How to Keep a Tarot Journal (and Actually Use It)

Almost every experienced reader will tell you to keep a journal, and almost nobody explains what to write in it. So people start one, produce three pages of careful analysis about The Tower, feel exhausted, and stop.

The version that works is much smaller than that.

Two lines

In the morning, draw a card and write one line about what you think it is pointing at.

In the evening, write one line about how the day actually went.

That is the whole method. The second line is the one that does the work, and it is the one people leave out.

Without it you have a record of your predictions, which teaches you nothing. With it you have a record of your predictions checked against reality, which is the only way anybody learns to read. The gap between the two lines is where the learning happens.

Why two lines and not a page

Because a page is a project and two lines is a habit.

The value of a journal is entirely in the volume of entries over time. Ninety short entries beat twelve thoughtful ones, because the patterns you are looking for only show up across dozens of readings. A practice you can do in ninety seconds on a bad day is a practice that survives a bad week.

If you want to write more on a day when a card lands hard, write more. Just do not make it the standard, because the standard is what you will fail to meet.

What to record

The minimum:

• The date.
• The card or cards, and whether they came out reversed.
• The question, if there was one.
• Your read, in a line.
• What happened, in a line, later.

Three optional additions that pay off later:

Mood. One word, before you draw. Tracking this is how you find out whether you read Nine of Swords differently when you are already anxious, and you almost certainly do.

Tags. Two or three words for the area of life. Work, family, money. This is what lets you ask "what has the deck been saying about work" six months later.

Whether you liked the answer. A single mark. This one is uncomfortable and it is the most revealing thing in the list, because it shows you which cards you consistently soften.

The mistakes

Recording only the interesting readings. Selection bias, and it will make you believe you are a better reader than you are. The boring draws are the control group.

Writing the meaning down. You do not need to copy out what Five of Cups means. That is on its card page and it will not have changed. Write what you thought it meant here, which is the part nothing else records.

Only journalling big spreads. A ten-card Celtic Cross is a lot of material and a poor teacher, because there is too much in it to check. One card is falsifiable.

Waiting until you have something worth saying. You will not. Write the line.

What a year of it shows you

Three things you cannot get any other way.

Which cards you actually meet. Every reader has cards they have drawn forty times and cards they have never seen. Coverage is a real fact about your practice and it is the one worth acting on. The reading stats page here, which needs an account, counts it from your saved readings, with the number chance alone would give you beside it, so a run does not read as a message.

Which cards you consistently misread. Not the ones you get wrong once. The ones where your morning line and your evening line disagree in the same direction repeatedly. That is your blind spot and it is worth more than any book.

Whether your readings track anything. This is the uncomfortable one and it is the reason to be honest in the evening line. Some people find the exercise sharpens their attention to their own life. Some find their reads and their days do not correspond much at all. Both are worth knowing, and only a journal can tell you which you are.

Doing it on paper or here

Paper is fine and has one real advantage: nothing else on the page is competing for your attention.

The journal here does three things paper cannot. It attaches the cards to the entry automatically when you save a reading, so you are not copying card names. It tracks moods and tags into stats over time. And it surfaces recurring cards with the share that came out reversed, which is genuinely hard to notice by hand.

Entries are private by default. Individual ones can be made public if you want them in the community, and nothing is unless you choose it.

If you are starting today

Draw one card. Write one line. Come back this evening and write the second.

Do that and nothing else for two weeks before you decide whether it is working. Building a daily practice covers the version that survives a normal week, including what to do about the days you miss.

Frequently asked questions

What should I write in a tarot journal? The date, the cards, the question if there was one, your read in a line, and later, one line about what actually happened. The second line is the one that teaches you anything.

How often should I journal? Daily, briefly. Two lines a day beats a page a week, because the patterns only appear across dozens of entries.

Do I need to write down what the cards mean? No. The meanings are on the card pages and will not change. Record what you thought it meant on that day, which is the part nothing else captures.

Should I journal every reading or only the interesting ones? Every one. Recording only the striking readings is selection bias and will make you overrate yourself.

What is the point of tracking my mood? It shows you whether you read difficult cards differently when you are already anxious. Most people do, and it is invisible without a record.

How long before it is useful? A fortnight to form the habit, a few months before patterns appear. Coverage of the deck shows up first; blind spots take longer.