Cultural differences in reading: split from: On Reading Tarot – A Rant

When I went to the field to work as a humanitarian, a couple of years later, I took with me two packs of cards. I read anywhere. I mean - literally - anywhere - on the tops of jeeps, in tents, in dugouts, in warehouses, outdoors and indoors, under straw parasols, in refugee camps - as well as, more conventionally, in houses . I read for anybody who asked - my fellow humanitarians, but also the people from wherever I happened to be, if they wanted a reading. I read for fun and I read seriously. I read when I was drunk, and I read when I was bored and on standby or waiting to get through check-points. I read for soldiers. The only people I did not read for were the prisoners I visited. But I did sometimes read to check my intuition that there was torture in a place and that some smiling, charming captain I'd met was a sadist.

Interestingly, even in the middle of a war, people still want to know about their jobs-love life-parents' illnesses. They might also want to know if and how they can get out of wherever they are and immigrate to somwhere safe where they can make a life for themselves. A lot of Iraqis I read for wanted to know that.

While I was in the field I made a friend on the internet. We met on an artist's site, and started corresponding privately by email, whenever I had email access. She is a professional tarot reader in the United States, and does only live readings, parties, etc. - a wonderful and very gifted lady. She would read for me by email, and I did the same for her: that was my very first experience of reading online and typing up a reading. Later, I continued reading for some of my Iraqi querents online, because they didn't know where to find a tarot reader in Baghdad or Basra (gosh, I'd got them hooked!) - they use other divination systems there, and in fact, I had to be careful HOW I read for them because the Koran disapproves of fortune-telling.

Fudugazi said:

Later, I continued reading for some of my Iraqi querents online, because they didn't know where to find a tarot reader in Baghdad or Basra (gosh, I'd got them hooked!) - they use other divination systems there, and in fact, I had to be careful HOW I read for them because the Koran disapproves of fortune-telling. But I prefer real-time, via msn, for those who have broadband access.

Click to expand...

Do you mean your readings were less predictive in order not to seem like fortune-telling? Did your readings change in other ways? I'd love to hear more about this. What divination systems do they use? Sorry if this is going too far off the topic, but it is really interesting.

--Myrrha

Do you mean your readings were less predictive in order not to seem like fortune-telling? Did your readings change in other ways?

Click to expand...

I'm interested in this, too. And I think it IS on topic because above all, Umbrae makes the point that the reading is all about the sitter.

If the reader refuses to take into account some possibly significant factors about the sitter's culture or attitude toward tarot, they s/he's forgotten the priority of the sitter in the reading.

Imagemaker said:

I'm interested in this, too. And I think it IS on topic because above all, Umbrae makes the point that the reading is all about the sitter.

If the reader refuses to take into account some possibly significant factors about the sitter's culture or attitude toward tarot, they s/he's forgotten the priority of the sitter in the reading.

Click to expand...

There is one thing most querents have in common, regardless of their culture: they want to be reassured. They want to know that things are going to be alright, or if they are not, that they can somehow deal with it. They all want to know the future, even when they tell you that they don't believe in fortune-telling or that their religion (in the case of Iraq - Islam), doesn't allow them to consult fortune-tellers. In those two cases, you somehow have to turn the reading into a kind of discovery - you have to suggest to them what the future looks like in the cards without it sounding like fortune-telling. In effect, you just make the present more elastic...On the other hand, Muslims are very fatalistic. Fate is "written" (maktub), so it does make things both simpler and more difficult. Simpler because they can readily accept God's verdict that their father is on his way out. More difficult because the onus on the reader to be accurate is that much higher. In many books and forums in the West, you read - "accuracy is less important than whether a reading helped someone" - and to a certain extent that is true. In OUR culture it is, because on the whole, we believe that free will allows us to take our fate in our own hands (this, by the way, is no less of a cultural projection than the idea that our entire lives are written by God in advance). But in a culture where people believe in fate and destiny, then accuracy is important.

Another thing that doesn't go down too well outside the Western World is the current fashion for tarot psychobabble. You know the type - "you need to respect yourself and face your shadow before you can be respected", when a woman has come to see you because her husband is taking another wife or has gone off with all the household money and left her debts to be repaid. An African woman is likely to stare in incomprehension if you spin her such generalised tosh. She wants to know if her man is coming back, if she will get one up on the other woman and where the money is going to come from!

I never had the time to investigate the type of divination they use in Iraq. I was rather busy there, and not with cards (besides I lost my cards at some point, and had to make my own). It is very discreet, whatever it is, since the Koran forbids fortune-telling. Generally in the Arab world, you can find palm-readers and astrologers. On the other hand in Africa (including Muslim Africa), divination - including fortune-telling - is part of daily life and taken seriously. The diviner is also a type of shaman, practices magic, communes with the spirits and the Ancestors. Fortune-telling slots into ancestor rituals and magic. A man might go and see a sangoma in order to find out whether he should marry such and such a woman. The sangoma will cast the bones and see that if he does, his prospective in-laws will try and rip him off when he comes to pay the bride-price. So the sangoma will leave the man with the choice of not marrying that woman, or of using preventative methods - a spell - against being ripped off. It's a complete service

Cards are something the white folks introduced, but they are gaining popularity in cities. Like with all divination, the approach is practical (but in Africa, "practical" often includes the spirit world, which is as real to them as the world you can touch - despite the strong inroads of Western rationalism).

So to make a long answer short - yes, part of focussing on the querent is to adapt to different cultural norms about divination, and that might mean considerable variation in your reading style. But the topics tend to be the same the world over: love, marriage, children, money, housing, death and danger.

I'd love to read some of our Indian members on this topic, btw.

As for reading face-to-face vs reading online...well, tarot is a bit like sex. You can do it online, it can bring a certain satisfaction to the parties involved, but it has nothing to do with the real thing

Fudugazi said:

Another thing that doesn't go down too well outside the Western World is the current fashion for tarot psychobabble. You know the type - "you need to respect yourself and face your shadow before you can be respected", when a woman has come to see you because her husband is taking another wife or has gone off with all the household money and left her debts to be repaid. An African woman is likely to stare in incomprehension if you spin her such generalised tosh. She wants to know if her man is coming back, if she will get one up on the other woman and where the money is going to come from!

Click to expand...

I found this interesting... since when has facing our shadow got anything to do with being respected/getting respect? I had the impression that facing one own shadow is the choice to turn inwards to explore personal belief systems, hidden motivations, self-defeating habits, ugliness that we hide so deep inside we can't remember what it looked like anymore, let alone acknowledge it's part of us.

To me, shadow is the very face we mock in others because we can't stand the thought of having it in us, the disgusting, unacceptable and unwanted parts of ourselves that evoke responses of resentment, detachment or negativity simply because I cannot stand it in me, I cannot stand it in you... but I am not like that ... you are like that. But shadows is another topic altogether, isn't it? And so is getting respect, being respected, self-respect. I got confused there for a minute.

I think people in other culture don't think about different things, they just think about the same things differently. But it all boils down to feeling the same way inside when the heart breaks, no matter which part of the planet you're on. Perhaps the way of dealing varies from culture to culture, I doubt very much pain feels different between cultures.

Fudugazi said:

Another thing that doesn't go down too well outside the Western World is the current fashion for tarot psychobabble. You know the type - "you need to respect yourself and face your shadow before you can be respected", when a woman has come to see you because her husband is taking another wife or has gone off with all the household money and left her debts to be repaid. An African woman is likely to stare in incomprehension if you spin her such generalised tosh. She wants to know if her man is coming back, if she will get one up on the other woman and where the money is going to come from!

Click to expand...

Exactly - and really, even in the western world, this kinda babble often helps nothing.

I used to read for Africans a lot, because my Ex is Nigerian. It was always easier for me because no one expected me to delve deep into psychological issues.

sacredashes said:

I think people in other culture don't think about different things, they just think about the same things differently. But it all boils down to feeling the same way inside when the heart breaks, no matter which part of the planet you're on. Perhaps the way of dealing varies from culture to culture, I doubt very much pain feels different between cultures.

Click to expand...

Yes, I agree, and that was my point about the reading topics being the same the world over. Where I disagree is on this: pain does feel different in different cultures, because we are conditioned by our cultures on how we deal with pain and as a result, the pain has a different life within us - not initially, of course, when we are first hit, but after that. Try this experiment. Next time you are in pain - any kind of pain - shout and yell and howl. Really loudly. Pull your hair, beat your breast, tear at your clothes - and ask your girlfriends to do it with you (if they accept!). The pain will feel very different to you - afterwards - if you do that, than if you swallow it stoically. It's not just the way of dealing with the pain: pain evolves differently depending on how it is treated. And tarot readers must take account of that. You simply can't read in the same way, for the same pain, in Norway and in Mauritania.

To give you an example of how a reader might have to deal with pain in a non-Western setting: Bantu men are trained, from very young, to show no pain, and never - EVER - cry in public. It is a great shame for a man to show he feels pain, either emotional or physical. The whole rituals of initiation on this continent are geared towards training youngsters to go through pain without showing it. It goes way beyond the British "stiff upper lip", although it has some parallels with it. At the same time, Bantu culture fully embraces divination and fortune-telling. Divining for a Bantu man - irrespective of tribal affiliation - is therefore made easy because of the acceptance of divination - but it is also an exercise in verbal and emotional gymnastics for any reader who comes from another culture, especially one, like my own Latin/Romance culture, where men might be allowed to express their emotions and pain more openly.

Moderator note:

The above posts were taken from the thread:

On Reading Tarot: A Rant

The posts have been edited to keep the thread to this single topic. The original posts still exist in the original thread, which has not been edited.

It was felt by a couple of members that the topic deserved its own thread.

Marion
co-Moderator, Talking Tarot

Fudugazi

Just wanted to say thanks for posting this Because in this big wide world of ours there are alot of cultural differences as well as similarities

*thumbs up*

It really was an excellent idea to split this part of the thread off.

I've noticed this too. When giving readings in the States, it's almost expected of me it seems at times, to talk about intangibles like spiritual development and so forth.

Someone asked me once to do a reading for her dog, whom she was convinced had shared several of her past lives.

However, when I've pulled out the cards in Greece and Romania, there was distinct tendency for people to ask extremely specific questions, with an extremely predictive bent.

People wanted to know how long before the curse they were under would wear off, if they had been cursed, how many children would result from a union, what they would look like. To a large extent, the "spiritual path" aspect of tarot cards was almost entirely left out in favor of a very down to earth desire for plain, ol' fortune-telling.

The curse mentioned above is a loose translation of the term employed, by the way, which doesn't refer so much to actual cursing as an innate ability some people have to give the evil eye. This can supposedly cause headaches, bad dreams, bad luck, excessive bleeding from minor cuts and even extremely painful menstruation. Close to a curse, but not identical.

Anyway, the expectations placed on the reader were quite different from the expectations placed on a reader in the US. At least, the expectatios I've noticed people brought to the readings I've given.