Tarot Journal
My adventure into online Tarot journaling
Background story, how TarotJournal was born
A few years back, my wife approached me with a desire for a tool that could enable her to conveniently track all her Tarot readings. She wished to gain insights into which cards emerged during each reading and how frequently they appeared over time. She told me that these recurrent cards are called “stalker cards” and expressed her interest in identifying them. After some reflection on my side I suggested that she could manually record her readings using tools like Excel or even pen and paper. She told me that she is already doing that as well, but the challenge of regularly consolidating this data remains. And in addition to preserving details about the Tarot spreads used in each session, she also aimed to document the specific deck used and taking photos of each reading. Summing up her desires, I quipped, “I understand. You’d probably also want the ability to search through these Tarot readings?” To which she promptly replied, “Absolutely! What I want is a Tarot App. I did some research and this app just does not exit… yet."
I had to admit, a physical paper solution or even keeping an Excel sheet or Google sheet would not be very useful, not only for my wife, but for many other people having similar requirements.
Fascinated by this subject and having a background in software engineering, I delved into researching the matter. I am not a Tarot reader myself and I had just little to no domain knowledge on this topic. So I wanted to gather as much information as possible. My focus was on understanding the landscape of Tarot apps and software programs, along with the array of features they presented. Astonishingly, my findings confirmed what my wife told me already, not a single Tarot app or website exists which would cover her requirements.
I discovered that the relevant terms for this area are “Tarot Journal” and “Tarot Journaling.” While there are numerous physical Tarot journal templates that can be purchased and free Tarot template PDF files for printing at home, we couldn’t identify a single dedicated Tarot Journal app or software. Although there are numerous Tarot apps available, a few of them do incorporate journaling functionality, it seems more like a second class feature. And all these apps need to be installed on mobile devices. As these observations accumulated, a realization struck: opting for a web app, rather than a mobile app, appeared to be a more fitting direction. And we had found a name for it (and the domain name was available for purchase): TarotJournal.com.
Tarot Journal Templates
Before I started to write any code for the web app, I did a deep dive into physical Tarot journal / workbook templates, guided by my wife, as she was the domain expert. There were plenty of templates available for purchase. Many Tarot journals give a lot of guidance and exercises regarding readings and spreads and how to fill the Tarot journal pages. Some people just record their daily Tarot draws, others record their Tarot readings.
After days of research on Tarot journal templates, and browsing through (my wife’s) Tarot books in our library at home, I felt ready to think about how to put all these ideas into an online Tarot journaling web app. What followed now were months of discussions with my wife about features, writing code, debugging code and testing…
Launch day and basic features
Tuesday, 11th April 2023, my wife and I launched our online tarot journaling app. We were extremely pleased with the outcome. Let me give you a brief rundown of the features we included in the initial version:
Record Tarot, Lenormand and Oracle readings
People have the possibility to record daily card draws as well as entire readings. It is possible to choose a deck, a Tarot cloth (various sizes) and a spread (or no spread) for each reading. It is also possible to combine multiple decks within one reading. For example, some readers combine Tarot cards with Oracle cards. It was very important for us to make our app as flexible as possible, and therefore future-proof. Even if a reader has chosen a spread template, it is still possible to modify the template and remove or add additional cards.
Since my wife is also a passionate Lenormand reader, one requirement was to fit an entire Lenormand Grand Tableau spread into one reading. And it goes without saying that readings can be recorded into personal journals on any mobile device or desktop PC.
Full-text search of readings has been an important feature too. Along with saving and exporting a reading as a PDF file, which can be sent to querents.
Each reading can be categorised by choosing from pre-defined categories or by creating personal categories. Privacy options allow to set a reading to private or public. Private readings are, as the name suggests, private to the owner of the reading. Public readings can be publicly viewed and shared on the web using a unique Tarot reading URL.
Tarot spread library
Each person signing up with TarotJournal has access to a personal spread template library with many different spread templates. People can find spreads for their career, daily draws, general, love and spiritual readings. It is possible to create new spread templates and categorize them accordingly, or to edit existing templates. Moreover spread templates can be published on a person’s journal and shared with other people. One can easily save a shared spread template into their individual spread library.
Blog posts
We added the possibility to create simple blog posts and publish them to the personal journal. My wife uses this feature all the time, for example when she wants to talk about crystals or new Tarot decks.
Personal Tarot statistics
Having detailed Tarot card statistics was very important for us, not only statistics per person, but also having global statistics (Tarot journal community statistics).
Personal Tarot journal
The personal Tarot journal is the central hub for publishing Tarot readings, Tarot spreads, Blog posts and Tarot statistics. All of these posts can be either public or private. Many of the people currently using TarotJournal prefer private Tarot journals tough.
I would argue that the combination of private and public readings and posts make a great Tarot journal. Private readings can be useful for client readings or very personal readings or card draws. On the other hand public readings, public blog posts and publicly shared spread templates shows that a person is very enthusiastic about Tarot and has a deep knowledge about it. And this can translate into new reading requests. If I were to search for a Tarot reader I would definitely feel more confident choosing a reader who is communicative and showing off her or his skills on a Tarot journal!
Edit Tarot card meanings
It was essential for my wife to be able to edit card meanings on a per deck basis. The following card meaning text fields are editable: keywords, keywords (reversed card), affirmation, card meaning, card meaning (reversed card), elements, numerology meaning, astrology meaning, yes/no meaning, associated crystals and card combinations.
Querent management
We launched with a simple querent management tool which allows people to add/edit querents and assign them to readings.
The future
We are constantly improving and adding new features to TarotJournal — it will never be “done”. And I have to admit that during the process of developing this app I became a Tarot nerd and started to learn reading Tarot cards myself. I think Tarot is a very powerful tool for self-reflection, almost like having a therapy session which can give you inspiration, motivation and highlights alternative view points on various topics.
For me personally, I am happy that my wife is loving her new journal. She is using TarotJournal on a daily basis and sometimes pointing me to app bugs which she found (which I have to fix). Her journal can be found here.
My own Tarot journal — Ici La Lune — can be found here.
We hope you enjoy TarotJournal!
