The Importance of Keeping a Tarot Journal
Emily JonesShare
Copyright 2023 Emily K. Jones
While keeping a tarot journal has always been an important component of a tarot practice, the wide array of tarot journals available today make it easier than ever to keep a record of your readings. Many people may initially be reluctant to document their readings, but doing so provides many benefits. It is easy to think that you will remember a reading, especially one that seems especially profound or significant, but several months down the road, it is likely that memory alone will fail. In that case, all you have to do is go back to your journal to see exactly what cards you pulled on a particular date. The act of writing down your thoughts about a reading also aids in cementing it more firmly in your memory, making it more likely you will remember readings. If a reading seems unclear, journaling about the cards can give some much needed clarity and perspective. A tarot journal gives you the ability to engage in a conversation with the cards that you pulled and understand the reading on a deeper level.
Such is the nature of divination that things will often make more sense in hindsight. Divination is nonlinear and symbolic, which is why it can be hard to decipher the meaning in a reading. It can be very handy to have a journal to refer to in this situation. Looking at past entries at a later date can help you find clarity and closure. This practice can also help you build confidence in your readings because you will see how the information gathered from the cards played out. For people new to tarot, keeping the journal allows you to keep track of your readings and compare the information with the situations you were asking about. As you notice more correlations between the cards you picked and the situations you encountered, this correlation builds your trust in the cards and your interpretation of them. This can be especially helpful with cards that you find confusing or difficult.
Another benefit the tarot journal offers, especially to new readers, is practice in talking about and explaining the meaning of the cards. Many people find that telling the story that the cards show is challenging for them. If you keep a tarot journal, it encourages you to explain the cards you picked. Telling the journal what the cards mean can be much easier than explaining them to a person. By writing about the cards in the journal, you will develop the language you need to explain the cards which can then make it much easier to give readings to others. Think of your tarot journal as your practice querent where there is no pressure to come up with an answer. Getting comfortable with talking about the cards is an ability that all tarot readers need to cultivate.
For beginners and seasoned practitioners alike, one of the best benefits of tarot journaling is that it reveals patterns you might otherwise miss. If a particular card or grouping of cards keeps popping up in your readings, that is a strong indication that those cards are really trying to get your attention. When you are keeping a journal, those recurrences are much easier to spot. You can then look more deeply into those cards to determine why they are showing up again and again. If you keep tarot journals over the course of years, you may spot even broader patterns, noting, for example, that every time you experienced a move in the past decade, the Chariot card kept showing up. Or when the Six of Wands kept showing up for you, you ended up getting a promotion. When you can look up readings going back years, it reveals the way specific cards work for and communicate with you. While the cards do have universal and collective meanings, the best readers are the ones who have also spent time building their own individual relationship with the cards, learning how the tarot speaks to them personally. Keeping a tarot journal is basically creating your own tarot dictionary.
If you have a magickal practice, tarot journaling gives you the opportunity to duplicate card layouts used for particular rituals or spells. If your tarot magick is successful, the record in the journal will allow you to exactly recreate it. If the ritual or spell does not work out so well, revisiting the cards you used may help you gain clarity and understanding about why it was not successful. If you set intentions with particular cards, journaling those cards keeps them in your awareness and helps you manifest what you are trying to create. You can even create a tarot book of shadows with a tarot journal. If this is your goal, using a journal that has stickers can really be helpful as you will have actual pictures of the cards. The tarot journal can act as a traveling altar. Alternately, as part of your tarot journal work, you can draw sketches of the cards, which is another way of more deeply engaging with them.
Tarot is a conversation, an interplay of energies between you and the cards. The more you interact with them, the more you will understand their language. Like any healthy relationship, the more time and energy you put into it, the stronger it will be. If you set out to build a connection to the tarot, you will find that the cards reciprocate. A tarot journal is a record of your relationship with the cards, and as such it enables you to expand your knowledge and experience with the cards. You may find that over time your tarot journal becomes your favorite and most used tarot reference book. At its best, a well kept tarot journal acts as both documentation of your past with the cards and as a road map to your future tarot work.
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