Using your journal

Simply Tarot Journal is your own private study space. Nobody else sees it, and it builds up over time into something that's properly yours.

Get to it at your journal, or via Tarot Journal in the menu, or Open your journal on the hub. There's a search box at the top that looks across the whole thing.

Inside you'll find your saved readings, all 78 cards, the spreads library, the spread creator, the Noticing Tool, your decks and Deck Fundamentals.

Opening a card. The card name sits at the top, then a row of tabs, then the card itself. On a computer the card stays on the left with whichever tab you're reading on the right. On a phone the card sits above and the reading goes underneath. There's one picture of the card and it stays put while you move between tabs.

My notes. Write what you notice, what it means to you, how you read it reversed, whatever comes. It saves to your account automatically. Do that over time and you build your own book of meanings, in your words, the one you'll actually trust. Come back and add to it whenever a card teaches you something new.

Symbolism. Three tabs sit under this one. On a phone they sit above the card.

• Traditional symbolism puts a lettered arrow on everything in the picture, with the list beside it. Tap a name, or tap its letter on the card, and everything else drops away so you're looking at that one thing on its own. See all brings the rest back.
• My noticings is everything you've spotted on this card in the Noticing Tool, each one with its date and what you felt the card meant at the time. Open one up and there's Write this up as a note if you want it in your notes properly.
• My notes on the symbolism is for things you want marked on the card yourself. Press the round +, tap the spot on the card, give it a name and write your note. You can change or delete any of them later.

There's a Do a noticing on this card button on My noticings, which opens the Noticing Tool straight onto that card, in whatever deck you're looking at.

If you've photographed your own copy of a card, you can swap between your deck and Rider-Waite-Smith while you're on it. Your own deck won't have the traditional symbolism on it, because those arrows are drawn on Pamela Colman Smith's pictures and nobody else's. Oracle cards work the same way: your noticings show up, but there's no traditional layer and no keywords.

My take on every card. Open any card and you'll get my own reflections on it, including how it tends to actually show up in readings. This is the deeper stuff that isn't in the free card meanings, and the journal is its home.

Which deck the tools use. In Settings there are two choices worth knowing about, Noticing Tool deck and Recording readings deck. Both follow your main tarot deck until you tell them otherwise. If you study with one deck and read with another, set them once and forget about it.

For laying out a whole reading rather than noting a single card, see Recording a reading. For getting your own decks in there, see Adding your decks and uploading deck photos.