When my first book came out in 1985, Radio Mercury in Sussex and LBC in London asked me to give readings on the air for them. I did this for many years, for them and subsequently for many other radio stations. In those days, I had to work out a method of doing this, and I decided to ask the callers to take a pack of playing cards, shuffle them, and pick out six cards. In those days, I thought the client always had to be the one to shuffle and pick the cards, and, as very few people owned a Tarot deck then, it was easier to ask them to use playing cards, which I would then change inside my head to the Minor Arcana of the Tarot. Obviously, this kind of reading isn't easy to pull off, but after years of constant practice, I became very quick and accurate at it.
Later, I decided to use a Tarot deck and to do the shuffling and picking myself. I devised a method whereby I would tell the caller that I didn't want to hear what was on their mind or what they wanted me to look into in their reading, but that I needed to talk to them for a moment or two in order to create a psychic link. I asked them to describe themselves a little, and to tell me whether they were tall or short, what color their hair was, and so on. This gave me the link I needed while I shuffled the cards on behalf of the caller. These readings worked surprisingly well, and it's the same routine that I use today when giving a reading over the phone.
Today, products such as FaceTime, Zoom, and Skype (to name but a few) give you the opportunity to do face-to-face readings, where Questioner and Reader can see each other. Such readings are obviously much more like in-person readings, where you are taking in visual information. For the purposes of this chapter, we will discuss readings in which you cannot see the Questioner.
Now let's work on a couple of these radio-style readings together. In the first one, I shall outline the meanings of the cards and leave you to string them into a story, while in the second, I'll write the story and you will do the thinking. Then, you must go back over them again and work out your own interpretations and stories for both of these readings; everyone reads the cards differently, and your ideas are more important to your Tarot reading development than mine are.
Let's assume for the purposes of this imaginary reading that our “caller” is male. The Reader has chosen the following cards:
Reading the cards from left to right, I feel that this Questioner is about to find himself involved in a dispute. The dispute will have come from some past situation, perhaps even from as far back as his youth or childhood. The outcome seems to be beneficial, but it will require a new way of looking at things and also a good deal of courage. His lines of communication will be clearer as a result of this dispute, because those around him will know what it is that he wants and will negotiate reasonable terms with him. He will grow in status as a result of solving this problem.
Now go back and work out the planning (the card meanings) for this one.
Here are the six cards. The following imaginary caller is female.
The card meanings (the “planning”) are as follows:
Now go back and interpret the reading
The next one is all yours, but it's slightly complicated by the fact that when I chose the cards, one of them turned out to be reversed. I shall leave this card just as it is and let you work out whether it has any significance or not. This time, you can choose the sex of your caller.
This one is all yours to plan and interpret.