So this woman I met, who practices a different path, told me self-readings are basically off limits. Won’t do them. Said it invites bad energy and you can’t interpret your own stuff objectively anyway.
Been doing my own spreads for a couple of years now, so this threw me a bit. Is this widely believed or just her thing?
Is it bad luck to read your own tarot cards?
Most readings leave you with more questions than answers.
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I’ve been self-reading for years with absolutely no problem.
You do have to learn how to do a reading for yourself. Some very different rules to reading for someone else and not really something that your average beginner guidebook is going to cover. Most of the problem is that it’s incredibly hard (especially for beginners) to honestly be objective with themselves. Even when you’ve been doing this for years, you need to carefully check in with yourself all the time and most will use a good Tarot journal so we’re forced to write and track our predictions.
This is one of those tarot superstitions that just floats around. The ‘you can’t read for yourself’ thing is like ‘you can’t buy your own deck’ or ‘you have to wrap your cards in silk.’ None of it really holds up when you look into it.
It comes down to objectivity, seeing what’s actually in front of you rather than what you’re hoping to see. One of her clients stopped coming to her and ended up writing a whole book about self-reading, which says a lot.
Bias is the actual challenge here. Not bad luck. We’re human, we see what we want to see sometimes, and tarot works on intuition, where the answers are open to interpretation. Some readers struggle with their own spreads because they’re too close to the situation. As one source put it, ‘the reader cannot see the wood for the trees.’
Something that helps me, which I picked up somewhere and can’t remember where, is to read the cards as if you’re reading for a friend sitting across from you. Pretend the question is theirs, interpret everything, then apply it back to yourself. It’s a decent mental workaround for keeping bias in check.
Mary K. Greer wrote a whole book in 1984 called Tarot for Your Self, all about using the cards for personal introspection. Self-reading has been a legit and encouraged practice for a long time. Your acquaintance is entitled to her boundaries, but that’s her practice, not a universal rule.
That’s her thing, not a rule. I respect anyone’s personal practice, but this idea that self-readings invite bad energy is superstition dressed up as wisdom. Your Tarot practice is entirely your own; don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something with your cards (that goes for us, too).
Tarot cards are a tool, like a hammer or a pen. How you use them and the energy you bring can affect your readings, but the cards themselves don’t carry bad luck. If you believe they do, though, you might start subconsciously finding reasons to prove yourself right, and then you’re just living inside a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A whole lot of people say one should not or cannot read for oneself, and some have translated this as meaning it’s bad luck. But you are your own best guinea pig. And beginners need to practice somehow.
I do agree that it can be hard to give yourself a good reading for other reasons. The thread linked above on reading for yourself is a must-read if you want actual, useful spreads. I would also read this one:
Less specific about reading for yourself but it will help you actually get useful messages (it’s hard to do this for yourself).
Some readers just can’t get objective enough about their own stuff, and that’s fine, no shame in going to someone else for the heavy questions. But blanket-banning self-readings is gatekeeping.
Two years of self-reading, no curses, no plagues of locusts. I mean. You’re kind of the proof here lol.
This superstition has been floating around tarot communities forever. It sits right next to ‘you must be gifted your first deck’ and ‘never let anyone touch your cards.’ Same shelf. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do with your cards.
A lot of these myths trace back to older traditions where tarot was sacred and passed down through family lines, like in some Romani traditions, where a deck would be given to a young apprentice within the maternal line. In that context, it makes total sense. But it got generalized into this blanket rule that was never meant to apply to everyone. Now people treat it like some universal law of tarot.
If I wanted to be really cynical, I’d say it was started by people who didn’t want people reading for themselves so they could sell them spreads.
It just screams gatekeeping to me.
Self-readings do get tricky with high-stakes emotional stuff though. Your energy will influence the cards you draw and how you perceive them. If you’re panicking or spiraling, probably not the time to pull cards for yourself.
I would read the cards aloud as if you’re reading for someone sitting across from you. It just switches your brain into a more objective mode. If you’re just reading them to yourself, you are more likely to (not intentionally) distort the meanings. And don’t ask the same question over and over. There’s an old I Ching concept about this. If you keep begging the oracle to tell you the same thing, it stops making sense. Or starts messing with you basically. One question, one read, sit with it.
I would suggest starting with some Oracle cards to start with as well. Something with more direct meanings printed on the physical cards so your spreads are a little more pointed than the RWS. Less room for your mind to dilute things.
Though honestly the locusts thing would have been kind of impressive…
I agree tarot is deeply personal and self-readings aren’t inherently bad luck, but that woman you met has a point about objectivity. I would keep that in mind because when we tell ourselves it’s impossible we’d fall for something so obvious… that’s when we are most at risk of it.
Full time Tarot readers with 10+ years of experience will still struggle being objective with their own readings (though it can be done).
Six months into my practice, it’s so easy to see what I want to see in my own spreads. We’re human. We bring our whole mess to the table every time we sit down with a deck. That doesn’t mean stop doing self-readings. Just approach them with a bit more humility than you’d bring to reading for someone else.
All the other rules people throw around (never let others touch your deck, always read reversals, etc.) come down to personal belief. Objectivity has merit.
Ha, well if that’s actually true, I’m definitely in trouble. Been reading for myself for years now.
But you got this. Trust your own practice.
My favorite deck basically only gets used for personal readings at this point. Self-readings have been my main practice for years.
No bad energy issues or anything like that. It just works.
Reading for others is where I shine. Self-readings are good for deck bonding and keeping my skills sharp, but the bias thing is real.
I can technically do it, just not nearly as well as when I’m pulling cards for someone else.
Okay, here’s my two cents even though I’m not Wiccan. Can we talk about this whole gatekeeping thing? When did tarot become something you need specific credentials for? It’s cards and intuition, practiced across so many different traditions throughout history.
The idea that you need to check certain boxes before you’re ‘allowed’ to read really grinds my gears. The cards don’t care what label you wear. If that were actually true I would be completely stuffed anyway, so… yeah.
I deal exclusively with solo readings sometimes. The real juice of it is noticing what emotional reaction each card stirs in you, what memories or life circumstances it brings to mind.
If you ever want to do a reading yourself and have someone help interpret, that’s always an option and a good way to learn. But love readings are trickier to start with. Your romantic life is so tangled up with other people’s energy, which makes everything muddier. Just something to keep in mind.
Something I learned the hard way. Don’t pull cards for yourself when you’re emotionally activated about the question. It just doesn’t work.
If you just had a fight with your partner and immediately sit down to ask about the relationship, you’re basically reading through tears. Give yourself a buffer. A few hours at least, ideally sleep on it, then approach the deck when your nervous system has actually settled.
Edit: I should clarify, you can still read on emotional topics. Just give yourself breathing room before you sit down so you’re reading the cards and not projecting your anxiety onto them.
Edit 2: This applies less to general daily pulls and more to those big charged life questions where the stakes feel high.
The biggest thing that leveled up my self-reading practice was keeping a tarot journal. Dead simple. I write down the spread and my gut reaction in the moment, plus whatever’s actually going on in my life that day.
When you come back weeks or months later with fresh eyes, a card’s meaning will unfold in a way you just couldn’t see before. Like you planted something in a garden and came back to find a flower you never expected.
The journal itself ends up being more revealing than any individual reading on its own. It becomes its own kind of mirror.
Real practitioners drill self-readings daily. Amateurs love peddling these old wives’ tales about never reading for yourself, but everyone from the Waite-Smith circle to modern pros like Theresa Reed treats it as essential practice. And her ‘different path’ thing honestly sounds like hedge witchcraft stuff, tarot demands personal immersion.
Train with grand tableau spreads long enough and patterns emerge clearly. Somewhere around 500 sits is where it clicked for me. That’s skill built over time.
Dedicate a shadow deck solely for yourself though. Keeps the main one clean for clients, energy stays strong. Something about that separation just works.
Self-readings are honestly the whole reason I got into tarot. Like, that was it. I bought my first deck maybe three weeks ago specifically because I wanted a daily check-in with myself, kind of like journaling but way more interesting (and less pressure to fill a whole page).
Every morning I pull a single card and write down what I think it means before looking it up. The gap between my gut reaction and the traditional meaning teaches me so much about my own assumptions. More than I expected.
And I think that’s the part that surprised me. I’m learning to catch how my brain wants to interpret things before the book meaning steps in. Has anyone else used self-reading as a learning method? Because I feel like if I had only ever read for other people I wouldn’t understand the cards half as well as I’m starting to. Maybe that changes later though…
Tarot works well as a mirror for self-reflection. That might be its most valuable use.
When you ask subjective questions for personal introspection, pure objectivity isn’t really the goal anyway. It just helps me notice feelings I would otherwise overlook, the stuff sitting right below the surface. That matters more to me than whether the reading is ‘objective’ by someone else’s standards.
That liminal sleepy state. Honestly that’s the whole trick for self-readings. I do mine first thing in the morning before my conscious mind fully kicks in, and it makes all the difference, my personal biases just aren’t awake yet to cloud the intuitive messages.
Not sure it works for everyone but yeah.
Honestly, the best training ground. Reading for yourself forces you to balance feelings with objectivity while staying unattached, which is basically everything when it comes to intuition.
Not easy, but once you can actually pull that off with your own cards, reading for other people just clicks.