How often to get your cards read?

Lucy com­mented on my pre­vi­ous post that the vis­i­tors to her site seem to want to know how often they should have their cards read. This is a great ques­tion and one I have addressed to my clients from time to time myself.

I rarely throw cards for myself. Hon­estly. And if I do, it’s one to three cards at most. I know that sounds pretty weird con­sid­er­ing I’m a card reader. I like to look through my cards and let my thoughts wan­der though. For myself, tarot is largely med­i­ta­tive and I use it to focus my energy where I want it to go. Div­ina­tion is usu­ally only help­ful if I’m really stuck on some­thing. Some­times I will throw a spread for myself, some­times I go to another professional.

For my clients, I don’t like to see them more than once a month. Again, I know that sounds kooky con­sid­er­ing this is how I make my money. I don’t like the idea that the peo­ple I read for are becom­ing depen­dent on my ser­vices. It’s prob­a­bly just a per­sonal com­fort issue with me — but I’d pre­fer to know that my clients are actively tak­ing con­trol of their lives and actively focus­ing their energy where they want it to go — rather than spend­ing all their time (and money) on readers.

That said, I have had clients in the past who I have worked with intensely and fre­quently to help them nav­i­gate par­tic­u­larly com­plex sit­u­a­tions. And in those spe­cial cir­cum­stances, each read­ing has been empow­er­ing and nec­es­sary for the client.

I think that where I draw the line is when it becomes clear to me that a client is des­per­ate for me to give him or her the answer they most want to hear — and keep com­ing back hop­ing that enough has changed that I can do that. Let me make this very clear: nei­ther the tarot nor myself will tell you what you want to hear. I will only tell you — and I believe that the cards will only tell you — what you need to hear.

So how do you know whether your sit­u­a­tion is com­plex enough or whether your being blinded by your most pas­sion­ate desires? How do you — as one of my poten­tial clients, for exam­ple — really know how often to get your cards read?

Hav­ing read­ings done over and over on the same sit­u­a­tion can be drain­ing and frus­trat­ing for both the client and the reader. I usu­ally rec­om­mend one read­ing per “sit­u­a­tion” unless your cir­cum­stances have dra­mat­i­cally changed.

If you find tarot read­ings empow­er­ing (and you should! If you ever find them dis­em­pow­er­ing, you’re talk­ing to the wrong reader) — con­sider dis­cussing smaller spreads with your reader. Lots of cards offer lots of infor­ma­tion, but in my expe­ri­ence, a Celtic Cross (15 card spread in my book) once a week or even once a month is just too much to digest in time for it to have any qual­ity impact on your life. I hon­estly would have no prob­lem with a client who wanted me to do a one-card read­ing for them once a week!

Finally, I think it’s impor­tant to say that I won’t take advan­tage of my clients suf­fer­ing by advis­ing addi­tional read­ings or even allow­ing a client to become depen­dent on my advice. I will — and I have — refused to read­ing for clients who were walk­ing that fine line. I think that some­times the most com­pas­sion­ate advice I can give some­one is to just breathe deeply and allow the uni­verse some time to work itself out for once.

After all, both the uni­verse and I need to take a vaca­tion from time to time.

Oracle of the Radiant Sun — Review & Impressions

Awhile back I bought The Ora­cle of the Radi­ant Sun on eBay for a dol­lar. To be hon­est, it never occurred to me that I could buy tarot decks from eBay before — though it never occurred to me to try and sell read­ings on eBay either. Any­way, this ora­cle deck and book set caught my eye some­where at some­time and it had been in the back of my mind until I saw it up for auction.

My first thought upon open­ing the pack­age was that it was really poorly pack­aged. One of the cov­ers of the book folded to make part of the box meant to hold the cards. So if I were to just read the book, all the cards would fall out of the box any­way and the box would still be attached to the book! And by cut­ting the box from the book (which I did do), I no longer had a box to keep the cards in. Need­less to say I’m putting them in a lit­tle draw­string bag that I pur­chased from this seller on etsy. (I haven’t got­ten the bag yet, but the pic­ture of the fab­ric just matches the cards perfectly!)

Any­way, I just fin­ished my first pro­fes­sional read­ing with these cards yes­ter­day and I really, really enjoyed it! The spreads offered in the back of the book are so flex­i­ble that ques­tions are answered in a snap (if you know some­thing about astrol­ogy). Now, I admit that astrol­ogy isn’t my strongest suit, but it doesn’t take a lot of knowl­edge to under­stand the basics behind these cards. I was really impressed by how a romance read­ing flowed using the horary read­ing method out­lined in the text. I’ve done sev­eral “yearly” read­ings for friends with these cards, but I really enjoyed this horary read­ing and think that this will become a sta­ple of my card read­ing offer­ings.

Of course the cards are really beau­ti­ful as well.

How to make the most of a tarot reading

I’ve been read­ing for peo­ple for awhile now — a good four-ish years as a “pro­fes­sional” (mean­ing strictly on a paid-basis). Read­ing pro­fes­sion­ally has taught me a lot about peo­ple. Who peo­ple are, what they want, what they need… they all come to me look­ing for answers and I throw down some cards and try to make some sense out of the chaos of their lives.

Ninety-nine per­cent of my clients want to know about love/romance/partnership. They fre­quently word this as “soul mate”. Every­one wants a soul mate. Every­one wants to be a lit­tle less alone in the world. I’m fine with this (though the fre­quency of this type of read­ing is some­thing of cha­grin to pro­fes­sion­als at the psy­chic water-cooler). What I’m less fine with is when some­one asks for a “gen­eral” read­ing from me and I throw cards, inter­pret, intuit, etc., and then after the read­ing they say, “Well, um, is there any­thing in there about a romance (or a relationship/possible relationship/soul mate/boyfriend/wife/etc.)?”

This both­ers me because it breaks some very sim­ple rules for get­ting a great read­ing. The first rule is Be upfront about your expec­ta­tions of the read­ing. If you’re going to a psy­chic for advice about love, say so! If you were going to a lawyer for advice on a traf­fic vio­la­tion, you wouldn’t ask for some “gen­eral legal advice”, would you? No, why is a psy­chic any different?

Lots of peo­ple expect a psy­chic to know exactly what it is they want, and part of the test is to see if the psy­chic will fig­ure it out. Unfor­tu­nately, the uni­verse doesn’t work that way. I don’t work that way. I can’t read your mind (thank GODS), so if your burn­ing desire is find out whether your part­ner is in it for the long haul, ask me! Don’t sit there purse-lipped and expect that the cos­mos is just as emo­tion­ally invested in your love-life as you are! I’ve got a lit­tle tip for you, it isn’t. What is most frus­trat­ing and most fruit­ful about the tarot is that it is a tool that tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.

That said, care­ful word­ing of your ques­tion and expec­ta­tions of a read­ing can help focus your reader so that you can get the kind of coun­sel you want. Here are some tips to get you started:

1. Let your reader know first thing what area of your life you’re inter­ested in exploring.
2. If you want to know about a spe­cific sit­u­a­tion, let your reader in on the specifics of the sit­u­a­tion. The more infor­ma­tion your reader has to work with, the bet­ter they will be able to syn­the­size the read­ing to answer your ques­tions. He or she should be able to adjust the spread used to max­i­mize your read­ing potential.
3. Engage your reader with ques­tions dur­ing and after the read­ing. It’s been my expe­ri­ence that my clients get more out of their read­ings if they are active par­tic­i­pants in them. Some psy­chics hate this. I love it. If you are look­ing at the cards and have a sud­den insight to offer to your reader do so! It’s your read­ing, after all!
4. Don’t try to “trick” or “test” your reader. I’m always very con­fused when some­one pays for a read­ing from me and then pro­ceeds to try and test my psychic-ness. I dis­like the word “psy­chic” any­way, since I’m of the opin­ion that we’re all psy­chic to some degree. My role is to inter­pret the cards, that’s it. In my mind it’s akin to going to a doc­tor but mak­ing the doc­tor guess what’s ail­ing you. I often want to ask these peo­ple what is moti­vat­ing them to throw away their money if they don’t believe there is any intrin­sic value in a card-reading? Alas, I bite my tongue since I’m the one the money’s being thrown at.
5. If you’re on the fence about whether you believe in the value of a tarot con­sul­ta­tion, share those feel­ings with the reader. He or she should be able to explain to you their exact process. Some peo­ple are uncom­fort­able with the method used (by chan­nel­ing, for exam­ple. I’m per­son­ally uncom­fort­able with angel read­ings and read­ings involv­ing dead rel­a­tives). In that case, you should seek out a reader with whom you share sim­i­lar philosophies.

Buy­ing a tarot read­ing (or any other kind of psy­chic read­ing) is a lux­ury for many peo­ple. Don’t waste your money on a read­ing you’re going to walk away from feel­ing empty. By fol­low­ing the sim­ple tips out­lined above you’re assured to receive at least some of the guid­ance that you seek.

Of course keep in mind that the tarot, as will all tools of self-discovery, does not always tell you what you want to hear. In that case, be open to the mes­sage offered in the cards. Give the read­ing some time to ger­mi­nate and give your­self the quiet reflec­tion time needed to fully digest what the cards have enlightened.

Motherpeace Tarot: first impressions

I recently pur­chased the mini Moth­erpeace Tarot deck, the Moth­erpeace: A Way to the God­dess through Myth, Art, and Tarot book and the Moth­erpeace Tarot Play­book from eBay. Unfor­tu­nately I don’t have a copy of the com­pan­ion book for the deck, but that will be my next tarot-related pur­chase. I very rarely buy just a deck if there is a book/set avail­able, but this was such a good deal in my mind (maybe it wasn’t, I have no idea what this set is worth) as I spent just over $20 for all three items. Have I men­tioned lately that I love eBay?

My first impres­sion is that this is a very pos­i­tive deck. I love the col­ors and the sim­ple prim­i­tive art. I love that the nudity includes both men and women (a qualm I have with The World Spirit Tarot). I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the round cards as they were some­what cum­ber­some in my hands on my first few shuffles.

Often a good indi­ca­tor of how well a deck will behave for me is I ask my hus­band to trade read­ings with me. Now, he knows absolutely noth­ing of tarot except for the few read­ings I’ve done for him (and seri­ously, we’re talk­ing a few. The man does not want to know his future!). He rec­og­nizes cer­tain cards that have come up for him repet­i­tively and he knows some of the majors because we have col­lab­o­rated on some tarot art­work together. So when he does a read­ing, it’s entirely based on what he sees in the pictures.

He liked the round cards and the art as well and was able to offer some insight­ful obser­va­tions on the three cards he pulled for me. I did notice that the imagery strays some­what from tra­di­tional Rider-Waite so I will have to con­sult the book if I want to know author’s inten­tions on some of these cards. Not hav­ing a Lit­tle White Book or com­pan­ion text to work from has proven more frus­trat­ing for me than I thought it would, hon­estly. I sup­pose I’d not real­ized how deeply ingrained the Rider sys­tem is in my tarot readings.

At first I appre­ci­ated the nov­elty of the deck, but after spend­ing some time just look­ing deeply into the cards, I can tell that it’s not a nov­elty at all. Look­ing at this deck makes me feel con­nected and calm and I look for­ward to hav­ing a free moment to pick up the lit­er­a­ture it came with and div­ing in wholly.

While I’m not ready to offer read­ings with this pow­er­ful deck quite yet, I’m excited about it’s poten­tial for the future ben­e­fit of myself and my clients!