Editor’s Note: In lieu of a Weekend Tarot Reading, we’re re-publishing this Oct. 6, 2010, article from Sarah’s earlier series of columns on how to read tarot cards. If you’re new to tarot, this series is a great way to get acquainted with the territory. Sarah will be back June 15 with a new Weekend Tarot Reading. — Amanda
By Sarah Taylor
Given that quite a few of my recent articles on tarot have focused on specific tarot cards and how to read them, I thought we could take a step back this week and look at one of the issues in approaching a tarot reading: that of coming up with — or not coming up with — a question.
This is a subject that, at first, seems relatively straightforward. But as you start to think and feel your way into it (and you will already be familiar with these if you have done readings for yourself or others) then you can find yourself facing all manner of choices, quandaries and contradictions.
The first of these being:
Not everyone knows what they want
Which means that not everyone knows what it is that they want to know — or, therefore, how to ask for it. Very often as a tarot reader, you are squaring up against this particular psychology when you embark on a reading.
If you’re reading for another person, it can take some time to really listen to what they are saying, and to crystallize a question from that. A strange but somehow fitting comparison I can draw upon comes from my days in advertising. Sometimes, the creative team that I was a part of would get reams of information from clients who knew their business back-to-front and inside-out, but who were at a loss to understand what this meant for a potential customer. They needed a “positioning statement” — something that summed the company up in a single line.
A question in tarot plays a similar role: a client may have many different threads of experience that they want to incorporate in a reading. How to frame a question so that it makes sense of who a client is and respects the complexity of their lives is a skill unto itself, and one that can prove very valuable to a client. An experienced reader will often be able to achieve this by using their perceptive abilities, intuition and a certain canniness, which beginners can hone with practice.
At other times, there will be a certain ‘not-knowingness’ that you and your client might have to sit with, and which you can then ask the reading to address directly. Although it can feel uncomfortable to be in a position where you have to place more trust in the cards than you might be used to, both of you can learn a lot about yourselves in the process, and the reading is no less do-able for the uncertainty.
If you’re doing a reading for yourself, not knowing what you want can be tricky because you have the possibility of an additional layer of fuzziness provided by the fact that you are up against your own psychology. We’ve all experienced first hand how much easier it is to see someone else’s baggage clearly while failing to notice our own. You’ll know it by a sense of resistance that can feel nearly physical — like two magnets with the same poles being pushed together. When you meet that feeling, why not try two things: first, be kind and forgiving to yourself. Just taking this step is an act of courage. Second, try opting for the ‘not-knowingness’ and see where your reading takes you. If you can stay in that state of not knowing throughout the reading, you might just find a nugget of gold you can prise out of the landscape and start to work with.
Be as detailed as possible… or don’t be detailed at all
Once you know what you want, you then have the option to refine your question so that your reading can give you as much information and direction as possible. The more you refine, the narrower the cards’ focus.
This can be a good approach when the person asking the question already has some clarity — “What will happen if I quit my job and start studying Philosophy at Columbia University?” for example. It might not be such a good approach if your client has a yen to go to university, but they’re not sure, and maybe they should just stay in their job and see what happens, but it would be great to go back to school and learn something, though perhaps this is the ideal time to cash everything in and backpack through India, and, and. You get my drift — and theirs.
There are some occasions where, no matter how detailed you have been in framing a question, the cards that appear in a reading seem to have scant bearing on what it is that you are asking. If this happens, it might be worth running with your ‘not-knowingness’ for a while and doing some investigation. Sometimes you will find that the cards are answering the question, but not in the way either you or the client had anticipated. At other times, they might be indicating something off topic but perhaps more relevant. This is where a practised intuitive ability becomes paramount — although I believe firmly that the cards, like life, never give you something that you are unable to handle.
If you want to dispense with the detail when you or your client formulates a question, then by all means do so. But make “not being detailed” a deliberate act. By this, I mean enter into the reading as one who is prepared to work actively with whatever is given to you.
Some clients will mention an area of their life that they want to look at, or a broad issue, and will leave it at that. Still others choose to ask no question at all, nor do they offer up any information. There is nothing wrong with these approaches; but it is useful to be aware of the reasoning behind them — especially the second.
If clients can work actively with the cards, then a no-detail reading can be very rewarding for both reader and client. If, however, a client is withholding relevant detail as a means to test the reader or the cards, then they are, in essence, withholding a part of themselves too. As a reader, that resistance is a psychological and psychic barrier to meaning; and it is best worked with by acknowledging it openly and discussing it with the client. This discussion — as with the earlier exercise of exploring with a client what they want — can be an enlightening experience that can add to the depth of a reading.
The no-detail/no-question approach can also be adopted by self-readers and clients to determine whether what they feel is important to them is also acknowledged as important by the cards. All well and good. The potential sticking point comes when the cards fail to validate that importance. Then the client has the choice of accepting and working with that contrast (which, let’s face it, can feel like a bugger, and I speak from much experience here); or they can refute the message that the cards are bringing them. It is at this point that you, or they, might try to sneak in a second reading… just to be sure. This isn’t a great idea for the reasons I’ve cited in earlier articles, not least of which because the cards are on to you the moment you decide to start again and they tend to booby-trap subsequent readings with all manner of ridiculousness. If you can, stay with your first reading, and try to remain open to what is being given to you to work with, rather than mourning that which wasn’t.
Yes or No questions
There is much debate in the tarot world about whether ‘yes or no’ questions (i.e. ones that limit the reading to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response) really work, and whether they have a place in tarot reading.
My quick answers to this are: Yes, they can work. Yes, they have a place… but I don’t do them. I say this for various reasons, not least of which is that I feel they not only cheat clients out of an opportunity to know themselves better; but also because it cheats them out of their hard-earned cash for something that, more often than not, they are completely equipped to answer themselves — whether through applying their own knowledge and common sense, or by picking up a tarot deck and seeing whether a card lands upright (‘yes’) or inverted (‘no’).
So, as you can see there is much more to starting a tarot reading than simply ‘asking a question’. It can offer us the potential for self-discovery. It can bring up matters to be integrated, or which can contribute to the refining or redefining of what is being asked. It can highlight discrepancies and areas of resistance. It can also encourage us to dance with the unknown, even if only for a moment. Who knew that something seemingly mundane could hold so much potential. All it asks of us is a willingness to explore and an acceptance to embrace what we find. Are we up for the challenge?
That ‘ping’ or ‘epiphany’ is spot-on, in my opinion. It is a visceral reaction to the cards that leads the way. 🙂
PS. Thanks for this wonderful and informative article!
With divinitory methods–I am not in any shape or form an experienced Tarot reader–I always seem to be listening for the ‘ping’, the something that speaks to me, speaks to the knowing in me, the knowing in me that sometimes seems to be speaking back to the method. A simpler way to say that may be just that I am always looking for something to relate to, but also something that takes my thinking and feeling in a way that it would not ordinarily go.
Sarah, thanks for addressing this topic. It’s one that troubles me in relation to both tarot and astrology.
I am uncomfortable giving tarot readings for other people, but I do them for myself and find that frequently I ask a question and the cards answer another one that I was denying from my conscious mind but was exactly what I really wanted an answer to. Once I see the cards it’s a total epiphany.
Good advice to be as detailed as possible or not to be detailed at all, but I find that difficult to formulate in actual practice. I guess that is just experience, as you say. And self-awareness.