I want you to memorize card meanings.

But wait! Every deck is different...doesn’t that mean the cards mean different things?

Kinda. 

Every card has its textbook meaning. No matter which deck you’re working with, The Fool is always an optimistic adventurer and Death is a life-changing transition. But if you’ve worked with different readers, read tarot books by different authors or just talked tarot with your other reader friends, you know everybody’s interpretations of the cards are a little bit different.

So how can a tarot card have a textbook meaning and be open to interpretation?

Think of the cards’ textbook meanings as their skeletons. Your specific interpretation of a card is its soft tissue. You need both and when you’re starting out, you’re gonna rely a lot on the structure. 

Let’s take the Death card, for example. The Death card means a drastic change, shutting the final door on an issue to make space for new things to come into your life.

How you interpret the Death card depends on a few things, like which other cards you’ve drawn with it and where your eyes go first in the image. Let’s say you pull the Death card, then The Emperor.