How would I go about getting started with tarot reading? I know nothing of it whatsoever but I'm really interested.
I learned several years ago, and the method I followed has served me well IMO. Get a standard Rider-Waite deck. They're available anywhere that Tarot cards are available (and even most bookstores) and are great to start off with. Start by going through the deck with a pen and paper, and study the images; writing down your first impressions of each card. Study the symbolism in each card and write down what you think that card is trying to say. After that, start going through the deck with either the including pamphlet, or any other Tarot interpretation book you pick up along with it. The Internet has several great resources as well. I found that it was much easier to learn the cards before attempting to craft questions and spreads to do a reading. Having to consult a book or other interpretive guide while doing a reading is a pain in the ass, and makes it much harder to see the associations between the cards and their position in any given spread. Basically, you want to learn to actually READ the cards, intuiting what the symbols in each card are trying to say all while using your innate intuition. This becomes easier over time.
while I don't know that much about Tarot , I have some experience with the I Ching , which I believe is quite similar in regards to how they work. As cookiecrisp has mentioned , its all about using your sub-conscious mind and intuition to do a reading. In any given situation there are a multitude of variables that need to be factored in to make a decision. It is harder to calculate every variable using your conscious mind since you can only really focus on one thing at a time. However, using the I Ching or Tarot cards, you can bring to the forefront certain aspects of the situation that you may not have thought of using your conscious mind alone. If you're confronted with a certain problem that you've been trying to solve and you're not getting anywhere , it's possible that you're too focused on that particular train of thought to think of a different way to look at the problem to find a solution. Using tools like Tarot cards allow you to raise questions via the symbolism , which lets you see the situation in a different light. Meditation and lucid dreaming are also good for this. I started a thread about lucid dreaming, which I've recently been researching online. Here's a youtube video which shows the basics of how the I Ching works [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgXaIYpAEHQ&feature=related]How To Consult The I Ching Oracle - YouTube[/ame] There was a quote from a book I read once which is something to the effect that 'a certain card turned , by a certain hand , in response to a certain question'. Basically meaning that your sub-conscious mind already knows the answer that your conscious mind does not perceive, and this is a way to bring the two together. Also, do a search on Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity. I believe this is also related to sports , and how athletes refer to being in the 'zone' to describe times when your game seems to flow like you're not even there, and everything is on auto-pilot. sorry for the long winded post, it's kind of hard to say some of the things I wanted to without mentioning the others.
Here's something I found on Tarot which you might be interested in How To Read Tarot Cards Guide - Reading Tarot Cards Revealed