just the cards, ma'am...

When I do a tarot reading, the client will sometimes ask if I'm clairvoyant or if I 'just read the cards'.

Just read the the cards!?! Hmph! If I was a more sensitive soul, I might get a little put out by that!

No, I'm just kidding. But there's a lot of misunderstanding out there about exactly what tarot is and how it can help. I myself will often say to a client who seems to have very high expectations that I 'just read the cards' as opposed to famous people in related fields such as John Edward or Alison Du Bois who talk to dead people and appear to know everything about everyone they meet.

They don't - and if you read their own words, they don't claim to. Sure, television is necessarily edited in such a fashion to make readings appear easier than they really are; like any live TV show, they cut out the boring bits. Sceptics claim this as a great deception. 'It's all edited to make it look better,' some say, with a great sense of betrayal.

Oh, really? As opposed to all those TV shows that aren't edited to cut out the dull bits?

My point, however, got a little lost there! Just read the cards?

Yes, I just read the cards. There are 78 of them and each one has myriad meanings depending on which cards it is surrounded by and what area of the client's life it refers to; the six of pentancles will have a different meaning in a question about money than it does in one about relationships or work and there is a lot of intuition involved in discovering which meaning is right in the present reading.

You need to be able to focus on both the many meanings of each card and the process of listening to your gut instinct at the same time. It's kind of like patting your head and rubbing you tummy; it takes skill but you can look a bit silly while you're doing it.

I've been to readers who close their eyes or stare up at the ceiling or nod as though they are listening to someone who is not with us in body. I am definitely not knocking them; everyone has their own process and if it works, excellent! But I try not to do any of that stuff - it makes most people uncomfortable and therefore creates a barrier between the reader and the readee. More than anything, I believe that at its best, tarot reading is an exchange between two people. It is not a situation where one person tells another what will happen to them; it's a little circle of two into which you invite a third Mysterious Other (intuition, gods, dead people - I don't know) and from where you can uncover the information you need to best travel forward in life.


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