When you think of tarot, or having a tarot reading, you might think of someone with years of experience and knowledge sharing their wisdom and giving advice. This of course does happen, and can be a great experience, but there are an increasing amount of people dabbling and learning tarot and reading exclusively for themselves. Here’s what i think about reading for yourself and using tarot for self care.

If you don’t know where to start with tarot and want some tips on how to learn tarot for yourself, check out this blog post I wrote on How To Get Started With Tarot.

Can you read for yourself?

I’ve heard many opinions on this question from different tarot readers. I’ve spoke to people who don’t read for themselves at all, who read for themselves only using help from guide books and written meanings, and people who exclusively use tarot for themselves and have no interest in reading for anyone else. Tarot really is such a personal experience and you have to go with what feels right to you, but if you want to read for yourself, you absolutely can! There are no set rules for how you use your tools.

Personally, I started reading tarot just for myself and it was a very personal and sacred experience. I didn’t have any desire to read for anyone else, I was curious and wanted to learn, and reading for myself allowed me to do that. Even when I started reading for others, I kept my personal tarot practice and I still do a variety of readings for myself, as well as visiting other tarot readers, psychics or mediums. I take a different approach to reading for myself, reading for those close to me and reading for strangers, and when I read for myself I use it as a self-care tool, to explore my feelings on a situation and explore different perspectives.

Why read tarot for yourself?

Tarot is such a wonderful tool that can be used to connect with our subconscious and provide guidance on our lives. When you have a reading performed by a tarot reader, you will usually walk away with a different perspective, some prompts of things to think about, some advice and hopefully some comfort. All of this will of course depend heavily on the reader, how they read, how they communicate and their own interpretations and experiences. In comparison, when you read for yourself you can spend a lot more time unpacking what you are being shown or guided towards and the cards can act as prompts to explore thoughts and feelings you might not feel comfortable talking about to another person.

Ways to use tarot for self care

There are many ways you can incorporate tarot into your self care practices, or even use it to start a self care routine if you don’t have one already. If you’re still in the early stages of learning to read tarot, I recommend trying to separating your ‘learning’ time from your self-care time, which might mean looking up meanings from a trusted source and working with that, rather than worrying too much about getting it ‘right’ or memorising anything. This is much more about you than it is about the cards or getting meanings correct.

Journalling Prompt

A favourite of mine because it allows for really deep and meaningful exploration, but it isn’t one I make time for often unfortunately. You can use a simple tarot spread (I recommend max three cards otherwise you’ll be here for hours) or just pull one card at a time. Beginning by writing the meaning and theme of each card, before journalling how those themes are appearing in your life. Use the card as a jumping off point to explore moments or feelings that are relevant to you and reflected in the cards meanings. This can allow you to explore thoughts and feelings that you might have been putting off dealing with, or spark new perspectives that you hadn’t considered yet.

Meditation

I am personally not great at meditation in the sense of sitting and quieting my mind, I find it really difficult. Once I heard the definition of meditation was to ‘focus on a particular object, thought or activity’ my approached changed and I realised my meditative activities were running, drawing and drinking my morning coffee. Another way of doing this is to pull one tarot card and spend a set amount of time examining the card, noticing all the details, the symbolism and what it could suggest, and noticing any thoughts that come to mind. This is a great practice for grounding and keeping your focus in the present. If you’re new to meditation you mind might wander to other things and that’s absolutely fine, just gently pull your attention back to the card.

Daily Card Pull

You can incorporate a daily card pull to your morning or evening routine as a way of taking 15 minutes to yourself, to slow down and focus on something that isn’t your phone, or work or the many other things we have to worry about. This can be as simple as pulling the card, and examining the meaning to give yourself a message or thought for the day, or it can be used for one of the above activities.

Emotional Check In

There are so many tarot spread ideas online, or you can create your own, to really deeply check into how you’re feeling and how you’re doing under the surface. How often to you really take the chance to ask yourself how you’re doing and allow time to explore the answer? Tarot can help us access the things in our subconscious and our deep feelings, and shine a light on what needs our attention. There are a couple of spreads I like to use to check in with myself: The Everything Spread, that I found in WTF Is Tarot? by Bakara Wintner and Know, Let Go, Grow, from Inner Goddess Tarot.

As with tarot, self-care is so personal and it might take time to find the processes that work for you. My love of tarot helps me make time for journalling, meditation and checking in with myself, but it’s still difficult to make it a habit and keep it up regularly. Will you be incorporating tarot into your self care practices? I’d love to know how - let me know in the comments!

If you’d rather have someone else do the leg work, click the links below to book your very own bespoke tarot reading from the comfort of your home:

How To Use Tarot For Self Care