For centuries, Tarot has meant different things to different people.
For me, it's a fun and insightful mechanism of consulting one's own subconscious resources, very much like the ancient I-Ching.
When I need to think about a real life situation I have gotten myself into, consulting a Tarot always provides me with surprising insights.
My subconscious has already dwelt on the problem and Tarot reading is the great way to let it point me to some crucial detail or new angle to consider.
Associations Are the Key People with a healthy amount of skepticism immediately point out that each explanation is pretty generic and can be applied to most people in most situations.
What they don't see until they think of it is that the same card for two people in different situations brings to the surface very different associations.
That's why every single book or article tells you that the most important thing of all is to let your intuition guide you.
Use Your Intuition Each Tarot card presents a different perspective on more or less typical life situations - those should be enough to get you started.
To help you further, most "modern" (the last hundred years or so) Tarot decks are illustrated and rich with symbols, which are not there by accident.
Simply pay attention to what catches your eye on a card and this is your intuition guiding you.
For example, if you feel that the Moon on a particular card in a particular reading is somehow important, that might mean your subconscious is telling you to consider relying more on your intuition in particular situation, but at the same time, to avoid mistaking illusions for reality.
This is what Moon basically symbolizes.
Or if we are thinking about a particular business situation, and most cards in a spread are Cups (which usually represent emotions), our subconscious can either disregard it or sound an alarm that we should consider the emotions involved, never mind that it's counter-intuitive for the business context.
How Reading for Other People Works Because Tarot is a mechanism for contacting the subconscious, if you read cards for someone else you simply must explore the situation together.
There's no other way.
You can't just spread the cards for someone and construct a nice story all by yourself while other person keeps her mouth shut.
That's only contacting your intuition instead of paying careful attention to hers.
Ok, but What About Predicting the Future? I personally don't try to predict future.
But if you are really interested, you can think of it this way: Your subconscious surely knows better than your rational (and utterly biased) mind the most probable outcome of some complicated situation.
Provided you don't take a different approach this time.
On the other hand, predicting that you will run into someone two and a half months from now and get married next year, and raise a beautiful little girl who will become a ballet dancer means only one thing to me: stretching it too far.