Read a book about tarot symbolism, then get an improv class so you can connect the dots in nice stories

Just keep doing it. One of the easier ways to get "good" at it is to learn the symbolism for the cards, rather than remembering specific meanings for each card. Colors, various objects, directions peoples face, animals, numerology, astrology, and the MBTI all come into play.

I'm saying this as someone who believes in none of this, I just think it's fun. I have my notes somewhere, I can upload them later if there's interest

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading

Scroll all the way down to the bibliography section

Some of you will not like this, but I have read the tarot to dozens of people and I don’t believe in it at all. I first read it and then tell them I don’t believe in it at all and I just had a non-magical, human-to-human conversation.

The online courses are going to scam you in the same way that pro tarot readers scam people. Cut the middleman. Read the tarot directly. Don’t charge for it. Don’t scam people. Give advice for free.

If you want to charge for advice, go to actually scientific stuff like evidence-based psychology or evidence-based counseling.

If you take a course on how to become a scammer, you can be quite sure you're being scammed.

are you a good liar?

Not necessarily, and it doesn't happen quick.

As someone who's been doing this for quite a while, there seem to be two types of readers. The first are the fortune tellers who make empty promises in exchange for money and give it a bad name. The second are those who understand that tarot works best as an introspective device rather than a magic trick.

Public readings are a mix of heart-to-hearts and entertainment. The cards are only there to serve as a guide. I'm always upfront about what the cards can and can't do, and one of my main points is that they can't tell the future, all they can do is predict possible scenarios. If you do it right, you will make people cry, more often than not happy tears (but be prepared for people who have been suppressing strong negative emotions to suddenly release them)

Take time to learn the symbology, connections, and deeper meanings behind each card. I recommend starting with a card a day, it doesn't matter if you use an app or a deck. The point is to have something to focus on each day. Do readings for yourself and practice on friends. Track your progress in a journal. I track mine in a 5-year diary. Once you get good at it, it's honestly uncanny how often the cards just happen to spit out exactly what you need.

Fwiw, I very rarely do reversals or charge for simple readings, though I do put out a tip jar

You can just make it up, because it's all made up, so there's no point in learning what someone else made up when you can just make it to for yourself

Look up cold reading and read a basic primer on Tarot "divination", you'll be all set to scam people with mystical bullshit! You're not limited to cards either, you can bullshit people by scrying with all sorts of things from tea leaves to crystal balls to a puddle!

By the way, the courses themselves? Also a scam.

As if charging people to listen to bullshit wasn't scammy enough, they now have "courses" that charge people to teach them how to charge people to listen to bullshit?

Just flip over a card and say whatever random shit pops in your head. It's not like you'll be any less accurate.

I run an online course about pro tarot card reading. DM me for a special discount only available right now for just you

I'll send you a DM with my PayPal account, and for a low price I will make you a pro with my psychic powers. I can also teach you how to use your psychic powers, but it's more expensive.

Or you could buy the book "How I became a pro at tarot card reading" by Albert Einstein.

Go to your local library. They can probably order books on this topic, if they don't have them already.

First you have to be a good con artist with no morals. Are you comfortable ripping of your victim?

At the end of the day tarot card reading is a form of a scam. You are promising a product that does not exist thus it is a counterfeit product scam.

It doesn't have the same "everyone knows this is fake" thing that magicians get away with, many people believe tarot reading is real and the readers go out of their way to convince you it is real. So if you want to know how to get better at scaming people, idk, go talk to scammers that will train you and try not to get scammed yourself along the way.

If you actually believed you had some mystical foresight, you wouldn't be here asking anyways..

I'm not sure, lemme ask my magic 8 ball... ok it says reply hazy.

Just make shit up and learn to put on a good performance, play on the bias of human cognition to make them think you're saying something when really you're just blowing hot air up their asses.

It's what literally every other tarot reader does.

I get that a lot of people are hostile to tarot, and the mysticism and hooie around it are definitely something to be guarded against.

However, genuinely, it can be a very useful tool for thinking about your current situation, and planning strategies for future action. It can be a very helpful step to add to making a difficult decision and sometimes the random aspect can reveal your own biases or make you rethink conclusions you've made. It's not going to work for divination, there's nothing that can predict the future, but it can help you learn some things about yourself.

Obviously, therapy would be better, but to start I recommend reading the companion book that comes with most tarot card sets front to back, and also deciding what those cards mean to you and how you want to interpret them. Then, do readings for yourself until you're comfortable, then your friends, and finally strangers. You would be offering a third party perspective and helping them through the same decision making process you do for yourself. Again, anyone saying it will help tell the future is selling you bullshit, but sometimes people need a neutral third party to bounce a difficult to chew conundrum off of for twenty minutes and that is worth something.