Insider Tips for the Tarot Guidebook Journal
We want your Tarot Guidebook Journal to end up just how you have imagined it so here are a few tips we wished we’d considered when we first started filling in our journal.
TIPS FOR FILLING OUT YOUR JOURNAL
- Plan ahead. Do you intend to journal one deck? Four decks and two resource books? Do you own 20 decks and want to include notes from them all? Do you want to use it as a guide for an online class? We have two versions of the journal (252 pages & 420 pages) to fit your needs once you know what you are looking for long term.
- Go slow. This journal wasn’t intended to be filled in one day. It was intended to be used as a personal reference for your Tarot practice as you learn and study your craft. Its ok to take your time and take it at your pace.
- Consider your writing size. Write smaller than you may want to originally. The value of this journal is in the abundance of information it can include, if you choose to do so. If you choose to use this journal for one deck, your writing size won’t matter as much. If you hope to include many decks over years, you may want to consider that in your original entries and the spacing you allot up front.
- Personalize it. The reason we are including all of this information here instead of in the book as a preface, is because we want your journal to be uniquely personal to you. We want it to contain your energy, your style, your creativity, and for it to represent you fully. To do that, we decided to leave the slate as blank as possible, so that your possibilities for how your journal turn out is just as endless as you are unique to the world.
TIPS ABOUT THE JOURNAL’S LAYOUT
Bullet style journal
The Tarot Guidebook Journal is a mostly blank journal organized in a way to help you learn and record the Tarot card meanings that are relevant to your practice.
It is formatted on top of dot style pages, giving you defined spaces to write while keeping the general design style open to your personal journaling style.
With bullet style dot pages you can easily create custom outlined header boxes, keep written information on a straight line, and also line up information across page spreads.
Blank pages
Don’t worry, they are planned.
There are some blank dot pages included for you to use as you see fit. Their location is strategically planned to offer optimum flexibility and space to include extra notes, collages, memory boards, or unique access tabs for chapters if you choose.
In the standard length version of the book, the first blank pages can be found at the end of the Major Arcana. We include these here because some decks have special bonus cards, and this allows you a space to record those specifically. Feel free to use this space to print and include miniature versions of your cards, to create a collage of the Major Arcana archetypes, or to create a web of the flow of the archetypes. The blank pages after each Minor Arcana suit are great for making custom easy access tabbed pages by taping them together with small tape, or doing any of the above options as well. These pages are yours to customize to your liking.
In the Tarot Guidebook Journal Extended Edition the blank pages are maxed out to include a blank spread of pages after every single card. Do you have a lot of decks and want to include them all? This option is for you. Do you like to cut out images and make collages? This option is for you. Do you hope to use this book as a resource for years, and want to make sure to have the room for multiple decks and books? This is definitely the option for you.
Both versions include alternating blank pages with Tarot Spreads pages in the last chapter of the book. We did this in the hopes of giving you space to confidently build your own spreads and bulk out your practice in a way that is personal to you, your needs and your particular spiritual journey. Add to spread sections we have already started, or create entirely new categories more personal to you.
Title Pages
Title pages can be found at the beginning of the Major Arcana, the Minor Arcana, each Minor Arcana suit, and the Tarot spreads section.
The Major Arcana title page offers two ways to consider organizing the archetypes. This page is great for summarizing your thoughts on each section, or including miniature versions of the cards in the space provided.
The Minor Arcana title page offers a place to give a brief overview of the suits, while each Minor Arcana specific suit title page offers the space for much more in-depth descriptions of the suits.
*Artistic element: One creative option to bring a pop of color to your Tarot Guidebook Journal would be to take a chisel tip marker and line the edges of your pages with the corresponding suit color. For the example shown, fire is red, water is blue, air is yellow and earth is green. You would also be welcome to designate your own color associations if you wish! After all, its your personal guidebook and we want it to be as unique as you are to the world. **Note: It is best to practice this technique on another book or other paper first, as some bleeding may occur depending on the marker you choose. As with any handcrafted project, there is some chance of error or possibilities of markers bleeding that you may occur when attempting this modification to your book.
Numerology & Court Cards
Once inside the Minor Arcana, you have the option to outline keywords for numerology and for the court cards. While each suit will have unique meanings as you progress through the numbers and courts, there are some basic principles to the numbers that can be applied universally. This knowledge is especially helpful when first starting to learn the suits in Tarot.
The court cards can be tricky when first starting your Tarot journey. Personally, I filled this section out after I had journaled all the card’s individual meanings but you may prefer to get a general guideline for each of the court card personalities, and then refine those generalizations in each suit chapter. Whatever you choose, these pages are intended to provide broad summaries, space for keywords, personality traits, or other corresponding information that resonates with you.
Summary Pages
Summary pages can be found at the end of 5 chapters, the Major Arcana, Fire suit, Water suit, Air suit and Earth suit.
There are five summary pages included in the Tarot Guidebook Journal, and they are included to provide quick summary insight into the flow of that chapter via basic keywords. You could also choose to include a miniature picture of each card in this section if you choose.
This is a great way to quickly review all of the cards in that chapter, to compare the progression of the suit as you travel through it, and to quickly jog your memory if needed.
Tarot Spread Chapter
The final chapter of the book evolves around exploring Tarot spread options, and encouraging you to create your own. While there aren’t any directions included in the book, we provide themed pages for Tarot spreads where we offer a couple of options for each theme. The Tarot spreads provided are all spreads we have used and devised for our personal practice, and are only meant as a guide for you to explore which questions feel best in your practice, and how you may prefer your card layouts to flow.
Many of the spreads provided focus on light work, and addressing smaller aspects of shadow that may be holding us back in day to day living. For every page we have offered spread options, we have left its partner page in the book spread as a blank bullet style dot page. Our deepest hopes in doing this is that you take the blank spaces available and design your own spreads that are personal to you. If you find that any of our spreads don’t suit your needs or reading style, feel free to tape or glue a scrap paper over it and devise your very own in its space! It is YOUR personal Tarot Guidebook Journal, and we want every inch of the inside to resonate with your Tarot practice. So feel free to modify the book however you see best.
We do have a digital version of the Tarot Guidebook Journal available for personal printing purposes, and you could always print a blank dot page and tape/glue it in place over any of the pages that don’t work for you.
Tarot Guidebook Journal 