How to Take Notes on a (New) Tarot Deck
This is less of a definitive guide and more documentation of how I take notes on decks I work with. I’m always interested to see how other people do it so I wanted to show my process. I hope some of these ideas will inspire folks to develop their own systems and share!
I don’t take notes on every deck I own. For some, I received them at a time when there wasn’t much free time to dig into them or I just knew it wasn’t going to be a deck that would see heavy usage so it wasn’t worth the time.
But every now and then I get a deck and immediately know I’m going to relying on it. In those cases, I find it really valuable to study the deck as deeply as I can. There’s a learning curve with any deck, but studying it head on really makes that go easier in my experience.
But more than that - it’s just fun!
For those of us who don’t use Books of Shadow and the like, divination notes and a divination journal can be a really rewarding way to spend time with our spirituality.
My Microsoft OneNote System
This is the system I’m currently working on with the Numinous Tarot I just got. I’m incredibly in love with deck and wanted to do something more involved for it. Also, my disability has been flaring up again and greatly impacts my ability to use my arms and hands so I needed it to be digital so I could update it more consistently.
As you can see, I set up a new notebook just for this tarot deck. I have a tab for general notes and then one for each of the major sections of the deck.
This is one card I finished my first pass with. I took a picture of it with the best light I could manage on my phone and then pulled it into here. I put my personal references in clearest view. I do that so I can begin to make and trust my personal associations. Since it’s digital I can update this as I do more readings and make more connections.
This deck also came with a digital guidebook, so I copy pasted the information here so I can compare it to my evolving understanding of the card.
Further down are where I have a few prompts I use when I’m trying to dig deeper into a card. They’re not filled out yet because I’m still in the beginning stages with this deck. But if I see this card turn up a lot in my readings, I’ll come back and do the journal prompts.
My Microsoft Excel System
I’ve written before about using an Excel sheet to make notes on tarot cards. I’ve played around with it some since writing that post but I will admit that it doesn’t produce nice neat notes so here’s a screencap of a blank Rider-Waite one. The download links on that post are still good by the way so you can still save yourself a little work if you want.
The major pro of this system I’ve found is that it forces me to keep notes brief. It’s makes me boil cards down to a few keywords. I use this more for decks that I already know and just want a reference for or for decks I don’t think I’ll be working with much.
I really like the visual nature of this set up. It fits more with how I picture the deck in my head when I’m working with it and that’s really helpful. It’s also pretty easy to search this set up for cards but also for keywords which is nice when I’m doing certain types of readings where I need to select a signifier ahead of time.
My dream handwritten system would be to hand bind a booklet and fill it with the same information I have in my OneNote system. But I’ve yet to have a situation that allows for that. So I mostly use my handwritten system for SOAP Journaling and daily draws. Since I do this mostly in my bullet journal, I can look up readings I do in the index of by day if I did them as a daily.
Note: Lots going on here, I know. It’s my personal diary, be kind. <3
It’s not perfect and I think I’m going to try putting them in a dedicating tarot journal just to see if I like that any better. I’m still figuring out what place a bullet journal has in my life at this point so that’s part of why my tarot journaling is kind of muddled at the moment.
Well to be fair, I’m still figuring out what place tarot journaling has in my life too. Everyone extols the virtue of doing something everyday but as someone with a chronic disability, ADHD, and other sensory processing issues that’s just Not Going to HappenTM. I really like doing a couple prompts in a challenge at a time and then putting it aside and then picking it up again when I can.
I hope this helps spark some ideas! I really do believe that deep study of a deck is worthwhile. Not mandatory by any means. I do just genuinely enjoy doing it. Give it a try! Write down what information you want to have on hand for each card and put together a system to collect it. Tag me in any experiments! I’m looking for more inspiration myself!
