Card by Card

A guided tarot journal for complete beginners: you learn the 78 cards by writing about them yourself, and you keep an honest record of every reading.

Most people try to learn tarot by memorising a list of meanings for each card, and most give up somewhere in the suits. This journal works the other way round. Each time a card turns up, you look at its picture properly, answer three questions written for that card, and write down what it means to you. Over a few months the journal becomes your own book of meanings for the whole deck, and a record of how your readings actually turned out.

It assumes you know nothing. The first sixteen pages explain what tarot and a tarot journal are, how the deck is put together, and the four simple practices the journal is built on, each with a filled-in example from Noor, an invented learner who starts from nothing, as you will.

What you will do with it

• Draw one card a day (five minutes): a first thought in the morning, one line in the evening on whether anything fitted.
• Meet each card on its own page (about fifteen minutes, once): a scan of the original 1909 card, three questions about details in its picture, your three words, your meaning in one sentence, and a table that collects every later time the card turns up and what it meant that day. The usual reading is printed small under the card, for after you have written yours.
• Record your readings: the question as you first wrote it and as you asked it, the cards as they fell, each card in its place, your answer and one thing you will do, then a look back two to four weeks later at what happened, what fitted and what did not.
• Look back once a month: tally every card that turned up, count the suits, and set them against what chance alone would give, so a card that keeps appearing is something to think about rather than a sign to fear.

What is inside

• Start here (16 pages): what you need, on paper or a tablet; the deck in two minutes; the four practices, each followed by a full worked page; what to do when your meaning and the book's disagree; how to handle upside-down cards; why the last ten cards take so long to meet, with a plan that gets most people to all 78 in about four months; a tick-off plan for your first four weeks.
• All 78 cards: every card as a picture with a box to tick when you meet it and its page number, plus a page comparing the same number across the four suits.
• 78 card pages, one per card, grouped by the Major Arcana and the four suits, with an opening page for each group.
• 13 weeks of daily card pages, 24 reading records and 12 month look-backs.
• A glossary, and a page on where the pictures and meanings come from.

Made to use on paper or a tablet

The journal is US Letter and prints on A4 with "fit to page". On an iPad or other tablet, open it in a note-taking app that lets you write on PDFs (GoodNotes, Notability, Noteshelf and similar). The coloured tabs down the side of the pages, the contents, and every card on the All 78 pages are links, and each card page links back to All 78.

An honest note

The journal treats tarot as a way to look at your life from an unexpected angle, not as a way to predict events. It does not ask you to believe anything, and its look-back pages exist so you can judge for yourself what your readings were worth. Questions about health, the law, money decisions or anyone's safety belong with a professional. Noor and her pages are invented teaching examples.

The card pictures are scans of an original first-edition Rider-Waite-Smith deck (1909), which is in the public domain. The questions point at details in those pictures, so the journal suits that deck and the many decks drawn after it; it can be used with any deck. You need your own deck; none is included.

Your files

• Card by Card (PDF, 158 pages, US Letter): the whole journal, with bookmarks and links.
• Print pages (PDF, 8 pages), in two copies, US Letter and A4: a blank card page for any card, a "continued" sightings sheet, a daily card week, a reading record, a month look-back and a two-page checklist of all 78 cards. Print as many as you need. They are white for printing and work in black and white.

These are pages to write on by hand or with a stylus; they are not fillable forms. This is a digital download. No physical book or deck is shipped.