I often get asked how to keep a tarot journal. Of course, you can do it any way you want, and there are dozens of things you can include and mediums you can use: notebook and pen, computer files, blogs, etc. A blog is nice in that it is set up for a sequence of dated entries, and you can choose whether to keep it private, make it public or only allow a few friends in.
I just happened on a “Tarot Book of Days” called Quirkeries by Sharyn Mallow Woerz. It’s practically perfect in its elegant simplicity.
Often there are no more than a half dozen sentences. Entries begin with a title, the deck and the card. These are followed with three brief paragraphs: 1) first thoughts on card image, 2) personal associations regarding card meaning, 3) an inspirational quote on a related topic. The card is pictured in a space to the right. Sharyn switches to a new deck every Sunday and usually adds a brief deck overview at that time.
I’m so glad I found this blog. I wrote Sharyn asking her some questions about the blog, which she kindly answered in the comments. I recommend reading what she has to say. I find her whole process inspiring. She’s given me permission to post this sample clip from her blog (click here to get a readable size). Imagine doing one of these every day!
Feel free to add your own experiences with keeping a daily tarot journal, and tell us what medium you use.
Mary K. Greer has made tarot her life work. Check here for reports of goings-on in the world of tarot and cartomancy, articles on the history and practice of tarot, and materials on other cartomancy decks. Sorry, I no longer write reviews. Contact me
Mary K. Greer's Tarot Blog 
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September 17, 2011 at 8:56 pm
Grace Mary Perez
I used to be against a daily Tarot spread because I thought it lent itself to what I call ‘mystical junkie-ism’. “I pulled the 10 of swords today so everything is going to be awful today.” Then a person makes sure they have a terrible day.
Lately I have realized that a daily spread is not like reading your daily horoscope, but rather a way to keep your spiritual journey near the top of your mind each day.
September 18, 2011 at 5:28 am
Jean Ann Bolliger
I use pen and hard back journal–almost daily. Also I have just discovered the collage which I made from a multiple card reading. I found that quite enjoyable.
September 18, 2011 at 6:39 pm
AliMoonGoddess
I don’t tend to pull a card every day, but sometimes I do. Loving the thought of keeping the pulls in a journal. Especially in a private blog format.
Thanks for the link. Loving this blog & yours.
September 18, 2011 at 8:15 pm
Jeri Lawson
Mary,
Thank you for the link to Sharyn’s website. What a wonderful tarot practice.
3-ring binders are definitely the journal method of choice for me.
Right now I use six 3-ring binders for my tarot readings, meditations, journal entries and research. Five binders are for card and symbol research. One binder is for the Major Arcana. There is one dedicated to the Court cards and the Minor Arcana is divided into three books: Ace/2/3, 4/5/6, 7/8/9/10. I like to think about the Minor Arcana in terms numbers, like Joanna Powell Colbert’s Gaian Tarot book.
The sixth binder documents my personal readings.
I use the computer, scan the cards, download PDF’s from the Internet, draw, write by pen, attach photographs and found papers.
Sometimes I pull one card and meditate on that one card, then I write about it. Many times I will pull that same card from a number of decks and feel the perspective each deck brings to the card. It’s interesting to scan all the cards on to one page and see what comes up.
Every so often suddenly see the world from a new point of view and the binders are easy to reorganize to the new vision.
Thank you for your inspiring blog,
Jeri
September 19, 2011 at 10:00 am
Rachel @ Psychic Source
I keep a journal online. I have a private blog for that but can share certain entries if I feel inspired. I once also felt like Grace but have found I derive great insights on being able to look back on the daily card pull.
September 20, 2011 at 8:39 am
Sharyn/AJ
Mary. thank you for your interest in my blog, In your email you asked:
Would you start with these questions and add anything else you’d like to talk about:
Did you start out with the three sections or experiment before you settled on them?
Where do you get your quotes?
Do you ever miss a day? What do you do then?
What’s the main thing you’ve learned by doing this?
——————————————————————
I think what I’ve won/learned from daily draws is 98% destroying the keywords I worked so hard to learn. That is the way I learn and they were invaluable in the beginning, but as my knowledge and confidence grew the need for keywords faded.
I shuffle, fan, and draw at random and looking back through my paper record I’ve drawn (for example) the Fool, the knight of Wands, the Ace of coins maybe 25-30 times. I can go to my blog, search for those cards and see 25-30 different interpretations of those cards. For me, that kind of stretching is invaluable. It also underscores the value for me, of multiple decks = multiple viewpoints.
Someone whose mind goes to standard keywords reading my blog would wonder what orifice I pulled my observations from but at the end of the day, those observations show how flexible the cards are.
As for nuts and bolts, each year I choose something new to learn. One year it was tarot. One year it was blogging. I wrote and deleted SO many posts but in the course of that I learned a few things. To be successful at blogging I needed a core subject that I found endlessly fascinating. Tarot fit the bill, there is literally no end to the study of the history and symbolism and psychology of the cards. March 2007 I hit my subject and stride. Looking back at that month this morning, I still remember some of those draws, particularly the Druidcraft 7 of Swords. And the very first post, the pudgy redhead from the Fairy Tarot, so much like me at the time.
I don’t know when I started adding the accompanying quote but I know why the idea crossed my mind. I like to choose a daybook most years, and I liked the quotes Sarah Ban Breathnach used in her book Simple Abundance. When I realized my blog was turning into a personal daybook, the ideas of quotations followed. I have learned SO much in the course of seeking out quotations that mirror my feelings each day, yet are not a clone of my written feelings. Everything from Confucius to Homer Simpson and there is always something to learn about the author and what makes their life and writing worth quoting.
Missing days..yes, at one point my computer died so there was about a week missing. For my own information I posted what cards those were, then went forward.
I spent 3 years elsewhere taking care of my father in law and his farm. There are some posts missing there, in the beginning. I missed the stability of my blog and tarot time (I do it the very first thing with my morning cuppa) so I bought a laptop to use there. As a side issue the draws from that time are sometimes all that kept me going, particularly the last eight months or so when he and I traveled home hospice time, when each day pieces of his mind dropped into the abyss. Without my draws to focus my mind and heart it would have been more tragic and less comforting for both of us. I’m not even sure I could read back through those posts. At the time I also had a quilt blog (KalamaQuilts, at the bottom of my sidebar) and made a lot of funny posts about the same situation.
This is probably both more and less than you wished to know, but it is what wordsmithing supplied today. I’d like to thank you for your research and books in which you’ve shared so much with the tarot community.
All the best, Sharyn Woerz, Quirkeries
September 20, 2011 at 10:28 am
mkg
Sharyn –
Thank you for responding to my questions. I so admire your consistency in doing these daily readings and wish that I could be that disciplined. Nevertheless, I find that dipping into your daily offerings reminds me of the huge benefits that come with doing so. It’s like a treasure chest filled with jewels. I so appreciate your being willing to share it with all of us.
Mary
September 20, 2011 at 10:31 am
BodhiSeed
Sharyn of Quirkeries is the one who encouraged me to start my own tarot blog. She once jokingly said that it would be interesting to see what I did when I had to write about the same card several times, and she was right! It makes me look, then look again. My husband asked if I felt bad because I don’t have many “followers” on my blog; I told him readers are nice (and appreciated) but not necessary. The knowledge and insight I’ve gained from a daily blog makes it all worthwhile.
September 20, 2011 at 10:40 am
mkg
BTW, I have ring binders full of tarot notes, on all kinds and sizes of paper (I just paste a smaller paper onto a full-sized one. And I have file folders full of materials and ideas for classes. I also have a couple of half-filled paper notebooks. These days, I keep most of what I have in computer files, which I only sometimes print out. This blog has become a place for me to flesh-out material from my notes. Readings, including short periods of daily readings, usually end up in whatever project-journal I’m carrying around at the time and therefore are difficult to go back through as I have dozens of them.
I think Sharyn’s daily reading method is one of the best I’ve seen as the format provides a huge personal resource that’s easily accessible via searches. The industrious could also categorize the daily entries for easy searches by topic.
BTW, there are other excellent personal reading blogs out there, if anyone wants to share the best ones they’ve found.
September 20, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Sharyn
I have 3 or 4 paper journals too Mary, from my beginnings. I found tarot about this time of year and spent many evenings on my back porch reading and writing.
Thanks for allowing me to share a bit of myself in a different way today. I share so much of the innie-me perhaps folks don’t realize there is an outie-me~
and a lot of Sharynspeak words still waiting to get out…
Sharyn/AJ @ Quirkeries
September 21, 2011 at 1:08 pm
mkg
Sharyn –
I hope you continue to write about your process and what you’ve discovered by keeping a daily tarot journal for so long. Even keeping a daily journal for several months (which is the best I could ever manage) teaches so much that you can’t learn any other way, and creates sense of the dance of the figures of the tarot through your own life, like that of the moving figures in Charles Williams’ The Greater Trumps.
September 22, 2011 at 7:52 pm
thebackdeck
Mary, thank you for putting the word out about this special blog. I have been visiting, and enjoying it, not quite daily, but always with pleasure and appreciation.
September 29, 2011 at 8:36 am
Paul Nagy
Sharyn and Mary,
Your blog and your reflections on it in these comments are inspiring. I also am happy you have discovered that the significance or meaning of a card is way more mutable than pat meanings. This insight of letting the cards evoke mystery and wonder is what keeps my interest keen toward tarot reading.
October 5, 2011 at 2:40 pm
Warren
I think I’ll start using a Tarot Journal from now on, it seems a good way to help me learn.
October 24, 2011 at 11:21 am
mkg
In a subsequent post I talk about a very simple diary app for iphone, ipad and android that is great for a private tarot journal. You can also include a photo, video or audio recording. It’s called Moment Diary and best of all – it is FREE. (android link – here)
November 12, 2011 at 9:41 pm
washiravit
I’m like it and very good idea / tips.
Thank you very much.
November 14, 2011 at 8:13 am
vidente
muy bueno thatís like good one
February 1, 2012 at 4:28 am
Edgar Danmer
Since I have discovered Evernote, I store all my daily readings within it. Evernote is great for storing information, online, on your mac or pc and even on your iPhone or android: http://www.evernote.com/ As it gives me to record my tarot readings audibly.
Its very interesting to read other people’s experiences in keeping a daily Tarot journal. For me its a way to see how the symbols in cards reflect what has happened in the day. So I like to be brief in my descriptions and interpretations for the day ahead when doing my Tarot journal, and than I review what I have written later on in the evening and see what aspects of the day are related to the reading in the morning.
For me this process is about building my very own dictionary of symbols that belong to my own intuitive language.
When using one card for a daily reading, one of my favourite questions to ask, is how I am presenting myself to world around me. It gives me an indicator of what is present for me and also what I need in my contacts with others.
Yet Another Great Blog Post!
February 1, 2012 at 9:43 am
mkg
Edgar –
I’m glad to hear from an Evernote user. I don’t use the app so I’m not that familiar with what it has to offer. One thing to consider is using an app that provides good backup – probably to your main computer so that you won’t eventually lose all your readings through having the technology outgrow your app. Evernote seems to fit that bill. Memory Diary requires you to separately backup your work. Using a blog engine (set to private) allows you to easily access your material from any computer.
I agree that the best way to learn from your daily readings is to write what you think it means at the time you draw the cards, and then come back in the evening or next day and note what actually happened. For major turning points and life crises, you can benefit from reviewing a reading from a perspective of a year or more. I have readings from the first day of a very significant job and from the very beginning of a 21 year marriage. I’ve reviewed them frequently.
Mary