Bought Your First Tarot Deck? Here’s Where to Start.

Bought your first tarot deck and don’t know where to begin? Booked a reading with your favorite astrologer and not sure what to ask? In this special episode, I break down the key elements in opening up and asking for guidance, be it from cards, star charts or any mode of divination. I talk about setting intentions, rituals for before and after a reading, and getting to know your guides (think: inner children, future selves, ancestors, angels, past lives, higher powers and gods) and framing your questions. 

And if you’re giving a reading, or receiving one, what should you look out for? I share some of my personal detectors for calling out bullshit in a reading, and for asking the right questions. I share some of my favorite tarot spreads, along with books that changed the way I practice, including Mary Greer’s Tarot Reversals, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Way of the Tarot, and Rachel Pollack’s Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom. Whether you’re looking to read yourself or your friends, my intention is to provide you with the inspiration to develop your own practice. 

Write to me at Ask@Heavenlybodiespodcast.com 

To book a reading with, go to DavidOdyssey.com and Davidodyssey.substack.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello, Star Child. You've tuned into Heavenly Bodies, a trip through the Cosmos with David Odyssey. I'm David Odyssey, your personal astrologer and guide, cruising through the stars and down to Earth. Each week we'll seek life's meaning in archetypes, old and new. And now, let's drop in. Welcome to the children of the vortex. Welcome to my brilliant dimension. Uh, it is I, David Odyssey, host of Heavenly Bodies, a Trip Through the Cosmos with David Odyssey. Welcome. Uh, this is gonna be a really fun episode because I thought it would be nice just to talk about what it's like to pick up a deck of tarot cards or look at your map or go into the sort of uh cruzy zone of getting or giving yourself a reading, receiving a reading, asking for insight, asking questions, asking for help through these sort of doors and portals. So um I am going to make this as new user friendly as possible. Um, and this is for people who've never done a thing like this or people who do it all the time. So just kind of hang out with me and let's see how it goes. We are gonna open this session with a tarot card. This is the hanged man. Uh, I'm using the hangman from the Aquarian deck. The hangman is card number 12 of the major arcana. The hangman, we see someone uh hanging upside down and looking out at the world. We're thinking a lot about um Odin who hanged himself off of a tree to gain uh god consciousness. Um The Hangman is about, I mean, you know, we obviously can think about um Grant Morrison talks about this in in their book Super Gods, but you know, it's it's very much the Joker at the end of the Dark Knight when he's upside down and Batman's right side up, but we're kind of not sure which is which. The Hangman is the psychedelic card about seeing the world in a new way, or flipping the order of things, or looking at things from a very different perspective. Uh, that card is really useful for trying to get insight about not only the life we're leading, but the world we occupy and why it is the way it is. When you're asking the cards or a reader um or looking at a map of of your astrology, when you're asking for this insight, you are going to be going to a place that's a little bit beyond um literalism and question and answer and um yes no and one zero. Uh, we're going to a place that's a little bit more um liquid. That does not mean that it's a pure place of um self-help nonsense and these sort of blurry, meaningless um landmark forum and co encomiums. Um these art forms, uh the these practices have for centuries and centuries been used for very specific forms of prophecy, for getting very real answers, often down to the date, down to the minute. But the idea of all of this is a lot more about like intention and recognition and feeling, and not necessarily about merh merh merrh mirr. So I wanted to talk about, you know, first of all, I wanted to talk about some of my earliest tarot experiences, and one that really sticks out is um the first time I did Acid, 2017, Prospect Park with a friend of the show, Henry Kapersky, Henky Skeedou, and uh our friend Philip. And we I'd never done it before, and Henry said, let's pull these cards, and each card will be an intention. And that was my first time doing something like that. I've been learning about tarot, and I would start developing it more and more with friends and having these adventures, and you take your tarot deck to Fire Island, and we all give each other readings. Sure. But the idea of we're about to have an experience, let's pull a card and see what it says to us or see what it means to us, and ask our friends what they see was really big because then throughout the the acid trip, I got to think back on that card's meaning, what it meant for me, what it was wanting to reveal to me. So I just wanted to bring that up because it was one of those early experiences where I was encountering an archetype and seeing what it had to say to me about where I was and what my intentions were, and allowing it over hours to take on its own meaning or to uh fulfill itself or to reveal itself to me. And that's kind of what we're doing. A big aspect with all of these is that you can't have too strict a sense of expectation, dualism, or moralism. What does that mean? If you're about to ask the cards a really serious question about your life, your future, your family, your emotional estate, what's gonna happen, where you are. The cards themselves are not really super interested in judging you or in laying down the law or in setting up a really uh definitive, strict, um, inflexible answer. That might be you who's doing that. The cards are wanting to show you um different ways of seeing the situation you're in, thanks the hangman, of giving you a framework through which to view the big and broad or the very specific, um, and of helping you kind of give this either a sequence or a series of archetypes through which you can understand this. So the big kind of thing to think about when you're about to go in and ask the higher-ups for question is uh a question is you're not talking to your parents, you're not talking to your kind of judgmental best friend that you went to college with who kind of secretly resents you. You're really just either talking to the unconscious, you're talking to your guides. I mean, we'll talk about that in a moment, but the cards themselves don't really want to judge you, and they don't necessarily have one fixed answer. It's not necessarily a yes no. It might be a yes, but therefore. Uh, it might be uh it this was this way, it might be going this way, this is where we are now. Same with an astrology reading. Like, if I'm giving someone an astrology reading, I'm not gonna tell them their life. I'm gonna tell them, all right, we're in this period right now, we might be entering this period next. These are the things to keep in mind. So it's really uh uh important to catch your own moralisms or catch the ways you can be really hard on yourself. Um, and just try to let the cards maybe speak to other things that are going on or other sides of you that they might want to be representing, even if it's hard for you to see them. The other thing to think about is I think it's really useful to learn the meaning of tarot cards, or to learn what a planet is, or to learn what a house is or how to read a chart. Um, I really recommend authors like Mary Greer or Rachel Pollack or uh Alejandro Hordorowski's book of The Way of the Tarot, which is a life changer. Um, I recommend when it comes to astrology, authors like Alan Oaken, um or um my my beloved Liz Green or David Odyssey. It's really good to collect that knowledge and wisdom about what these archetypes mean, what the kind of intention might be. It's good to look at your tarot deck and see what is the artist giving us here. You know, these are based on traditions, they have a lot of connections. The tarot and the astrology are very much rooted in the elements, angels, Kabbalah, spirituality, etc. That said, I've done I anytime I've kind of been at a party and we're reading cards, there will be someone who is gonna look the meaning up on Chat GBT, and that's fine, but that's not it. What's really before you is what you see. Um, you know, uh the beloved Ruby McAllister, I remember she used to say, the first thing you ask someone when you're reading their tarot, and this is the first thing I always ask my clients, is what do you see? Not what does it mean, not what do you know about this card, what do you see? Because that might be it. Um, I did a reading early on years and years ago for my friend Tommy, and we pulled the three of pentacles, and he said to me, Oh my god, this card looks exactly like the church I grew up in. And I thought to myself, oh wow, he he nailed it. I would never have guessed that. I don't know, I don't have I don't exactly have like childhood church memories. And this has a lot of meaning for him, so let's just go there. You know, they say at 12-step meetings, like, take what you like and leave the rest, and sometimes that might be it. A good reader, when you get a reading, a good reader is going to elucidate what the historical themes are, what these things might objectively kind of mean, or what what their agreed meaning is. Um, but we don't want to get too hung up in a way that cuts us off from feeling something or getting a pang. Uh, you know, there's that scene in Margaret when they're arguing about Shakespeare, and um Matthew Broderick is like, look, it's scholarly opinion, and one of his students is like, what, so a thousand Frenchmen can't be wrong? So yeah, you might be getting something that I'm not. And let's go with that. Um, I always, when I give people readings, I record the reading because I'm like, you your brain should not be working overtime to like memorize everything we talked about. You should just be letting what needs to hit you hit you. I always say, you know, when you've done a reading for yourself, when you've done a little inner voyage, when you've had a sort of inner trip or meeting or vision, you should write it down. Um, I keep a shamanistic diary. You know, anytime I do a meditation or I give myself a reading, then I will write down what I saw, who I talked to, what I felt. That's good because then you get some reference and it helps you develop your skills. But the point is that you shouldn't, it's just for the best not to be too you can't grip the steering wheel too much. So when you're doing a reading, who are you talking to? I mean, you might be giving yourself a reading, you may have a friend giving you a reading, you may have paid um your favorite podcast host to give you a reading, but where is this coming from? Because the person pulling the cards or looking at your map is really more of the messenger. It can come from a few places. I always give my clients these options. We might just be looking at the unconscious. These this could be a Rorschach test, this could be giving you some insights into your mind or your unconscious. This could also be coming from the heart space, the soul, the spirit. This could be coming from your inner children. This could be coming from your future selves. And of course, this could be coming from your guides. This could be coming from God, from your gods, this could be coming from your angels, this could be coming from your ancestors, from your spirits, um, from your past lives. It frankly could just be coming from everyone. You know, when I get a reading with a friend of the podcast, Kat Hunt, um, she talks about our uh our masters, teachers, and loved ones. So I would amend that list to be guides, masters, teachers, loved ones, angels, ancestors, higher powers, inner children, future selves, um, and past lives. So it can be the whole caboodle, or it can be no one. You don't need to believe in any of that shit to get an amazing reading. But yeah, that's something to really think about. If you're doing this solo, if you're doing this with friends, if you're doing this with a reader, is there someone you want to keep in mind? Is there a door you want to be opening carefully? I'm not saying that we're doing like a full seance or like welcoming a spirit to take over. I'm just saying, you know, is there someone we want to be thinking of to have with us who can maybe be leading us? Um when I charge up before a reading, um, before giving a reading, I usually do some rituals to kind of clear the space, light a little fire, literally, you know, maybe light some incense. And you, you know, I want to dedicate this to the highest good, welcome any guides uh who are gonna help me, my own guides and and the guides of the person I'm about to read. Um, and that way I just say, you know, please lead me, guide me, and make sure this is of the highest good. Of course, I'll also say, like, by the way, when the reading's over, uh, I'm gonna be releasing you guys. And um, if you read Damien Eccles or Gordon White, they're really good with tea, those are really great books about rituals and about how to, you know, set up a ritual and release. But usually when a ritual's over, I'll also say, uh, this is the one I use. I hereby declare this ritual duly closed. Any spirits trapped herein may now return to your own abodes, harming none as you you do so. Take with you the blessings of Yeshua. That's kind of a an old one. But you know, you can do that. Open a window, say thanks. But there is this aspect of kind of charging up and kind of, you know, making sure your phone's off or phones in the other room, making sure the room is clean, just kind of getting into the zone. Even if you don't believe in any of that shit. Do you know what I mean? It's again, it's the thing of uh when you sit down at a restaurant, you kind of like to see the waiter clean your wipe your table down because you want it to be a clear space. Sometimes we ask for something and we are going to basically get a slap in the face. Uh often the cards or the guides will really just whack us, or the planets will just make it very clear, very obvious. Um, and sometimes you almost don't even need to keep asking because you'll really know, like, okay, they have kind of given me, I'm going through it, this is it, let's deal with it. Sometimes, and I always, you know, this happens a lot, you'll really won't get a super clear reading, or you'll get a lot of like, you'll have to really decide if you want to kind of work through and pull more cards, or if they're kind of telling you, like, girl, you're scattered, we're not going to like do this right now. So that's something to really think about when you're giving yourself a reading or giving someone else a reading. Sometimes by design, I feel like the cards won't give me a clear answer because what we're dealing with or trying to sort through is not, it's in an incoate place. It's not ready to like make a lot of sense. It's kind of in a scattered place. And sometimes these readings are really good at saying, okay, this is what we need to focus on to make some sense of this shit. You know, when someone is asking you for a reading while they're at, while they're discovering their queerness or their homosexuality, when someone is at the verge of getting conscious about their gender, when people are going through a very like dot to dot to dot transformation, sometimes the cards will say, This is what's happening with you, girl. And sometimes the planets will say, Here we are, buckle up. Other times they'll say, Okay, this is going to be an incremental journey. We're going to give you some insight about what you can focus on now, but we are not going to reveal everything. And some of these answers you're going to have to find for yourself. Um, you know, it's like in X-Men 2, one of the great films of our time. Wolverine says to Professor X, like, why won't you? I I don't have access to my memories. Why won't you just open up my mind? And Professor X is like, look, the mind needs to uncover things for itself. I can't just go in there. It's a beehive. So sometimes the cards are not going to give you that very satisfying read. And you know, I have to say, this is something I get from the guides where sometimes, and this is how I, by the way, the way I really discovered that this wasn't just me talking when I was giving readings is because I would get these sort of bitchy, cranky voices who are basically hags, uh, who are the guides who are basically saying, like, look, I already told you, I'm not telling you anymore. So sometimes it's good to pay attention to that when you feel like if you're going through it, this the reading is going to give you insight in how to heal or how to feel better, but it's not going to make your problems go away. Um, and you are going to have to kind of learn how to work with that and maybe laugh with that, which is a pain in the ass. I think, you know, a lot of the books I recommended about tarot spreads are very useful. Uh Hodorofsky has these very cuckoo kind of psychedelic ritualistic spreads. Uh Mary Greer has a lot of very fun spreads. Those are really great for structuring a layout, for figuring out what you want to put there, um, and seeing how the cards are splayed out. Often, uh, you know, some spreads can be there's the hero's journey spread where the first and last card are where you want to begin and where you want to end, and then the middle cards tell you the obstacles, and then the key card tells you how to face them. Those are great. Sometimes you can just put three cards out, put another three, put another three, you know. Um I I think there's it's worth experimenting, and eventually you get to a place where again it they're kind of just saying what they need to say, and you can kind of let go. Um, you know, it we've all had these experiences in therapy, I think, where you have these sessions where you really kind of have to hack at it and push each other and talk and talk and talk, and then you have other sessions where it really kind of takes off on its own and you let the kind of shared consciousness of you and the healer go where they need to go. Um, when it comes to tarot cards, reversals are I think really fun. Uh, Mary Greer has a book on on tarot reversals. Uh Rachel Pollack again is very good with reversals. When a card is upside down, it's not a bad thing. Um, it could mean a lot of things. It could mean that I often think that the card is might be doing underworld work or some sort of subconscious work that we need to kind of understand what's there. It might mean that something is cooking, but it's not ready to emerge. It might mean that something overly odd obvious or garish or gaudy that would be upright is actually undergoing something really subtle and beautiful and strange. But when it comes to a reversal, just like see what's try to see what's there. What are the cards doing side by side by side? Who's facing whom? What's up? What's down? Um, what are the colors? What are the what plants are there? What, you know, what are we seeing? People, are we seeing building? Are they masculine? Are they feminine? You know, just kind of like it's really fun to just sit and look. When it comes to astrology, astrology is really good for specific questions. Tarot is a bit better for broad. Tarot, you can really ask anything and see where it takes you, and they're gonna tell you what they want to tell you. Astrology is a lot better for sequence, time frame, chronology, direction, um, next steps. This will be happening this year, this will be happening next year, these are the themes, these are the structures, this is where things are going, this is how we should look ahead. So astrology is a bit more of a bigger chicken to deal with. Um, and for that reason, like you can really take those structural questions to astrology what should you do when you are working with someone? Um when you are either having a friend read you or you are hiring someone to read you. First of all, I think the good news is that you really can get something different from every sort of reader, even within, you know, I have now two Akashic readers, I know multiple astrologers. It's the same with when you there's different sorts of massages that you can get, you know? Some you want the masseuse to absolutely annihilate you, some you want them to kind of like gently reset you. So different readers will give you different things, and I don't think any one reader is going to like fix you or heal you or save you. But I think it's very fair to go to your reader with specifics, and it's really good for your reader that you are as vocal as you can be. I mean, not so much that you're like, by the way, I've had a lot of people, I love when people will pay full price for a reading and then spend the whole hour talking, and I'm like, okay, girl, if this is healing for you. But, you know, obviously the point of getting a reading is that you're kind of sitting and listening and receiving. That's a huge thing, of course. But I think a lot of people show up to these readings and they kind of just are like, should I talk? And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not that I'm like a psychic who knows everything about you and I'm going to like reveal your secrets. Those psychics exist, and sure, we can do that. But for me as a reader, I love context. I, you know, if you're going through a transition or a breakup or you're depressed, tell me about it. That'll inform me and it'll inform the cards. And more than that, it'll really help you. Because I think a lot of times we show up to these and we don't have the thing formed, and now we suddenly have an occasion to say, okay, actually, that's where the pain is coming from. Oh, wait, I never put that into words. Actually, that gives us a huge amount of information, regardless of what this fucking reader is going to say. So I think it's really good to be vocal, and you can ask for specifics. Um, this does not need to be, again, like I said, this is not landmark for him. Like, sorry, I hope I don't get in trouble for saying that. But this is not just like believe in yourself, you know. It's no, what do I do about this relationship? What do I do about this job situation? And you can ask when. Should it uh I'm looking at this apartment. Is this right for me? Should it be next week? Should it be next month? You know, and again, I'm I I want to be clear, you're not guaranteed any answer. You're not going to, you're not guaranteed the answer you want, that's for sure. But the asking will give us a lot, and you're going to get a lot of insight one way or the other. It might not be, you know, we've talked about this in previous episodes, but you know, when you get an Akashic reading, either from uh John Juan Kiko Soare or from um Kat Hunt, both of whom I highly recommend, you know, you might ask a question. I I've had it happen where I've been like, why am I having a money crisis? And then the they'll say, like, you're an iguana, and here's why. And then three months later, that iguana revelation actually gives a huge amount of insight. But we're going into a place beyond time and space and beyond um back and forth. You know, uh Alberto Villodo, um who I love and who's a great writer, and I really recommend his book, Shaman Healer Sage. He talks about, you know, shamans don't believe in causality. Everything is connected back, forward, past, future. There is no sense of this happened, then this happened. It's a bit more we are going to look at this whole thing in a sort of Amy Adams arrival lens. Astrology is really good for saying this is the progression, this is where we were, this is where we're going next. But the reader is going to need to hold both for you. They're going to need to. Um, while really trying to serve you. Um I think it it took me time to learn this, but you can never really give your client what they want, and they're not you, you know, you're never gonna sometimes you really are aching to make this reading happy for the person. And I think there's always a positive or an optimistic insight, no matter what the reading, no matter what the situation. I do believe that, but yeah, life can fuck you up, and sometimes the cards or the stars want to affirm that and say, yeah, this really sucks, and it might not necessarily get better. I've had a lot of I pulled cards a lot for myself where I've said, Why am I broke? When is this gonna get better? And the cards have said, like, listen, bitch, you have some things you need to deal with, and we wish you luck. Uh come back. So the reader's job is tricky because they want to give you good news, they want to make you happy, they want you to get your money's worth. But I think when you're looking for the right reader, considering the right reader, you really want someone to tell you the truth. That's not everybody. Um, so it's important that there is a bullshit radar. Um, and you really get to ask your reader, like, what the hell does that mean? You know, if your reader is going up into the heavens or going into these very um, you know, using arcane terminology, and I always say this to my clients, you can stop me, you can slow me down. If I'm talking about something that has no resonance for you, you can tell me. Um, if this doesn't mean anything to you, tell me, and we're gonna work there together because it is the reader's job to put it in your language. And by the way, I've had a lot of clients where I've just said they weren't really getting what I was saying, but I think they got what they what they needed to get, and I did my very, very best to speak in their language and deliver this to them the way they needed. Um, you know, all of that is important. I think what my advice would be would be get a book. I think a book is gonna be when it comes to these books on tarot books, they are just gonna be more fun than than the chat or more fun than looking something up on Google, just because you're already in a kind of beautiful mindscape where you're starting to like look at things and perceive and contemplate and maybe write things down. So it's just kind of more fun to have a book at hand. Um get a deck, and if it's not tarot and if it's not astrology, whatever that thing is, if it's looking at stones or runes or birds, the point is is that you're just kind of sitting with the cigarette and just contemplating for a minute and just seeing what's there, seeing what wants to reveal itself, and give the thing time. Let it reveal itself, you know. If you're pulling a tarot card every day, see how it reveals itself over the day, you know? That's it, that's very fun doing a daily pull. Um, it it allows you to kind of see what wants to show itself over the day, and it's a great way to kind of learn card by card, whatever. But I think like the biggest thing, and this is something we can give each other, is most of us are extremely hard on ourselves, and we often bring that to these questions where we'll say, Oh, well, this is just revealing to me that I'm stupid or boring or tedious or whatever. And it's good to have someone else there, with whether it's a friend or whether it's your higher power or your angels or your team, or whether it's someone you're paying to give you a reading, to say, Oh, I actually see a different side here, and this might be a different side of you. And why don't we explore that and talk about that and think about that? Um, you know, what why not? What's not to love with that? Okay. I hope this helps, and I hope we can do a reading together someday and you know have this shared experience. Um let's talk about this week's high priestess. Uh, every week on this show we celebrate someone whose birthday is this week. Uh, they are the week's high priestess, and I wanted to talk about the defiant brave Taurus Kiyoshi Koromiya, uh, who lived who was born uh in 1943 uh in a Japanese-American uh internment camp and died in 2000 of complications from uh AIDS. Uh he was a major activist in the Act Up movement in the Gay Liberation Front. Uh he wrote uh he was an editor for the Act Up uh newsletter. Uh he helped draft the guidelines uh for people living with HIV and AIDS. Um and he was a major activist uh in the legalization of medical marijuana. Uh this is someone who really called out bullshit during the Vietnam War, who called out bullshit during the AIDS crisis, and who really like put the pen to paper. Uh I one I always want to celebrate anyone who's involved in Act Up, but I think the Torians are very good at standing our ground, and we really don't like um like being told what's what, especially when it's not true and when it's fucked up. And when you look at this person who, you know, came out of an internment camp, lived through the Vietnam War and was a prominent opponent, and who then said, wait a minute, I'm in this crisis. Uh I have AIDS, I want to live, you know, fuck this messaging. I'm gonna make my own messaging. That really goes to the Taurus. Uh, you know, you think about the the tarot card, the Hierophant, which says, like, Um, I'm gonna call the shots. Um, I'm going to create my own dogma, my own script, my own way of thinking. So we are celebrating Kiyoshi Kurumiya today. Um I hope this episode was useful or helpful for you. Thank you for uh joining us. We will be back next week. I want to hear about your reading experiences, about your experiences with readers, about how this has been for you. Uh I am at ask at heavenlybodiespodcast.com. Please let us know. Please show us your spreads. Dot dot dot. Uh, we are on Instagram uh at Heavenly Bodies Podcast, and you can always book a reading with me uh at David Odyssey.com. I have been David Odyssey. Please leave me a glowing review, share this with your friends, uh, and I will see you next week. Thank you so much for going on this ride with me. Thank you for listening. This podcast is part of Pride House Media, hosted by David Odyssey and produced by Matthew Breen and Josh Rosenswag. With original music composed by Nell Balaban. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And while you're there, leave us a rating and review. It really helps others discover the show. I'd love to get to know you. So email questions and visions to ask at heavenlyboddiespodcast.com and book a reading with me at David Odyssey.com. Until our next trip, keep looking up.