Madame Tezra's Minimalist Tarot Reading Method

This can be taught to anyone ages 7 and up. In fact the first person I taught it to was a 7 year old. She was a very bright 7 year old, but still a 7 year old, with all of that age’s associated lack of maturity and life experience. I told her that the Trumps, or as we grown-ups like to call them the Major Arcana, represented higher ups. For a 7 year old, that represents parents, teachers, and other authority figures. For an adult, it means archetypes and gods and goddesses. One vital note: it is very important that your Tarot deck be one of the many based upon the Rider-Waite-Colman-Smith deck where there are full scenes for the pip cards 2-10. Tarot Classic, Tarot of Marseilles, and other decks like that will not de because all you have for the pip cards are arrangements of the symbols of the suits arranged in patterns, and that is where all that memorization and reading of books that you find intimidating come in. Two excellent decks that do have the scenes are the Morgan-Greer Tarot and the Robin Wood Tarot. Both decks have large easy to read images, and the cards are of a size that is easy for most medium-sized hands to manipulate. My own hands are rather good sized for a woman. I am 5’6” tall, and my hands are good proportion to that height and build. I find the cards of these two decks very easy to manipulate. When I use the term manipulate, I am talking aboiut your standard shuffling, cutting, and dealing moves, nothing deceptive. Although I know the deceptive moves, I would never use them. In fart, nearly 40 years ago I taught them to a member of the LAPD Bunko squad so that he could recognize them, and thus catch an unethical reader in the act. I feel that unethical readers are a blot on ethical readers’ reputations everywhere. Nowadays I feel that most readers are ethical, but you know what they say about rotten apples. Back to good Tarot decks: my daughter used my copy of the Cat People Tarot, which, while not ideal, is one of those decks that is based, however loosely, upon the Rider-Waite-Colman-Smith Tarot. The Morgan-Greer and Robin Wood Tarots are better for learning on, however. Robin Wood is published by Llewellyn Pub., while Morgan-Greer is published by U.S. Games, Inc. Say what you will about Stuart Kaplan the CEO of U. S. Games, but he has done a lot for the Tarot.

This method is good because it is non-intimidating. One friend told me that she was intimidated to learn the Tarot because to her it meant reading scads of books and memorizing lots of stuff that she doesn’t find relevant to her life. She isn’t good at either reading or memorization. In fact, she is dyslexic. She is very much a hands-on type of gal, and I don’t think that she is alone. I think she has lots of company. I think that some of you, while probably not dyslexic, are intimidated by feeling that you’d have to read a lot of books, and do a lot of memorization. But this method of mine has none of that.

The Major Trumps represent, as I’ve said before, Higher Ups: Archetypes and gods and goddesses. The pip cards (lower arcane 2-10) represent life situations. One example is the 5 of Pentacles. The 5 of Pentacles, Disks, or Coins represents those times when you have too much month left at the end of your paycheck. In most decks based upon the Rider-Waite-Colman-Smith Tarot, It is a couple, usually either a pair of children or a widow and an orphan, limping along beside a church which is closed to them. The 6 of Pentacles is happier. There you have a prosperous merchant doling out gold to either beggars or his creditors. Here you can interpret it to mean either that you are the merchant paying his bills, or you are receiving largesse from this individual, the government, or some corporation or foundation giving out grants. It doesn’t mean that all the time, of course. What it means depends upon the nature of your Querent’s question, or the issue at hand. Stephen doesn’t believe that we can read the Tarot effectively for ourselves. While his philosophy may seem on the surface to be self-serving, I think he has good reason for feeling the way he does. We can’t read for ourselves because we are too close to the situation. I myself have found this to be very true. I wondered why I couldn’t read for myself until Stephen told me his reasoning, and I tend to go along with it, because it jibes with my experience.

Pentacles represent the material physical realm: wealth, health, physical and spiritual protection, work, and romance. But Wands represent passion, activities and enterprise. It also represents our spirituality, because of the fervor that it engenders. Cups are emotions, love, and intuition. Swords represent the intellect, ideas, the law, or other government action. The government has its fingers in most of our activities these days. There is a law, ordinance, or regulation for almost any activity or situation that an American citizen or resident can get hirself into. If you are an international client reading this, I’m sure that you have found this to be true of your government also.

One tool that I have found indispensible for reading cards is a magnifying glass. You can pick on up for a few bucks at your neighborhood drugstore or pharmacy, or order them from several outfits either online or by mail order. I now think that it was Stephen’s failing eyesight that induced him to use a magnifying glass, but even with my somewhat better vision, I have picked up details with a glass that I might otherwise have missed that have brought depth and color to my readings. For example, on the Page of Cups in the Morgan-Greer deck, there is an artist’s palette on his belt that led me to suggest that my Querent had something to do with art. You can pick up many things in this manner.

There are many layouts you can learn, or you can make up your own. I like either the Celtic Cross or the Tree of life layouts. When I get bored with the Celtic Cross, I use the Tree of Life. I went for several years once using the Tree of Life because I was bored with the Celtic Cross. Stephen6580 has an elemental spread that he likes to use. Call him and ask him about it. He will tell you all about it. It will cost you something, because the lesson will go far beyond the free 5 minutes, but it will be worth it, because it will be a tool you can use for the rest of your life.

This is the last blog I shall write here until December, because Starting tomorrow, November 1st, I shall be working on NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month. It really is a misnomer because there are writers in several foreign countries feverishly turning out their 1666 words per day over 30 days. I think it should be renamed to GloNoWriMo or Global Novel Writing Month. I made it easy for myself because I take 5 days off and do 2000 words per day for 25 days, thus eliminating the need for higher math, and coddling my terminal math anxiety. My topic this year is actually to finish a novel I started this past spring, when I was rudely awakened at 3:30 a.m. by an insistent woman’s voice with a heavy French accent telling me to tell her story “the way it should be told, as only you can tell it.” I shall tell it as an historical fantasy picaresque novel, which is my favorite form of novel. The picaresque (picaro is Spanish for rascal) has been my favorite form of novel ever since I was studying my upper division Spanish classes in college, and had to read several picaresque novels in the original Spanish. You might find it rather geeky or nerdy, but that’s all right. I am a nerd. The boys I was attracted to in high school and college were nerds because they were the only ones intelligent enough to understand what I talked about, and also I had no competition. The other girls were all sighing after the jocks. I later married a nerd, and had my daughter Janvier, my pride and joy, who is also a nerd, by him. So you see, nerds can live fulfilling lives too.

I feel I must clarify something that Stephen6580 has said. I am not a true clairvoyant. As I progress and refine my talent I may resolve into a true clairvoyant, but as of now I am a pseudo-clairvoyant. I can remote-view. I get pictures of things, but as the author Philip K. Dick said, they are as “through a glass darkly”. I do not get specific names of people or places. You need some clairvoyance to scry in a crystal ball, magick mirror, or bowl of water, but it can be pseudo-clairvoyance like mine. I can describe what I see in my mind’s eye, but no specific names or names of locations will be present unless I myself have been to that location physically, and can recognize it. It’s rather like seeing a place in San Francisco California, or Minneapolis, Minnesota in a TV program, and being able to recognize that location. Astro Wing, however is a true clairvoyant. She can remote view and pick up names of people and locations with ease. So if you need a pure psychic reading from a clairvoyant call on her. .