Embracing Down Time in Your Tarot Practice

While teaching a beginner class the other day, I got to thinking about frequency and dedication in tarot.

A question I get often, especially from people just starting out, is how to use tarot in everyday life. And the most common practice by far is a daily draw. I’ve also seen, however, that this practice can get overwhelming fast. Same goes for daily readings.

With so many cards coming at you, how do you know what they truly mean or even have time to digest their message?

My tarot philosophy centers around its use as a system to reflect the entirety of the human experience. The cards are always there, ready to tell a story, but if we’re constantly reading - our noses deep in the cards or a book - we don’t have the experience of real life to back things up.

In other words, I actually think that taking breaks between reading and studying tarot is just as important as all the research and practice in the world.

Why?

Because if tarot is a reflection of the human experience, it’s best learned when we can connect it to our actual human experience!

So if you’re feeling burnt out with the cards or wrestling with a trickier reading, give yourself time. Take a break. Get outside and see what happens in your life. You may be surprised to see a hidden meaning in a card emerge in a conversation with a friend or a symbol you never resonated with pop up on your commute to work.

Sometimes people get a bit shy when taking these tarot leaps. They’re not written in a book somewhere, at least not verbatim, so they must be intrinsically sketchy or wrong. That’s not the case at all, and finding tarot in your real life is, in my experience, the quickest way to make the cards sing in your readings.

How have you incorporated periods of rest, pause, or reflection in your tarot practice? In what ways have the cards evolved or appeared in your own experiences? I’d love to hear your stories below.