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Tarot with Gord

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Tarot with Gord

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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.

28/10/2026

Comment CIRCLE and I’ll get you three free Sundays in Simply Tarot Circle, my weekly space where we practise tarot together.

The Four of Cups meaning that comes into my head first didn’t come from any guidebook. It came from a hoodie.

In the Rider-Waite-Smith Four of Cups, someone’s sat against a tree with their arms folded, three cups on the ground in front of them and a fourth being offered from a cloud that they’re not noticing. The Modern Witch Tarot keeps most of that, and then puts the words OVER IT on the figure’s hoodie.

Now whatever deck I’m using, I think of that hoodie. When I read, I’m also subconsciously associating the card with every version of it I’ve seen.

In one Simply Tarot Circle we looked at one card across about 50 decks, and some of them showed me things I’d never seen in any other deck. If you want to practise with us on a Sunday, comment CIRCLE.

27/10/2026

Comment NOTICE and I'll send you my free Noticing Tool.

Get the Devil 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.

So many people think this card is about evil, so look at what's actually drawn on it.

There's a hand held up with the fingers split, a torch pointing at the floor, and chains that are loose as hell. And the two people at the bottom look strangely familiar. They're stood in the same places as two people on another card in your deck, and I'll let you find which one.

Swipe through and ask each one a question. You don't need the answers yet. You need to have noticed.

What's different about them on the Devil?

You can also get it here: https://tarotwithgord.com/the-noticing-tool/

25/10/2026

Comment NOTICE and I’ll send you my free Noticing Tool, so you can start spotting details like this in the cards for yourself.

Right down by the feet of the figure in the Nine of Pentacles there’s a tiny snail, and most people never notice it.

It carries its home wherever it goes, slow and steady, and that’s how all of that abundance got built. The vineyard is heavy with grapes, and grapes take years. The falcon on the gloved hand has a little hood over its head, so it’s calm, but it could take off at any second. And the hand on the pentacle is just resting there, not gripping it.

My card page puts it as “You’ve built this, and it’s yours.” You put the work in, so you’re allowed to enjoy it.

If you want help noticing the details in your own cards, comment NOTICE.

24/10/2026

Comment COURSE and I'll send you the details for Simply Tarot Course.

For years the deck most people learn tarot on was called the Rider-Waite. Rider was the publisher and Waite wrote the book, and neither of them drew a single card.

Arthur Waite was a writer, a Freemason and a member of the Golden Dawn, a London magic society. In 1909 he wanted a deck of his own, and he hired an illustrator called Pamela Colman Smith to draw it. She'd worked in the theatre and painted what music looked like to her. She did around eighty pictures in about six months, and that November she wrote that she'd just finished a big job for very little cash.

Waite gave her detailed instructions for the 22 Major Arcana, which is why you can still find him in them: the B and J on the High Priestess's pillars are Boaz and Jachin, standard Masonic symbols. For the other 56 he gave her little more than lists of meanings, so the scenes on the Minor Arcana are largely her own invention. Before this deck, most number cards were exactly that. Eight swords, count them.

And she signed every card. Look for a little squiggle, usually in a bottom corner, sometimes higher up or right at the top. That's her signature. Waite's name went on the box, and hers was on the cards the whole time. She's even said to have put her friends in it, though nobody wrote down who.

Smith died in 1951, in debt, and nobody knows exactly where she's buried. Her name only started going back on the deck from the 1970s.

So when a Minor card shows you something the book never mentions, you're looking at Smith's decision, and you get to read it yourself. The picture already knows more than the book does.

Try this tonight. Go through your deck and find the cards that look like they're stood on a stage, a flat floor with the world painted on behind. Then notice which cards they turn up in.

Learning to trust what you see in the picture is what Simply Tarot Course is for. If that's what you want, comment COURSE.

21/10/2026

Comment CIRCLE and I’ll get you three free Sundays in Simply Tarot Circle, my weekly space where we practise tarot together.

A lot of people go straight to the black cat in the Queen of Wands, but have a look at how the figure’s sat. They’re sat forward on the throne with the wand in one hand and a sunflower in the other, holding both at the same time.

There are lions on the throne and sunflowers on it too, and the cat’s sat at the bottom, right at their feet, completely at home.

My card page calls this somebody who walks into a room and changes it just by being there, no performance needed, and you can read that straight off the picture before you’ve opened a single book.

We talk about cards like this every week in Simply Tarot Circle, and the first three are on me. If you want to be in the room for that, comment CIRCLE.

19/10/2026

Comment CIRCLE and I'll get you three free Sundays in Simply Tarot Circle, my weekly space where we practise tarot together.

Why does reading tarot for yourself never land the way it does when you read for other people? It's got nothing to do with your skill, so you can stop quietly deciding that you're s**t at tarot.

I read for people all day every day, and reading for myself is still one of the hardest things that I do.

When you're reading for somebody else, you've got some distance. You don't know what they're hoping to hear and you don't know what they're dreading that you say, so you just read whatever you're seeing in the cards. Turn the cards on yourself and you know exactly what you want them to say, and without even noticing, you start projecting all of your biases onto the cards.

A couple of things help. Before I notice what I'm seeing in the card, I say out loud what I want to hear and what I don't want to hear, and then I'm somehow more attuned to noticing when I'm about to gaslight myself. And getting somebody else to read for you is a massive win. That's why I love my tarot circle each week, because I know that without fail, I'm going to be able to get somebody to read for me and read for them as well.

Send this to your friend who keeps telling you that they can't read tarot for themselves.

In Simply Tarot Circle we read for each other every week, and your first three Sundays are free. If you want to be in the room for that, comment CIRCLE, or see how to claim your free Sundays here: https://tarotwithgord.com/free-circle/

18/10/2026

Do tarot reversals change the meaning?

They do for me, every single time I pull one. There just isn’t a rule for how, so nobody needs a second set of 78 meanings.

A reversed card is still the same picture. Same figure, same objects, same everything, just upside down. When I get one in a reading, I turn it upright and read it first, and then I say it came out reversed and work out what that’s doing to the energy.

Sometimes it’s blocked. Sometimes it’s something you’re not doing and need to start. Sometimes you’re doing way too much of it and need to stop. The question you asked and the cards sat around it are what tell you which, never the card on its own.

And when a whole spread comes out upside down, it doesn’t just change how I see each card on its own, it changes how I see the entire reading.

I used to quietly turn them back the right way round, because I’d been told reversed meant negative. Do you remember the first card that came up reversed for you, and what you made of it?

16/10/2026

Where did tarot’s spooky reputation actually come from? There are names, and there are dates.

For nearly three hundred years tarot was a card game. A suit of picture cards got added to an ordinary pack to beat the other four, and in the Italian games Death scores one point, the same as a plain number card.

Then in 1781 a French pastor called Antoine Court de Gébelin wrote in his book, Le Monde primitif, that the cards were ancient Egyptian wisdom. He had no evidence, and nobody could read hieroglyphs yet. In the same book the Comte de Mellet called them the Book of Thoth, tied them to the Hebrew alphabet and printed the first tarot spread.

By 1789 a Paris card reader called Etteilla had published the first deck built for reading rather than playing. In the 1850s Éliphas Lévi, who’d left a week before he was due to become a priest, tied the cards to Qabalah, and in his writing the Devil became Baphomet. In 1888 the Golden Dawn started up in London on a manuscript written on artificially aged paper to make it look ancient. And in 1909 two of its members, Arthur Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, made the deck you probably own. It’s the one I think most modern decks seem to be built around.

So every spooky bit in this story has somebody’s name and a date on it, and you can go and look them up.

For me, understanding where tarot comes from has, in many ways, helped me get the permission that it doesn’t really matter how I use it. It’s a card game that got turned into something else.

Which bit did you think was ancient?

14/10/2026

Comment BUILD and I'll send you the link to my free workshop, How to Build a Relationship with the Cards, on Sunday 18 October. There's a replay if you can't make it live.

The cups on the Nine of Cups aren't being drunk from. They're on display.

That's the whole card for me. Everything looks impressive from the outside, nine of them lined up like trophies, and there's a real reason to feel good about that. But a cup that's just sat there goes stale, and a relationship can do exactly the same thing.

I'd never have got that from the little white guidebook. I got it from looking at the picture before I looked anything up, and from a cup of water that had been by my bed for four days.

That's the habit. One card in the morning, no book, and one sentence at night about where it turned up. Then the book, if you want it.

If you'd rather do the looking with other people, that's what the workshop is. A few cards, small groups, a proper natter about what you see, and then we all compare.

12/10/2026

Comment CIRCLE and I'll get you three free Sundays in Simply Tarot Circle, my weekly space where we practise tarot together.

What does the Magician mean in tarot? This week we found out it depends what you ask it.

The picture stays exactly the same. A figure at a table with a cup, a pentacle, a sword and a wand, one hand up to the sky and the other down to the earth, an infinity symbol over their head, roses and lilies round the edge.

Ask it what's going wrong in a relationship and the room saw one person holding all the cards. Somebody asked, are you showing all your cards? Which mask are you wearing? Ask the same card what's going well in your career and the same room went straight to the garden in full bloom and skills that are sharp.

So before you look a card up, think about what you actually asked it, because the question decides which part of the picture starts talking.

Next in Simply Tarot Circle we put other cards round the Magician and ask again. Simply Tarot Circle is part of Simply Tarot Membership, and your first three Sundays are free. If you want to be in the room for that, comment CIRCLE, or see how to claim your free Sundays here: https://tarotwithgord.com/free-circle/

Address

Manchester

Opening Hours

Wednesday	12pm - 10pm
Thursday	12pm - 10pm
Friday	12pm - 10pm
Saturday	12pm - 10pm
Sunday	12pm - 10pm

Telephone

+447572986780

Website

https://tarotwithgord.com/services/simply-tarot-course/, https://tarotwithgord.com/services/simply-tarot-membership/, ht

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