Interaction
with the Querent
If you’ve been observant, you’ve seen that we have been discussing interactions with querents throughout the previous six chapters. The energy of the querent is imbued in the reading just as the energy of the reader is. This isn’t all metaphysical mumbo-jumbo; in addition to the more occult meaning of energy, which is certainly present, the querent has concerns and questions, as well as a personality and style of communication. All of this will affect your reading. There are lots of ways in which a querent can actually make your reading harder. This may seem counterintuitive: Why would someone ask for a reading, perhaps pay for a reading, and then impede the reading? We’ll look at the answer to that question shortly. There are also ways in which a querent can make a reading easier, although we, as readers, have to beware of allowing ourselves to rely on them.
Types of Querents
As I see it, there are four types of querents, and each brings his or her own challenges to a reading:
1. Yourself
2. Friends and family
3. A paying customer who is a regular client: someone for whom you read weekly, or monthly, or irregularly on an ongoing basis
4. A stranger; often someone you will never see again after the reading, such as a customer at a psychic fair
Establishing a Connection
Whoever the querent is, it’s important to establish a connection to him or her. I like to feel that there are three “people” in the reading—me, the querent, and the cards—and we’re all connected.
Susan, my first teacher, taught me to shuffle the cards, then hand them to the querent to shuffle. First I have the querent pick a significator, handing him four appropriate court cards (having decided whether my querent is a page, knight, queen, or king—if I’m not sure, I can ask). I say, “Choose the one you feel is you.” That word “feel” is important, because I don’t want what the querent thinks, believes, or has decided. I want the querent to be in an intuitive state. I then shuffle until I feel the deck is clear of any prior readings, then hand the deck to the querent, instructing him to visualize his question flowing into the cards. “Don’t concentrate,” I’ll say. “Just see the images like a movie montage.” Experience has taught me that many people are intimidated by meditation and are convinced that they can’t concentrate or aren’t good at concentrating, so instructing querents to visualize can make them stiffen up. While the querent shuffles, I focus on the significator, visualizing the querent’s face on the card.
Next, I ask the querent to cut the cards into three piles, from him to me, then I pick them up in such a way as to reverse the order of the three piles (illustration 47). I make sure we both use our left hands, since left, in the occult, is the side of the unconscious. The hand-off of cards at the cut helps us connect, too.
All of this is great for long consultations and establishes a deep rapport. However, at some point I started doing things like parties and psychic fairs, where I had to work quickly, one reading after another, bam, bam, bam. All that shuffling and cutting and so on took too much time for a fifteen-minute reading.
I learned that making eye contact, handing the cards back and forth just for the cut, and taking a few deep, cleansing breaths could replace having the querent shuffle, and even the significator was unnecessary. (It’s still nice to have a significator, especially when working for a phone or Skype client, but in a rapid-fire situation, I’ve learned to do without.)
I should point out, though, that I was reading for three or four years before I felt comfortable dropping these extra steps. In addition to establishing a connection, these steps help anchor and ground the reading, and they help the Psychic Child to come out. If you drop them and find there’s a loss of clarity in your readings, trust your feelings and add them back.
Always let the querent touch the cards if the reading is in person, and work out a substitute if the reading is over the phone or Skype. (My phone readings go like this: I’m going to run my thumbnail up the side of the deck. Tell me when to cut. Okay, I’m starting now. The querent tells me to cut, and we do it again twice more.) At one psychic fair for charity, the organizers were rushing the readers because a long line had formed. Instead of having the querent cut the cards, I just had each person hold the cards for a moment. That brief touch was enough, under the rushed circumstances, to create the connection.
Reading for Yourself
The querent can be the reader—you can read for yourself. Some people read only for themselves, and some never read for themselves. For me, if I just want to look into this or that, I’ll read my own cards—it’s a good way to just check in or to get short-term information, and it keeps me on my toes. On the other hand, if something serious is happening, I’ll get someone else to read for me.
In learning to know your own Psychic Child, it helps to know what your blocks are. For me, when I care very, very much about the outcome, I get a little “head-blind.” Once I did a reading that predicted disastrous results, blew it off as a mistake, and then was blindsided when the disaster happened. The reading was both right and wrong—the information was correct, but I didn’t take it seriously. Ever since, I’ve reached out for support in situations where really listening to the reading is crucial.
If you read for yourself, I highly recommend reading out loud. Vocalizing does things to the psyche that make a huge impact on a reading. Spoken language uses different parts of the brain than does merely thinking to yourself; more neural connections are made, and this helps to open the deeper mind. You may have noticed this yourself. Have you ever thought through a problem and been stuck, and then gone to talk it out with a friend? Often, you’ll discover the answer just by verbalizing the problem, before your friend has even spoken. This is the power that the spoken word opens up in the brain: you send the thoughts to the brain’s speech center, and along the journey, synapses fire. It can be an awakening.
When reading for myself, I will pretend that someone else is in the room, and read to that imaginary querent, or even have someone close to me sit in the position of the querent and read to that person.
Reading for Friends and Family
When you first pick up the tarot, you will be reading only for people you know: yourself and those close to you. This can present some serious challenges that you should be aware of.
You usually know the issues going on in the lives of the people you love. You know their relationships, their jobs, and the things that bother them. It can be easy to zoom in on what you know in the querent’s life and immediately apply this information to the reading, without opening yourself up to psychic knowledge.
When I was young and had been using the tarot for perhaps a year or two, I did a reading for one of my sisters. (Given that it was over twenty years ago, I no longer remember every specific card, but I do remember a lot of the content.) At that time, this sister was involved with a theater group in which there was a lot of gossip and back-stabbing. She had wormed herself into that group and was a relative newcomer, and she was very concerned with holding her position and being accepted.
The reading suggested dishonesty, theft, and a terrible outcome. I recall a Page of Swords reversed and a Seven of Swords, and perhaps also a Five of Pentacles reversed. I told her she’d be the subject of gossip and dishonesty, that some kind of theft would be involved, and that she’d end up being ousted from the theater group. We talked a lot about that group, those people, and how the entire situation might play out.
A few weeks or months later, we discussed the reading. By that time, she was well established in the theater group, and key people had accepted her as a friend. The gossip that had plagued her when she first joined was no longer directed at her, and she felt comfortable in her role. She brought up the reading: What could that have been about? How could it have been so completely wrong?
At the time, she was working in retail. Looking back on when I did the reading, we realized that she had been fired from a job shortly after. A coworker had stolen from my sister’s register; my sister was the one who came up short, and the thief successfully made it look like my sister was to blame. Point by point, everything that I said would happen had, in fact, happened, but in a different situation, with a different group of people.
This was one of the most important lessons I have ever learned about what happens when you dampen the presence of the Psychic Child, and I always keep it in mind. If you, based on your mundane, day-to-day knowledge, declare right off the bat what the meaning of the reading is, then you don’t allow the cards to tell you, and you don’t allow the Psychic Child to step forward. Your own preconceptions drive away the more accurate knowledge. In my sister’s case, the reading was correct, the cards were correct, and my Psychic Child guided me to an accurate narrative about what would happen. But because I was sure I knew the whys and wherefores, I didn’t listen to my inner voice. Listen? I didn’t even ask, so there was no opportunity to listen for an answer.
There are times when you think you know the answer, just as I thought I knew in the case of my sister’s theater group. In chapter 5, the House of Sorrows reading (illustration 36) was for a friend, and as I saw the first card, I was sure it was about the situation with his house. Right away, I said, “This looks like it’s about your house,” and explained the meaning of the card. Laying down the crossing card, I again explained the meaning, and suggested it meant a person controlling money. I asked him if he’d met with such a person. By suggesting, instead of stating, the part of his life this related to, and by asking questions, I slowed myself down enough to make sure I didn’t ride roughshod over a hidden meaning; that the obvious didn’t overwhelm the subtle. This interaction allowed us to fine-tune the reading. I was right about the subject matter: the Nine of Pentacles reversed was about his house. I suggested the King of Pentacles might be a loan officer; the querent corrected me—it was an insurance adjuster.
Another potential issue with friends and family is that it can be inhibiting. The better you know someone, the harder it can be to tell the person difficult news or to reveal something potentially embarrassing. It’s important, when doing a reading, to have some privacy. People will sometimes say, “Oh, it’s fine if s/he stays in the room and hears this.” If this person has never had a reading from you before, though, she may not realize that a reading can reveal something deeply hidden.
When I was in my early twenties, I had a boyfriend who was quite taken with my ability with tarot and told his family all about it. So much so that, when he invited me to his family’s Christmas gathering, he asked me to bring my cards and do a few readings. Wanting to impress my boyfriend’s family, I agreed.
Fortunately, I insisted on a private room, because I sat down with a cousin, laid down the first three cards of a Celtic Cross, and turned beet red. As I recall, the cards were the Lovers, crossed by the Queen of Cups, with Justice in the near future position. “You’re having an affair and planning on leaving your wife,” I blurted out. I was correct. Needless to say, the whole thing was extremely awkward and made me intensely aware of the dangers of reading for family. The querent was an in-law in the family; it was my boyfriend’s cousin he was cheating on. I never saw that particular person again, but I learned my lesson. Be careful who is around when you’re reading, be cautious when agreeing to read for family, and tell the truth, because it’ll come out anyway.
Regular Clients
Paying clients bring up, for many people, personal issues around money. What is it okay to charge for a reading? How do I ask? How do I set a price? These are difficult issues for many of us, and whole books have been and will continue to be written on the subject.
It’s okay not to charge. You can choose to be an amateur reader forever. I think it’s a mistake in life, and a peculiarly American one, to assume that everything you do well is something that must bring income.
There are some advantages to charging that have nothing to do with having extra money in your pocket. One is, it forces you to become a better reader. Exchanging money puts a little pressure on you; you feel obligated to give the customer bang for his buck. While few people are foolish enough to charge for something they’re not yet good at, there’s no doubt you’ll see improvement the minute you start charging. Money grounds the reading and makes it seem real. This impresses the daylights out of the Psychic Child, who will feel trusted and valued and step up to the plate as a result.
Charging for a reading also forces the querent to pay better attention. A friend or relative might think this is some amusing little thing you do. You might even feel that way when reading for yourself. But someone who has handed you money has handed you a different kind of trust and given the reading gravitas. This helps you do your work.
When I first began charging, I assured every client at the beginning of the reading that they could have their money back if they felt the reading wasn’t worth it. That assurance was a way of giving myself permission to charge money without feeling like a jerk. There were one or two times, over the years, that I made good on that assurance. The reading went dead, I didn’t feel anything, the querent felt nothing, and a refund was in order. Once or twice, that is, over dozens, perhaps hundreds, of readings.
I don’t tell people that now, because I have much more confidence. I believe that the reading will work and there will be no need for a refund. I see no reason to say something that plants a seed of doubt. Of course, I would absolutely still provide a refund if it was the right thing to do.
How Much to Charge
My late ex-husband, Isaac Bonewits, used to say, “Charge your age.” That was a good rule of thumb, but inflation finally outstripped it. Prices are also regional. You should certainly ask around, even going to a psychic fair and finding out what readers there charge.
As a beginner, give a discount for your inexperience. If the going rate in your area is fifty dollars, then forty dollars is probably appropriate for your first year. The opposite is also true, and given my experience level, I sometimes charge more than the going rate.
Regular clients, over time, will take on some of the problems of reading for family and friends: you’ll get used to their issues.
In chapter 5, the infertility reading (illustration 41) was for a regular paying client. I am accustomed to reading primarily about her career. This client and a couple of others ask me career-based questions on an ongoing basis, which is quite interesting since most people are first and foremost concerned with love and family. I began the reading seeing job-type cards (the Six of Wands) and at once gave her information about her work. The querent redirected me to the fertility question.
As I stated in chapter 5, the Six of Wands and the Sun would have suggested career anyway, but the fact that I was pretty much expecting this client to ask about her career was a trap for me. I was fortunate that this client has a deep appreciation for how the psychic arts work (she is an astrologer) and so was comfortable asking me to change direction.
An advantage of reading for anyone regularly, whether yourself, those close to you, or clients, is that people have recurrent cards. This is a disadvantage to a beginning reader. If you are new, you want to get used to reading all seventy-eight cards, and reading the same people over and over will mean you see only a subset, as the same people have the same issues recurring in their lives.
What I mean, though, is a little deeper than just “Jane has a troubled marriage, so every time I read for her there will be complicated relationship cards,” or “Joe has chronic health problems, so I should expect to see health-related cards every time I read for him.”
Everyone has life issues specific to his or her own psychology, karma, and personality. For someone who regularly receives tarot readings, certain cards will come to symbolize certain issues. For one regular querent of mine, immaturity was an ongoing issue. This querent had Peter Pan syndrome well into adulthood, so we would look at pages and how they appeared in the reading. Pages symbolize young people and children. Often we’d find pages in this querent’s self-image position when using a Celtic Cross layout. Once we established that it might not be great for a twenty-something or thirty-something person to see herself as a kid, we kept an eye out for those pages. Once you’ve had a few readings over a length of time with a page in the self-image position, it changes and colors the meaning of a page suddenly appearing in the crossing or the recent past position. Like a recurring dream, part of the meaning is in the recurrence itself, and this is a powerful force in your interaction with your regular clientele.
Reading for Strangers
The final category of querent is the stranger. I love reading for strangers. It is exhausting but exhilarating. There’s a disinhibition that accompanies such readings. It’s the “seatmate on the plane” syndrome: it’s often much easier to bare your soul to a stranger than to someone you know, someone who will see you again and remember what they heard. Reading for a stranger is the opposite of reading for family and friends: there is no fear of revealing something if you know there will be no repercussions.
The circumstances under which one generally reads for strangers—at parties, psychic fairs, fundraising events, Renaissance fairs, and the like—are a downside for many readers, although that’s a matter of individual taste. Such events can be intense, and chaotic, and demanding, and they can also be dull. At a fair, you might sit at a table, trying to “look psychic,” waiting in vain for a customer to appear. It’s more common, though, for a line to form, and it can be difficult even getting a sip of water between readings.
It’s easy to complain about such circumstances, but many readers have noticed that the pressure cooker of doing one reading after another with little or no break increases their psychic abilities. The readings become more and more accurate, with more and more detailed information being revealed.
It is also my experience that strangers come to you with very serious problems indeed. I have done readings at fairs for such diverse individuals as a person with a persistent headache that may or may not have been a brain tumor, battered spouses looking for a way out, a drug dealer trying to get out of the business, a suicidal student at an Ivy League college, and a woman whose military husband didn’t know she was pregnant. It’s not enough, in such situations, merely to be psychic; you have to know how to do counseling as well, at least at the nonprofessional level, and it wouldn’t hurt to have some emergency resources with you (like suicide hotline numbers and contact information for domestic violence shelters).
One downside of reading for strangers is that you don’t get any follow-
up. I’ve often thought of the woman with a persistent headache. That was a reading at a fundraising event. There were some dark, disturbing indications in the reading. The Star reversed and the Nine of Swords appeared; there was a nine pattern and she’d had the headache for nine weeks. She’d made doctor appointments and not shown up. I felt sure that this was a tumor or something equally dangerous. Without saying something inappropriate (never predict death to a querent), I urged her to see a doctor and said the omens were “serious.” I will never know if I was correct, or if she saw a doctor, or what happened next.
Ask Questions!
Asking questions during a reading is valuable. Sometimes people don’t want to do this because they think it means they’re not really psychic (if you were psychic, the logic goes, you’d just know). Both readers and querents might think that asking questions is a no-no, especially if a querent distrusts occult things in general. But asking questions is actually a way to be psychic.
This looks like XYZ situation; does that sound right to you? By saying it this way, you can reassure the querent that, yes, you’re seeing specific things and you’re not on a fishing expedition. You can also assure your Psychic Child that you’re listening to her voice (it’s the Psychic Child, after all, who helps determine what “this looks like” when you say “this looks like XYZ”). The querent is asked only to fine-tune or redirect the reading.
This also goes back to establishing a connection with the querent. Even if all you did was make eye contact and hold hands for ten seconds, your querent is more likely to trust you: he feels connected to you and to the cards. When a connection is established, you, your Psychic Child, and the querent are all assured that the question is rooted in the context of the relationship, the interaction, and is not a con job that makes the querent do all the work.
As you become more and more talented as a tarot reader, you’ll ask fewer questions because you’ll be able to derive so much data from your interaction with the cards. But your querent will always be a part of your tarot interaction.
When Not to Ask Questions
As a beginning reader, you may ask a lot of questions rooted in insecurity. A lot of them may be “that can’t be true” questions. For example, you see cards indicating an affair and think, “That can’t be true,” and then ask gently leading questions about the querent’s marriage. This could be a successful strategy: the querent could reveal the affair, allowing you to go back to the cards and show why you asked the question in the first place. But these questions can undermine the Psychic Child’s sense of safety as well as the querent’s trust in you. When you interact confidently with the querent, you allow him to trust your abilities. This is particularly true when a querent is uncertain whether cards and tarot are legitimate at all.
Now, this may seem to contradict earlier advice. I’ve said to ask questions, and I’ve said not to make assumptions. How can you do that and avoid seeming unsure, all at the same time?
In truth, it’s a balancing act. Give enough information, with specifics, to help both you and the querent feel that you’ve said something real, something grounded in real-world events and people, and ask questions based only on that information.
“Fishing expeditions” are something that people are warned against by those who are sure that all psychics are fake. “Fishing” is making vague, universal statements followed by leading questions designed to make the querent do all the work, such as “You were once unhappy. What’s that about?” Everyone was once unhappy—you haven’t really read anything, and anything the querent tells you at that point isn’t really coming from the cards. This is very different from saying something like, “Your childhood unhappiness is affecting your ability to manage a project right now. I’m not sure what this childhood issue is about. Would you like to tell me?” In the following sample reading, I ask a question very much like that. The reason it’s different is twofold: first, because I talked about specifics, relating a past unhappiness to a present-day project and management problems, and second, because I invited the querent to tell me (or not).
It’s natural to find a lot of details in some areas and yet be confused or disconnected to other areas of a reading. Provide what details you can first, before asking questions, both because this allows the Psychic Child to come out, perhaps giving more details than you knew you had, and because it will build the querent’s confidence. Then be honest about “this section here is a little unclear to me; let’s see what we can figure out.” This is very different from “fishing.”
When I sit down to do readings, querents often ask if they have to tell me their question. I assure them it’s entirely their decision. A querent who feels that the reading is based only on information she provided is not likely to trust the reading, and therefore is not likely to take the steps the reading, and the reader, says she should take.
Sample Reading: A Crucial Question
Another kind of question is when you see a situation but you can’t place it in context. “What does this have to do with that?” is a legitimate interaction. You’ve been specific about one section of the reading, and about another section of the reading, and are not yet seeing how to put them together.
As I so often do when giving a reading, I started this particular one by asking, “Is this a yes/no question, a decision, or do you just want to know what’s going on?” This lets me choose my layout.
“I have a decision to make about a health issue,” she said.
I chose an Influences layout (illustration 48). Although normally I would have chosen the Vitruvian Man layout, which has a clear and obvious “what you should do” position, I felt like shaking things up and breaking my own routine. (This is something I do for my Psychic Child, to keep myself fresh and connected to the reading: I change decks and spreads whenever I feel a little stale.)
There are two sevens, so willpower and decision-making are crucial here. Right away we can see how difficult this decision is for the querent: the Seven of Swords is a weak card, a card of sneaking away and theft, while the stronger Seven (of Wands) is reversed. Otherwise, the reading is well balanced: two swords, two cups, one pentacle, one wand, and one major. No pattern there.
Since there is only one major arcana, this isn’t a matter of life or death. That’s a relief with a health reading.
Looking at the three central cards, I tell the querent that she’s feeling off-balance and tired of fighting (Seven of Wands reversed); she just wants to walk away and not have to worry about it (Eight of Cups). The medical decision will cost money, and she’s concerned about paying for it (Ace of Pentacles), but that’s not a major concern. It’s a new expense (aces are beginnings), but since the Ace is upright, I feel like she can handle it or is insured. Primarily, I see the stress of having to make a decision when she’d rather not.
The Emperor is a decision-maker. He’s a leader or an authority, and as an influence, he’s placed side by side with the thief: the Seven of Swords. The querent feels that someone else is taking this decision away from her. I suggest she’s reluctant to cede to the authority of her doctor, who probably has already made up his mind.
The big thing, though, is the pair of influencing cards to the left. (In fact, during the reading, I addressed them first, and am only switching the order of the reading for purposes of writing it up.)
The Ten of Cups reversed suggests family issues. Its upright meaning is a happy family, fulfilled on a deep level that transcends simple wish fulfillment (which is the Nine of Cups) and addresses what truly matters. Reversed, it can be family fights, dysfunction (especially between parents and children), and loss. The Three of Swords is a card of tremendous grief and heartbreak. Reversed, it indicates that a grief has ended and wounds have healed, but scars are still present.
It’s clear that something happened in the querent’s family that caused her great grief, which she has healed from. That there was grief and subsequent healing means this is something in the querent’s past, something she’s had time to recover from. Somehow, this past sorrow is an influence on the current decision.
The querent and I interacted a bit about each section of the layout. She talked about her symptoms and her doctor and so on. I said there had been grief in the family and she agreed, but as we talked, I didn’t see how this grief was connected. So I asked: Somehow, this past grief is affecting your ability to decide about the medical procedure, and I don’t understand that. What is it in the past that this current situation is bringing up for you?
The querent revealed that some years back, her mother had a potentially fatal illness. The symptoms were not the same, but the querent’s symptoms, though different, were consistent with the same illness. Her mother survived and is alive today, but might easily have died. The doctor was not concerned until he learned of the mother’s medical history, and then decided to treat the querent’s symptoms more seriously.
Suddenly it all connected for me. You don’t want to deal with these symptoms because doing so reminds you of the terrible pain of almost losing your mother. You were so overwhelmed at the thought that she might die that you’ve suppressed the whole incident, and now it’s come back.
It was an intense moment. Tears came to the querent’s eyes; she could only nod. We hugged, and there was tremendous release. I was able to say that these symptoms had nothing to do with her mother’s illness. I also said that it seemed as if she wasn’t even worried about the diagnosis; it was facing the tests and making the decision that was causing her pain. Once she decided to go ahead with the testing, she was truly relaxed and not worried about the outcome.
Only the most gifted clairvoyant could have made the connection between the past incident and the current decision without interacting with the querent, asking cogent, compassionate questions, and truly listening to the answer. Yet even after I asked the question and listened, it still required some psychic ability to put it all together. The Influences layout turned out to be exactly the right reading; this querent was influenced by her past without even knowing it. (Note that the left side of an Influences reading is the influence you don’t know about.)
The querent turned out to be fine. Her symptoms cleared up and she needed no further treatment.
Difficult Querents
Difficult querents are those who refuse to interact; they are closed off or distrustful, or they lie. I have encountered all of these and more as a tarot reader.
Querents Who Test and Lie
Querents sometimes want to test the reader. They want you to prove you are psychic and will withhold important facts in order to see if you can discern them on your own.
I once read cards for a stranger in a client-based setting (that is, she was a potential new client, getting her first reading). I used a Celtic Cross layout, and the Tower card covered her. I said, accurately, that she was losing her home. I also said that it seemed that the house was more than a house, that it was tied up with her sense of self. She said no to that, repeatedly. I asked her many different ways—saying that I saw this, that I was sure of it, but that I couldn’t put my finger on it. She assured me, throughout a sixty-minute session, that this was not the case.
She was indeed losing her home. She was in the midst of a divorce, and the home was being sold to split the money between her and her ex. We discussed many of the things I saw in the cards, and yet she had an “I’ve got a secret” gleam in her eye the entire time.
As she was leaving, with her hand on the doorknob, she said, “I’m an interior decorator. The reason the home seems like it’s an extension of me is because I decorated every bit of it myself.” That was twenty-five years ago, and I’m still annoyed!
There’s little you can do with a querent like this. Perhaps I should have told her flat out that holding back information was just taking away from her own experience. However, she could then have used my own statement as “evidence” that I wasn’t a “real psychic.” Indeed, anything that happened would have provided that evidence for her. After all, when I said that her home was tied up with how she saw herself, most people would have acknowledged that I had accurately guessed her career, without necessarily naming it. I once had a querent to whom I said that she worked with education and with the physical body—she was a gym teacher. A querent who was determined to test me and withhold from me could have concluded that because the words “gym teacher” didn’t come from my mouth, I hadn’t really gotten it!
Ultimately, if a querent wants to spend money to “prove” you’re a fool, it’s their money. Such people are rare and can frustrate your own sense of confidence and ability. As soon as possible after an encounter like that, give a reading to a friend or acquaintance you know to be receptive. It’ll help you feel you have your mojo back!
Be honest with querents, and if it’s not working, offer to give them their money back. Many are ambivalent about tarot: Is it real or is the reader a charlatan? Do I want to know my future or am I better off not knowing? Those mixed feelings can get mixed up into the cards and distort the reading.
If you feel your reading has become distorted, pick up the cards and shuffle like crazy, letting the shuffle feel like it is sloughing off the prior reading. Then lay out the cards again. If you do this, do a smaller reading. Let yourself focus, deeply, on just a few cards. Contrarily, if the first reading was small, lay additional cards on top of it. The idea is to change the playing field, shake things up, and move energy that feels stuck.
Querents Who Want What They Want
There was a guy in my town who was in a terrible relationship. He went to a reader, and she told him the relationship was a disaster. He went to another reader. And another. After he’d been to every reader he knew, he started over again from the beginning. He wanted someone to tell him to stay with that girl. No one would.
Everyone knows a version of this guy. He is seeking validation of his bad decision and will refuse to listen to any other answer.
There is only one solution when a querent like this seeks you out: refuse to do the reading.
Translators and Interpreters
If you’re working with a translator or an interpreter, make sure that the querent makes eye contact with you. I’ve done readings of this kind several times, and have found myself in a situation where the querent starts talking to the translator instead of to me. This can prevent you from making a connection. I have found that readings with translators can be quite challenging for that reason.
Don’t let the fact that you and the querent don’t share a language be a barrier. Establish a connection by introducing yourself, getting the querent’s name, shaking hands or giving a hug (as appropriate), and explaining what’s happening. Maintain eye contact while listening to the querent’s voice and intonation, and stay with the querent when hearing translation. If the querent ends up in a tete-a-tete conversation with the translator, break it up! Make sure they don’t establish their own “language world” that excludes you.
Psychic Blocks
I worked once with a querent who told me sadly that she’d never been able to get a reading. Every time she tried, nothing happened; the information wasn’t accurate, and the reading simply didn’t touch her.
My reading with her went like this. I laid out the cards, and the first one didn’t connect. The second didn’t connect. The third didn’t connect. The reading was dead.
I took a deep breath to let go of fear, to let the Psychic Child know we were okay.
“This isn’t working,” I said, washing the layout and pulling in all the cards.
“It never works for me,” she said. “I’ve had readings before and this is what happens.” She sounded sad. I felt immediately that this was about connection.
“Listen, we’re going to do this. Look in my eyes and stay with me.”
I shuffled the cards without breaking eye contact, and fanned them out on the table.
“Now let’s stay in contact here.” I placed my hands gently over hers, and asked her to pick a card from the fan. I read the card.
“Yes,” she said.
We repeated the process. Eye contact. Hand contact. Slowly pick a card. Read it.
“Yes, that’s true.”
We read six cards that way—a small reading, but the process was slow. And powerful.
“That’s all we’re reading,” I said. “You’ve broken through. There was a wall, but we broke it down together. You never again have to say that readings don’t work for you. You can always break this wall.”
This was a beautiful experience for both of us. We hugged. We had successfully used the cards to transcend a psychic block that had who-knows-what effect on her life. It was truly a healing.
Homework
Homework Questions
1. What are special considerations when reading for yourself?
2. What are special considerations when reading over the phone or via computer?
3. What are special considerations when reading for someone you know very well?
4. What are some things you can do if a reading feels “off”?
Homework Answers
1. If you’re like me, when you care very much about an outcome, you may not be honest with yourself. This is a situation where you may reach out to another reader instead. Also, the tendency to read silently doesn’t awaken the brain. Reading aloud will solve this.
2. The lack of eye contact (even Skype can be difficult) and the lack of touch—especially the lack of an ability for the querent to touch the cards—can be challenges. You need to find alternative ways to visualize connection and create intimacy with your querent. For example, I allow my querents to tell me when to cut the cards.
3. There are two main concerns, the first being that you may know the querent so well that you make assumptions; you essentially give friendly advice rather than do a reading. The second concern is that you may hold back—either because the information is embarrassing, or because it’s hard to give a loved one bad news.
4. First, acknowledge the problem. You’ll do no good by faking it. In a worst-case scenario, offer a paying client his money back. Before that, try reshuffling the deck and laying out a small reading if you started with a larger layout. With a smaller layout, try adding more cards on top of the layout.
Exercises
Exercise: Charging for Readings
To charge or not to charge? This can be a difficult decision, because people have strong, often subconscious emotions about money.
Do this exercise when you are grounded and centered. Although a few cleansing breaths might be enough, consider a deeper meditation before you begin. You should be completely calm and feel connected to yourself.
1. Close your eyes and visualize charging for readings: You have regular clients, in person or over the phone. You make house calls, or they come to you, or it’s entirely via phone and computer. Or you do your readings at Renaissance fairs and other public venues. Visualize whatever feels real to you. Don’t just visualize doing the readings; visualize being a person who reads cards professionally, even if infrequently.
2. Write down everything you liked about the scenario(s) you envisioned. These “pros” (positive aspects) are personal to you, and are based on the experience of the visualization, not on something you decided rationally.
3. Now write down everything you disliked about charging for readings. Again, these “cons” should be personal and based on the feelings generated during the visualization.
4. Review your two lists. Are they about equal, or has a clear decision emerged? The simple process of list-making in a meditative state is a powerful tool for decision-making.
Of course, you could have skipped this exercise and simply done a reading. But reading for yourself is not for everyone, as discussed in this chapter. The next exercise will help you determine if reading your own cards is right for you.
Exercise: Being Your Own Querent
The results of this exercise will help you decide if you should read for yourself on serious matters or if you should go to another reader, perhaps trading readings, in order to see yourself more clearly.
This exercise adds a “hidden card” to your layouts. Use this card to learn what you are hiding from yourself.
1. Choose a layout you are comfortable with, one in this book (or not) or even one of your own. Determine the question you will ask. For the purpose of this exercise, it should not be a simple or silly reading, but something where you have some emotional energy invested in the outcome. “What movie should I see tonight?” is not the right sort of question, while “Should I propose to my girlfriend?” is. It can be a simple Yes/No layout or a more complex one, such as a Celtic Cross.
2. If you will use a significator, select it now.
3. Take several deep, cleansing breaths.
4. Shuffle or mix the cards, stopping when you feel it’s right.
5. Do the reading as you normally would. Read out loud.
6. As a last card, take the bottom card from the unused portion of the deck and place it to the left of the layout. Read this card as “what I hide from myself.” For example, illustration 49 shows the five-card Influences layout with the bottom card added to the left (hidden influences).
7. Make a note of this reading in your journal. Be sure to write down the following:
• Your question
• How you interpreted the reading before the hidden card appeared
• What changed after the hidden card appeared
• Your interpretation of the outcome
8. Repeat this exercise on a regular basis. Mark the pages in your journal where these readings appear so they are easy to find.
9. When real life has caught up with each reading and you know how the situation turned out, go back to your journal and determine the following things:
• Were you right overall?
• What did the hidden card say, and did that make the reading more accurate?
• How do you interpret the hidden card now, in hindsight?
Over a period of time, this exercise will teach you how much you hide from yourself, and how much that has an effect on the readings you do for yourself. The best possible outcome, if you want to read your own cards, is to discover that your readings proved accurate and the hidden card had little effect on the overall interpretation. On the other hand, you may discover that the hidden card has messages for you after the fact, and that rereading that card shows you exactly what you missed. If that’s your pattern, then reading your own cards for serious issues is not something I recommend.