If you have begun Tarot reading and recently heard a lot about starting a Tarot journal, you are probably feeling a little intimidated about where to start. However, keeping a Tarot journal is a great way to deepen your connection with your Tarot reading practice and a great tool for you as a Tarot reader.
Keeping a Tarot journal is an easy and rewarding task. How you keep a Tarot journal is entirely up to you, and you can put many things in it, such as insights on what Tarot means to you, a place to write about your readings, and a way to keep track of all the cards’ meanings.
If you are still undecided on whether or not you want to keep a Tarot journal, we have explained below the many benefits of having your very own Tarot journal. We also provide a complete guide on keeping a Tarot journal so it can become a fun and beneficial part of your Tarot reading journey.
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Why You Should Keep a Tarot Journal
If you want to be more intuitive and confident in your Tarot reading practice, creating a deeper and more personal connection with your Tarot cards is the key.
Using a Tarot journal, you can record the messages you receive in your readings, keep track of your Tarot card meanings and form such a deep relationship with your cards that the stories you see in a Tarot spread will begin to flow out of your with ease.
If you want to become more confident in your readings and would like to be able to connect with your intuition faster, the reasons we have listed below are how keeping a Tarot journal can help you improve as a Tarot reader.
You Form a Deeper Connection With the Tarot
If you are doing readings and are stuck with what a card is trying to tell you, you may feel like reading Tarot is impossible. At the same time, you wish you didn’t have to think so hard about the meaning of a card.
By having your very own Tarot journal, you will be able to develop a deeper connection with the Tarot, creating your own personal and meaningful relationship with it. In your journal, as you note down things such as what each card means to you, you can begin to develop your inner wisdom, and as time goes on, you never have to memorize a meaning again.
By doing this, you are allowing yourself to go beyond the given meaning of a card and let the cards become a part of who you are. As you begin to take more time to learn not only about Tarot, but about how you feel and view the Tarot on a personal level, you will form a deeper and more soulful bond with your cards.
To Understand and Develop the Card Meanings
While each card has its traditional meaning, each deck is unique, and the great part of the Tarot is that each reader can have a different connection and interpretation of the same card.
As you decide to take the time and connect with each card, you will be able to see meanings beyond what each one was initially intended for. Through the pictures on the cards, your experiences with them, and your newfound connection with them, you will begin to see unique meanings for each card arise.
As you have these unique and specific new meanings for cards, you can write them in your journal and create a new insightful and accurate representation of the messages each card is trying to send.
It Validates and Increases Your Intuition
One of the essential things that Tarot reading comes down to is your ability to connect to and further trust your intuition. While you can just read the meaning of a Tarot card, letting your intuition take the lead is the best way to create meaningful readings for other people.
While time alone can help increase the intuitive hints you receive and allow you to trust your intuition more and more. If you use a Tarot journal to write down when your intuition is spot on, you will be able to more accurately know when and when not your intuition is guiding you in the right direction.
By keeping track of your readings and intuitive wins, you will be able to reflect on them more often and eventually pick up on them more instantaneously.
You Can Document Your Progress
As you begin your journey with the Tarot, you know it will be a life-long one. As you move from deck to deck and reading to reading, you will constantly learn about who you are as a reader while increasing your skill.
With a Tarot journal in your back pocket, you can document your progress and track where you started and where you ended up. Not only can this be a great way to look back and see how far you have come, but it can also serve as a motivator in your journey as a Tarot reader.
It Helps You Track Your Readings
If you love to do Tarot readings for yourself from time to time to get advice on your life situations, you probably are not remembering every message that came through in your readings.
By keeping a journal, you have a place to keep track of all of the advice the Tarot cards gave you. As time goes on, you can go back and look at the reading to ensure you consider the advice it has given you.
Also, this is a fun way to track and develop your accuracy in readings, allowing you to write down notes about whether readings about the future came true.
How to Pick a Tarot Journal
Now that you have decided to keep a Tarot journal and improve your Tarot reading skills, you want to make sure you pick the right one. Don’t worry; there is no wrong way to choose a journal.
However, you do have some different format options to pick from, which include:
- Digital Notebook
- Phone Journal App
- Ruled Notebook
- Paper Dotted Bullet Journal
- Antler A6 PU Leather Notebook Binder Refillable
- Tarot Tracker: A Year-Long Journey
When picking a journal, pick one that you know you will enjoy using often; if you are not someone who likes writing, choose an online one, for example.
You can have fun customizing your look with stickers if you choose a paper notebook or bullet journal. You can even find some guided Tarot journals if you find a blank notebook/journal too intimidating.
What to Put in Your Tarot Journal
Now comes the fun part, what you should write and keep in your Tarot journal. Before you continue through and read about all the awesome things you can do with your journal, remember that there is no right way to do it, and you can pick and choose what you would like to keep in it and what you would rather not.
All in all, let it guide you on your Tarot journey and serve as a tool you use to deepen your connection with the cards. If it begins to feel too stressful to keep up with, try to narrow down how much you keep in it.
What Tarot Means to You
In the first few pages of your Tarot journal, a good starting point is to take the time to define what Tarot means to you. Writing down what the Tarot means to you and how you connect to it personally will be a great way to feel more inspired in your readings.
Here are some ways you can describe what Tarot means to you:
- Your personal experience: Write about how you first discovered the Tarot and why you felt such a strong connection. This can be a way for you to connect back with why you love Tarot reading so much.
- Why you read Tarot: Maybe you have never gotten a Tarot reading but felt called to start reading it yourself. Take the time to learn and write about this experience so you are always aware of why you started reading the Tarot in the first place.
- Your favorite card: Write about your favorite Tarot card or one that resonates with you. Write about why this one stands out to you above all others.
No matter what you write, take the time to uncover why you felt called and inspired to begin reading the Tarot in the first place.
You can even take this time to write about what you wish. The result of your reading Tarot cards to others gives you a page to always come back to for motivation and inspiration.
Meaningful Images
If you are more of a visual person, use your Tarot journal as a creative way to display and draw what Tarot means to you. Use your cards to trace through the pages if you have a card that is special to you.
If you love to pull a card daily for general advice, trace or draw the card onto the page with any insights about what advice it is giving you.
If you have an old worn-out deck, you are not using anymore; you could also tape, glue, or photocopy them into your journal to get creative. If you were ever gifted a Tarot card, maybe this would be a great place to keep it safe as an inspirational reminder of why you do what you do every time you open your journal.
Every Card’s Meaning and Message
If you are new to reading Tarot, writing down every card’s meaning in upright and reversed positions is a great way to begin learning about what each card represents. However, you don’t want to always rely on your memory for your readings, as this is both difficult. It also makes your readings more impersonal and robotic than personal and free-flowing.
You can write about the traditional meaning of each card and take the time to develop and craft a unique meaning each card has to you. Don’t worry; this doesn’t mean you need to throw the traditional meanings out the window. It simply means getting in tune with the messages that arise when those cards occur.
How Do You Develop a Personal Meaning?
You will first choose a card to develop a personal and unique meaning for each Tarot card. You can start at the beginning with The Fool, pick one because you felt called to, or pick one at random.
Second, you will look at the card and write down whatever messages come to you. Write about the image you see and what that represents, as well as the energy you feel that this card emits. As you write, don’t question what your intuition is telling you. Without judgment or second-guessing, allow yourself to develop a personalized meaning for each card.
You can also write about what you have felt about certain cards. Maybe during a reading in the past, The Five of Cups represented something slightly different than the traditional meaning. Take note of this and any energy you may have gotten from cards in the past.
Finally, take a look at each card’s traditional meanings, and write down any new information you think should be included in your meanings. If it’s different from your meaning, don’t worry, this is okay, as it’s not meant to be the same. In many cases, the same card can send different advice to different people.
Writing and Journaling Exercises
After you have taken the time with your Tarot journal to connect with the Tarot and look deep into both the traditional and personal meanings each Tarot card has, you can begin freestyle your way through the rest.
You can do many different writing and journaling exercises with your journal, and you should feel welcome to do as many or as few as you would like. Here are a bunch of different journaling exercises you can do:
- Describe a card’s image. Take the time to analyze and interpret the image on a card, and do not leave out a thing. Let your intuition guide you as you describe what the image of the picture is showing you. With each deck being different and some being more detailed, different meanings will arise depending on the deck.
- Write a story about the image. Write about the person that is depicted in the image. Instead of writing about the image, focus on the person. After that, write a story about how you imagined their life at that moment. Where are they from? What lessons have they learned in life? What are they like as a friend?
- Pick a card randomly and write about the memories you have with it. Do not leave any details out as you sit and write about every reading you can remember with this specific card.
- Go through the Tarot-book that came with your cards. Look into the existing interpretations for the cards you are currently using. As you go through, write about their interpretation of the cards and note anything that stands out to you.
- Daily card reading. Pick one card a day as a token of advice for what the day has in store for you. Write about what message or advice the card is trying to send you, and later that day, reflect on how the advice helped you. This can be a fun way to see how helpful the insight was.
- Make two cards and have a conversation. Pick two cards at random and use your intuition to write about what they would be saying to each other; write them down and let this serve as an opportunity to connect to your cards on a deeper level.
Your Readings
Another journaling exercise you can do is write about your readings and the readings you do for others. Doing this as the reading takes place is best so you don’t forget any details.
One of the most important reasons you should always write down what came out of reading for yourself is that you will not remember everything. You may be more likely to leave out things that do not relate to your current situation. By writing down the advice the cards gave, you can reflect on it later when the advice may be needed.
For Your Next Personal Reading
The next time you go to do a reading for yourself, you want to make sure you have your notebook open and ready. Before you begin, write down the question, and the Tarot spread you will use.
After drawing all the cards, write down exactly what you drew and in what order. As the reading continues, write down all the messages you received, even if you think they might be wrong or unrelated to your life. Finally, as the reading ends, write down how you will use this advice and what actions you will take.
The more descriptive you were, the better, as when you come back later to look at the reading, either for further advice or to see how accurate your reading was, you can reflect further.
Use these old notes to write about how the cards helped you and what insights you may be seeing now that you didn’t before. By going through your old readings and validating what you said, you will continue to build up your confidence in your intuition and become better at reading Tarot overall.
For Your Next Reading on Others
The next time you go to do a reading for someone else, you can still benefit from writing down parts of the reading. While it won’t specifically help you in life, it will help you massively with your intuition.
As you are doing the reading, if you say something to the other person that relates to their life in a big way, jot it down. Consider this as an intuitive win, a time when you trusted your intuition, and it ended up being something extremely accurate.
By doing this, you will encourage yourself to become more confident in your intuition and train yourself to know when you should listen to your intuitive hints.
New Tarot Spreads and Questions
Another way to utilize your Tarot journal to help expand your ability to read and connect with it is by coming up with your own Tarot spreads.
While the Celtic Cross or Three-Card Spread are great ways to spread Tarot cards out for a reading, you may want to venture outside the norm. Creating your Tarot spreads is also a great way to develop the perfect spread for a specific question.
To develop a new spread, there are three main choices you have to make first:
- What question or situation is this Tarot spread going to answer?
- How many cards are you going to use?
- How are you going to lay out the cards?
Whether it is a New Year, spread with three different sections, or love and relationship spread with two parts, each representing someone in a relationship, you can get as creative as you want.
Once you know what the cards will answer, how many you will use, and how you will lay out the cards, use your Tarot journal to write down the details about what each card represents.
For example, if it is a three-card decision-making spread, you would write:
- Card 1 represents the first option you have (left)
- Card 2 represents the second option you have (middle)
- Card 3 represents insight on how to make the decision (right)
As you create new Tarot spreads, write in detail how to use them and what questions they answer so you always have them in your back pocket if you want to try something new.
Creative Ideas
If you are into using your Tarot journal for more creative things, you can do that as well. There are no rules regarding what you keep in your Tarot journal.
Creative Writing
You can take time to write about anything that pops into your head freely, even if it isn’t Tarot related. You can even spend time writing about a problem or situation in your life, then take the time to pick a Tarot card for advice. Write the advice down and let your intuition guide you as you try and motivate yourself on paper.
Creative Images
As well as writing creatively, you can break out your pencil crayons or paint and draw/paint some of your favorite Tarot cards or ones you choose to write about.
Let your inner creativity and intuition combine to create a beautiful page in your Tarot journal.
If you want to get creative, you could even draw or paint your variation of a Tarot card. Pick one at random, or if you feel called to draw, let your intuition guide you. Start with a person at the forefront, and draw an intricate background and some situation that fits the meaning behind the card.
Most importantly, have fun with it and get creative!
Final Thoughts
Having a Tarot journal is a great way to develop a more meaningful, personal, and intuitive connection with the Tarot. As you explore each card deeper, you will eventually become more intuitive and confident in your power as a Tarot reader.
By writing about each card, you are developing your meaning for each; by writing about your readings and intuitive moments that wow you, you will be able to build your ability to read the Tarot in a smooth, flowing, easy way.
With a Tarot journal, there will be no more boring and basic readings from you as you will be able to become both more unique and skilled; the more often you take the time to connect with your cards.
