By Sarah Taylor
In summer 2007, a couple of months after the birth of my son, I decided to demonstrate my commitment to my tarot reading, and my re-commitment to myself (having been fully immersed in matters family for the past year), and ‘go pro’.
I can see why I did this — I was keen to start re-asserting myself in the adult world and put my slowly developing tarot skills to the test. Nevertheless, it was also a fragile time for the very same reasons.
As a new mother, it was daunting re-entering the hard and bustling quotidian from the dreamlike limbo of feed-burp-sleep-play. I felt like I had to re-acquaint myself with the English language, having spent so much of my time communicating non-verbally. Even my clothes seemed ill-fit for purpose: rather more elastic than I was used to — rather more material than I was used to, come to that. Just walking down the street took up all my mental and emotional faculties. I felt like a rabbit in the headlights.
Having limited theoretical or practical tarot knowledge, I was primarily armed with my intuition, which was strong, yes, but inflexible and undisciplined. Crafted in childhood, it had served me very well indeed — mostly as a means of knowing when and how to pass under the radar when the shit was hitting the fan. It had helped me to see things that seemed completely bloody obvious to me but apparently eluded the adults around me. I could read my parents’ feelings like a book.
At the same time I learned it was dangerous to admit to this; I couldn’t even afford to admit it to myself fully. My intuition was more of a secret weapon than a tool. Thus, I was able to bring that honed sense of insight into my tarot reading, but the downside was that I had used it to learn how to avoid, subtly control or redirect circumstances rather than how to address or confront them directly.
And so I found myself embarking on my first professional reading with a questionable sense of self-confidence and what felt like a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-(elasticated)-pants intuition.
My client was hand-picked for the occasion.
He arrived on time, having driven two hours along a notoriously busy route for the hour-long reading. So — no pressure. He was well-dressed and his speech contained, but there was a clipped quality to its edges that stood in contrast to the rather lazy, warm day that was happening around us. I didn’t feel warm at all, and I don’t think he did either.
We sat down at the table I had prepared for the occasion and I asked what had brought him to the reading. He began to relate the events that had befallen him since he had moved into his current neighbourhood: disagreements that had led to fights, and now he found himself in the unenviable position of not being able to move, not least because he had just moved there recently … to escape a similar set of circumstances in his previous neighbourhood.
I could feel his frustration — but what I felt most was the expectation that the reading was going to solve this for him. That part of me that was keen to solve problems for people (let’s call it Sarah’s inner Knight in Shining Armour), was at the ready, cards in hand.
I shuffled and laid the ten-card reading out, one card at a time. Confusing. There were no cards that showed anything other than a single figure. There were no cards that indicated a conflict with others of any nature. No Five of Wands, no Five of Swords — not even a Two of Swords. And then it dawned on me. He was his problem! His nightmarish circumstances were a hall of mirrors for something going on inside him, which he was projecting onto those around him. It also explained why, by moving, all he had done was change the backdrop to the same drama.
I looked at him. Looked down at the cards. Looked up at him, looking at me. Gulped. And realised that I wasn’t going to tell him the truth — or not the full truth as I saw it, at any rate.
“Have you thought about staying where you are and sorting it out?” I semi-squeaked.
“No. Why would I do that?” he replied.
“Because I get the sense that no matter how many times you move, you’re always going to encounter the same thing.”
“But I want you to tell me how to get out!”
His frustration was understandable. His nightmare might have been self-created (like all nightmares), but he didn’t see that. I did, though, and I was holding back that information — in part because I didn’t trust myself, but mostly because I was scared. I wanted the reading to be nice; I wanted him to like me. Instead, I had become one of his god-awful neighbours: uncooperative and unaccommodating. He had become my parent around whom I felt I needed to duck and dive. The rest of the reading was more of the same; I found myself talking in circles, doing everything to avoid the hot-spot at the centre that I had learned would burn me. Sheesh.
I remember I was wearing black, and indeed the session did die a death, and there was no way of resuscitating it. He got up to leave, and asked me how much he owed me. I told him. He put the money on the table, along with the final verdict: “I really don’t feel like I should be giving this to you, but here it is.”
And fair enough. He shouldn’t have. Not because I didn’t tell him what he wanted, but because I didn’t give it to him straight. He deserved no less than that, even if only because he was paying me to do so.
There endeth the Cautionary Tale of Sarah’s Misguided Inner-Knight and his Less-Than-Magnificent-Initiatory-Quest. Or was it ‘less-than-magnificent’? It, and other similar experiences, have served me well in one thing at least: try to avoid shit and you step in it anyway.
I’ve learned not to be afraid of saying it straight, and not to be afraid of being wrong. Um-ing and ah-ing is a form of shadow-boxing. It interferes with the ability of a reading to shed light, in the same way that light can change when we put a filter in front of it, or can be diverted entirely if we choose to block its path. (Actually, is it really a fear of being wrong — or is it a fear that the tarot is wrong? If that’s the case, why would we want to believe in something that’s lying to us anyway? That’s a question worth asking all by itself.)
I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I just said to him, “The cards are pointing to you as the one who can change — not your neighbours, not your location.” Who knows? Is it relevant anyway? It didn’t happen. Sometimes shit happens instead; sometimes it can be our greatest teacher.
If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.
DivaCarla, Mia, aword, Getcalm, Lizzy, Maeve, eco11 – Thank you all so much for your comments. I appreciate them deeply.
And eco – I’d say the time might well be ripe to try your gifts out. Why not? Everything is feedback, one way or another. 🙂
Sarah, I so appreciated this piece. Thank you.
I am not a “tarot reader,” but I am intuitive and a sensitive.
I have never put out my shingle -yet- for a number of reasons including wanting to please the other person and also fear that I will freeze and “get” a big nothing and, also when it happens it just comes to me. I don’t want to be a fake. I never know when or what will just come to me. And, sometimes, it seems it’s more like common sense than anything.
I’d also like to be helpful and stay positive. (I have a friend who tend to go to the dark side with her readings and I find that a bit too disturbing to try to go deliberately dark too.)
It is usually best for me if I don’t know the person at all and hold an object of theirs in my hand and then just say what comes up and, God help me, try try try not to censor that and realize that “I” may not know what it might or might not mean, but just to go with it. Hey. I mean, if it comes up, share it.
So, I also have a funny tale. Once, with this, there was a a woman in my group who’d been kind of off and irritated-acting. I held her object and immediately got a sense of this beach covered in crabs. The image just wouldn’t go away. I thought: now I’m really going to tick her off, but I took a deep breath and I asked her: “Um, have you been feeling crabby lately?” Suddenly she burst out laughing – I mean guffawing even.When she came up for air, she let me know that she had really been struggling hard trying to be pleasant all the time to everyone in all situations, when in fact she had been feeling crabby as hell.
It was coming out sideways, hence her off-vibes. She felt so liberated and gave herself permission to feel all of her own feelings more authentically rather than to try to restrain them until they exploded inside her.
And then I had this other wild picture of her, sitting on a giant beehive with all these bees, like she was giving birth to them. I also felt a bit rude telling her this image as well. She just looked at me and said, she’d had a very mystical revelation just recently about the mystical life of bees and somewhere in it had found some some soul-fertility that she was greatly inspired by.
But telling someone these kind of maybe rude images was really hard for me and IMPORTANT to just go with and many times I have had no idea at all what -if anything- they might mean to the person, but was surprised at how often they do mean something.
It’s an interesting and co-creative world and we are connecting on many levels all the time that we may not even be aware of.
What DivaCarla said.
That session was more a lesson for you than it was for him. Because he wasn’t ready yet. He was part of your teaching, your healing, rather than the other way around. The stage was set so that you were in control, you created this place. Instead of being too similar to issues like with your parents. And he refused your gift, because he would not hear it. But YOU listened. You heard.
If he’s lucky, he’ll learn his lesson sooner rather than later. But none of that is on your shoulders. That’s all his baggage.
Yes, there are times when one needs to be tactful, to present things in a way that someone will continue to listen. You can dance around the point, as long as the dance spirals in. When you keep knocking on the walls that surround the issue, something will make its way in, and there’s your bridge, and that’s how you talk about the point.
You have your point A (where you are) and your point B (where you want to be). You can see where you are, because you’re there. Visualize your destination so you have a goal. Dance your way through and you’ll get there gracefully. 🙂
…And really helpful.
Thank you for this wonderful, beautifully written piece, Sarah. So touching and funny at the same time. THIS is the kind of stuff I want to write – at this level of honesty and humour, so inspiring. And yes, I agree with Divacarla, you can tell people the truth until you’re blue in the face, but if they don’t want to hear it, they won’t.
Sarah, it was as if you had a recording of my past weekend, during which I repeatedly said Yes when everything inside me was saying NO! Like you, I learned that fine intuitive skill of “reading others” as a child and learning what to say to calm them to avoid serious physical harm. That skill, however, needed a file update to 2013. The old file WAS useful to keep danger at bay, but I have done a fabulous job of weeding out all the dangerous people from my life. I often forget that it is not dangerous for others close to me to hear my No, but it is damaging to the fragile thread of honesty that can get snagged on resentments when I ignore my true feelings and sacrifice them to “please” (replace with the words control or manipulate and it would be more likely true!) someone else.
As always, I love your take and the simple beauty of letting what is true come through.
Sarah,
Thank you for straight-up revealing this; telling your story here.
It hits home because I run the same theme with my writing – that is, I often write in circles around my point rather than just going there. That is not a consistent trend in my life in general – I can be point blunt in conversation and can verbalize a story I am writing with ease – but it is indeed useful to find where the disconnect/s are between our internal truths and those we wish/are-able to effectively share, isn’t it?
Fear and doubt – intuition busters, to be sure.
Thank you for pointing straight at the bullseye!
Dear Sarah,
Great article and pertinent for all.
I used the tarot generator for the first time and then went to facade.com to use theirs. What was really interesting is that Many (more than 50%) of the cards were the same. How about that for timing. I gave me some good information on an important subject – twice!
Thank you.
Mia
Thank you, DivaCarla – and of course you may! There’s no point in making a haunting mistake if you can’t have it reverberate around you a little 🙂
He would have got mad and wouldn’t have liked you. He may have had to prove it to himself with a few more moves, and a few more readings elsewhere.
YOu would have missed out on that great teacher — the haunting mistake. The bold truth backed down from, the glaring need for the client’s approval, the letting someone down by being too polite. I’ve done it all, and learned from it!
Brava for getting naked with the healer’s dilemma. May I refer my clients to this post as I teach them these skills? It could save them a lot of time!
PS. Elisa said something related a few weeks ago, that the seeking of comfort and solutions from a healer can be addictive. I paraphrase badly.