by Jean Huets
Honest awareness of one's own weaknesses is helpful. If the querent's expectations and desires are intimidating, we might be tempted to contrive an air of authoritativeness and omniscience. Perhaps we want to impress others through our knowledge of the cards or through psychic powers we claim to possess. We should acknowledge these temptations, and not base readings on them.
Most of us are unable to access psychic powers consistently and accurately; most of us are not trained psychotherapists; only the highest saints and sages have total insight.
A Buddhist story relates that a man walking along the edge of a pond found a fish that had flipped itself out of the water. His compassion was aroused by its struggles, and he took it by the tail and flung it back in. The fish promptly ate the rest of the creatures in the pond. We are like the man: we want to do the right thing, but we don't have the ability to see the complete outcome.
A cardreader can't pretend to be a prophet or psychoanalyst; the vast majority of us have no training to counsel or assist people with serious problems. If someone seems to be deeply troubled, don't try to be a Mr. or Ms. Fix-it. Be ready to guide him or her to a professional counselor, a doctor or healer, or a community agency or support network.
This is not to say that we should be frozen into passivity, never helping, never hurting. However, we should always be flexible in reading the tarot, and we should impress this flexibility on anyone receiving a reading. The cards can offer insight into human nature, hints at possible courses of action, clues to obstacles or opportunities.
Nevertheless, they are only images on paper, not commandments written in stone. Circumstances are mutable. The negative indicators that surface in most readings can help us face up to bad situations and patterns of negative thinking; they aren't character assessments or prophecies of doom and gloom.
All factors, negative and positive, in a reading point to possibilities and tendencies, not fated events and hopelessly ingrained character traits.
So many disclaimers. . . . But so many people have been haunted for years by fairground palmists' or cardreaders' dire predictions, which are made with about as much thought and creativity as an assembly-line worker applies on the job. So many people waste hard-earned money on "spiritual advice"—which often centers on money or romantic manipulations, and is just food for fantasy. So many people mock the tarot because of the absurd presumptuousness and pretensions of readers who climb onto the pedestal of psychic, prophet, and know-it-all.
The images of the tarot can spark imaginative and rational faculties, and thus reinforce a feeling of control in our lives. A good reading gives a person something to work with, something that is real and in the present.
The best readings are those to which the querent contributes, sometimes with a gratifying, "Aha! I knew that all along, but I couldn't put my finger on it!" The tarot points to the truth that is waiting to be discovered in each person.
The temple of truth in which a reading should take place is not a palace built by the reader. It is a living creation of the reader and the querent.
Preparation
Rituals may or may not have innate power or results. At the very least, they serve to focus the mind. Short prayers, incantations, mantras, or meditative silence are useful to some readers. Others prefer to plunge straight into a reading because rituals baffle their concentration on the cards themselves.
The environment is also your choice. Some people read best in a totally silent room; some do terrific readings in tearooms, bookstores, and even amidst the nightlife on the sidewalks of Greenwich Village in New York City. The universal preparation for a reading is the adoption of a serious (but not grim) attitude, an open mind, and a sensitive heart.
Before handling the cards, you should ask the querent or yourself if a particular question or issue is of concern. Usually people know exactly what they want to know, but they may be reluctant to reveal their secret worries. This is no problem. If you don't receive a specific question, you can do a general reading. Trust is built between the reader and the querent in the course of the reading, and the matter of concern will surface.
The mode of shuffling varies. You can riffle the cards, mix them hand over hand, put them down on the table and stir them up. You can cut them with your right hand or your left hand, seven times, three times, or just once (but do cut them, since the bottom card has a tendency to peak out during shuffling). As long as the cards are thoroughly mixed, the methods of mixing and cutting aren't important—unless you want to adopt a ritual.
Some readers ask the person receiving a reading to mix the cards, some ask the querent merely to cut the mixed cards. Some people wouldn't dream of letting others touch their deck under any circumstances, because the vibrations might be upset. Even the method of laying out the cards can vary. Most readers deal the cards themselves, with the top card going in the first position, next card in position two, and so on.
Once the cards are laid out, you can turn them all over and proceed with the reading, or you can read each card as you turn it over. You can do a brief reading of each card as it is turned over, and then do a more in-depth reading of the spread as a whole.
Divination begins before the cards are even shuffled. A person reveals much simply by voice, clothes, gait, expression, makeup or lack of makeup, and so on. While first impressions can be misleading, no more than a reflection of prejudices or stereotypes, thoughtful observations can help.
A trick of fortunetellers is to ask a seemingly trivial question, such as where a client got an article of her/his clothing, in order to elicit personal information and obtain a more "accurate" reading. Don't be tricky. If you want information about the querent, be up front and ask them what you need to know.
Relaxed concentration is the state of mind most conducive for reading the tarot. Keep the mind on the cards, but don't make it so tight that intuition is strangled. The traditional meanings of the cards have the authority of authentic symbolic values and long use. By bearing them in mind, one can be more objective, not captured by personal prejudices or by preconceptions concerning the querent.
Traditional meanings need not be interpreted in a narrow or stereotyped way, however. The word "partnership," for example, calls up romance, business, and astrological configurations of the planets. Let your imagination range over the images; let your imagination blend with the thought of past men and women who have contributed to the resources of the tarot.
The Story Told by the Tarot
The cards are laid, the spread complete. The beginner sees a bewildering array of images, some contradictory, some vaguely similar, some frightening, some soothing.
The experienced reader sees symbolic pictures of people, events, and influences which interact with each other as they move through time. In other words, the experienced reader sees a story. In tracing the story told by a spread, it helps to find a beginning, middle, and end, and events and characters.
The beginning of a reading can be considered the question asked by the querent. If no question is formulated, you could consider the beginning of the story to be the attitude, mood, or circumstances of the person receiving the reading. The beginning can also be the first card. The middle is the rest of the cards, up to the last one, which is usually an outcome card.
Most tarot spreads imply a flow of time. The past (the beginning) may be the immediate past or one's childhood. The present (the middle) is the here and now, or the present may be considered the time period in which the question at hand began to manifest. The future (the end) can indicate what is to come, a possible course of action one may wish to take in the future, or influences that bear on the future.
Any card in the tarot deck can symbolize a person, an event, an object, or a psychological issue: family, friend, employer or employee, colleague, social group, teacher, animal, a stranger who may have an impact on the situation, celebrities; a birth or death, a promotion, a meeting; buildings, institutions, dwellings, nations, cities, outdoor places, cultural events, a
car; personal strengths and weaknesses, romantic interests, religious outlooks, behavioral patterns—the list is limitless.
The meanings of each card depend on the flow of the reading—that is, the cards that precede and follow the specific card being interpreted. The position of the card in the spread is also a deciding factor. Every single card relates to every other card in a spread. Sometimes it is helpful to move temporarily a card from its place in the spread and put it next to a card that seems strongly linked to it, and study the two cards as a pair.
Major Arcana cards do not dominate Minor Arcana cards; courts do not dominate numbered cards. All the cards work together. Occasionally, a single card or a few cards will seem to have more emphasis, a situation worth studying.
The cards in a reading are a story, a continuum. A configuration of, say, ten of swords, The Empress, and two of cups might mean that a motherly person (The Empress) will alleviate a personal disaster (ten of swords) by matching the querent with a partner, a lover, or a friend (two of cups). Or it could be that this motherly person is causing trouble in a relationship.
Cards often have contradictory meanings; a wide range of interpretation gives the reader more freedom to see the individual's story.
The Time Spread
The Time Spread is specifically for beginners since it uses only four cards and deals with an obvious sequence of time. More experienced readers might like to use it as a quick and simple spread.
The reader should have a clear question in mind. While the question need not be a yes-or-no query, it should be specific and uncomplicated. Remember that the cards can refer to people or events.
Card 1: The past What led up to the present situation. This can refer to people or events of one's childhood, but more likely points to the events or people directly concerned with the situation.
Card 2: The present The way the situation stands at the moment.
Card 3: The future The likely outcome of the situation as manifested in the near future (within one or two months), if influences continue as expected.
Card 4: Action What one can do either to encourage the outcome or to change it—the querent chooses the way in which this card is to be used.
The Cosmic Pentagram Spread
The design of the Cosmic Pentagram Spread is based on the pentagram and rose on the back of the Cosmic Tarot cards.
The first five cards are laid out in the same order one would use in drawing a five-pointed star, or a pentagram.
Card 1: Intention - The Intention card clarifies the issue of the reading. It states our intention, the way in which we would like to see the situation in question resolved.
Card 2: External Influences - This card reveals the powers that have led to the situation. The focus is on circumstances or people that we feel rule us or the situation. Possibly childhood events or events of the past may be of concern.
Card 3: Hope - The Hope card reflects personal hopes.
Card 4: Fear - The Fear card reflects personal fears.
Card 5: Internal Influences - This card reveals the factors of our personality that have created the situation. The focus is on inclinations, habits, and patterns of behavior.
The next five cards are laid out from the feet of the star to the head.
Card 6: Inner Will - Paired with card 5 Internal Influences, card 6 reveals sources of strength and insight.
Card 7: Action - Paired with card 2 External Influences, card 7 indicates what action we can take.
Card 8: Help - Paired with card 3 Hope, card 8 reveals factors that can be of assistance to us in the situation.
Card 9: Obstacles - Paired with card 4 Fear, card 9 indicates inner blocks, sometimes perceived as external obstacles, that prevent the situation from being resolved favorably.
Card 10: Aspirations - Card 10 takes us beyond the intention shown in card 1, beyond immediate needs and greeds. Now that the situation has been analyzed through the reading, we may have a more open mind about what we can accomplish.
Card 11: Outcome - Card 11, in the center, shows the result of the factors indicated by all the other cards. The last card is a scenario that has been generated by the possibilities shown in the rest of the spread.
The Outcome card should be viewed in context with the Intention card as well as with the Aspiration card. If the Outcome is unfavorable, conflict among these three cards may give clues to the source of the problem. The Obstacles card can also offer clues.
The Human Community Spread
The Human Community Spread is unique in that it is dealt from a face up deck; the querent chooses the cards. It is for analyzing a social situation—a conflict, an election, new developments in science, the arts, or technology—but it is also useful in examining personal matters.
The readings can focus on one's own region or on foreign places. If the spread is applied to a social situation, one generally reads for oneself, and is both reader and querent. Otherwise, the reading can be done for another person.
The deck should be well shuffled. A question must be stated in specific terms.
The reader turns the deck face up, and lays the cards down one by one in a single stack. A card should be laid down at about the rate of one every second. The querent should gaze with concentration at the cards as they are laid down.
The reader will then ask a series of ten questions. After each question is asked, the cards are laid down again, one at a time in a single stack, at the rate of one card every few seconds. When the querent spots a card that answers the question, he or she tells the reader to stop. The card is drawn out and put down face up; all ten cards will form a simple vertical line, with card 1 at the bottom, and card 10 at the top. If the querent was unable to select a card, lay down the deck one more time. (The deck does not need to be shuffled after each question.)
Card 1 What do you see as the heart of the present situation?
Card 2 What historical (childhood or long-term past) events led up to the current situation?
Card 3 What historical (childhood or long-term past) person or people led up to the current situation?
Card 4 What recent events led up to the current situation?
Card 5 What living person or group instigated the current situation?
Card 6 What is the most positive element in the situation?
Card 7 What is the most negative element in the situation?
Card 8 What kind of person can make the situation as positive as it can be?
Card 9 What action can most improve the situation?
Card 10 What is the likely outcome?
The Human Community Spread is not meant to be predictive. It helps us to articulate the way in which we relate to the world by clarifying our feelings and thoughts about issues.
Readings of this kind can, over time, expose prejudices and ideals, fears and hopes. We may see a tendency to scapegoat or idealize a particular group or ideology; we may arrive at a more definite knowledge of the role we'd like to play in the world.
One may prefer doing a slower, more thoughtful reading of the Human Community Spread, especially if one is unfamiliar with tarot cards or with this particular deck. However, by viewing the cards rapidly, one is likely to be honest, not choosing the cards that support a self-image or that say what one wants to believe.
An Improvisation
In theater, improvisation is done by actors in order to explore characters, to loosen their imaginations as well as their bodies and voices, and to get to know each other. Generally, there are no sets or costumes, and there is no script. A scenario is chosen by a director, and the actors spontaneously create action and dialogue based on the scenario.
An Improvisation using the tarot is much like a theatrical improvisation, except that we have the benefit of costumes and sets, courtesy of the images on the card. Anyone can play any character that appears on the cards: men can play women, women can play men; conservatives can be liberal, free spirits can be straight-laced. A theater troupe could use an Improvisation to
help shape a performance piece. An Improvisation could also be useful in a class on tarot.
An Improvisation can be used to approach a personal problem, to explore a fantasy, to attempt to understand a situation in the world or in your social group. Scenarios can revolve around historical events, exotic travel fantasies, mysteries, surreal dream voyages.
Interpersonal relationships should be tackled only with people who have a relationship of trust. Possibly, a grudge can be aired or a quarrel patched up through an Improvisation, but no one should be embarrassed or harassed; personal secrets need not be aired. An Improvisation is not for deciding who's right and who's wrong, but for exploration. As in any reading, everyone taking part should be sensitive to changes of mood that may take place as the reading unfolds.
An Improvisation can be done with any number of people, up to about eight. To begin, sit in a circle. Then choose a leader, either by drawing lots or by consensus. (The role of leader will revolve around the circle, with a new leader for each Improvisation.)
The leader decides on the scenario for the Improvisation and also makes sure the Improvisation doesn't get out of hand. An Improvisation that goes on longer than ten or fifteen minutes tends to wander, and the leader should bring it to a close at that time, unless the group is very keen on continuing.
Shuffle the deck well. The leader draws the first card and suggests a scenario based on its image. The leader's card will determine the setting of the situation, and the leader will play the character presented on that card.
The others in the group each draw a card in turn, starting from the person on the leader's right and moving round the circle. The card each person draws will decide his or her character, in terms of personality, inclinations, secret or overt agenda, and even physical appearance.