Super Tarot: Interpret the Cards Like a Pro

By Sasha Fenton and Theresa Reed

“This is a Tarot book that will change the way you approach your readings. Instead of rote meanings and stiff spreads that only allow for a color-by-numbers approach, Super Tarot teaches you how to read as the pros do.” —Theresa Reed, the Tarot Lad

Improve your ability to string tarot cards together to create an accurate, insightful story.

Anyone can learn the basic figures on a deck of tarot cards; but to become a truly skilled tarot reader, one must go beyond mere symbols to recognize the deeper stories the cards are telling.

This generously illustrated guide will help you gain confidence and enjoy a greatly increased understanding of the tarot deck. Chapter by chapter, you'll build skills and put that newfound knowledge to work through an assortment of practice readings, intriguing exercises, and even games.

With the expert advice and proven techniques included here, you'll quickly begin to understand how each of the major and minor arcana interact, when and why to use focused spreads, and why the court cards can be especially tough to interpret. And for more serious students, there's even a chapter on becoming a professional tarot reader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
• Release date: Feb 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781612834542

Sasha Fenton

Sasha Fenton is a best-selling astrologer whose books have sold over half a million copies world-wide. She is well known for her chatty, accessible style, and is the astrology columnist for ‘Woman’s Own’. Her other books include ‘Tarot in Action’, ‘Fortune-Telling by Leaves’, and ‘Understanding Astrology’. Fenton has presented her own radio show on LBC and appeared on national television programmes in the UK such as ‘This Morning’ She has been professionally consulting since 1973.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

What Is this Book All About?

This book has been designed and written in response to many requests that l have had over the years from people who manage to learn the meanings of the Tarot cards by heart, but then find that they cannot put them together to make a worthwhile interpretation. The ideas, advice, exercises, and games in this book are designed to help you overcome this problem once and for all.

Simply put, this book will show you methods so you can learn to link the cards for a faster, more intuitive, more honest, and more accurate reading. And the methods are fun; some are downright games, like Chutes and Ladders with the tarot cards. Some of the teaching methods have come out of the successful series of Tarot workshops run in the south of England by Eve Bingham and myself, while others have come straight from my own convoluted mind.

The best way to use this book is to start on page one and work your way through it in the same way that you would use a school textbook. You will get more out of the book by working through it in this way than by dipping into pages at random, because it has been designed to give you specific information and advice when you need it and to lead you through graded stages of attainment. You will need the cooperation of a couple of friends for some of the experiments because you cannot learn Tarot without checking your progress on other people. I doubt whether you will have any difficulty in finding willing guinea pigs, because practically everybody loves having their cards read, even by someone who is still learning the craft.

The games presented in Part Two of this book are all carefully designed to stretch your imagination and to encourage you to become more relaxed and confident when using the cards. One of the most valuable of these is the back-to-front game, where I tell a story with a variety of outcomes and you select the cards that best illustrate each situation.

Part Three of the book will introduce you to the many spreads that are in use, and in the Appendix I have provided a quick reference chart to give you an at-a-glance review of their relative values and the best way to use them. Woven into and between each segment of the book are plenty of exercises to help you stretch your skill.

Finally, in Part Four I've provided an advice section that outlines the benefits and pitfalls of becoming a professional Tarot Reader as well as how to go about this.

I hope that by working through this book and trying out the ideas on your friends and colleagues at work, you will enjoy this highly original guide to Tarot reading. I also hope that you will have gone a long way to solving the seemingly impossible problem of how to string the cards together to tell a story.

Although Tarot is well known as a vehicle for self-introspection and self-growth, this book largely focuses on the practice of reading for the purpose of drawing out the story, whether that is the story of the past, the present, or the future. Many people want to know whether they can read the cards for themselves or whether it would be unlucky to do so. Yes, you can read the cards for yourself, and it's not at all unlucky to do so—it's good practice for honing your skills. But my purpose in this book is to help you become attuned to other people, to their stories, and to do something to help sort out their lives, rather than concentrate on your own. It's difficult to take an objective view of the cards when reading for yourself, because you are bound to try to fit them to what you know of your life and circumstances. It's also very hard to create a psychic link to yourself.

Many beginners are tempted to read spread after spread for themselves, which results in the cards losing all meaning, thus putting them off reading the cards at all. Self-awareness and the ability to look into your own future are entirely reasonable objectives and many great books are devoted to this practice. I suggest that one method of self-reading that might be worth experimenting with is to lay out the cards and analyze them as objectively as you can. Write your findings down, date the piece of paper, and put it away for a few weeks. Then take it out and check the accuracy of your reading. The same method can be tried out on family and close friends.

This book is a new edition. Many beginning Tarot Readers will delight in purchasing their first, new deck of cards, and there are many selections out there, from the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith deck to more unusual and unique decks which for many new Readers can be hard to interpret. I have made this book easy to understand because it's illustrated with traditional designs, drawn by my friend, the late Jonathan Dee, and I have used traditional naming for the cards. The text links exactly to the cards.

Opinions differ about the numbering for the Strength and Justice cards; Jon drew his deck in a traditional style and kept the numbering traditional as well, so Justice is No. 8, while Strength is No. 11. Some other decks reverse these numbers.

PART ONE

TAROT BASICS

CHAPTER 1

Useful Tips for Beginners

If you have just bought or been given your first pack of Tarot cards and don't know where to begin, read this section first. If you are a complete beginner, you will find that the booklet that accompanies your new deck of cards will give you a little basic information, but you will need something far more comprehensive than this. My book Fortune Telling by Tarot Cards is designed for beginners, and there are many other books on the market these days.

In addition to this, look around your neighborhood for classes, read the psychic magazines, and check out the Internet. You might gather a few friends together and approach your local Tarot Reader to see if he or she would be willing to teach you. You will also need to have a reading yourself from time to time, so that you can see how it works when done by an experienced professional Reader. In the meantime, try to ensure that you become reasonably familiar with the cards and their basic meanings as a foundation for future readings.

How to energize a new deck of cards

Simply handling the cards will begin the process of energizing or charging up; however, there are other ways of doing this. A Tarot Reader named Edward Ubels showed me the following method many years ago.

Take the new cards out of their packet and spread them out face upwards on a table or on the floor. Borrow an old pack of well-used Tarot cards from a very trusted friend and lay each card face down on its companion in the new deck. After this, ask for a blessing for the cards so that they will bring peace and healing to all those who look for their help and protection so that they won't pick up any unpleasant vibes along the way. After this, keep them safely in a box. Many people wrap their cards in silk to keep them protected from evil influencers. I keep mine in an Italian cigarette box and don't wrap them in anything.

Shuffling and dealing

You can give the cards to your Questioner to shuffle and then you can deal them straight off the top of the deck. Alternatively, you can ask him to cut the cards and then discard one half. He can cut them three times with the left hand, moving to the left, and then put them back together. You can even shuffle them yourself on behalf of your Questioner (this is very useful for readings that are carried out on the telephone). Try everything until you find the routine that suits you best.

The Significator

A card can be chosen to signify a person or situation. The card choice is entirely personal.

How much do you need to learn?

It's not essential to learn the meanings of all the cards by heart just yet. Confine yourself to learning the Major Arcana and the underlying meaning of the four suits of the Minor Arcana without worrying yet about each individual card. Get some idea about the Court cards and, even at this early stage, begin to give some mini readings to your friends. Remember to be flexible in your reading of the cards and accept that your interpretation of each and every card will change slightly with every reading you do.

Reviews for Super Tarot

[Soothesayer · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sasha Fenton is straight to the point and does not engage in copious amounts of new-age psycho-babble.

[javi930 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Basico, el autor propone una creatividad interesante a la hora de enseñar