How to keep a tarot journal
Reading tarot · 2 min read · updated
A tarot journal is a record of your readings: the date, the question, the cards and a few lines about what they meant to you. Over weeks it turns single readings into patterns, shows which cards keep returning, and lets you check later what you saw and what you missed.
- Write
- Date, question, cards, first impression, a note later
- Time
- 3 to 10 minutes per reading
- Best habit
- One card a day
- Review
- Weekly and monthly
- Why it helps
- Patterns, memory, honest checking
Why keep one
A single reading is easy to forget or to bend in memory. Written down, it can be checked. A journal answers questions no single reading can: which cards come up again and again, which suit dominates a hard month, whether the advice you drew was the advice you needed.
Writing has its own value. Since the first study by James Pennebaker and Sandra Beall in 1986, hundreds of experiments have tested short sessions of writing about what is on your mind; on average they find a small but real benefit for wellbeing.[1][2] A tarot entry is a short, structured version of the same thing: the card gives you a starting point, the writing does the work.
What to write
Keep each entry short enough that you will keep doing it.
- Date and time.
- The question, in one sentence. See How to ask tarot a question.
- The spread and the cards, with positions and any reversals.
- First impression, before you look up meanings: what you see, what you feel.
- The reading: what the cards say together, in two or three sentences.
- Later: a line added after a few days or weeks. What happened? What did the reading get right about you, and what did it miss?
Prompts that help
When you do not know what to write, answer one of these:
- What in this picture did I notice first, and why?
- Where in my life is this card right now?
- What would the person on the card do in my place?
- What am I hoping this card means? What am I afraid it means?
- What is one small thing I can do today because of this card?
- Which card would I have liked to draw instead, and what does that say?
Weekly and monthly reviews
Once a week, read the week's entries in one sitting. Once a month, count. Which cards appeared more than once? Which suit was missing? A month with five Swords and no Cups says something about how you were living, whatever the single readings said.
One card a day
The easiest habit is one card each morning and two lines each evening: the card, and where you saw it in your day. After a month you will have met most of the deck in your own life, which teaches the meanings better than memorising. See One card a day.
Paper or app
A paper notebook is personal and slow, which helps some people think. An app is quicker and does the counting for you. Pulp is a tarot journal built around this practice: you draw or enter your cards, write your question and notes, attach a voice memo or a photo of a physical spread, link entries that belong together, and see which cards return over time.
