If you can tell a story, you can read tarot. "Telling a story" is the final advice frequently given by tarot readers to novices, but they often don't really expound upon why this is one of the most crucial parts to giving a reading, and how it works.
Firstly, a story is much more than a string of words printed in a book. It represents the synthesis of certain elements and the discarding of others in an attempt to communicate some kind of order that a listener can potentially understand. Anything, as long as it fulfills this function, is a story: 10 notes of music, an advertising campaign, the periodic table, architectural structures, the rules of soccer, a phylogenetic tree, an html template. Basically, any sort of system be it linear or holistic, tells a story.
When presented with even a single card, a myriad number of interpretations present themselves. The tarot image can be incredibly flexible because it has the ability to incorporate meanings far beyond the traditional meanings; in short, its meanings are potentially infinite. Learning to tell a story with tarot means honing the ability to pull out from the card images what may be deemed relevant and discarding what is not. Having done so, the reader must then take into consideration the relationships between all the relevant elements, and to synthesize them into a coherent structure or narrative. "Putting it all together" as they say. This is not simply adding up card meanings. A computer could do that. This means that the card meanings alter and effect each other, that they all exist and fulfil a role in the greater form of the system, that they in fact, derive meaning from their context, not only the context of the other cards, but the context of the reading itself: who the querent is, the questions asked, the history of the deck etc.
This story telling skill leans heavily on the function of intuition. Intuition is constantly in use in even the most mundane tasks of daily life. People do not pause for 10 minutes to analyze how to respond for example, to an encounter with a stranger. They intuitively filter through all the information being received by the senses, taking into account factors they may not even be aware of to present a timely response. Intuition is a holistic function; it takes its cues from anything as long as it can be deemed relevant. And because it can draw heavily on factors that the conscious mind is unaware of or does not understand, intuition can present a system that features meanings that straightforward conscious analysis cannot. Intuition is the diviner's eye; it provides the ability to make the invisible visible in order to guide the story teller.
You can improve your story telling skills a number of ways. The most frequent advice given is learning how to integrate your intuition into consciousness, or to "listen" to your intuition. Because there are many techniques described elsewhere, I won't rehash them here. A different technique that is not often mentioned is to find and make connections. Connect the system of tarot to any other system you can find. Do not restrict yourself to obvious connections, such as other esoteric systems like astrology. See the images and archetypes of tarot at play in art, science, philosophy, myth, games or wherever you can. This will train your intuition to reach a broader base by which to extract relevant factors, or to have an eye which sees farther and deeper.
As humans, we are hardwired to seek out meaningful patterns and create stories, whether it is seeing shapes in the clouds, making sense of a strange dream, or reading tarot. Even if you are just beginning tarot, you have already heard, read and created countless stories. The ability to discard irrelevant information, attend to what is useful, and then synthesize the relevant material may not require much conscious effort, but it is a function that to this day, cannot be reproduced in the most sophisticated AI programs: the incredible act of pulling patterns out of chaos, of weaving a narrative, of telling a story. (Isthmus Nekoi)
