Firstly, let's dispel a few myths about tarot cards. Unfortunately, following the James Bond film Live and Let Die, there developed an assumption that the tarot is somehow linked to the occult or voodoo. Whilst tarot tradition is secured within the Occult, there is nothing sinister about the practise of reading tarot cards, any more that the Death card actually resembles death! (In fact the Death card symbolises renewal, a new beginning - whether wanted or not!)

You can download this free tarot card meanings program on the next page to run on your own computer or by clicking here.  Once you have understood the meanings of the cards, the next step is to learn how to carry out a tarot card reading. The process of selecting a small number of cards from the entire tarot deck of seventy-eight, and setting them out in a pattern to be interpreted, is called laying out a spread.

There are many different kinds of spreads, however the particular tarot spread which we will illustrate here is one of the oldest and most popular - The Celtic Cross Tarot Spread. The reader should shuffle the cards gently then spreads the 78 tarot cards out in a fan shape on a table, faced down. The seeker is then asked to select 10 cards, still faced down, from the presented tarot deck.

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