How to Charge and Cleanse Your Tarot Cards: The Ultimate Guide for Beginners

Are your Tarot readings not feeling as insightful or accurate as they used to?

Perhaps it's time to cleanse and charge your Tarot cards.

Understanding the Importance of Cleansing and Charging Tarot Cards

Before diving into the how-to, let’s understand the ‘why'. Tarot cards, like any spiritual tool, can absorb and hold onto energy—be it positive or negative.

This accumulated energy can influence your readings, causing them to be inaccurate or confusing. Or, to be completely frank, it can drain your energy and not make you want to read your cards! Been there done that…

A few reasons why it's essential to cleanse and charge your Tarot cards:

• Removal of Previous Energies: Tarot cards collect energies from each reading and from whoever touched them. Cleansing helps clear any previous, stagnant energies that can interfere with your connection to the cards.
• Enhancing Psychic Connection: By charging your Tarot cards, you essentially align them with your unique energy. This process boosts your intuitive connection with your cards, leading to more accurate and insightful readings.
• Maintaining Card Potency: Regularly charged and cleansed Tarot cards maintain their efficacy. This ensures quality and consistent readings over time. Of course, they don't do all the work for you – but every little bit helps! 😉
• Promoting High Vibrational Readings: Cleansing and charging routines can raise the vibrational frequency of your cards. This translates to more positive, empowering, and enlightening readings.

Understanding the role that cleansing and charging play in Tarot reading is an important step that will help you elevate the personal connection you have with your cards, especially if you're working on becoming (or already are) an intuitive reader.

How to Cleanse Your Tarot Cards

Cleansing your Tarot cards is a practice that helps maintain their energetic integrity. By ensuring your cards are cleansed, both physically and energetically, you're setting the stage for more accurate readings.

Now you've also gotta realize, though, that this is just one piece of the puzzle. You've gotta put the work in to learn the tarot card meanings, and also learn how to follow your own intuition. Are you ready to do that? 🙂

Step-by-Step Guide to Cleanse Tarot Cards

1. Gather Your Materials: Gather the materials you want to use for cleansing: sage or palo santo (depending on what's native to your area), and your favorite crystals (go with selenite or clear quartz when in doubt).
   
   If you want to read more about cleansing with crystals, my friend Kristen wrote some blog posts about cleansing and charging with crystals.
   
2. Set your Intention: Before starting the cleansing, set an intention that you’re clearing out all negative energies and influences from your cards.
3. Perform the Cleansing: Waft your cards with sage or palo santo smoke, leaving them under the moonlight to charge, or keep them under a cleansing crystal.
4. Thank and Store: Once your Tarot cards are cleansed, thank them for their services and store them in a clean, dry place. Humidity can ruin your cards!

Methods to Cleanse Tarot Cards

There are various methods you can use to cleanse your Tarot cards. Here are a few common ones:

• Using Sage or Palo Santo: Sage and Palo Santo are known for their potent cleansing abilities. Waft the smoke over your cards, ensuring it touches every card.
• Moonlight Bath: Leave your Tarot cards under a full moon. Its natural light is said to cleanse and recharge.
• Crystals: Certain crystals like Clear Quartz and Selenite have cleansing properties. Place your cards atop these crystals for a gentle cleansing.
• Sound: Sound vibrations from a tuning fork, bell, or singing bowl, can cleanse your cards.

The Importance of Intention in Cleansing

While there are several ways to cleanse your Tarot cards, your intention plays a crucial role in the process:

• Clearing Negative Energy: The intention of cleansing is to clear all negative incursions, bad energies and previous impressions from your cards.
• Inviting Positive Energy: By clearly stating or mentally projecting this intention, you invite fresh, positive energy into your deck.
• Enhancing Accuracy: A clear intention helps you connect better with your Tarot cards and improve the clarity of your readings.

Remember, the more love, respect, and care you show your Tarot cards, the better they can serve you.

How to Charge Your Tarot Cards

After cleansing your Tarot cards, now it's time to charge them.

Charging your cards rejuvenates their energy, aligns them with your personal energy, and boosts the accuracy of subsequent readings.

Explanation of Charging Tarot Cards

Charging your Tarot cards simply means ‘infusing' them with a specific type of energy or intention, making them more potent sources of wisdom during a reading.

It's like resetting your deck, basically. This way it aligns more closely with your intuition and guiding energies. This process amplifies the intention set during cleansing and strengthens the messages you receive from your cards.

There are so many distractions in the world, it's easy to get detached from our cards during a reading. Pull yourself back in by connecting with your cards on a deeper level through cleansing and charging them.

Techniques to Charge Your Tarot Cards

Various practices can be used to charge your Tarot cards, here are a few methods:

• Affirmations: Speak or mentally project affirmations into your cards. This can be something like, “These cards are infused with light and understanding.”
• Energies: Hold the cards in your hands and visualize charging them with positive energy.
• Sunlight/Moonlight: Sunlight energizes and charges your cards, similar to how it charges us. Conversely, charging your deck in the moonlight fills them with more subtle, intuitive energies. I prefer moonlight charging!
• Crystals: Some crystals can also charge your Tarot cards. Clear Quartz, for instance, is a powerful energy amplifier. I don't write about crystals much but I love the blog All The Crystals for learning allllll the things about crystals. 🙂

Impact of Charging on Tarot Readings

Charging your Tarot cards has a tangible impact on your readings:

• Improved Accuracy: Charged cards are better able to mirror your intuitive impulses and provide accurate insights.
• Energetic Replenishment: Regularly charging your cards ensures they never run out of energetic ‘fuel'.
• Better Connection: Charging helps you to build a deeper connection with your deck, which can help guide you towards more nuanced interpretations of your readings.

Every time you charge your Tarot cards you're aligning them with your unique energy signature. This makes your readings more personalized and insightful, making the charging process a vital part of Tarot care.

Tips to Maintain the Energetic Integrity of Your Tarot Cards

Maintaining the energetic integrity of your Tarot cards is crucial for accurate and clear readings. Here are several tips to help ensure your cards stay cleansed and charged.

Tips and Best Practices

• Regular Cleansing and Charging: Make a habit of regularly cleaning and charging your cards. It keeps them energetically fresh.
• Safe Storage: Store your cards in a place where they won't absorb negative energies. You can wrap them in a silk cloth or keep them in a special box or pouch.
• Mindful Handling: Treat your cards with respect. While shuffling, be gentle and focus on your question or intention.
• Self-Clearing: Before starting a reading session, make sure to cleanse and center yourself. This helps to prevent your energy state from affecting the cards.
• Limiting External Handling: Try to limit how often others touch your cards. Other people's energies can affect your own deck's energy.

Factors That Might Influence Your Cards' Energy

Several elements can influence the energy of your cards, including:

• Environmental Factors: The emotional and energetic state of the place where you read your cards can affect your deck.
• Physical Handling: Cards that are roughly handled may lose their energetic alignment.
• Energetic Drift: Over time, without regular charging and cleansing, cards may naturally drift from their energetic set point.

Remember, tuning into your intuition and taking good care of your cards can greatly improve the quality of your readings and prolong the lifespan of your deck.

Mastering how to cleanse and charge your Tarot cards is a valuable skill that is essential to the accuracy and vitality of your readings.

Harness the full potential of your Tarot journey by being mindful of the energies surrounding your cards.

Tarot Cards Cleansing and Charging FAQs

How often should you cleanse your Tarot cards?

Cleanse your Tarot cards as often as you feel like it! Many readers cleanse them after each reading, especially if the reading was emotionally intense or if the cards will be used by a different person.

How do you know if your Tarot cards are charged?

You'll know your Tarot card deck is adequately charged when you begin to feel a strong connection with the cards and the readings become more accurate and revealing.

The energies will feel vibrant and full, influencing your intuition positively during readings.

What materials can be used for cleansing Tarot cards?

There are several methods to cleanse Tarot cards. You can use sage or palo santo smudge sticks, crystals like clear quartz or selenite, or natural elements like moonlight or sunlight. Some people also use sound vibrations from bells or singing bowls.

Is cleansing my Tarot cards with sage cultural appropriation?

As a white woman, I don't speak about cultural appropriation much. It's not up to me to decide what is and isn't appropriating other cultures.

I practice cultural appreciation. As I've visited other countries (especially Mexico and India), I've learned that most people I encounter are thrilled to have others participate in their cultural practices as long as it's done so respectfully. You will have to decide what feels right to you and stand firm in that belief.

Do I need to charge new Tarot cards?

Yes, charging new Tarot cards is essential. Even though they are new, these cards have been through various hands and carry energies from factories, stores, and transportation.

Charging them helps infuse your energy into the cards, making them more attuned to you.

Is it okay to let others touch my Tarot cards?

It depends upon the reader's personal preference. Some Tarot readers believe that others touching their cards might transfer their energy, which could influence future readings.

If others touch your cards, you can simply cleanse and charge them again before the next use. Some people (like me) are willing to let others touch certain Tarot card decks.

At one point, I owned over 50 decks, but I always go back to using my favorite 3 decks! So, my favorite decks are protected and just mine – but the others? Have at 'em! 🙂

Can I use the same method to charge and cleanse my Tarot cards?

Yes, some methods, like leaving your Tarot cards in moonlight or sunlight, work to both cleanse negative energy and charge the cards with positive energy. It can be beneficial to experiment with different techniques to discover what resonates best with you and your cards.

Before You Go:

Choose the image(s) that resonate with you to pin to your tarot board on Pinterest!

All thoughts and opinions are mine. There is no right or wrong way to read your tarot cards as long as you're doing so authentically and leaning into your intuition.