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Tarot Beginners

Why the Tarot Nova Made Me a Better Reader (and Almost Made Me Not Become One at All!)

Courtesy of amazon.com

This is the story of baby’s first Tarot deck.

The Tarot Nova was my first deck. It came in a Fortune Telling Kit with a small book on Palmistry (which I read, but never used).

I got it as a birthday present for my mother when I was sixteen. I thought it was awesome, the bee’s knees, the boss-a nova (emphasis on “boss” & “nova”!). There was no way she wouldn’t like it. I was sure about that.

Yeah, not being a tarot reader before that point, my certainty in my mother liking the gift was misplaced. I was wrong. She didn’t like it.

“Didn’t Like It” is probably the wrong thing to say about it. I think she feared it, and I think she feared she was either going to be really accurate (thereby scaring herself) or just would make too many mistakes. She never outright said she didn’t like it. She just said, “You can hang onto it so you can read for me.”

Thus, a tarot reader was born.

I relied on the “little white book” for a long time. The little white book for the deck was a large brochure-type-thing, about 8 1/2 x 11 (see above). I just simply couldn’t read the cards without it.

The first spread I learned was a four-card spread, which may be surprising to people considering the three-card “Past, Present, Future” spread is my tarot bread and butter.

It says: “This basic tarot layout was designed for use with the ‘Tarot Nova.’ If you’re familiar with other layouts, you can use them with this deck too or you can design your own. Be creative!” [not bloody likely, thought my newbie self]


The positions:
A: What’s at hand
B: Past influences
C: Ponder this
D: What to do


How I would go about a reading: I would shuffle the cards. They were small cards, so I was able to shuffle them as I would playing cards (a rarity, I have come to find, since most tarot decks I have owned since I have to shuffle in a different way because of my freak-like tiny hands). As I shuffled, I thought of a problem I was having, and then I would stop when ready, and then lay out the cards A through D, with the deck resting in my right hand and my left hand doing the pulling of the cards. This is not how the “little white book” said I should do things, suggesting to shuffle and separate the deck into four piles, pulling cards A through D from the top of each pile. I don’t know when I realized it was “okay” to do it a different way. One day I was following the instructions to the letter, and at some point I just didn’t anymore. I also don’t remember who my first “client” was, when I transitioned from reading for myself to reading for others. I would guess it was my mother, and as it is now so it was then… I don’t remember any details of that reading.


So, long story short, why I think the Tarot Nova deck made me a better reader: the deceptively simple Minor Arcana. I remember for a long time thinking, “I will never remember any of this stuff; I will never be a true tarot reader.” I would cry because I would quiz myself on memorizing the meanings in the “little white book” in a flashcard kind of fashion. Tarot card came up: 4 of Wands. What did the “little white book” say? And I would struggle to remember without opening up the book. For new readers, I don’t recommend this kind of torturous learning… ’tis far better to build a rapport with your deck in other ways, making connections between the imagery on the card with memories/associations from your own life (see my past post Advice for New Readers and you’ll get some more of “Do As I Say; Not As I Did” type of advice).


The problem with deceptively simple Minor Arcana cards is they’re very bare bones. Only one or two images on the card as “clues” with which to interpret with. I find the Minor Arcana to be the most daunting of all things new readers learn… and perhaps a reason why I nearly didn’t become a tarot reader. Simple imagery is a double-edged sword: it gives us very little to go on, and when we latch onto those few meanings we glean, we don’t let go of them and could become short-sighted because of it.


Examples from Tarot Nova:


4 of Pentacles: I will always think of this card as a greed card, keeping and hoarding money for the sake of being a miser and not to put it to use. Why? Because my first association is linked to this deck’s depiction of this card: A greedy little piggy with his arms wrapped possessively around four golden coins.
BUT…
Some of the other cards in the Pentacles Suit only have one symbol that catches the eyes, such 3 of Pentacles (vine wrapping around a ladder with coins growing off of it), 5 of Pentacles (a lizard with a coin for an eye and four coins surrounding him), and 6 of Pentacles (bread baking, three coins in its center with three additional coins scattered). I couldn’t wrap my head around these cards, making reading them difficult and me to the point of tears.


9 of Swords: The Nightmare card. Will always say it, will always see it for this card. When someone is sitting in a bed made of swords, cowering as swords are flying above them threatening to decapitate them if they dare to look up to the sky for reprieve… well, let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? (or in this case, let’s call a sword a sword)
BUT…
The 3 of Swords is depicted as a turnip getting his leaves chopped off. Something in the imagery here is definitely lacking for what I now know to be a very complicated card. A lot more than chopping veggies here is needed to get the point of the 3 of Swords across.


I don’t know when I stopped using the “little white book” as my personal tarot bible. Probably a few decks after Tarot Nova. I wish I could pinpoint the time I went from “I’ll never learn this” to “I know this”, but perhaps it’s best that that portion is left to the nice hazy fog of memory. The bigger point: if I can do it, so can you. As long as you’re willing to do the work. There really is no shortcut to learning tarot; just many paths. And this was my start along that path.

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7 Responses to Why the Tarot Nova Made Me a Better Reader (and Almost Made Me Not Become One at All!)

  1. […] but I still remember our first meeting like it was yesterday! You came to me in the guise of the Tarot Nova, and you evolved as I loved you new deck by new deck. I evolved […]

  2. Sunny says:

    I have this deck but I got it in a different edition “tarot, the complete kit”. Ive had it for a few years but I’m still somewhat of a novice lol.

    • Hilary says:

      Sunny, I would suggest trying a deck that its imagery speaks more to you. I learned that while Tarot Nova is sweet and beautiful, it’s too simplistic for beginners to really understand the Minor Arcana. 🙂

  3. Lisa says:

    I love Tarot Nova! The artwork is so lovely! When I was younger (about ’96 I think?) I got the mini one from a bookstore as I thought they were so cute & tiny… The next time I saw them was in the fortune telling kit and I bought that as I was happy to see them in a bigger size, then I lost those and have been looking for them ever since… skip 10 years later and recently I found the Complete Kit on ebay and HAD to get them! In the beginning they are really hard to understand, but now I can look at them and I’m like ‘OH, right! I get that card now!’ They do speak to me as the artwork is so beautiful and sweet I could look at them the whole day… They now make me want to become a professional reader. 😉

    • Hilary says:

      This is wonderful, Lisa, I’m so glad you were able to connect to the Tarot Nova deck. It really is lovely, but it’s simplicity may cause newer readers to become frustrated, especially with learning the Minor Arcana.

      And yes, that fortune telling kit you spoke about was the one I spoke about in the blog post. Without my mother saying, “Read them for me” I don’t think I would ever have become a professional reader. Good luck to you if you decide to pursue this profession, it really is wonderful and rewarding, but at times can be difficult!

  4. […] We simply couldn’t get over that simple connection. It was “meant to be” that we reconnected over writing, since we knew each other through a writing class! More synchronicities ensued when I started reading her book Holistic Tarot, including the synchronicity of our first tarot deck (both the Tarot Nova!). […]

  5. […] 💬: The Tarot Nova deck by Running Press [in their Fortune-Telling Kit]. See this post for how I started: Why the Tarot Nova Made Me a Better Reader… […]

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