What Actually Taught Me: How to Get Better at Reading Tarot

I found a crystal shop almost by accident.

My sister was visiting. We wanted to go to Crystal Henge in Affleck’s Palace and it was shut. So we trailed Google Maps until we found somewhere else. A place in Eccles called Transcend, run by a guy called Paulo. We both ended up getting Reiki. While I was getting my reiki, my sister mentioned to Paulo that I read tarot, and he said there was a Mind Body Spirit festival coming up, they needed readers, and there was also a Sunday tarot circle if I was interested.

I said yes to both. Mostly because I didn’t have a reason not to and I find it hard saying no to stuff.

What I didn’t expect was how much that circle would change things. Because I’d been learning tarot for a while at that point. I thought I was doing alright, but on reflection, I definitely wasn’t doing alright.

What I Was Doing Before That

The Solo Grind

I started the way most people start. Deck, guidebook, a lot of time on my own. Daily card pulls, journaling, looking things up constantly. The problem was that most of what I found online gave you a tiny bit of information and nothing else. Keywords, maybe a sentence. I got so frustrated with it that I eventually built the card meanings pages on this site myself, because I wanted something that actually went deep enough to be useful.

That frustration also led me to build my own resources. Simply Tarot Essentials is the free one, a quick reference for all 78 cards you can keep on your phone. Simply Tarot Fundamentals is the one I really wish I’d had, 558 pages covering every card properly, £5. I made both of them because they didn’t exist in the way I needed them to.

And all of that does work. Genuinely. You need to know what the cards are before you can read them.

But I kept hitting the same wall. I knew what the cards meant. I still wasn’t confident I could read them without checking those resources.

Reading for People Who Don’t Know Tarot

I started reading for other people. Friends, family, strangers in Amsterdam on a trip where a mate basically dared me to just go for it. And it helped, MASSIVELY. I got more comfortable handling the cards, more comfortable talking about them and using stories and analogies to explain what they meant, more comfortable with the silence when I didn’t know what to say.

What it doesn’t do as well is expand how you think about the cards. When you read for people who don’t know tarot, they’re not evaluating your interpretation. They’re waiting to hear something that lands. Which is fine, and there’s real value in learning to communicate clearly. But it’s not the same as having someone push back on your reading, or say they’d never thought about that card that way before, or offer you a completely different angle on the same spread.

Honestly, getting readings from other readers taught me as much as giving them. Seeing how someone else moved through the cards, what they noticed, what they skipped. That’s a different kind of education.

What the Circle Gave Me That Nothing Else Could

Reading for Other Readers Is Completely Different

The first time I sat in that circle and read for someone who also reads tarot, I understood immediately what I’d been missing.

They know the system. They know what the cards are. So you can’t hide behind vagueness, you have to actually commit to an interpretation and say out loud what you think is happening. And then they might say yeah, that’s where I’d go with it. Or they might say interesting, I’d have read that completely differently. And both of those responses teach you something you can’t get from anywhere else.

There’s also something about the low stakes that makes you braver. Nobody was paying me. Nobody needed me to have the answers. We were all there to practise and figure out what the fuck we were doing. So I could take risks. I could be wrong. I could say I genuinely have no idea what this card is trying to tell us, and that was fine. That was the whole point. Working it out together, out loud, with people who understood the language.

I got better faster in those Sunday sessions than I had in months of reading alone. Looking back it’s obvious why.

What Community Does That Reference Material Can’t

You can study tarot for years and still feel like you’re guessing. I know because I did. And the thing that shifted it wasn’t finding a better book or a better reference guide. It was other people.

Not because the books aren’t useful. They are. But confidence with the cards isn’t really about knowing what they mean. It’s about trusting your own reading of them. And that trust gets built by doing it with other readers. Having someone tell you your interpretation landed. Having someone push back and show you another angle. Hearing someone read the same spread completely differently and realising that’s not a problem, that’s the whole point of this thing.

You can’t get that from a PDF. You need people.

What I’d Point Someone to Now

Start With the Free Stuff

If you’re early in your tarot journey, start with the card meanings pages and the spread library. Both free, both solid. Simply Tarot Essentials is free too and gives you a quick reference for every card. Get familiar with the system. Read for yourself, read for anyone who’ll let you.

And then find some readers to practise with.

Then Get in a Room With Other Readers

This is what I built Simply Tarot Membership around. Every Sunday, 7 to 9pm UK on Zoom, Simply Tarot Circle runs as part of the membership. We do a group card pull, I go deep on one card or technique in the Thought of the Week, and then members split into pairs for an hour of practice readings. Low pressure. Everyone’s there to learn. Same energy as that Transcend circle that changed things for me.

Simply Tarot Membership is £15 a month. Includes Simply Tarot Circle, a growing library of Thought of the Week content, Simply Tarot Fundamentals, all the spread workbooks, Gord’s Tarot Journal, and 20% off readings. You can also drop into Simply Tarot Circle as a one-off for £5 if you want to try it first.

But really? Just come and practise with other readers. That’s the bit that matters.

The Thing Nobody Tells You

You can study tarot for years on your own and still feel like you’re guessing. Not because you haven’t put the work in. Because the work that actually builds confidence isn’t solo work.

I got lucky that a crystal shop was closed on the right day. You don’t have to wait for that.