot reading with the quick start tarot guide? How did it go? Let me know in the comments!

Joy Vernon
Joy Vernon

Joy Vernon is widely recognized as an expert tarot teacher and respected community leader. With over twenty-five years’ experience teaching energetic and esoteric modalities, Joy brings expertise and practiced familiarity to her specialty of esoteric tarot, which layers astrological and qabalistic symbolism onto the traditional tarot structure. Under her leadership, the Denver Tarot Meetup grew into one of the largest and most active tarot-specific meetups in the world. Now Joy runs the Greater Seattle Tarot Meetup. Joy works as a tarot reader, astrologer, and teacher in Burien, Washington. To learn more, please visit JoyVernon.com.

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