What is "accuracy" to you?

We see people here using the term "accuracy" quite often so I thought it would be interesting to find out what various people consider accuracy to be.

Is it generalities?

Is it specifics that nobody could ever possibly just guess?

Is it of a predictive nature that you only find out later?

I dislike the term "scary accurate" a lot, but if you use it, what would your reading have to be in order for you to consider it "scary accurate"?

Is it also being able to work through a spread on the table in front of you and feel as if you now know the inner workings of a complete stranger's life? (added by nisaba)

Try to analyze exactly what you'd have to have in a reading from someone else in order for you to use either of those terms about the reading.

Accuracy can apply to all your examples. Accuracy is your degree of truth, or correctness, and I can be both accurate or inaccurate in generalities or predictions.

I strive to give facts in my readings, I try to be trusting in my skills and give details as to what will happen, I prefer to do predictive readings, with specifics. I of course strive for accuracy within these boundaries of my reading. I have no interest in using the cards as a soul searching tool, or some sort of self improvement new age thing. I have much better methods to improve my self then tarot cards. I want to read the future with them, with detail and accuracy

edited because I don't think I was answering the question.

Accuracy can mean different things to a sitter.

It's nice when a reader can be specific and detailed. However, as a reader, that doesn't always happen, and sometimes just letting the cards say what they need to say is enough.

I find that the "scary accurate" readings don't happen often, but when they do, they just kind of pop up, at least for myself. The same with readings that predict the future, in many ways. Those are very precise readings, like "cats have been going to the bathroom on your bed."

As long as we have helped the sitter, i think that's the way to judge if a reading is accurate.

Grizabella said:

We see people here using the term "accuracy" quite often so I thought it would be interesting to find out what various people consider accuracy to be.

Is it generalities?

Is it specifics that nobody could ever possibly just guess?

Is it of a predictive nature that you only find out later?

I dislike the term "scary accurate" a lot, but if you use it, what would your reading have to be in order for you to consider it "scary accurate"?

Try to analyze exactly what you'd have to have in a reading from someone else in order for you to use either of those terms about the reading.

Click to expand...

Is it generalities? .... Err yes, but if all a reader can give a sitter is 'generalities', this is not enough to say a reading was fruitful/successful/helpful. Accuracy is being able to answer the questions the sitter asks about, not only what the universe says they 'need to know' or what 'the cards want to say'.

Is it [confirming] specifics that nobody could ever possibily just guess? ..... Yes.
Is it a predictive nature that you only find out later? ..... Yes (but later could be in an hour's time, tomorrow, within a year, or in several years' time).

Accuracy is the sitter's degree of truth/correctness .... it is not the reader's assessment.

I think that, in a way, the best readings are those that don't tell you anything you didn't know before. The most accurate readings for me are those that hold up the best mirror possible of the querents' lives, the trends that began in the past, manifesting in the present and leading to whatever happens in the future, whether the reading is for self improvement or predictive. Also, the questions that the reading asks can be as important, if not more so, as the answers it gives. What question, what aspect of the querents' lives are important at this moment in time to be mentioned.

These are questions I've pondered a great deal. I've often been told my readings are "accurate", and while that flattered me, I had to reason (especially considering my often aleatory method of reading) that my querants' perception of "accuracy" was their invention. Besides, how could they know ?

Is a reading just a guessing game to see if I can correctly predict the present ?

"Let see ... You're travelling in disguise. No, that's not right. You're - you're going on a visit. No, I'm wrong. You're, you're - running away."

It's telling me something that I already know, in a way that I can see it in a new light.

If it's just repeating what I already know, then it feels like a cold reading to me. If the card's message comes so far out of left field that I don't even know what it has to do with anything, then it feels inaccurate (even if I might eventually find out things that make that card have everything to do with my concern.)

I guess every card has generalities and specifics. I got a scary accurate reading right here last week. For example: the 4 of Pentacles, my generous reader kindly interpreted as that I'd had some money saved up, but I felt it spoke more to my painful history: when the breadwinner of the family lost her job, and intimidated my sister and I into keeping it a secret just so that she could save face. I was out of school for more than a year, and I wasn't allowed to tell anyone, or look for alternative options for myself like public school or taking a job.

That I could easily apply a similar story to almost every single card in that spread (except for the Near Future and Final Outcome position, of course,) is what made it scary accurate to me. Critics of divination say that the meanings are so vague and varied that anyone can twist any card spread to apply perfectly to the situation, but as I mentioned I've had some cards fall to my, "huh, what?" reaction. Of course, that could be the fault of my intuition, and that's what the Your Readings board is for.

I like what tripleentendre says.

It's telling me something that I already know, in a way that I can see it in a new light.

Click to expand...

But I think for me it is when the reading FEELS right. Not always a moment - but when you KNOW you have to take it seriously. I've had a few like that here. One downright scary

It may be kind of what charlatans must say if their cold readings make no sense, but sometimes the readings don't mean anything in the context of a reading and a few days later I have an "ha!" moment that when thinking back it clicked all of a sudden. Readings may show us what was, or what should have been; what is or can be, and we can never be completely sure what we're seeing.

Perhaps Tarot is first and foremost an observational tool, as in, whether using it for meditation or predicting the future, you're taking a few minutes to sit down and think about how to improve your life. Merely thinking about what the reading means and how it relates to your life is already more than most people analyze their lives, and if making predictions, not even The Wheel can go and fill in that winning lottery ticket for you. That the present and future are mutable is an essential, hopeful part of Tarot, and the very fact a person is receiving a reading could make them pause and think, and perhaps grow from that reading having pondered questions they wouldn't normally ask. The accuracy of a reading is in how the reader gives the querent not what they want but what they feel the querent needs based on the cards, based on empathy to them as human beings just like us, and the fact that those are the cards that came up and not others. The more in tune you are with your own mercurial creative and emotional forces, you are more able to deliver the cards' messages to your querent.

A reading is as accurate as I believe it to be.
That said, I will probably never have a "scary accurate" reading from anyone... because I tend to believe that everyone who gives me a reading has got something of worth for me... the degree to which each reader is accurate varies. But I've not been totally knocked off my seat yet.