I have often thought that I might be an unlikely Tarot reader.  I knew next to nothing about Tarot when I bought my first deck.  My saved allowance only allowed for the cards and no potentially helpful handbooks.  I had no Tarot reading godmother to pass down arcane lore.  Due to my mostly nonreligious upbringing, I had no inherent leanings or aversions to divination, or fortune-telling as I might have thought of it then. 

I was a sneering teenager, and assumed that there was some trick involved that I'd be smart enough to pick up quickly.  My new Tarot deck would simply be a fun toy for me and my friends to play with during study hall.  We did have a blast asking about boys we liked and thumbing through the tiny instruction booklet in search of terse answers, but alone in my room I struggled with questions like why I didn't get the lead in the play, and where I should go to college. 

The provocative and beautiful images on the cards implied that I was missing some deeper meanings, but I was also acutely aware that picking cards from a shuffled pack is as random as a Magic 8 Ball and therefore patently ridiculous.  Later I was as surprised as many Americans to find that my Tarot deck was built for gaming in boring old Renaissance Italy and only had a short couple of centuries in which to build a reputation as a spiritual tool, not the eons that some writers claimed.  And what a name it made for itself!  Until modern times Tarot history has been rife with speculation, faulty logic, and downright lies.  In fact, it's been mostly fiction.  As a result of this misinformation Tarot has become something to be feared and ridiculed.  

So why did I stick with it?  If I was a skeptic and Tarot's mystical roots could not be verified, what made me come back to the cards again and again?  Learning that Tarot cards had not come from ancient Egypt or Atlantis, but were mass produced and manhandled by all social classes was actually a relief.  Stripping Tarot of the elitism and extraneous or erroneous associations left simple patterns and universal themes that I could easily grasp and explain to others in a reading.  Realizing that clairvoyance was not required opened up new and more useful ways to read the cards and alleviated my concerns about the seeming randomness of it all. 

The core structure of a Tarot deck is adaptable, accessible, and not tied to any one religion.  It is a template on which a reader can overlay virtually any world view, and one can find a Tarot deck to match almost any philosophy, from Voodoo to baseball.   

I have explored other divination techniques over the years, but Tarot has something that these other methods lack.  A rune or hexagram can represent an image or idea, but having an actual piece of art to focus on will provoke something different.  It is always interesting to hear new interpretations of scenery and situations, and to see which parts of a picture stand out to different people.  The eight of coins may represent a fulfilled apprentice to one person or a bored drone to another, but amazingly they can both be correct depending on the circumstances. 

Like some psychological tests, the associations are free; the hard part lies in assigning the right meaning.  The modern Tarot has outgrown its fortune-telling reputation and found new uses including meditation, self exploration, and creative problem solving.  

Most importantly, I still read Tarot for the same reason I picked up my first deck.  It's fun!  Tarot readings are often depicted as dour, cheerless affairs, so we might forget what the cards were invented for.  I still like to ask the occasional silly question, and the Tarot can be an entertaining story teller with its colorful and emotive characters.  And the cards can often be funny, provoking puns and double entendres, so it's really okay to laugh (or groan) at them.  Tarot is a game after all, so however I use the cards, I try to remember why I picked up that first deck.

April Wagner has been reading and studying Tarot cards since 1995 and has written many articles and Tarot deck reviews for print and the web. In 2005 April founded the Chicago Tarot club to provide a social network for professionals and hobbyists in the area. She is available for readings in LFAC's Healing Room and will be giving a short talk about Tarot at LFAC on March 22, 2010.