AUTHOR’S NOTE: Process-control technicians often face a dilemma known as an “upset condition,” an off-normal deviation that must be corrected to return the system to a state of balance. There are similar challenges in tarot reading, where the reader must flush out any discordant anomalies so they can be examined and dealt with constructively by the querent. The hopeful bromide “There are no bad cards, only opportunities” is of little use in matters where the premise of upbeat empowerment rings false. The sitter knows that something “just isn’t right,” and while the answer is most certainly in the cards it may not be showing its face to the diviner at first glance with any degree of urgency.

There are a number of ways to “get at the bad” in such cases. The most obvious target is the inherent character of the individual cards in the spread; in the Golden Dawn’s Liber T tarot guidance, MacGregor Mathers acknowledged this fact with the phrase “for good or ill according to their nature.” Some cards are bad actors that simply won’t “play nice” with the rest, like a viral infection that invades the body and sidesteps the immune response. Although there are almost always subtleties to address (take, for example, the Death card), these clear-cut scenarios typically amount to a “slam-dunk” for the reader, and the seeker will immediately relate to their legitimacy. We could say that, if given half a chance, the answer will “jump right out at us.”

Second in usefulness is the phenomenon of reversal, the poster child and favorite whipping-boy of the “no bad cards” crowd. I’ve found it to be a reliable shortcut, a time-saver that circumvents having to weed through all the possible meanings for a card to isolate the crux of a problem. Over the years I’ve adopted a nuanced approach to reversal that views it as an oblique expression of the normal interpretation, one that perhaps flies under the radar or sneaks up from behind, blindsiding the recipient. The card “is what it is,” but the querent’s awareness of its impact may be skewed to the point that its arrival feels like a UFO about to disgorge a horde of nasty “little green men.” (I’m thinking of the movie Mars Attacks: “We come in peace!” <snicker snicker.>) My handling of reversals may be quirky, as captured in my two dozen previous essays on the topic, but it is effective.

Another “in-your-face” conundrum is the “good card in a bad position.” How on Earth do we reconcile the sanguine outlook of the Sun card with a situational posture that advises “Abandon all hope?” In these cases we must pick apart the range of possibilities for the card’s action in the matter and zero in on those that might be construed as less favorable (if only as an antidote to the querent’s naive assumptions about its positive effect). This is usually the best we can do, and it has to suffice in identifying any negative consequences. (For example, I often say “Look in the shadows for the solution.”) The objective is to head off what I call the “Bobby McFerrin mistake:” it’s not “Don’t worry, be happy;” more ominously, it’s “Don’t look now, but . . .”

At all costs we must avoid haplessly “throwing in the towel” and saying “I don’t see anything remarkable here.” There is always something to talk about, and I would be surprised if the sitter lets us off the hook so easily when it’s apparent that the situation “smells bad” even if we can’t promptly locate the dead rat in the cupboard. At any rate, the reader’s prerogative is to talk, and a valuable insight will invariably pop up if we keep at it in the form of a dialogue about the intricacies of the subject.