Frequent Questions
So, you may be wondering exactly how this tarot card thing works. Firstly, I like to consider myself to be a healthy sceptic. What do I mean by “healthy skeptic”? To me, an unhealthy skeptic is someone who simply discards the opportunity to watch and see what happens. Basically, someone who denies everything that is being said. In a sense, this is what’s known as being an “oppositional reader”. One who looks for ways to discredit what is being presented. Sometimes this approach is necessary. (Hey – it’s my default position for some things.) In contrast, a healthy sceptic takes a curious perspective. In voting circles, you’d be referred to as a “swinging” voter. It’s someone who aims not to judge and, if they discover they are judging, pulls back from this stance and reassesses all available positions on the table. That does not mean buying into what you are being sold. It simply means witnessing the unfolding kaleidoscope of events before you.
When it comes to the tarot cards and the mystical realm, what I expect from you as reader is to consider “what if she’s wrong?” and “what if she’s right?” – or “can she be both right and wrong?”. And yes, there will be days when I try to make it work. At other times, I will not. Just because it works for me does not mean something will work for you and vis-a-versa. Healthy skepticism and a curious mind are the default positions.
Is this too much to expect from people? I hope not. And while some basic website training I undertook recommended that a website’s readability should be aimed at a reading age of an eight-year-old, this site will most likely not comply. Writing for eight-year old children removes a large chunk of vocabulary that I think is required. Essentially, I am not writing for an eight-year old. Rather, I am aiming to appeal to sensible and intelligent people who, if they are reading this blog, will be able to look up an online dictionary for words they don’t understand. Or if a word or context is too difficult, I am happy to try to explain it a different way. So, if this is the case for you, please send me a comment using the Contact form.
Now, to move forward to some frequently asked questions …
Aren’t tarot cards fatalistic and rob you of independent creative control of your life?
Rather than going into detail here on my views about how it can be a bit of both, I will state upfront that I believe there are some things in your life you need to learn. Therefore, some things are “just meant to be” (fatalistic). Now, how you actually go about learning this information is where you have free will (independent creative control).
Suffice to say, I believe our soul negotiates (with God, the universe etc) to accomplish certain lessons on Earth for the spiritual development of our souls. Some of this process is what we have agreed to do for others. Some of it – if you believe in past lives – is what you owe them; some people would call this karma. I believe intuition has been bestowed on us to help us to identify when we are close to delivering on an obligation or learning a lesson.
The tarot cards can assist by prompting your intuition.
So, do you just follow what the tarot cards say?
Absolutely, one hundred percent not! The tarot cards act as a guide with the reader as a conduit. So, you need to listen to your intuition to find out what feels right. The reader does not necessarily need to be a good reader for you to hear what you are meant to hear at that point in your life. Sometimes, you need to hear utter rubbish in order to know what you need to do. The cards simply serve as a focal point outside yourself; a reader provides a fresh perspective that isn’t your own.
Just because someone is a good reader for another person doesn’t mean that they are necessarily going to be a good reader for you. “Good readers” have off days, and “bad readers” have good days. I had one reader who I thought was rubbish and, as a result, I felt depressed for days afterwards. Luckily for me, I had a friend whose shoulder I could cry on and who told me that it was exactly what I needed to hear– a metaphorical slap in the face. When the friend I’d turned to for sympathy in the midst of my self-indulgent, self-pity party told me this, I instantly woke up to reassess, not just the reading, but my entire life.
What do you do when you get a bad reading?
A bad reading (or even a good reading) can play on your mind – even if you are a discerning skeptic. From personal experience and from witnessing countless others, I should give you a word of caution here. Try not to completely deny the very thing that has been said to happen. Strangely, you will wind up backing into this thing that you have been trying to avoid – just by another route. For instance, a friend of mine named Sue bought a crystal ball. (She didn’t know how to read it but she wanted to learn.) In the first class, the psychic who was teaching the class did a reading to demonstrate the approach (using her own crystal ball not my friend’s). She told Sue that she was not meant to read crystal balls and suggested that she leave the crystal ball with her until the next class. Apparently, this was all the detail that the psychic was able to derive from the reading. The class ended and Sue decided that she didn’t want to read crystal balls after all and so told the psychic that she would take the ball home with her. On her way out, the psychic did happen to mention to Sue that she should keep the crystal ball covered for the summer.
However, Sue didn’t want to cover such a beautiful crystal ball. Also, it hadn’t been cheap so she decided to display it on her bookshelf. Later, Sue went to work and about 3 pm she received a phone call from a neighbour saying that she’d called the Fire Department and to tell them that Sue’s house was on fire. Apparently, the trigger for the fire had been the magnification of light through the crystal ball onto one of the books in a bookshelf. Fortunately, the Fire Department was close by and so only the bookshelf and the living room were burnt.
The best approach to take is always a balanced one. If Sue had decided to go back to crystal ball lessons the following week and leave the ball with the psychic or she’d heeded the advice to cover it until autumn, the fire might never have occurred (possibly … it depends on whether or not the fire was another lesson for something else). Sometime later, Sue mentioned that she felt putting the crystal ball in that spot had been a wrong move. There was another spot on the dining table that could have potentially worked but Sue had rationalised that idea away by arguing that the kids would knock the crystal ball down when they were doing their homework.
Another point to consider here is that you shouldn’t go out of your way to make something happen. You may discover that it’s not really what you wanted after all. And, for goodness sake, do not wait for a moment to happen! Many years ago, I was on radio and there was one girl who always rang in every time I was on air to find out when she was going to meet a man and have romance in her life. At first, I did the cards and said it was likely to be about a month. A month later, she rang back and asked me the same question. I read the cards again and this time it was three months. This scenario kept on for a couple of months. Finally, she mentioned how frustrated she was at hearing this information because she wasn’t going out and she’d declined opportunities to go to a friend’s house.
So, of course, she wasn’t going to meet ’the man of her dreams’! She had locked herself away and stopped doing what she usually did in her daily life. At this point, I needed to put away the cards. My advice to her was that she just needed to live her normal life. Remember, there might be things you might need to learn in order to meet your ‘other half’. You may decide to join a walking club and then– voila – after a couple of weeks someone else joins and the next thing you know you’ve become walking partners into the sunset!
There’s a verse written by French novelist Gustave Flaubert that beautifully summarises how love can occur in a different manner to what we had initially expected:
“As for Emma, she didn’t think she was in love with him. Love, she believed, should arrive all at once with thunder and lightning — a whirlwind from the skies that affects life, turns it every which way, wrests resolutions away like leaves, and plunges the entire heart into an abyss. She did not know that rain forms lakes on house terraces when the gutters are stopped up, and she remained secure in her ignorance until she suddenly, discovered a crack in the wall” (Victoria Book of Days, ISBN 0-688-08067-7).
Your future is changing with every decision you make. By all means visit psychics, but it’s important for you to be aware that they are communicating to you via their life experiences at a single point in time. Sometimes, you simply need to plod around in the dark on your own to learn that you are the light that is required at this point – even if you are struggling to turn it on *smiley emoji*.
Aren’t you advocating responsibility to the tarot cards instead of owning it yourself?
For me, it’s like this: everything I encounter, see and do in my life is a result of some decision I’ve made to wind up where I am. Therefore, to extrapolate this concept further, I make the decision to select this reader/ tarot deck/ day/ moment to read the cards. The cards are shuffled by me and contain my energy and the way I shuffle is my style. So, I have influenced the moment, selected the reader, the cards and the way I have shuffled them. In this way, the outcome of this process is what I have generated or manifested. The trick is to consider “what was I looking for?”. The next step is how I choose to interpret what the generated outcome says. Once again, the final decision is mine.
The tricky bit is remaining objective to what you hear and see. As you will discover over the following year, there are cards that appear that I love and cards I am not so fond of in the deck. But if I ignore them just because I don’t like them, I am not going to derive the benefit of that card showing up and what message it delivers. Sometimes, however, the cards will be deliberately obscure because you need to make up your own mind and reach your own conclusion without assistance. When this happens to me it’s because inwardly I know that I need to make my own decision and not use the cards as a guide. The cards will reflect this and tell me a heap of confusing rubbish when what I need to do is make up my own mind. The really frustrating part is when you have two horrible options to choose from and the cards are absolutely no help whatsoever!
I believe that the cards reflect my shuffling style and my energy. Life’s cycles are a form of controlled randomness and so the cards could apply to my circumstances most of the time.
In this way, for the cards I have selected, shuffled and dealt, it follows that any responsibility I advocate to “the cards” is actually my interpretation of what I say and therefore the advice is to me from me. It’s simply easier to provide some objectivity if I say “the cards” rather than me, me, me. They’re really just a mirror of me. Consequently, I’m not advocating responsibility to anything but I am projected into the cards.
If I misinterpret the cards, it is because I have chosen to ignore them. At the end of the day, Newton’s laws of motion apply to this kind of energy as well. You know them: they go something like this:
1. An object at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by an external force.
2. An object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force.
3. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Anyway, this is the way I learnt Newton’s Laws. I’m sure there are more technically phrased versions about so I wouldn’t use these in an exam without verifying the correct wording; however, the gist is right.
What would happen if you visited another person to read the tarot cards? Wouldn’t you’d then be getting their interpretation?
Certainly true. However, I chose to visit that person or I decided to put my name in a hat to be drawn for a reading by anyone from a “pool of readers” available to do readings (in the case of a psychic fair, for instance). Usually, I’m a little more selective and try to get the reader who I think “looks or feels” as though I can connect to them.
For the most part, I aim to be a healthy skeptic. It’s one of those “accept and deny” situations. Accept what is being said and treat the reader with respect but deny their validity until I have had time to assess them in my mind. I ask myself if this is a scenario where I need to make my own decision without guidance.
Always keep in mind the fact that your life is your own. You need to make the final decision to follow or not to follow the reading. Always be aware of Newton’s third law that if you push too hard against an idea, you might wind up backing into or becoming the very thing you are trying to avoid. Aim for balance and react gently. Remember, reacting gently is not the same as reacting slowly. Don’t confuse the two.
Why are you reading your own tarot cards? I thought you weren’t supposed to do that.
Most people agree that reading your own cards is not a wise thing to do. It’s like representing yourself in court; only fools would consider having themselves as legal counsel. It’s a similar philosophy with reading tarot cards. There are, of course, reasons for this approach. Not because there’s bad karma or juju attached to doing so – although some people do believe this. The main risk involved with someone reading their own cards is the lack of impartiality and objectivity in performing the reading. As a result, the way in which the reader interprets the cards may lead them to make decisions contrary to how an objective reader may have interpreted the cards. This, in turn, could mean that you may wind up in an unfavourable situation.
Many of the readers I know – myself included – have dealt their own cards. They’ve seen the outcome the cards have produced and, not liking this result, they’ve gone “nah” and decided that a re-deal was necessary *smiley emoji*. This can happen more than once in a single sitting.
Now, there are different reasons for this:
1. The reader has learnt what they needed to learn from the cards and has decided to avoid this outcome by committing to not make the decisions to arrive in that spot. If this is the case, then reshuffling and re-dealing the cards is not discarding the result for a new one but, rather, learning from it. If the reader has not learnt anything, then the cards will show up the same. For more details, you can refer to “My Life” post titled “Deal Again”.
2. Sometimes when the reader is also the questioner, the cards may, on reshuffle, not give the same outcome but tell the same story a different way. For instance, there are many ways to tell people how to do/ not do or avoid something via metaphor. But if you’re the reader and questioner, you could choose to read it in the way that will make your life easier.
Why do you continue to read your own tarot cards?
The reason I do this is because I am reading these cards as an objective journey for my own life. Don’t get me wrong. It will most likely become subjective and I’ll become invested. There may be times when I do not want to read or talk to the cards’ outcome. This will also be true for me. Nevertheless, when you are subjected to parallax error – like scientists – you make some adjustments. I could, for instance, have another person read the cards for me and then we both publish our comments on the reading. Apart from the massive commitment I would be asking from a friend (365 days is a big ask taking into account vacations, family commitments, potential sick leave etc), it would be difficult to coordinate such a venture at this stage.
Another way is to simply try to out-guess myself :). This is where it goes wrong. For the most part, I am just curious. When I lay out the cards, it will most likely be before I go to work (at my paid job) so I possibly won’t have sufficient time to properly read the cards. It’ll probably be a case of: shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, lay out the cards, take the snap, crop the snap, apply auto enhancement, change the name of the layout to X day. I’ll wait until the end of day to add the name of the first card for descriptive purposes. Then, after the day is done, I’ll write about my day against the cards.
To that extent, writing about my day against the cards is a surprise for me. This won’t stop the alignment happening. If I do write about the reading in advance of my days, there would need to be a retrospective done as well, possibly as part of the next day’s writing. And, while I do love writing these articles, I still have other demands on my time that I wish to honour as well.
The cards seem to have a sense of humour. Sometimes I am determined to read them a particular way and metaphor them. (I know that, strictly speaking, that’s not the way you’re meant to use the word metaphor.). Then, “ta da” – it works out literally! Very much like Indiana Jones in the The Last Crusade when he says “X” never marks the spot and then, later on his adventure, the roman numeral for ten is a big X which does mark the spot. If the daily readings don’t bring you joy, perhaps, you might like to click over to the stats area to and check out what the cards are doing – statistically speaking.