tarot myths & other bullshit

Today on CARD TALK, I’ll cover:
-where many of the worst tarot myths come from
-debunking the most common myths about tarot
-other gatekeeping rumors that we can ignore
-my only hard and fast rules for tarot

The Psychic Art of Tarot by Mat Auryn

For more on Meg, check out 3amtarot.com, and order your copy of Finding the Fool through Bookshop.org or your favorite local bookstore.

Find episode transcripts and more over on the CARD TALK website.

Love what you’re hearing? Support the pod with a one-time donation or recurring subscription, and get the chance to submit topics for future episodes! 

Chapters

• 0:12 Breaking Tarot Myths and Gatekeeping
• 6:13 Dispelling Tarot Myths and Misconceptions

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

My name is Meg Jones-Wall and you're listening to Card Talk, a mini podcast for tarot basics and evergreen insights. I'm glad you're here. Today we are going to be talking about tarot myths, gatekeeping and other bullshit. Basically, this is the episode where I tell you about a lot of shit that you super don't need to worry about. Now I've got to be real with you. I have recorded this episode two or three times already and I keep having to stop because I keep getting angry about how these different myths originated and how often they hold people back from building the kind of tarot practice that they want to build. So I'm going to try to keep the rage and the swearing to a minimum so that we can really get to the heart of what we're talking about in this episode, which is myths that you do not need to stress about. The TLDR here is that tarot history is packed full of random occultists who wanted to be special and feel fancy, who dreamed up a lot of different rules that were designed to keep lay people from reading tarot and which would make them stand out as unique or blessed or highly favored or whatever else felt important for them and their self-esteem at the time. Now, of course, divination itself, and card reading in particular, has a long history as being a very real way that people made money and supported themselves in hard times. Capitalism has always been a problem and we're not going to erase the long history of cardamancy and divination services as a means of survival, especially for people groups like the Romani, who were constantly traveling around and getting pushed to other parts of continents in order to survive. We're not going to erase that part of tarot's history, but most of the myths that I hear most commonly regurgitated and stressed about today originated from, like white, british and French occult men who had a dream once and decided that that meant they were chosen and that they were the only ones who could read tarot or that it was on them to tell other people how to read tarot. Those are the myths we're talking about, not people struggling to survive in a capitalist hellscape.

Speaker 1: 2:16

Part of the reason that I get so upset about these myths about gatekeeping and other kind of bullshit practices that often get conflated with real tarot practices is that tarot's place in history is so often with the people. It has origins and roots as a game. It's always been a tool for socialization and discovery and just joy and pleasure, and it's also often been a form of artistic expression that was specifically designed to speak to the people who were using it. And whatever you believe about how tarot functions or what the imagery means, just please hear me when I say that, just because some British and French assholes from hundreds of years ago needed to feel superior about their own intellect and magical prowess, you don't have to get all twisted up in what they thought about the tarot they're dead. And they don't have to get all twisted up in what they thought about the tarot they're dead. And they don't get to gatekeep your practice. So let's talk through some of the most common gatekeeping myths together and then I'll also talk quickly through some other less common but still annoying myths that you might hear along the way.

Speaker 1: 3:18

By far one of the most popular gatekeeping myths in tarot is that you have to be gifted your first tarot deck, or that someone has to give you, bestow upon you, your first tarot deck. It is straight up, not true. I really hate that this myth gets so commonly shared because it quite literally keeps people from moving forward in their tarot practice. If you want to read tarot, if you want to learn tarot, if you want to start playing with the cards for any reason. You can go, get your own tarot deck. You can buy it with money, you can get it with a trade or service trade. You can buy a used deck or a new deck whatever makes sense for you and your budget and your preferences. But you can buy your first tarot deck. You don't have to wait for some friend to decide. You need one or some hermit to come out of the fog and hand you a deck and run away. None of that's real. If you're really struggling with this one, if this one got its hooks into you early and you're having trouble shaking it, think about it this way you can gift yourself your first tarot deck. You are a perfectly worthy person to bestow a tarot deck upon yourself. That's what I did, and look at me now.

Speaker 1: 4:28

Another one of the most common gatekeeping myths that I see is this idea that you have to store your tarot decks in a specific way, and there are different ideas around this, but the most common one is that you have to keep your cards wrapped in silk or velvet or satin, that you have to keep your cards on an altar or like under your pillow or in a place where no one else can see them. There's a number of different iterations of this myth, but it's bullshit. You don't have to store your cards in any particular way. I would advise you to put them somewhere safe. You know where they won't get wet, or you know your dog won't eat them, which is a thing that has happened to me. But you can keep your decks in the box that they came in If you like. That's how I do it. I don't have the budget or the space to not keep my cards in their original boxes, but it actually works really nicely. However, if storing your cards in silk or in special bags or whatever feels nice to you, there's no reason you can't do that. This isn't about telling you that you shouldn't bother with something. It's really just to say that how you store your cards is entirely up to you. It's completely a matter of personal preference.

Speaker 1: 5:27

The last of the most common gatekeeping myths that I see that I want to touch on here is this idea that tarot cards are evil, that they are a product of the devil, that bad things are going to happen to you if you use the cards, that using the cards will open you up to all kinds of terrible things, and it's not true. This is a very old myth, though, and this originated not just from occultists and tarot readers, but actually from the Puritans and the church. Of course, tarot cards at their core are paper and ink. Any meaning that you give to the cards themselves, or any discoveries that you make while reading with the cards, you get to decide where that comes from, what it means and how significant it's going to be for you. The cards aren't inherently good or bad. They're cards, and you get to decide what their magic is and where that magic comes from.

Speaker 1: 6:13

Now there are a number of other less common but still often repeated myths that pop up around tarot, so we're going to just work through these fairly quickly. The first is the idea that you have to charge or cleanse your tarot cards on a regular basis, and, like so many things that I'm about to say here, you get to decide for yourself if you want to charge your deck, if you want to cleanse your deck, if you feel that that's necessary or if you never want to do it. Charging or cleansing is really just about trying to release any energy that might have gotten associated with your cards, either through your own readings or through client readings or readings for other people. Now, everyone's going to have their own opinions on this, and so you really do get to decide for yourself if charging or cleansing is something that feels like a really beautiful part of your regular ritual or if it just feels like something going through the motions and it doesn't have a lot of meaning for you. Personally, I hardly ever charge or cleanse my cards, but for some people, this is something that they're going to do in every reading or something that they do on a regular basis, like on the new moon or the top of every month or once a week or whatever. Experiment with it. See if it feels good for you, if it has any meaning for you, and if it does, fantastic. But if you don't feel anything, you don't have to do it.

Speaker 1: 7:23

Second is the idea that you, just straight up, can never read tarot cards for yourself, and if you've been following me for more than five minutes, you know that I don't believe this at all. You can absolutely read tarot cards for yourself if you want to, as long as you're being responsible and thoughtful. Now, I do think there are times when reaching for your tarot cards is maybe not the first thing you should do when trying to navigate a situation, make a decision or just understand a problem. But reading for yourself is absolutely fine, it's safe, it's okay, it's acceptable, it's appropriate. Just do so with care and respect and make sure you are being really intentional about what you're asking and what you're expecting to receive.

Speaker 1: 8:00

Another myth is that you should never let anyone else touch or use your tarot cards. Now, for some people, this is going to be a lot more relevant than others. If you're someone that mostly just reads for yourself, in the privacy of your own home or in solitude, this might never really come up. But if you're someone that likes to read with a partner or a friend, or you have a tarot study group, or if you're someone that reads for the public, reads professionally, like reads for clients, you might need to decide sooner rather than later how comfortable you are with other people touching or using your tarot cards. Now, this really is super personal. For some people, letting their clients touch the cards feels like an important part of the ritual, but for others, having people touch their cards really doesn't feel good. And so you get to decide for yourself what your lines are around that, what your boundaries are around that and don't be ashamed of them. If you're ever reading for someone and you tell them not to touch your cards and they do it anyway, that's disrespect on their part. That's not you being a bad reader or being fussy about your cards. They're your cards, and tarot decks are often expensive, so you get to decide for yourself how you want other people to be able to interact with your tool.

Speaker 1: 9:06

There are a number of correspondences and common interpretations sometimes called traditional interpretations of the cards that often get shared, and so another kind of gatekeeping myth that I see is around how people understand the cards. Now we're going to do a lot of different episodes talking about different ways to interpret the cards, what cards can mean and how we come about those meanings, but all I'll say for right now is that you do not have to use a certain set of correspondences, a certain type of correspondences or a certain kind of keywords to read tarot. There are plenty of different ways to build meanings for the cards, and we will talk about this at length in other episodes, but for now just suffice to say you don't have to read tarot like anyone else does, just some quick hits. You do not have to start with the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck. If you don't like it, you never have to buy one If you don't want to. You do not have to pay for expensive tarot classes. You do not have to work one-on-one with a tarot teacher in a mentorship or coaching extravaganza and you certainly do not have to get a tarot certification before you read for other people. There are not accredited systems or like worldwide recognized organizations for tarot reading. You really just have to decide for yourself when you're ready and why you want to read tarot for other people.

Speaker 1: 10:23

You do not have to be a psychic to read tarot. You didn't have to be a medium to read tarot. You do not have to believe that you are channeling or using any other kind of magic to read tarot. You definitely can, and I will include some resources in the show notes of books to read and just like folks that I would recommend following if you want to use tarot to tap into psychic skills or develop psychic gifts. But you do not have to identify as a psychic in order to read tar.

Speaker 1: 10:49

As I mentioned at the top of this episode, divination and cartomancy specifically have a long history of being exchanged as services for money or trade, which is all just to say that every time the discourse comes around that people shouldn't be allowed to charge money for tarot or other spiritual services, it's bullshit. You absolutely can charge money for tarot services and I think often it's actually important to have there be some kind of exchange when it comes to a spiritual service, because tarot has value and knowing how to read tarot requires a lot of different kinds of skills and practice and energy and intentionality and really big boundary setting. So don't let anyone tell you that charging money for tarot is like somehow impure or wrong. That's absolute bullshit. One of the last myths that I want to touch on here is this idea that you can only use tarot for divination or for predicting the future specifically. Now I had an entire episode that's already out talking about all the different ways that you can use tarot cards. Well, not all a lot of different ways that you can use tarot cards, but there are dozens and dozens, perhaps even hundreds and hundreds of different ways that you can use the tarot in your own world. So you don't have to worry that anytime you're using the cards, if you're not using it for divination, that it's somehow disrespectful or incorrect.

Speaker 1: 12:10

The last kind of myth, or just general idea that I want to touch on in this episode are these ideas around what it means to study the tarot or how one can use guidebooks and resources to support a practice. I sometimes hear folks say that once you reach a certain level of tarot experience, that you shouldn't be relying on guidebooks or resources in any way, and I want to push back on that a little bit, because I think that there are a lot of different reasons and ways that people use resources. Someone wanting to reach for a guidebook or a resource when doing a tarot reading does not necessarily mean that they don't know what the cards are saying at all. Yes, when you're getting started, that might just basic comprehension might be a big reason that you want to use guidebooks, but I also think that objectivity and interpretation can be really bolstered and supported by guidebooks and resources. That's why there's so many different tarot books out there and so many different tarot resources available.

Speaker 1: 13:08

Sometimes, when we're reading for ourselves, it can be really hard to separate what we want to see from what is actually there, and so guidebooks and resources can be a really great way, even for very experienced readers, to be a little bit more objective about what the cards are truly communicating. But something that I think often gets lost in this discourse is that brain fog is a thing, disability is a thing, different people have different cognitive needs and that sometimes using a guidebook or a resource or just referring back to your own notes is a really useful device, and I think there should be a little bit less shame and judgment around using those kinds of tools as part of our practice. Just because you occasionally want to reach for a guidebook or a resource to help offer some additional clarity or support in your reading Doesn't mean you're not a good terror reader or that you can never go pro. You get to read in the way that works for you, and that includes supporting your brain and your memory and your cognitive function in whatever way you need to. There are a lot of different ways to learn tarot and there are also a lot of different ways to deepen your relationship with the cards over time. For some people, this is really reliant on guidebooks and resources, on taking new classes or listening to podcasts or just being in conversation with people who have more experience with the tarot than you, but there's also nothing wrong with just spending time with the cards themselves and seeing what your intuition brings up when you look at certain images or when you start to weave together certain stories. Different folks are going to have different needs when it comes to learning the cards, and I really, really want to stress that there is not one kind of reading that is superior to another.

Speaker 1: 14:45

I'll probably do an entire episode about this, although I'm a little loathe to wade into that particular capital D social media discourse, but I hear a lot of people talk about the difference between traditional reading and I'm using the biggest air quotes here versus intuitive reading, which, again with the air quotes learning about the history of the cards, wanting to know historical correspondences and meanings for the cards, wanting to understand how certain images developed. That does not make you an inferior reader to someone who has thrown out all of their guidebooks and only reads tarot based on what their intuition tells them. The thing is, both forms of reading work just fine, depending on who you are, and studying the tarot can look both ways. Studying the tarot can mean looking at resources and history and correspondences and taking classes, but studying the tarot can also just mean literally spending time with the cards and studying the images. So if you get caught up in the online discourse, or if you just hear someone dismissing anyone who studied the cards, just be skeptical of that. You don't have to put down your own practice or ways of learning just because it doesn't look like someone else's.

Speaker 1: 15:56

I always like to wrap up these episodes with a tip or trick, and so in this episode, I just want to reiterate the only real hard and fast rules that I have for tarot, which are don't use the tarot to manipulate, coerce, pressure, influence, deceive, control or otherwise intentionally cause harm to other people or yourself. Tarot readings are vulnerable, even if you're just pulling cards on your own for your own use. So do so with care, with attention and with respect. Respecting the tool that you're using, no matter how you came to it or how long you've worked with it, is a really important part of the practice, and the only other hard and fast rule I have is not to appropriate Romani culture as part of your tarot practice or to pretend that you're something that you're not. Don't pretend that you're more experienced that you are. Don't pretend that you have certain cultural origins that you don't, and just don't bullshit people. Be authentic, be genuine and be truthful about what you see in the cards, and you're going to be just fine.

Speaker 1: 16:54

That's all I've got for you, but thank you so much for hanging out with me today here on Card Talk, and I will be back with another episode soon. Card Talk is committed to staying ad-free for everyone, which is possible thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. To pledge your monthly support or make a one-time donation, click the link in the show notes. You can also find episode transcripts, more about me and additional tarot resources through my website, 3amtarotcom. See you next time.