It’s fair to say that many (if not most) seekers who are moved to pay for a tarot reading are dealing with anxiety (or at least unsettling reservations) about whether some action they are contemplating or some situation they’re confronting will work out as desired. While it’s also understandable that they want an unambiguous “Yes-or-No” answer, there is a bias against such binary inquiries in the tarot community, many of whom spurn this narrowly deterministic approach. Instead, readers are encouraged to have querents rephrase their question in a way that is more proactive, arguing that in this way individuals won’t succumb to being “done in” by the fate shown in the cards but will rather take responsibility for becoming the “doer” in re-engineering their future. The goal is to translate the unequivocal “Will I get what I’m after?” query into what I call “actionable” terms that support identifying “what” sitters can do to make their wish come true, “how” they can best go about it, and “why” it’s the right solution under the circumstances. (This of course assumes that querents are willing and able to take charge of their own destiny; I sometimes suspect they’re just trying to “hide behind” the tarot’s advice but I don’t shun them for it, I just do my best to steer them away from such dependency.)

While I don’t personally agree that the cards are only good for telling stories and fail miserably at “Yes-or-No” answers, I can see the value in having a question that is a little broader in scope, inviting a response that “paints a picture” of the surrounding environment that will ideally flesh out the bare-bones assessment of the likely outcome. This presents something of a quandary in my own work because I prefer to read without knowing too much in advance about the sitter’s specific situation, at most just the general area of life involved (romance, work, money, well-being, family, etc). It’s more than a matter of ensuring absolute privacy; I want the cards to speak first without conscious preconceptions of any kind and then I will embark on the task of deciphering their language with the sitter’s help. It brings to mind one of my favorite analogies about the act of divination: it’s like a “buzzard” circling a bit of choice “road-kill;” the quarry “ripens to perfection” as we discuss the details emerging from the cards and jointly zero in on the “Aha!” moment of revelation.

To offset this shortfall in prior knowledge, I present my clients with my short dissertation on what to expect from the reading, part of which goes “We will discuss ‘probability’ and ‘possibility,’ not inevitability. The future isn’t carved in stone and can always be changed through your own actions. The purpose of a tarot reading is to provide useful insights into ways that might be done.” They can then build this objective into their silently-posed question as they shuffle the deck, making it less a wish-fulfillment scenario and more a statement of intent. This clear assignment of ownership is the essence of “empowerment,” or putting the power of choice in the hands of the person who can make the most difference in how it all works out, if they only know what to do. It goes well beyond the “Yes, you will” or “No, you won’t” response by offering reasons for the verdict that speak directly to the querent’s involvement in either reinforcing one conclusion or overriding the other if that seems to be in their best interest.

The second part of this essay looks at the subject of physically repositioning the cards in a standard three-card spread to reformulate the answer, under the assumption that visually reordering them will create subtle but significant differences in their interpretation. I’ve never found this initiative to be particularly useful as a routine practice, instead preferring to simply refocus the testimony of each position in the series as necessary while leaving the cards as they were dealt. As mentioned in a recent post, I might switch from a strategy of reading them as a linear “sentence” with a subject, verb and object to treating the middle card as the pivotal occurrence or “hinge” in the matter, with the storytelling trajectory of the other cards leading up to and following on from it in a “past/present/future” or transitional “input-throughput-output” tableau. Alternatively, they can serve as simple modifiers providing additional detail about the middle card’s meaning in a “primary-and-secondary” or “noun-qualifier” alignment. To be honest, though, once I’ve settled on a reading approach I almost always find my initial narrative to be rich enough without getting into second-guessing myself, and I will backtrack only as required to address the sitter’s hesitant reaction to my original observations. But, as the saying goes, “your mileage may vary” if you choose to physically swap the cards around when analyzing them.