Question Quibbles
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’ve just begun reading Vincent Pitisci’s first book, Genius of the Tarot: A Guide to Divination with the Tarot, and I’m pleasantly surprised to find that his thinking agrees on almost all points with similar opinions I’ve formed over 50 years of study and practice. At the time he wrote it (2013) he had been reading the cards for over 40 years, as had I, making us akin to “crusaders in a common cause.”
In the first part of the book, he drills into the reader the importance of having a very specific and well-framed question in mind before sitting down for a tarot reading. I concur that, for the best results, querents — assuming they have a question to be answered and aren’t seeking a general “life-reading” with a broader focus — must ideally achieve this degree of specificity when concentrating on the matter during the shuffle (I normally won’t perform this step for them). But — and it’s a big “but” — many diviners believe that they must be as privy to the details of the question as the sitter in order to read successfully (which may be due in part to insecurity about being able to reach an accurate conclusion).
There are two potential problems with this: first, there is the issue of privacy, since some subjects may be too sensitive to share with anybody other than a psychotherapist, which most of us emphatically are not, so I always give my clients the option of remaining silent; second, the risk of preconception or subjective bias on the part of the reader is very real, since there is a tendency to leap immediately to our own private experience of similar situations in forming opinions about the querent’s circumstances rather than interpreting the cards in a neutral manner. We aren’t obligated to function as a “life-coach,” just as a translator of the subconscious dialogue between the seeker and the cards, but if we know too much in advance we could be tempted to interject our own personal anecdotes into the narrative. Sitters who may be paying by the minute don’t want to hear about us, no matter how enlightening our observations might be.
Recently I’ve been encountering a growing number of readers who, like me, prefer not to grasp the full scope of the sitter’s inquiry at the outset, at most wanting to know only the “area of life” the topic falls into: romance, career, finances, family, health (a tricky one), education, relocation, etc. This frees up the cards to “speak their piece” without tying our hands by insisting that we talk explicitly and exclusively to the identified crux of the matter, allowing some latitude in our storytelling approach as we explore alternate routes to the answer. During the course of the reading the relevant details can be “dialed in” to the extent the sitter is willing to reveal them. I’m perfectly fine going in with this aura of imprecision since, if we are diligent in our interlocution, the appropriate measure of specificity will almost always emerge by the end of the session. In my experience, the look of comprehension in their eyes makes it obvious that querents understand full well what the cards are trying to tell them even if I don’t in total (nor do I need to). I would argue that they invariably get their money’s worth and then some. For me, the reward lies in the satisfaction of discovery.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on June 21, 2023.
