given what i wrote in the "key to the tarot" meta thread, i'm going to try to focus in somewhat on my own relationship to reading each card. it's gotten to the point where when i draw a card in most readings i immediately have a strong sense of what it means... this is good but a bit scary? if you've driven a car for a while and start to get comfortable, there's a moment when it feels like "autopilot" and you don't even know how you got there.

i want to describe how the card feels to me while also leaving space for someone to fill in the gaps. but i don't know if that will make any kind of actually useful reference book, and that really scares me!! what is this book that i'm going to write and publish?

i hope that when someone is learning tarot they use another source, and not only what they find in my silly little lookup tool and book-to-be...

but, i know what i am capable of writing, and it's not an exhaustive handbook. it's just a vibey little pamphlet. that's what i'll aim to do! what i know i can deliver well, what reminds me of things that my brain likes to forget... ah! here i am with the flavour of ambitiousness in my mouth...


i do, after all, want a book that i love to use. that's really my goal. should it be spiral-bound? argh!

one of the guidebooks i encountered during my research, as well as the site i use, contains many prompts per card. i think my go-to site contains more sensible categories that i have found use for over time (career, finance, love), whereas the guidebook i skimmed had more woo-woo nonsense categories.

i will probably end up writing things about my cards that belong to some real nonsense categories.

returning to a couple guidebooks in the book store —

one is "Wild Whispers", an oracle deck (i never look at oracle decks...) that describes each card under multiple headings:

whisper as calcination, introspection as dissolution, and five more like that.

the other is "The Wandering Star" because of how personal it seems? but also, how casually written? upon a second look i don't know how connected i feel to it, but i love the tiny book, and The High Priestess' page begins, "Ah, the Priestess High!" — i just like the casual excitement

approach like a spell book, every card magic... quickly did a draw from my deck and my JUSTICE is so different from The Wandering Star's, haha