AUTHOR’S NOTE: When I was a kid, one of the earliest self-discipline challenges I faced was learning how to “color inside the lines” with my crayons and coloring-books. I eventually became a trained artist possessing the talent to draw my own outlines within which to paint, and I now see parallels in the narrative art of divination.

In tarot-reading terms, the cards in a spread frame the landscape of the events and circumstances the seeker can expect to encounter when dealing with the matter at hand. Exploring this terrain, we can choose to recommend staying within its borders (thus “playing it safe”) or propose stepping beyond the frontier to forge a different path (“coloring outside the lines”). Ideally, the reading will provide the wisdom required for the individual to make an informed decision about which is best. Although I’ve never thought of it in these terms, I do much the same when I read professionally. I lay out a preliminary synopsis for the tale (I think of it as a “gestalt overview” that takes in the entire layout), then I discuss with the querent how the individual card meanings might be stretched and shaped to yield more profound insights.

This is “chapter-and-verse” of how I use tarot divination to provide relevant detail: there are usually two story arcs going on at the same time, a “typical” scenario and a more evolved way of looking at the situation. The first track is derived from the knowledge and experience I’ve gained over several decades of study and practice that I share in brief with the sitter, and the second one comes straight from my imagination as a more inspired view of the images that can take on a life of its own as I explain it, often fleshed out with storytelling tropes in the form of metaphor and analogy.

There is a logical progression (or “method to the madness”) in my approach. I begin with “This is what it suggests to me,” then encourage a dialogue about what it means to the seeker that ends in either an understanding and acceptance of my observations or an “agree-to-disagree” standoff. Needless to say, I’m inclined to treat the latter as a failure on my part to communicate clearly, and I seldom let it lie; there is always more that can be said without digging a deeper hole of misapprehension, but it demands even more finesse, as well as more time and effort, than normal.

Taking a page from the psychoanalyst’s playbook, one of my favorite ways to deal with this disconnect is to simply let querents talk openly about what they feel about the matter versus its portrayal by the spread. (I should probably add that I see no risk to their mental health [and therefore no malpractice liability for the reader] in this exercise since I have no intention of offering a clinical diagnosis, just an opportunity for a little informal self-examination.)

I’m of the opinion that clients knows more about their private reality at the subconscious level than I can hope to learn from consulting the cards, they just don’t realize it yet and my job is to help them coax it out into the open. I’ve found that very few people are reluctant to talk about themselves, and the train of thought it reveals can open their eyes (and mine) to what the reading is trying to say, letting us “connect the dots” between conjecture and comprehension. Herein lies the “Aha!” epiphany every reader covets.