Topic Is King
I’ve been reading tarot cards for several decades now without needing to know in advance exactly what the sitter (querent, client, etc.) is seeking. Since discovering the idea in Eden Gray’s book The Tarot Revealed, I’ve always felt that — beside offering total privacy unless the sitter chooses to breach it — such an unstructured approach allows the cards to fully “speak their piece” (or whatever part of the truth the “tarot gods” care to divulge) without any subconscious bias on my part due to “knowing too much.” The specifics of the question often slowly emerge out of the self-imposed fog as we work our way through the cards until the sitter arrives at the outer limits of his or her “comfort zone” and clams up. However, I don’t want the verdict to originate with me but rather devolve from the subtle, silent conversation between the cards and the sitter during the shuffle, which hopefully will be disclosed as I help translate it into common language. This works extremely well but it takes a lot of time; I sometimes feel like a vulture circling a dying animal, waiting to swoop in on the answer with a triumphant squawk.
The opposite perspective is that of having a specific target in view from the get-go, which permits the reader to cut right to the chase with no preliminary “range-finding.” This is certainly efficient but it seems too much like “mainlining” the answer without bothering to explore any of the arterial branches of the matter. These side-trips frequently turn out to be the most revealing and rewarding aspects of a reading, especially when augmented by the reversals that can serve as “signposts” pointing them out. I should note, however, that when reading remotely, this is the only way to work successfully unless we have clients pull their own cards and keep the question to themselves, something I always try to do when they own a tarot deck. It isn’t wrong to begin with a well-defined scope, but it can take a lot of the storytelling “flair” out of the narrative. The sitter might be adequately enlightened but the reader won’t be as inspired and neither reader nor sitter will have as much fun doing it. My experience has been that such stimulation makes for a more enjoyable experience for my clients, and I only gloss over it when doing very short readings on-the-clock.
I’ve been thinking lately that the optimal marriage of focus and flexibility may very well be achieved by knowing the situational range of the sitter’s interest without any of the “gory details” before we begin. For example, I have numerous topic-specific spreads that are tailor-made for situations related to decision-making, problem-solving, relationships, work and business, and health and happiness, along with a large number of general life-reading and miscellaneous spreads. By selecting one of these with the sitter’s concurrence, I can immediately start exploring the most relevant avenues of inquiry while still having the leeway to go “outside the box” when the cards lead me there. Not that this can’t be done with a more narrowly-phrased goal in mind, it just feels a little dishonest to get too far “off-page” from the story the sitter has been primed to expect, to the point that it becomes a separate reading that is difficult to bring back on course should the sitter warm up to it and forget the original question.
My future practice will therefore involve requesting a general topic of interest from my sitter. I like the idea of having a loose conceptual framework around which to build my observations, and I think my sitters will pick up on where I’m going much more quickly when they don’t have to negotiate a roughly-carved ladder of narrative “handholds” by which to pull themselves up from one hazy vantage point to the next. I will be doing both of us a favor. Another thought is that I hope to expand my reach into corporate reading and I don’t suppose business clients will care much about being charmed by my storytelling skill; most likely they will already have some kind of plan in mind about which they want a different perspective. The tarot will either confirm their intentions or offer cautionary advice for their consideration, and to do that effectively I will need to know a little more about their purpose.
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on March 5, 2022.
