Tarot with Gord

Tarot with Gord You've had the deck for ages and still feel like a beginner. That stops here. No fortune telling, no fluff, no figuring it out alone. (I can also read for you!)

I teach you to actually read tarot, your way, with weekly sessions and people who get it. You've had the deck for ages and you still feel like a beginner. That's the entire reason Simply Tarot exists. I teach people to actually read tarot, properly, in their own voice, not hand you a script of memorised meanings and hope for the best. The Course is where that starts. Level 1 gets you reading for yourself, Level 2 takes you into reading for other people, ethically, with enough grounding to trust what you're actually seeing. Each level runs six weeks, online on Zoom or in person here in Manchester. Once you can read, the real question is whether you keep doing it. That's what the Membership's for. Weekly Circle every Sunday, a room full of people who take the cards as seriously as you do, plus the full card library, every spread workbook, and somewhere to keep track of your practice instead of losing it in your head. You stop reading alone. That's the whole pitch. And yeah, I still do readings myself. We don't really use spreads, only if you specifically ask for one, and even then it's rare. It's mostly a straight conversation with the cards about whatever you actually bring that day. I don't predict futures. I help you see your present clearly enough to actually do something with it. We start every session with a short grounding meditation, nothing heavy, just a minute to land before we get into it. It doesn't matter if you've never touched a deck or you've been reading for years. It doesn't matter what you believe. If you're curious and willing to look at what's actually in front of you, there's a place for you here. I read from my place in Salford, or on Zoom worldwide. Get in touch if you've got questions. I'm always happy to talk it through before you book anything.

Put a tarot reader in the corner of a party and the room does something you don't expect. The first person over is nervo...
15/09/2026

Put a tarot reader in the corner of a party and the room does something you don't expect. The first person over is nervous. They come back having been read to filth, and then there's a queue with the sceptics in it.

Nobody needs to know anything about tarot. Most people who get a reading at a party have never had one, and sitting down and finding out is a great way to try it.

If you're thinking about it for a birthday, a hen do or Halloween, here's what you actually need: a table, two chairs and a quiet corner. The reader brings the rest. You can run it with a list of who's getting read, or as an open table where people wander over when they fancy it.

Nobody gets put on the spot. A good reader won't read anyone who hasn't asked, won't read anyone under 18, and leaves health and legal stuff alone.

Halloween's on a Saturday this year, so now is when you ask.

Comment EVENT and I'll send you how to book me for yours.

14/09/2026

The Ten of Swords turns up and everyone reaches for the same word. Ruin.

Here's what I'd ask before opening a book.

- What has already finished that you're still bracing for? There's nobody else in that picture. Whatever happened, happened.
- What were you holding together in your head? Swords is the suit of the mind, so it's usually a way of thinking that's collapsed.
- What does the morning after this actually look like? There's a sunrise in there. It's the smallest thing in the picture and it's still there.

However you answer those, that's your read of it. The book can't do that bit for you.

I'm running a free workshop on Sunday 18 October, an hour on Zoom, and the question running underneath the whole thing is whether anyone's read of a card is ever wrong. Comment BUILD and I'll send you the details, or sign up here: https://tarotwithgord.com/services/simply-tarot-workshops/

Get The Moon out of your deck and look at it properly before you read a word about it. This is how I teach every card, b...
13/09/2026

Get The Moon out of your deck and look at it properly before you read a word about it. This is how I teach every card, because the picture already knows more than the book does.

The moon's got a face, and it's turned away from everything it's lighting. Why draw the only light in the picture looking somewhere else?

There are two towers with a path between them and nobody in either. Who built them out here? Are they keeping something in, or keeping something out?

A dog and a wolf are howling at the same moon. One got tamed and one didn't, and they're doing exactly the same thing. Which would you rather have with you in the dark?

And right at the bottom there's a crayfish climbing out of the water onto the path.

It's the only thing in the whole picture going anywhere.

Why a crayfish? Why start it in the water? Is it coming out, or thinking about going back in?

You don't need the answers yet. You need to have noticed. Sit with the card for two minutes before you reach for a book, and whatever you noticed, that counts.

The Noticing Tool makes you do exactly this with any card, and it's free. Comment NOTICE and I'll send it to you.

Every tarot habit you think is ancient has somebody’s name on it somewhere.The man in these slides is Jean-Baptiste Alli...
10/09/2026

Every tarot habit you think is ancient has somebody’s name on it somewhere.

The man in these slides is Jean-Baptiste Alliette, publishing as Etteilla, his own surname backwards. From about 1770 he made his living reading cards in Paris. He printed the first method anybody could pick up and use, he was the first to give every single card a meaning of its own, and he coined cartonomancie, which our word cartomancy grew out of.

Then in 1789 he published the first deck ever built for reading rather than playing, with the meanings printed on the cards themselves so you’d never need a teacher or a book. That’s the bit worth sitting with. The idea that a card turns up with its meaning already attached, and your job is to look it up and repeat it, is a lot younger than people think, and it got its push from one man with a printing press and a living to make.

He didn’t even come to tarot on his own. Everything up to 1781 was ordinary playing cards, and then Court de Gebelin published an essay that got Paris talking about them, and Etteilla’s first tarot book two years later was him answering back.

He never claimed to be first, either. He said three old people taught him card reading in Paris in the early 1750s, and that he picked tarot up later off a reader from Piedmont. There’s a sheet in the university library in Bologna, dated to around 1730 to 1740, that lists meanings for thirty five tarot cards, and nobody knows who wrote it.

And the courts kept records of people already doing this for a living. Two women in Metz got eight days in prison in 1759. Anne Cauvin, in the slides, got the shackles in 1772.

We know his name because he printed it himself. We know theirs because a court wrote down what it did to them.

So when someone tells you a card definitely means one thing, what they’re repeating is a decision a person made and then sold. You get to make one too, same as everybody else in that chain.

Comment NOTICE and I'll send you the Noticing Tool.

09/09/2026

Does the Bible actually call tarot demonic?

Somebody with a big Christian following is telling people who message them for help that it does and that they need to repent.

Those people came to them struggling. They weren’t picking a fight.

I was on the road to becoming a vicar, so I’ll take this one.

Acts 1:26. The apostles need somebody to replace Judas. They pray about it, then they cast lots, and the lot falls on Matthias. That’s after the resurrection, done by the eleven, and not one person in the story so much as flinches.

Exodus 28:30. God tells the priests to carry the Urim and Thummim in the breastplate. And Numbers 27:21 is the one that never gets quoted at you. Joshua, about to lead the whole nation, is told to stand in front of Eleazar, who will inquire for him by the judgement of the Urim. That’s the leader of Israel getting his decisions settled by inquiring through the Urim, before the Lord. Nobody snuck that in. God asked for it.

Matthew 2. The birth story opens with the Magi reading the sky and following what they found until it takes them to him. Magi were astrologers. Reading the sky is what the word meant.

And yes, Deuteronomy 18 condemns a list of practices, in the context of Israel going into Canaan. I’m not pretending those verses aren’t there. But it’s a list and it’s specific. So if you’re going to put somebody with a pack of cards on their kitchen table on it, show your working. Show me how you get from those verses to “you’re consorting with demons”. Go on, I’ll wait.

You can read the whole lot and still decide tarot isn’t for you. That’s a real position and I’ve got no argument with it.

What you don’t get to do is take somebody who messaged you because they’re struggling and tell them they’re consorting with demons. That’s not care, whatever you tell yourself. It’s using somebody’s worst week as a recruitment opportunity, and calling it love doesn’t change it.

08/09/2026

Comment NOTICE and I'll send you my free Noticing Tool, which makes you say what's in a card before it tells you anything.

What does the Nine of Swords mean?

When it turns up, don’t stop at “I’m anxious”. Ask yourself three things:

🗡️ What am I refusing to look at?
🗡️ What usually helps that I’ve stopped doing?
🗡️ Is any of this actually happening outside my own head?

That last one matters. In the picture, the nine swords never touch the figure. Not one of them lands.

My free Noticing Tool makes you do this with any card, before anything tells you a meaning.

Get the Queen of Swords out of your deck and look at it properly before you read a word about it. This is how I teach ev...
07/09/2026

Get the Queen of Swords out of your deck and look at it properly before you read a word about it. This is how I teach every card, because the picture already knows more than the book does.

This card gets called cold a lot. Ask the picture whether that's fair.

Look at the face. Stern, yes. But is it cold, or is it concentrating? How would you tell the difference from a drawing?

The sword's held dead straight, pointing up, not at anyone. It's a weapon that isn't aimed at anybody. What does that change?

The other hand is open. Palm up, reaching out, and nobody in the card to reach for. Is that an offer or a stop sign? Cover the sword with your thumb and look again, and it reads like a different card.

Clear sky above, cloud piling up under the throne, and one bird out on its own in the distance. Is it lifting or coming in?

And there are butterflies carved into the throne.

Of everything that could go on a sword throne, Pamela Colman Smith picked butterflies. What was a butterfly before it was a butterfly?

You don't need the answers yet. You need to have noticed. Sit with the card for two minutes before you reach for a book, and whatever you saw, that counts.

The Noticing Tool makes you do exactly this with any card, and it's free. Comment NOTICE and I'll send it to you.

The two biggest tarot decks were made by two men who couldn't stand each other.If you've ever wondered why one book tell...
06/09/2026

The two biggest tarot decks were made by two men who couldn't stand each other.

If you've ever wondered why one book tells you a card means one thing and another book swears it means something else, this is a big part of the answer.

It starts in a secret club. London, 1888, a magic society called the Golden Dawn, built on a forged manuscript and sealed with an oath never to tell. Arthur Waite joined in 1891. Aleister Crowley joined a few years later and helped blow the whole thing apart. Both walked out with the same secret system. Then they did opposite things with it.

Waite thought fortune-telling was vulgar. He wanted a deck anyone could pick up and read. He didn't draw it. He paid Pamela Colman Smith to do all 78 cards in six months, she gave every number card a scene instead of a pile of cups, and that's the only reason you can read a card you've never studied. She got very little cash for it and was written out of the story for decades.

Crowley thought Waite had made tarot far too polite, so he went the other way. His deck needs astrology and Kabbalah just to get started, and it renames half the cards. He didn't paint his either. Lady Frieda Harris proposed it, bankrolled him, and chose to keep her name off it.

They couldn't even agree what card eight was. Waite's is Strength. Crowley's is Adjustment. Check your own deck.

Both are still in print. Both have serious readers. The people who made them were arguing about what these cards meant, and so has everyone since. You get to join that argument rather than lose it.

Level 1 is called Tarot for Me for a reason. You come out of it trusting your own read of a card instead of waiting for a book to agree with you. Comment COURSE and I'll send you the details.

What do the numbers in tarot mean?The number is a rank, and the rank wears the suit. A Five is a Five whether it's dress...
05/09/2026

What do the numbers in tarot mean?

The number is a rank, and the rank wears the suit. A Five is a Five whether it's dressed as Cups, Wands, Swords or Pentacles. The suit tells you what part of your life you're in. The rank tells you how far into the cycle you are. Learn the ten ranks and you've got forty cards sorted, and that's over half the deck.

I've dressed them all in Pentacles here because I had to pick one. Swap the outfit and the rank does exactly the same job.

Ace is potential. It's the raw offer, before anyone's done anything with it.

Two is duality. One thing meets another and has to relate to it somehow. Sometimes that's harmony. Sometimes it's a fork nobody's picked a side of yet.

Three is growth. It's the first real evidence that something is working.

Four is structure. It's the pause where you consolidate what you've built and check it holds. Solid ground, or stuck, depending on whether the structure is serving you or trapping you.

Five is disruption. It's the wobble that turns up right when you'd got comfortable. Nobody likes the fives, but nothing grows without friction.

Six is restoration. The come-down after the Five, when things start to feel workable again.

Seven is reflection. A pause to look at what's actually happened and decide if it's still the right direction.

Eight is movement. The pace picks back up. Eights are doing, not thinking.

Nine is culmination. Nearly there, not quite. It can feel like anticipation or exhaustion, and sometimes both.

Ten is completion. Whatever the suit's been building towards, this is where it lands, for better or for worse. Then the Ace starts it all again.

That's the s**t we practise together in Simply Tarot Circle, and your first three Sundays are free. Comment CIRCLE and I'll send you the details.

04/09/2026

Comment NOTICE and I'll send you my free Noticing Tool, which makes you say what's actually in a card before it gives you a meaning.

What does the Magician tarot card mean?

Look at the hands. The table is only half of it.

- One hand points up at the idea
- One hand points down at where it has to land
- The four suits sit on the table between

Ideas into something real. That’s the whole card, and it doesn’t happen without you.

When it turns up: what’s the idea, and what have you already got to build it with?

My free Noticing Tool works on every card. It makes you say what’s there before it tells you anything.

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