AUTHOR’S NOTE: It’s acknowledged wisdom in the tarot community that any question posed solely for the purpose of discovering whether a hoped-for event will occur in the near future should be rephrased in the form of “What can I do to encourage the outcome I want?” This approach does away with the rigid “yes-or-no” structure and replaces it with a more fluid architecture that invites meaningful interaction as a way to zero in on the target.

The idea is to examine the cards in a spread for potential trends, tendencies, obstacles and opportunities, then enable (i.e. “empower”) the seeker to take control of the situation and steer it in the desired direction. Other scenarios are the “What if . . . ” query that looks at different decision-making options, and the “woulda, coulda, shoulda” lament that admits past mistakes and explores ways to cope with the unpalatable fallout. Divination can seldom be relied on to come up with ironclad conclusions, so not “putting too fine a point” on the forecast is prudent.

In my own practice, I prefer the following: “What are the circumstances surrounding my stated purpose and how can I best align myself with them to attain it?” This acknowledges that the Universe has an undeclared agenda that a card reading is supposed to reveal, and to provide guidance regarding how it can be “leveraged” to the querent’s advantage. It is also broad enough to cover all the bases from a situational perspective.

Since I typically want to know nothing more than the topic of interest when beginning a face-to-face session (remote readings, on the other hand, require an explicit question in advance), I never get into rephrasing an inquiry since I’m not aware of the specifics until later in the reading, if then. I do this to offer the sitter an appropriate level of privacy, and to avoid subjective bias on my part that could surface as experience-based preconceptions about the forthcoming answer. My intention every time is to “just read the cards” and let them speak their piece.

When it comes to divination, one corollary to “Nothing happens without a reason” would be “Nothing happens for the best without a nudge.” The goal is to take the prediction out of the realm of straightforward fortune-telling and elevate it to the status of actionable advice. I’ve always said that the main difference between fortune-telling and divination lies in degree, not pedigree. Both tap into the same source of hidden knowledge, but one is aimed at hopes and wishes and is therefore of limited practical value, while the other opens up a range of possibilities to act on one’s own behalf.

I still call myself a “fortune-teller” because I pursue an action-and-event-oriented focus in my work, but also because it gets the smug psycho-spiritual crowd spun up. I was one of them for many years, but I ran the self-awareness well dry long ago and finally decided that – despite push-back from the empaths, the intuitives and the psychics – the ideal way to demonstrate the effectiveness of divination is to strive for demonstrable results. Since that is what most seekers are after, it makes perfect sense to align them with the circumstances that will ideally cooperate in achieving it.

For the record, every attempt at prognostication embodies a subjective element that is accessed via intuitive speculation – I call it “the nature of the beast” and it’s how we as storytellers put our personal stamp on the narrative – but there is always a prominent objective aspect that any competent reader can identify in the cards and come up with a remarkably consistent answer. It’s the latter that engenders a reliable goal-oriented predictability whenever those cards show up in a spread, and it is the purview of the knowledge base that underlies practical divination.

The cards pulled may not immediately support the present objective, but coaxing them to work together toward that end is where diviners earn their fee even if it comes down to coaching our clients in “making the best of a bad situation.” Being told what might be coming is fine as far as it goes, but grasping how to gain the most benefit from it in proactive ways is a step beyond.

There is little use in stating flatly “You’re probably going to have an accident next Wednesday,” when cautioning “You might want to lay low in the middle of next week and watch your step if you go out” is much more professional as well as more defensible from a real-world standpoint. As the saying goes, while “the future is not carved in stone,” any vulnerability shown by the cards should never be dismissed out-of-hand.