- Assigned Meanings

I have experienced that the cards are always extremely flexible about their meanings.

If you assign a meaning to a particular card, then it will turn up in a reading spread only when that meaning is supposed to be looked at.

For example, in the days when I had just finished learning Tarot and had begun reading professionally, I had (inadvertently) assigned the meaning of ‘Karmic Connections’ to the Death Card. To me, this card would say (back then) that the incident or the person has had some kind of Karmic Past Life connection with the client. Trust me, the card would show up only when it meant that, and at no other times.Of course, as time passed, the Death Card became more that just past life connections to me. The meaning expanded. Similarly, the way the card turned up in the readings changed.

I have often seen this happen with other cards as well. For example, I have assigned the meaning of actual death to two cards (Tower and 10 of Swords). And when they come in a reading (not exactly side-by-side, but somewhere in the same spread) the cards have indicated actual death. No – the death was not of the client, but someone in the client’s family.

For me, the cards are open to constant experimentation. And for that reason, I find them very flexible in meaning and content.

As with the passage of time, the reader’s perspective of things gets affected, added to and changed. In the same manner, the meanings of the cards also get added to, affected and changed.

So the cards will change right with you. There can never be any fixed meanings for a card. The meanings will also be changeable, just like your perception and your life.