The whole thing started last year, right after I finally moved into that tiny apartment downtown. I was trying to set up a little side hustle, doing quick-hit tarot readings for friends of friends and, honestly, anyone who’d pay me five bucks for five minutes. The problem wasn’t the reading part, that was fine. The problem was looking like a total amateur because I kept screwing up the speed.
The Frustration that Kicked It Off
Picture this: I’d pull three cards. The clock is ticking. The person across from me is looking skeptical enough already. And what do I do? I have to grab my phone, unlock the app, wait for the ads, search for the card, and then try to quickly read the tiny text while mumbling something profound. Or worse, I’d grab one of my three massive reference books—the classic RWS text, the esoteric Thoth breakdown, and the quirky modern one. I’d be fumbling, flipping pages, trying to merge three different perspectives in my head in real-time. It killed the vibe. It drove me nuts. I looked like a student taking an open-book exam, not a seasoned reader.
I realized my whole operation was a total hodgepodge. I had my personal handwritten notes, my highlighted bits in the books, and these scattered screenshots on my cloud. It was a maintenance nightmare. Every time a new person asked a follow-up, I’d have to track down which source I used for that specific interpretation. Forget quick readings; I was running a library research desk for myself.
The breaking point was when my sister-in-law, who thinks tarot is total rubbish, sat down. The pressure was intense. I drew the Nine of Swords, and for a split second, my mind went blank on the ‘reversed’ meaning because one book said ‘escaping the nightmare’ and another said ‘deepening despair.’ That moment of hesitation completely ruined the delivery. I vowed right there I was going to consolidate all the information I needed into one place. One lightning-fast reference. Something you could print out, stick on the table, and just point to.
The Grind: Building the Hot Mess Behind the Simplicity
So, I sat down and started compiling. I didn’t write new content; I harvested it. I pulled every single note, every underlined phrase, every key concept from those three books and my own two decades of scribbles. It was a massive data dump. We’re talking 78 cards, 2 meanings each (Upright and Reversed), times 5 different sources I trusted. You can imagine the resulting file. It was a chaotic mess of contradictory information. It was like trying to get three different programming languages to talk to each other—Go, Java, and Python—but they all insisted their way of defining “truth” was the only way.
My first draft was unusable. It was paragraphs long for every single card. I spent the next three weeks doing nothing but stripping it back down to the studs. I needed the core idea, not the philosophy. This is the part of the practice that was the most brutal, the data standardization. I had to force consensus where there was none. I had to discard the beautiful poetry for the blunt, brutal keyword.
- I picked the one essential keyword for the Upright meaning and the one for the Reversed meaning.
- I developed a standardized, three-line structure: Card Name, Keyword, and a short ‘In a Reading’ summary. I forced every single card meaning into this tiny little box.
- I bolded the keywords and the summary line so my eyes could snap to them instantly, even in poor light.
- I used an absurdly small but readable font size (9pt) to cram all 78 card meanings onto just a few pages.
It’s not academically pure. It’s a functional tool. If you look at the raw notes I used to create it, you’d scratch your head. But the final product? It works. It’s concise and direct.
The Final Realization: The Essential PDF
Once I had the raw text wrestled into submission, the final step was easy: I converted it all into a PDF. I deliberately didn’t spend money on some fancy layout program. I just used a plain word processor to make a clean, black-and-white, highly compressed PDF file. Why a PDF? Because it’s fixed. It’s fast. You can open it on any device, print it on cheap paper, and use the built-in search function on your computer or phone to instantly jump to ‘Three of Pentacles, Reversed.’ No loading screens, no ads, no internet needed.
It looks rough. It is rough. It’s probably the least “spiritual” looking thing in my reading kit. But man, did it speed up my practice. I went from fumbling and hesitation to being able to deliver an interpretation of a three-card spread in under a minute. That quick, confident delivery sold the whole process better than any deep, flowery explanation ever could.
I still have the big books on the shelf, sure, for deep study. But for the actual, real-world, five-minute reading where money changes hands? This ugly, direct, essential PDF is the only thing I rely on. It took a massive amount of cross-referencing and argument with myself to create this simple guide, but now I’ve got it. And that, folks, is why I’m sharing this battle-tested reference with you today. Because sometimes, the ugliest process makes the cleanest result.
