The Daily Card
Draw one card each day and check it each evening. It is the easiest and most solid way to practice tarot, and within a year you'll have met all 78 cards.
Why one card
A single card has no position and no context, so you have to read it on your own. It forces you to match the card's meaning to what actually happened during the day, and that is how memory grows. A card in a spread can lean on the other cards for help; a daily card can't.
Your First Reading explains why to start with one card. This page covers only how to keep it up and how to keep a record.
Draw in the morning, check in the evening
In the morning, the draw has only one job: take a look, write down a keyword, and don't interpret. In the evening, bring the card out again and match what happened during the day against the morning's card. Write down what matched, and write down what didn't. The second kind is often more useful.
The record doesn't need to be fancy; one line is enough. Keep the same five columns:
| Date | Card | Morning note | Evening note | Did it match? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 5 | Eight of Pentacles, upright | A day of keeping my head down and working | Spent the afternoon revising a proposal, no interruptions | Yes |
| Sep 6 | Five of Cups, reversed | Letting go of something | An ordinary day; can't think of anything I let go of | No |
| Sep 7 | Page of Swords, upright | News is coming | Got an interview invitation in the afternoon | Yes |
The "morning note" is your first reaction to the card, without looking anything up. The "evening note" is the one event of the day that most resembles the card; if there wasn't one, write that. For "did it match?", fill in only yes, no or sort of, nothing longer.
There is only one way to keep it up: tie it to a habit you already have. Draw while the morning coffee is brewing, and check before you brush your teeth at night. A ritual you have to carve out special time for rarely lasts more than two weeks.
Look back over the table after a month, and you'll find that some cards always match and some never do. The ones that don't match are the cards you don't really know yet. Go to their pages, read them through, and put them back in the deck.
What if you draw a "bad" card?
In a daily draw, the Tower, the Three of Swords and the Ten of Swords almost always point to something small: a missed call, a remark that stung. That is exactly what makes this practice useful. It lets you see with your own eyes how small a "big" card becomes when it lands in everyday life.
Here is what a few cards that often get over-read usually look like on the scale of a single day:
- Death: deleting a pile of old files, finishing something that has dragged on for ages, a conversation that has run its course.
- The Tower: a plan thrown off by a small surprise, a last-minute rescheduling, a computer crash.
- Three of Swords: a remark that stung, with a specific source; by evening you can say exactly which remark it was.
- Ten of Swords: something comes to a complete end, you're too tired to do anything but lie down, and tomorrow is a new day.
- The Devil: two extra hours scrolling on your phone, knowing you should stop and not stopping.
- Nine of Swords: overthinking at night, when nothing much actually happened during the day.
In a single day, a reversal reads as "this area takes effort": reversed Wands mean you can't get going, reversed Cups mean feelings get easily stuck, reversed Swords mean a muddled head and words that come out wrong, and reversed Pentacles mean keeping your hands off your wallet. For the full treatment of blocked, overdone and turned inward, see Reading Reversals.
How it relates to Today's fortune on this site
Today's fortune on this site draws three cards and looks at the day from three sides; the cards decide the "do" and "avoid" items and the lucky color. You can use it alongside a daily card: the fortune is read for you, and the daily card is one you read yourself. Comparing the two is the fastest way to improve.
Today's fortune uses the free-form method from The Three-Card Spread, where the three cards have no set order. First look at the shared character of the three: if all three are favorable, today goes smoothly; if two are favorable and one is reversed, the day is mostly fine and the reversed card is the danger zone; if all three are reversed, it's a low-battery day, so avoid big decisions. Once the tone is set, each card takes charge of one side of the day, usually divided by suit: Wands cover drive, Cups cover mood and how you get on with people, Swords cover your thinking and what you say, and Pentacles cover money and your body.
The "do" and "avoid" items come down from the cards and are written in the style of an old almanac of lucky and unlucky activities, things like "Do: sign a contract" or "Avoid: meeting the family." The activities themselves are neither good nor bad. The same activity is a "do" on a day when the cards flow and an "avoid" on a day when they are blocked. That is why you won't see a line like "Avoid: staying up late" in the fortune; staying up late could never be a "do."
To compare them: in the morning, after reading the fortune, draw a card of your own and write down whether your card and the three cards are saying the same thing. Check them together in the evening. On days when both match, you can feel reassured; on days when only one matches, think about which reading went off course.