A Matter of Presentation
Questions are often posed in online tarot discussion groups regarding the various ways that readings can be presented to clients. I thought I would take some time to enumerate them along with what I perceive to be their strengths and weaknesses.
Face-to-Face Reading: This is the ancestor of all delivery methods and in my estimation it is still the best way to interact with a querent since feedback — both verbal and visual — is instantly available, which permits tailoring the narrative “on-the-fly.” It also requires diviners to “think on their feet” about what to say next. There is no better way to sharpen our “sight-reading” skills than having a “live one” sitting across the table eagerly awaiting our wisdom.
Reading by Snail-Mail: Although almost nobody would dream of doing it today, this was the only way to perform remote readings during the 18th, 19th and early 20th Centuries. Jean-Baptiste Alliette (“Etteilla,” the originator of the esoteric approach to tarot) mentions it in his book Etteilla or the Only Way to Draw the Cards. Its main advantage is that it allows the reader as much time as it takes — and then some — to contemplate how to frame the presentation. Its chief flaw is that immediacy fades since communication can be greatly delayed, and it also discourages the sitter’s participation in shuffling and cutting the deck (a key feature of how I think “tarot works”).
Reading by Electronic Mail: This is the 20th-Century version of “snail-mail” reading with all of the same advantages and no excessive delay in furnishing the results. But it also suffers from lack of querent involvement in the methods and mechanics of the process; in my own practice I’ve overcome this weakness by asking my remote clients to pull their own cards and email me the list for interpretation.
Reading by Text Message: This is the “social media” descendant of email contact, but — at least on a phone — it saddles us with a tiny keypad and we have to be vigilant about auto-correct sabotaging our text. It doesn’t really serve for the meticulously detailed write-ups that I prefer to offer.
Reading by Telephone: Anthony Louis proposes this in his book Tarot Beyond the Basics, and solves the “absent client” problem by pulling cards while on the phone until his remote sitter tells him to stop (as many times as it takes to populate the spread). This is also the province of “psychic hotline” readings. Its primary defect is that there are no visual cues to convey the querent’s non-verbal reactions.
Reading by Video Link (Skype, Zoom, etc): During the peak of the COVID epidemic this became the only way to meet in a “first-person” sense. Probably the closest thing to a live one-on-one tarot reading session. Drawbacks? You can’t do it in your pajamas unless you crop the frame to a “head shot” (and hopefully brush your hair first).
Generic “Card of the Day” Online Reading: These are about as reliable as the old “daily horoscope” newspaper readings, which is to say “not very.” Pretty much a waste of time.
Commentary:
Before I had done any, I used to think that online readings (whether delivered via a “real-time” exchange or by subsequent email) are tantamount to divinatory “fast food” in that they require no interaction by the querent beyond having an internet connection and a credit card. Now I realize that the email version at least provides an opportunity for the reader to produce a more thoughtful, fully-fleshed-out interpretation with no distracting time constraints; the challenge is to not let it become a total monologue but instead engage the client in both pre-and-post-reading conversation (and whenever possible I try to have the querent pull the cards for the spread, although some have resisted and some don’t own a deck).
Readings by text message now occupy the “fast-food” niche and, as far as I can see, they are only useful for the lightweight “entertainment-only” type of thumbnail outlook. I don’t care for telephone reading since, if I’m going to put myself on-the-spot for a “live” performance, I want to at least see the other person. I haven’t done anything with Zoom, but have witnessed enough bad video presentations to know that production values need to be carefully managed so the results are not laughably amateurish. That leaves face-to-face reading as the one method that checks all the boxes for me, and I try to do it that way whenever possible while recognizing that it limits me to a local clientele. Although I like the thoroughness permitted by the email interface, I don’t appreciate the impersonal nature of the contact even when I can get the client to shuffle and pull the cards. My long-standing opinion is that tarot should be an interactive experience as well as a “performance art.”
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on January 13, 2023.
