What to expect in a Tarot Reading, and how to get one.
A Tarot Reading is an event where you can gain new understandings of the forces and currents at play in your life. The symbols and meanings of the cards can shed light on those influences, uncover hidden ones and give you a new perspective on your situation, and provide an affirmation and confirmation of the effects you already know.
The techniques I have learned over time allow me to create a reading that can provide you with insight and clarity about your situation.
Since you are the person who truly knows your own situation the best, you may find yet other meanings in the cards and the reading that I might have missed – If this occurs, please regard it as your own intuition giving you an additional gift of wisdom and clarity about your situation.
I strive to provide you with a comprehensive, detailed and insightful reading – as such, a complete reading can take some time. If the reading is in person, we can easily take a full hour to discus the meaning of just a few cards.
If you have asked for a reading via e-mail, I cannot promise to respond to your question immediately, but will attempt to get back to you as soon as I can. Good readings take time to do!
I may also need to rephrase your questions to allow the Tarot to provide a clearer, more direct answer to your situation, or to avoid an ethical problem. If I find this necessary, I will consult with you first before proceeding.
If you make a reading request to me, please provide me with basic information including your name, birth date general geographic location and email address or other contact information. Please do not hesitate to provide additional information about the situation surrounding your question. It is also helpful if you tell me a bit about yourself so that I can better picture your involvement in the situation and provide a good reading for you. Request your reading here.
How a reading works (the short version)
A reading is made up of five things:
1) The question
2) A spread designed to shed light on the question
3) A method for selecting or "pulling" the cards for the spread
4) The cards themselves "pulled" for the positions of the spread
5) The interpretation of the cards in their positions in the spread
Some questions are better suited for the Tarot than others. Read more about that at Good Questions for the Tarot.
Spreads are a large topic unto themselves. In general they define what aspect of the question a particular card will address as part of the reading. Depending on the question, a certain type of spread may be more relevant than another. There are many traditional spreads, some of which I use from time to time. I have other favorites to use with certain types of questions. I often design a spread to use with an unusual question that I have not seen in the past. I have more information about spreads on another page.
The cards are picked or "pulled" in a number of ways. Traditionally, the deck is shuffled while concentrating on the question, and the shuffling ceases when we feel that we are fully centered on the question. If we are doing a reading in person, I will usually ask you to pick the cards face-down using a method appropriate to the spread. If this is a reading by e-mail, I will perform that step.
Lastly, the interpretation is where the real energy of the Tarot comes through. I provide the traditional meanings for each card pulled, and discuss how that meaning interplays with the meaning of the position in the spread. If you are getting a reading by e-mail, I will also provide a description of the images on the card. There is also much to be gained by understanding the relationships of the cards to each other -- there are a number of methods that are used to provide additional information based on these relationships, which I describe briefly on the Advanced Topics page. I discuss the additional meanings brought out by those relationships, and then look at the whole picture for additional trends and patterns that can provide more information to answer the question. As you can see this process depends both on knowledge of the cards and many historical meanings and methods, but also on listening intuitively to the relationship between the cards, the spread and the question. If we do the reading in person, you can be an active participant in this process. If we are reading by e-mail, we can correspond back and forth to provide additional understandings and clarifications.
This discussion is a simplification of the whole process, which is best experienced by having a real reading done!
