I have no idea what the cards are trying

You don't need more intuition — you need a way to look at the card before you look up its meaning. Most "I have no idea what it means" comes from reading right-to-left: card name first, feeling second. Here is the order that works.

1. Look at the picture first, and describe only what is on it.
Not "Knight of Cups is romantic." Rather: a figure is walking, one foot over a stream, holding a cup they are looking at, a smaller cup stands at their feet, two castles behind. Facts. You can check facts.

2. Then name the card, its suit, and whether it's upright or reversed.
Position + orientation + suit is the whole label. Everything after that is interpretation.

3. Read the position before the card.
The same card sits very differently in "what the situation looks like now" versus "what resists you." Ask the seat's question *at the picture* — not at your life story.

What the deck is, in one minute:
78 cards, 22 Major Arcs (the big structural chapters — Fool, Tower, Star, Death, the World) and 56 Minor (four suits of daily life: Wands = action, Cups = feeling, Swords = thought, Pentacles = material things). Low court cards sit with a person holding something; high court cards show them using it. So a King of Pentacles is about *handling* resources, while a Page of Pentacles is about *learning* them — same suit, different posture, different advice.

Listening better, specifically:

• Name three things on the card before you interpret it. You are forcing yourself out of the summary you already had.
• Say what you don't know. "I can't tell what the river is doing" is real information; it often marks the exact spot where the question is actually about your life.
• Keep the condition attached. A future position is a tendency *if the present position continues*, not a verdict. Cards pointing at something is not the same as cards settling it.
• One card, one line, one testable step. A reading that produces nothing you could do or check today was a mood, not a reading.

Practising: a practice pull is one card and the four steps above — look at the picture, name position and orientation, ask the seat's question at the picture, write one action you could take today. It teaches nothing about fortune and is not a prediction of anything.

Want me to pull one card now as a practice round, and we'll walk it through those four steps together?