free as a bird

Stereotypical Italian summers.

One thing I’ve noticed as I’ve started teaching tarot cards to other people is that they have a tendency to think that every card has an individual meaning and it is their duty to memorize 78 complex sets of meanings before they can begin reading for others. 

That’s simply not true. 

It’s also incredibly inefficient and totally kneecaps you when you move on to learn another deck (and try memorizing ANOTHER 78 complex sets of meanings). Cards exist in relation to one another. Understanding those relationships lets you remember meanings quicker, better understand how cards in a spread might be connected, and give much smoother readings. 

If you’re learning Tarot for the first time or looking to bush up, here’s my advice after reading cards for 10 years. Please, learn from my mistakes.  Tarot is a language

In the same way you learn letters and string them into words and then string words into sentences to communicate, tarot is a language you learn so your intuition can communicate more fully with you and others. And like a language, it’s often best to start with the phrases that you’ll use the most. 

Practice: Go through your deck and pick out no more than 12 cards that are really calling to you and look up those meanings. Write them down if you’re up for it. Go through your deck and pick out no more than 12 cards that give you a feeling of unease and do the same. Notice any reoccurring symbols?

 Tarot is a story

How you understand that story may vary on your tradition, your experience level, your aims. Most standard Tarot decks follow the Fool’s Journey through the Major Arcana as he becomes more skilled and then more enlightened. A similar pattern can be seen in each of the suits. The Court Cards are less narrative in my opinion but a similar progression can be seen. 

Practice: Take out each of the suits one at a time and lay them out in a row. Read the meanings of each card and see how the story progresses. Write down a summary. Do the same with each of other suits’ courts and the major arcana.

Tarot is a system

You aren’t fluent until you know the language well enough to speak smoothly and in most situations. Similarly, it takes understanding Tarot at a high level to give the best quality readings and read without a book. No card exists in isolation and just like when they show up in a reading, you must read them in relation to the rest of the spread - it helps a lot to know them in relation to the rest of the deck. 

Ruby Bridges was the first black child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis in 1960.

This movie made me cry, I was so heart broken by how Ruby Bridges was treated! She was only 6, but was so strong. She is a very brave girl and she did not care what the white folks called her.

People are simply disgusting to minimize people by skin color!

Ruby Bridges in 2010 

“As Bridges describes it, “Driving up I could see the crowd, but living in New Orleans, I actually thought it was Mardi Gras. There was a large crowd of people outside of the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of goes on in New Orleans at Mardi Gras.“ Former United States Deputy Marshal Charles Burks later recalled, “She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn’t whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier, and we’re all very very proud of her.“ 

U.S. Marshals escorted Bridges to and from school

As soon as Bridges entered the school, white parents pulled their own children out; all the teachers refused to teach while a black child was enrolled. Only one person agreed to teach Ruby and that was Barbara Henry, from Boston, Massachusetts, and for over a year Henry taught her alone, “as if she were teaching a whole class.”

Every morning, as Bridges walked to school, one woman would threaten to poison her; because of this, the U.S. Marshals dispatched by President Eisenhower, who were overseeing her safety, allowed Ruby to eat only the food that she brought from home.

Another woman at the school put a black baby doll in a wooden coffin and protested with it outside the school, a sight that Bridges Hall has said “scared me more than the nasty things people screamed at us.” At her mother’s suggestion, Bridges began to pray on the way to school, which she found provided protection from the comments yelled at her on the daily walks.”

More info on Ruby Bridges on Wikipedia

THIS SHIT WAS ONLY 58 YEARS AGO. PEOPLE WHO PARTICIPATED IN THIS RACIST TERRORISM AND ACTS LIKE IT ARE STILL ALIVE, AND THEIR KIDS ARE IN THEIR 40′S AND 50′S. 

This is literally how she looks in 2017.