About Tarot Card Reading
Tarot card reading has been practiced for hundreds of years. The earliest known pack dates from the fourteenth century, though it's likely the use of cards to tell fortunes started even earlier. Practitioners of tarot card reading concentrate on an issue or question, then deal the cards out in certain patterns to read fortunes.
Other People Are Reading
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Tarot Card Deck
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Tarot card reading requires a deck of 78 tarot cards comprised of 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana cards. In a pinch, regular playing cards can be used as an abbreviated deck, using these as Minor Arcana.
Spreads
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The patterns that tarot cards are dealt into during a reading are called spreads. There are different kinds of spreads a tarot reader can use, depending on what question the reader has.
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Celtic Cross
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The most common spread used in tarot card reading is the Celtic Cross spread. It uses 10 cards, plus an optional significator or "querent," which is used to depict the subject of the reading.
Cards
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The Minor Arcana of tarot cards correspond to the four suits of a standard deck of playing cards. Instead of hearts, spades, diamonds and clubs, tarot card suits are cups (or hearts), swords, pentacles (also coins or disks) and wands (or rods).
Symbolism
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Tarot cards have symbolic images on each card that provide it with meaning. The symbolism is the summation of the combined meanings of a card's suit, number and place in the overall scheme of the cards. The Major Arcana speak to deep forces of a person's life, while the Minor Arcana deal with more circumstantial issues.
Reading
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A tarot card reader studies the position of the cards in a spread and the prevalence of certain suits and numbers, along with the meanings of the individual cards themselves, to begin interpreting the reading. Intuition plays an important role, as well.
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