Have you ever dealt out the cards and then stared at them for ages hoping their meanings would finally become clear?

What about when you see a story in the cards, but one card doesn’t make sense and it stops you from being able to give a good interpretation for the whole spread. What do you do? You go back to basics!

When your mind has gone blank and you’re not sure about the meaning of a Tarot card, it’s time to fall back upon traditional interpretations. If the difficult card is from the Minor Arcana, the first thing you must do is look at the suit and recall the element governing that set of cards. For example, in the suit of Cups, you need to remember that water is the element flowing through the suit. Water represents the emotions, so all of the cards in the suit of Cups reflect your friendships, your feelings, and your romantic attachments.

If a card from the suit of Cups is hard to interpret, look at the image and see it as an emotional situation. Use your imagination to discover if the card is about a relationship, or if it is about someone’s inner needs or desires.

If your intuition is still telling you there is more to a card’s meaning than you have managed to uncover, then there’s one more trick you might like to try. Because the card is from the suit of Cups, stop thinking about possible interpretations and start to feel instead. When looking at the card, discover its connection to you. What feelings does it generate in you? Do you sense that the character in the card is happy or unhappy? How do you respond to the colours in the card?

What about the other suits? How do you discover the meaning of those Tarot cards when you feel blocked or unsure about their interpretations? I’ll deal with this dilemma in my next article.