You have a deck, you have a place set up, and you are ready to read your tarot cards. But you’ve heard that you need to do something special before you’ll be able to do a reading. What is that all about? Today I want to discuss opening rituals and prayer before reading tarot cards, why it may be good for you, and what some of the different options are that you can explore.
I’ll start by giving my own ritual as an example, discuss the benefits of a solid opening ritual, and give you some unique ideas to get you started exploring your own opening ritual and prayer.
Before we dive into this topic, I want to say one thing: I do not believe tarot requires you to do any sort of ritual, protection practice, or cleansing in order to get a great reading. I believe the energy is with the cards and messages are ready to be delivered no matter what. All that is required is for the reader to have enough focus to be able to see the messages. I believe the purpose of opening rituals in tarot readings is to give the reader that focus.
My Personal Opening Ritual
I’ll start this off by describing my (usually brief) opening ritual that I perform.
First, I sit in my reading spot, close my eyes, and place my hands on my knees with my palms facing up. This hand position helps me to feel open and ready to receive.
I take three deep breathes in and out.
Then, I do a “come here” motion with my hands, and ask my spirit guides to be with me during the reading. The hand motion helps me physically connect with the idea of summoning my spirit guides.
(Side note: I am a fairly spiritual person, and like the idea of a spirit guide team who follows me through life, and gives me direction via signs and dreams. I also choose to believe that is the spirit guides that are delivering the messages we receive in tarot. These are my beliefs, and by no means does anyone else need to take them on to get benefit from tarot. One of the beautiful things about tarot is how it can help people with any belief system.)
After this, I visualize restoring my energy field. I hold my hands in front of my stomach, as though I am holding a ball. I ask my spirit guides to please restore my energy. I then let my hands float apart from each other, until I feel restored (which is usually when my hands have moved beyond my hips). Again, restoring energy in this way is something I choose to believe, and I always feel very refreshed and energized after this visualization.
I finish my opening ritual with a small prayer to God. I was raised Catholic, and out of habit I always do the sign of the cross before a prayer, so I do that with my right hand. I’ll then place my hands in prayer position, or place my right hand on my heart, and speak with God about what I am seeking, and ask for help with the reading.
Again, praying to God is a belief I choose to have, and not at all something that is required to be a tarot reader. It doesn’t matter to me either what my client’s beliefs are – they do not need to participate in the opening ritual at all. If they do wish to participate, I am more than happy to have someone to do the ritual with! I love being flexible with my clients and my readings, and just vibing with the flow. To me that is a big part of the magic of tarot.
I usually take one last deep breathe and open my eyes after the ritual. Now I’m ready to read!
Benefits of an Opening Ritual or Prayer Before Reading Tarot
As I said above, I think the biggest benefit of a regular opening ritual is that it can help you focus in on the reading you are about to do. If you are feeling rushed, or are full of anxiety, or are distracted by the million other things you need to do that day, you will not be present for the cards and the message they need to deliver to you.
If you are more of a spiritual tarot reader like I am, the opening ritual can help you connect with your spirituality a bit before diving into the reading. Sometimes over the course of a normal day, it’s easy to put your spirituality on the back burner, and having a regular opening ritual can bring your spirituality back to the forefront.
The opening ritual can also help you connect more with the cards. Some readers choose to incorporate the cards into their ritual (cleansing the cards before each reading or client is an example of this), and this can help you feel that this deck is ready to serve your (and maybe your client’s) needs.
How to Develop Your Own Pre-Reading Ritual (Plus Some Unique Ideas To Try)
How do you develop an opening ritual? Just start experimenting! Think about the different things you enjoy that relax you and focus you. This can be mediation, prayer, affirmations, mantras, casting spells (for my witches out there), setting intentions, or visualization. If you need a starting point, you can play around with some pieces of my ritual that I outlined above.
Don’t forget to explore incorporating your deck – read up on some deck cleansing rituals, flipping through the cards, and shuffling rituals.
You can also look to incorporating other objects into your rituals. Place some crystals near you, light a candle, burn some incense, look at an inspiring picture or piece of art, or put on some special jewelry that helps get you into the right mood to read.
The most important thing to remember is that the opening ritual needs to serve you. If it feels too time consuming, doesn’t relax you, doesn’t focus you, or feels uncomfortable in any way, then it is not serving you, and you don’t have to do it. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to! This is your tarot experience.
And now for some links! I earn a small commission from Amazon if you click through the links below and purchase something, and this does not affect the price you pay in anyway. I appreciate your support!
Trust Your Magical Self is one of my all-time favorite books, and it is where I developed the idea for the energy restoring part of my ritual. It is full of fantastic exercises for restoring energy, connecting to your intuition, and reading others. I can’t recommend it enough! Available on Amazon:
The Book of Blessings and Rituals is a spectacular collection of rituals from around the world. It’s organized by months of the year, and is a great source of different ideas for rituals and prayers you can incorporate into your opening ritual. It is available on Amazon:
If you’d like a free copy of the tarot cheat sheets I use in my practice, and to receive my newsletter to stay up to date on my latest blog posts, sign up here: Tarot Elements Cheat Sheets
