Rootlock Radio is a podcast designed to demystify Tarot, offering a resource for learning and exploring its cards through a practical, wisdom-focused approach rather than solely divination.
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you're listening to root lock radio [Music]
[Music]
hello and welcome to rootlock radio a
podcast for uncloaking
learning and exploring the tarot cards
my name is weston i live in new york
city and i'm the founder of rootlock tarot
tarot
my practice for reading and teaching the
tarot cards
i'm creating this podcast for a couple
of reasons
the first is to provide a resource for
people who are trying to learn the tarot cards
cards
in each episode you'll find step-by-step
instructions that will help you to
familiarize yourself
and get proficient at reading tarot
cards the second reason is to contribute
to the conversation
because tarot was malleable and
ever-evolving the more voices that
contribute to the conversation about it
the better in my mind i'd like to add my
voice to that conversation
and contribute my ideas about the tarot
and i'd also like to hear from you
so if you have any questions comments or
things you want to talk to me about
please shoot me an email you can reach
me at realblocktarot
gmail.com in this first episode i'll
give you an idea of the philosophy that
i use to approach the tarot cards
if you're someone who's skeptical about
tarot you might find my philosophy a bit reassuring
reassuring
after that we'll get started with our
first lesson i'll tell you which deck i
recommend starting with
how to take a look at the deck for the
first time and how to do a beginner's spread
spread
so that said let's get started with the
first episode of rootlock radio [Music]
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before we start our first lesson i want
to give you an idea of the philosophy
i use to approach the tarot cards before
you really know much about the tarot
cards you probably
have some perception of them as a mystical
mystical
tool that fortune tellers use to tell
you things that you don't know and tell
you what's going to happen to you in the future
future
now i recommend setting aside this whole
idea of
what's called divination or fortune telling
telling
when you first approach the tarot cards
the main reason for this
is that most people are skeptical of the
ability of the tarot cards to
tell you things that you don't know or
tell you what's going to happen to you
sometime in the future
and in many ways i'm one of those people
even after using the tarot cards for years
years
having worked with the tarot cards for
this amount of time
what i've come to realize is that the
best use of them
is not so much telling me what's going
to happen
or what i don't already know but helping
me to understand
the best path for me to take forward
throughout these episodes we'll talk a
lot about the imagery the symbols and
the archetypes that are represented in
the cards
what comes with these images symbols and
archetypes is a lot of wisdom about the
human experience
so when you decide to select a card or
spread of cards
in the face of a question or a dilemma
or a choice that you have to make you
are asking the cards to
share their wisdom with you so no matter
what card you
draw in relation to the situation you're facing
facing
you will get some bit of wisdom that
will help you
if you try to reframe the situation and
see it from
a different side and in a new way and
hopefully help you to get some clarity
about what you should do about it now
there's nothing wrong with enjoying
the mystical aspect of the tarot cards
and i
that's not what i'm trying to get at
here many times i'll draw a card and be
quite shocked at how perfectly fitting
it is
and especially when i do tarot readings
for other people
there's nothing more enjoyable than
watching people feel
surprised and delighted at how fitting
the cards that they're seeing are for
them in their life so by all means enjoy
that part of the tarot
in future episodes i'll revisit all this
and we'll talk more about divination
and the mystical aspects of the tarot as
well as the practical side of it but for
now i think it's useful to know that
focusing on divination is not all that
important as a beginner tarot reader
so that said let's get started on our
first lesson [Music]
[Music]
so for our first lesson we're going to
talk about
which tarot deck to start with there are
a lot of options if you go to any store that
that
offers tarot decks you might see dozens
if not hundreds of decks
so it can be a little overwhelming to
try to figure out where to start
and for that reason i would like to recommend
recommend
the writer weight tarot deck as the
place to start
a lot of other decks are inspired by the
art on the rider weight deck so it's
sort of like
the mother deck in a lot of ways
that doesn't mean it's the oldest deck
um there are other
tarot decks that date back farther the
marseille is another classic tarot deck
that predates the writer weight deck however
however
the writer weight deck is unique from
the ones that predated and that there is artwork
artwork
on every single card so
if you pick up a writer weight deck and
i recommend that you do
and you start looking through you'll see
that there are a couple different kinds
of cards
so the first is called major arcana
cards there are 22 of them
and they start with zero which is the
fool and go up to 21
which is the world now the major arcana cards
cards
represent sort of more um archetypal
and major experiences in life
and when you lay them out as a set
and you get to understand what the
images and the archetypes in those
images mean
you start to get the story of a person's
journey through life through the human experience
experience
now the other type of card in the
tarot deck is the minor arcana cards
these come in four suits which is cups
wands swords and pentacles and they
range from aces to the number 10
and then there are four court cards the page
page
the knight the queen the king so these
are kind of more like
the classic playing card deck and
actually playing cards
are rooted in the tarot deck
now each suit represents a particular type
type
of energy so just the basic
way that each card derives its meaning
is you can think of it as an
intersection of energy so each card
is an intersection of energy between the suit
suit
so whether it's cups wands swords or pentacles
pentacles
and the number right so numerology
dictates that each number has a specific
energy of its own
so when you combine the energy of the
suit with the energy of the number
that's where you sort of get the meaning
of the card
so someone who's not familiar which you
may not be with numerology or
with the elemental energies of water
fire air in earth it may be difficult
for you to memorize
what each card would mean and that's
exactly why the rider weight deck
is special and helpful for a beginner
tarot reader
because rather than having to memorize
what ten
swords means you see an image on the
card of ten of swords
that helps you to understand what that
card means so
with say the marseille deck the other
sort of classic
deck that's what you see on the card you
see ten swords you see seven pentacles
you see
six wands you don't see an image depicting
depicting
what that intersection of energy
actually denotes
so that's why the rider weight deck is
particularly helpful
for beginner tarot readers that said i recommend
recommend
starting out with the riderweight tarot
deck we're going to talk a lot about
the particular meanings of each of the
cards and how to learn those meanings
and how to
become familiar with the cards but
there's also something about
intuition that plays a big part in
reading tarot
so no matter how much you try to
memorize what each card means you should
still be also relying on your own
reaction to each card your own what you
see in each card
on your own as a first sort of
preliminary experiment
and a preliminary attempt to read the tarot
tarot
what i recommend doing is sitting down
and shuffling the deck thoroughly
you know just just shuffling it as much
as you can
making sure it's nice and mixed up
because if you're buying a brand new
deck it won't be so
you know shuffle shuffle shuffle and
then figure out a way that you want to
draw the cards out of it so what i do is
i usually cut the deck
in half after i've shuffled it so cut
the deck into two piles
and then the lower pile is where i draw
my three cards from so what we're doing
is we're drawing three cards
so this is one of the most classic starter
starter
spreads okay so past present
future and then flip them over and see
what you've drawn
now if any of them are upside down turn
them right side up we'll talk about
reversals which is upside down cards
later we're not going to do that yet and
just look at the cards
um and ask yourself some questions look
at the images
on the cards right so what i drew for this
this
this experiment is the ten of cups for past
past
the six of pentacles for present
in the major arcana card judgment for future
future
so looking at the past card right i see
uh some figures some people and they
look very happy
there's a rainbow up above them with the 10
10
cups embedded in it and it looks like a
very celebratory
card so i think to myself okay there's
something of celebration right
and i may want to look at the colors too
so the people in the card are happy
the colors are bright there's a nice
blue sky which usually denotes happiness
there's a rainbow
so it's a very positive feeling card
and then for the middle card i have the
the six of pentacles
and on this card there's a man holding a
a scale and he is giving something to
these two men that are begging to him so
he's in nicer clothes than they are
he ostensibly has more money than they do
do
and he is sort of giving them something
it looks like he's feeding or giving
money to beggars
um the background of the card is gray
which is much less happy a gray sky is
not as happy as a blue sky
right so this seems to be some sort of
exchange of goods exchange of
money and it seems to have something to
do with you know
there's the rich and there's the poor
and then for the future card i have the
major arcana card
judgment and there are people standing up
up
in what appear to be tombstones they're
all naked their bodies are blue
and they're looking up to a a trumpeter
in the sky an angel with a trumpet and a
flag in the sky
and it very much seems like some sort of
after death thing especially with the
word judgment
so looking at those three cards you know
the the first one is very happy and positive
positive
the second one is more negative and has
a feeling of sort of
inequality right and then the third one
has this feeling of sort of a great moment
moment
of judgment and it kind of feels like
after death
right so so there's something a little
bit morbid into me about it their blue bodies
bodies
their naked bodies standing up in these
graves but also something just sort of
faded with the the trumpeting angel um
so i might think to myself well
in the past this situation was very
happy and celebratory and simple and positive
positive
the blue sky the celebrating family the
red the rainbow the dancing kids
in the present maybe there's some sort
of transition happening
having to do with work or money or
possessions and then in the future
somehow i'm gonna be called to my fate
so even though
this maybe is some sort of death experience
experience
right these people in the in the graves
have died
maybe it's some sort of big transition
right death usually represents a
transition not physical death
through this transition from happiness
to a more inequal
scenario i will be called to something greater
greater
okay so that's that's what i see in
these three cards
so even without knowing what the cards
actually mean
and knowing what other people would say
that the cards mean
i'm able to look at them and sort of by
looking at
what the figures in the cards are doing
just my emotional reaction to the people
in the cards
the colors that i see in the cards i'm
able to see
sort of a story unfolding before me so
that it really is
the most basic skill in tarot reading and
and
um i recommend when you get your first deck
deck
that you do this exercise as well
and just push yourself to try to
understand what the cards mean
even without looking them up or trying
to figure out
what someone else would say they mean
[Music]
so to recap this first tarot lesson i
recommend that you buy
a copy of the writer weight tarot deck
and take a look at it and understand the
major and minor arcana cards
and also understand the four suits the cups
cups
the wands the swords and the pentacles
and understand that each card
is an intersection of its suit and its number
number
and then shuffle the cards and draw a past
past
present and future tarot spread
and then take a look at that and assess
what you see
without looking up what the cards mean
this will give you an idea of the
intuitive nature of tarot reading
and help you to get started on building
your own relationship
with the tarot cards [Music]
[Music] so
so [Music]
[Music]
root lock radio is a podcast for
uncloaking learning
and exploring the tarot cards it's
written and produced by me
westin the intro music for today's show
was provided by shenandoah davis
you can find her information in the show
notes she's also got a new album coming
out so please
check her out the music you're hearing
now is provided by jere
you can find the link to her band camp
in the show notes as well and listen to
her radio show on brooklyn radio it's
called the ice cream and cake show
thank you so much for listening and i
hope you'll join us next time for root
lock radio [Music]
[Music] you
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