Finding your tarot niche

I've been thinking about this tonight and thought I'd put a post here and see what everyone else's thoughts about it are.

I got the book called Tarot: Your Everyday Guide awhile back and it was as though I had just found my "niche" in reading tarot. Everything in that book made so much more sense to me than reading the cards for other purposes, so I think this must be my best way of reading the cards for others.

This leads me to think that maybe we all have our niche---our calling, maybe you'd say, within tarot reading. My reading the cards so naturally as guidance and advice is probably because that's my nature and my personality type. I just do counsel more easily than anything else. Others may read better analytically or through numerological connections-----I feel I'm explaining this awkwardly, but maybe someone will read this post and understand what I'm trying to say so they can articulate it better than I'm doing and get this discussion off the ground. I'm catching a cold, so my stuffy head isn't letting my thoughts flow out very well.

Anyway, I envy many others I see here who read so well intuitively in other ways, rather than the way I do it and the way the book talks about, so maybe we all do have different roles to play as tarot readers. What do you think?

I can see where you're coming from,

I havent completely found my rythym yet with reading for other people, and I've tried different approaches. Analytical does =not= work for me! I tend to be more intuitive and try to tune in to the other person's aura or vibe. To me (and i've mentioned this before in some other thread i can't remember anymore, too many threads to keep up with! but i love it..) when I read for a person (and this is mostly to do with general readings..since i haven't fully delved into the specific question aspect of reading) I see it as a reflection of the person's energy. The cards are only guides (hehe, i just typoed 'the guards are only cides) to the energy this person is projecting. The energy contains imprints of past and present influences and it helps me derive to a conclusion. I haven't but would like to incorporate other things into my readings such as astrology and possibly even numerology. Ever since I started reading I started noticing numbers a lot more.. weird, perhaps it's the next step I need to take in order to grow for my readings. I'm self taught and my teacher didn't know anything before I joined my own classes... so until now I didn't really have any guidance on how to develop a reading technique. I've done a lot of trial and error and find it at times very frustrating because it's like I can -almost- see it.... but in the end I return to my intuitiveness instead of by-the-book procedure. I guess I've kinda developed my own language and understanding for myself on how to read. It is wonderful to finally find a community in which I can get more light on the subject and I think this thread is a shining example.

I wonder whether our 'niche' changes over time. I went through a period of intensive reading for myself, a period of reading for others, and now I rarely read the cards at all ... I paint them, read about them and related traditions and so on. So, over the time in which tarot has been part of my life, my 'niche' has changed. There is no question in my mind, at all, that painting a deck, is my current 'calling' ... but that will come to an end with the finished product (if I don't keel over from old age first ), so what then? I don't know ... but in some form or other, tarot will always be part of my life.

mythos

This Tarot world has so many compartments and layers. For myself, when I read for others I was probally a Tarot therapist for want of a label. When I read for kids under twelve I was a tarot granny. When I read for myself I use visualisation methods. When I started, I had a book and a deck and I learned the meanings by rote and then watched people act out their life Tarot story and I learned some more. I used Tarot because it has a structure and in the main some structured meanings; and thats where I was led (Tarot). My mind makes calculations of card groupings quickly and I see patterns in the spreads. I love to chat- not aimlessly, but with a subject at hand. Tarot shows me how to be and how not to be and the consequences. It has taken time- some people can do it in a flash and some people may not even need the cards or the books or the meanings. I do. I do not see the point of reading , say a set of seashells or bones I would not be able to 'fly right' that way, even if I had all the body language and little clues people who question the cards leave. Each of us know when we are shamming I am sure -or doing the very best we can for the querent and if how you read has structure Lyric, then thats your style. It is not better or worse than the next reader who interprets the cards. How can better or worse be quantified when there is this one opportunity that is presented- a reader and a questioner and dialogue..... and there is Art in Miniature, painting, designing, history, communication and the writing of superb Tarot books-ahh the list goes on and the learning never stops. ~Rosanne

I think the important thing is to go with it. If it works, use it...and some day it might stop working and another way will show itself. Don't be rigid in any way. It's why tarot is so fascinating eh.

I'm not a big fan of the word "niche", which in French means the dog-house or an alcove where you put a statuette and forget about it Even in English it sounds all too static for my way of life and nature.

Tarot has been an evolving journey for me, and it continues to be so - but mainly because my life is a journey, and the idea of settling anywhere (far less a dog-house!) for any length of time puts me off. Where I follow you is where you talk about your practice of tarot fitting your nature and your personality type - I agree absolutely (and that's what is what I was getting at above, in a way - niches go against my nature and personality type).

If I were to caracterise what tarot is to me, it is a long walk over an evolving landscape. Sometimes rich and fertile, sometimes dry and barren, where I have to scratch for understanding and meaning as nomads scratch for food in the desert. I might revisit some paths, only to find them different, and stop awhile in some places - history, psychology, symbolism, kabbalah, brain-storming with the cards, advice, predictions, etc. I have to keep moving, in tarot as in life, because otherwise I feel heavy and my creativity and intuition dry up, as does my intellectual curiosity.

Another analogy I might use for my approach to tarot is conversation. To me, the art of conversation is the highest form of civilisation, bar none, in all human societies. Conversations are like walks -they ramble, but follow a certain rythm and path, they can be long and demanding or short and gentle: but in either case, the journey is the destination, the conversation is the destination of the reading - not what X or Y might prove (so the outcome card is just another twist in the conversation...). To me, Tarot reading is a conversation with props.

Because it through conversations and journeys that human life changes the most - so how else can I see tarot?

Maybe a tarot habitat?

From Enchanted Learning: "The Earth has many different environments, varying in temperature, moisture, light, and many other factors..."

In our way of defining are current, future or past Tarot Habitats - or forums of tarot interest, perhaps--we might understand that ourselves and others evolve and adopt to changing circumstances. Many of us here might enjoy taking our tarot decks along for the changes that we experience in interest, use and focus., Our different use or focus and comfort with the cards might expand or contract, if we're open to such enjoyments. I could see the above suggested way of looking at tarot as an analytical way of defining how we explain our changing use of tarot.

I say 'we' and 'our' to make my language more inclusive--but I'm talking about what I think, so I know I'm not speaking for others in general!
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It might be more comforting to just reflect on our own use of tarot decks as we remember. In my own case, I've approached tarot in so many different ways, different decks evoke different type of sensory memories!

The first thread mentioned "Tarot: Your Every Day Guide" and how the reader resonated with the book. It is a lovely book and I enjoy browsing through it at the bookstore. I've some older books though that also seem to have similar approaches. So I do find the warm and conversational approach
quite appealing, but don't feel the need to have it. I tend to look at "Special Topics in the Tarot" titles, the annual almanac, or online. Many tarot decks that come with books also have that charming and personal way of connecting decks with one's daily concerns...just my opinion, of course.

Regards,

Cerulean

the word "niche" is used in marketing and means something like your specialty, your "créneau".

imo this thread is closely related to the one started by caridwen in Using Cards. she tells about problems with passive querents and she got excellent advice from many ppl, including Thirteen and Teheuti.

i don't do reading for querents (yet?) but i can see my reading niche being just a kind of councelling conservation. first because i don't believe tarot nor anything else can predict the future, so no fortune telling kind of reading for me, thanks, second because i think two heads (and two hearts) are better than one. i find Teheuti's description of how to get a querent active in a reading so interesting and challenging!

Lyric: does J. Renee give examples of niches in her book? very interesting question and thread btw, thanks!

kissa

Hi Lyric,

I think I get what you mean too - I still read better for myself than for others - I find it hard to get down on paper what a certain card means when I fully know what it means for them but then I have to try and explain to someone else.

And so my readings on here sometimes seem short and to the point, if I'm getting the message across I don't feel the need to elaborate but in doing this I have to actually find the right words to use and get down on paper.

I do this when I read for myself for guidance and for inner seeking - I can get the message the card is trying to give me in a single glance or one word so I really do think my niche is in self reading although I really enjoy reading for others, especially on here so I continue and push myself and will hopefully get better.

Hi, Lyric! I just wanted to say that the book you mention is one of my favorite Tarot references. It changed my entire outlook on how to read in a way that made total sense to me, and helped me to discover my own niche, which blends intuition and advice. I've always been a little surprised that this book isn't more widely recommended.

Blessings,
A