If it’s your first time getting a tarot reading (or doing one for yourself) one of the most influential aspects of a tarot reading happens before the reading even starts. Asking the right kind of questions can make your tarot readings productive, illuminating and insightful - and can help steer you or your client towards their dreams and goals. When we start with a badly phrased question, chances are, we’re going to get answers that are either confusing, or even depressing.
We’re going to go through some rules to abide by when asking tarot card questions for a reading. You can even use this article as the basis for constructing your own tarot spreads in the future! The same rules generally apply towards creating positions for your tarot card spreads. Finally, we’ll also give you a list of questions by topic that we find helpful for initiating readings.
So let’s get started!
If you find your clients asking a lot of questions that fall into the “don’t” category, don’t feel stressed! Oftentimes these are newbies when it comes to getting readings, who may have very different expectations of what a tarot reading means based on what we see in movies or television. It is often enough to try and rephrase their question - use your intuition and your compassion to try and grasp at what the heart of the question really is about. Many of the questions in the don’t category tend to only scratch the surface of what it is they’re truly searching for. You’ll see this theme as we go through a few of our tips here below.
While it is often possible to ask questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no during a tarot reading, the tarot oftentimes gives us rather complex answers. Getting a clear yes or no - often involves delving deep into the cards symbolism to understand the reasoning behind that yes or no. The cards are rather wordy conversationalists that love to explain and ponder possibilities.
Other people are probably the biggest unknown we can have - and naturally, we may find ourselves tempted to ask questions about them in our tarot readings. But these questions can be both unethical as well as unproductive. Asking a tarot card question about somebody else can be an attempt to control what is uncontrollable; we don’t want to promote unhealthy ways of dealing with anxiety.
Sometimes as humans, we are tempted to place responsibility elsewhere when things don’t go as planned - making ourselves a victim of our circumstances or other people’s actions. There are times when this is true - sometimes there are very little things that we can do to change our situation. What is also true most of the time, is that we can change the way that we react and respond to those situations. As tarot readers, we have the responsibility of steering our clients (and ourselves) towards ways of thinking that empower them, not take away their sense of agency. The way we phrase our tarot card questions can make the difference between getting a reading that helps us on our journey towards self improvement and evolution, or getting one that hinders us.
Despite tarot’s reputation for fortune telling, a tarot reading is actually most beneficial when it is used to focus on the present moment, and one’s journey into the future - not what the future looks like. When we think about what the future holds, we need to also remember that what we do today shapes that future. A tarot reading helps clarify our choices, and gives us the understanding we need in order to make the best ones for us. Similarly, don’t use tarot readings to ask about how things in the past, or how life could have been if only we made that other choice. Those are things that we can no longer change.
In case you need some more inspiration to get your creativity flowing, here is a list of questions that we think make for some great tarot readings.
General Tarot Card Questions
Love Tarot Card Questions
Work / Career Tarot Card Questions
Finances Tarot Card Questions
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