Dangers to be aware of...

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 08 Jan 2005, and now archived in the Forum Library.

FaeryGodmother	08 Jan 2005
In your opinion, what dangers or traps should we be aware of when studying tarot or in doing readings both for ourselves and others? I couldn't fall asleep because this question just kept repeating in my brain. Hopefully, now that I've asked it, I can sleep. :D FGM

jmd	08 Jan 2005
One consistent problem, from my perspective, is to assume that any particular astrological or other associations people variously make - especially in print - are either the only ones possible or the 'correct' or rectified ones. Likewise for elemental attributions.

MeeWah	08 Jan 2005
Concur with JMD. Any possible associations of any kind such as those JMD mentioned are myriad & in turn, depend on variables such as the context or query, the moment, the reader &/or other factors.

Sulis	08 Jan 2005
I think it's important when reading for others to remember the responsibility which comes with reading. The people you read for take everything you say very seriously. I remember a reader telling me a story once about a client of hers who killed himself. In his suicide note he said he wasn't afraid to die as his tarot reader had shown him that there was life after this one. Not her fault obviously but imagine how she must have felt. Don't underestimate how seriously people will take your words. Love Sulis xx

Sinner	08 Jan 2005
I know what you mean, I once gave a reading to someone who I thought was a skeptic. But when he pulled out the tower card and I told him what it meant, he started getting really alarmed. I think I terrified him... ...almost makes you feel powerful. anyway, thats something you generally want to avoid, bad news should probably be softened and quickly followed by advice on how to make things better.

Dark Inquisitor	08 Jan 2005
Dangers: -Thinking of tarot as just a simple deck of cards . When it is possible for interacting with it to stimulate psychic experiences you have not prepared for. -Assuming that the people you encounter that read , or whom you read for , are harmless. Some are anything but and you need to figure out how to get protect yourself or rid yourself of their energy. -Not figuring out ahead of time how to tell your querent unpleasant news in a helpful way that is not scary. -Assuming everyone is as open minded as you are about tarot. This is not the case and can cause you a lot of problems you might not have any idea exist. -Opening yourself up to become a tarot doormat for every friend and passerby who needs your time for free readings and then comes to feel entitled to it. Traps: -Assuming your feelings are always correct. -Assuming tarot authorities are always correct. -Getting stuck in attitudes that relieve you of any responsibility for your own development. -Becoming so overinvolved in various systems and attributions that you lose the ability to even answer a simple yes/no question or make your readings understandable to the average person. -Not realizing that the tarot is a great exaggerator. Just because you get the Tower doesn't mean you are going to fall through a hole in the sidewalk tomorrow. - Not looking beneath the surface and logically scrutinizing what is accepted as tarot gospel . We tend to read the words of others and not look at what is really sitting there in front of our face. -Not questioning our own projections , prejudices, and religious backgrounds and how they influence our interpretations . -Thinking you have nothing left to learn . -Refusing to see anything that might be labeled as "dark" to the point that you regularly misinterpret what is going on and might even live in a state of constant fear of what your deck is going to tell you. -Not being willing to risk being wrong and dealing with it. Some people have become extremely adept at producing readings that are long on flowing wordage and microscopic in anything of actual substance. -Manipulating the oracle. The point of having an oracle at all is so it can reveal something to you. If you limit it, control it, fear it , fluffy-ize it, you are just playing games with yourself. -Probably the lowest trap of all is just telling the querent what you know they want to hear. And/or resorting to reading body language and other slimey little tricks of the unscrupulous who prey on the trust of others . Giving a "reading" that is just you basically asking a lot of leading questions.

Alta	08 Jan 2005
Adding to the above: Becoming fearful because you can't understand how cards could 'know'. You know, they show.

mzoltarp	08 Jan 2005
One trap that people can fall into is to elevate one belief and put down another. That is in order to feel good about one's path s/he has to put down another. I've seen some that like "difficult" decks and have to put down RWS as a "beginner" deck. To illustrate with an unrelated story: A friend of mine is a vegan who invades the space of people she sees eating meat telling that they are immoral for killing animals. While I absolutely respect her belief in her conviction (more power to her), she pollutes her modeling by putting others down to build herself up. Her approach vacates her opportunity to teach quietly. A person of true confidence leads by being a model not by shouting the loudest. Hence the trap is to confuse "shouting the loudest" with being "confident" in one's truths. As a person new to tarot--1 year and counting--I see a lot of attitudinal tarot people but many, infinitely more who are gracious and kind. The former are "shouting the loudest" the latter are modeling their confidence through generous inclusion and acceptance. Pride can be a terrible trap.

WalesWoman	08 Jan 2005
Remembering Tarot is a tool...not to become dependant on it at the expense of doubting your own intuitions...using it to make your decisions rather than as a guide to consider?

Cerulean	08 Jan 2005
...'this usually means this to me, especially with these surrounding cards, because this is a situation that I find commonly refers to XXX...does this resonate with you in this XXX context...or do you want to think about what other meaning or context this has for you now?' Someone once told me of a young man who has his eyes on me romantically because it was all about the page of cups and a beautiful infatuation...I laughed with great delight...I had to explain that my youngest nephew, the smallest member of his baseball team, did an event that weekend and my husband and my brother were attending. In that context, the page of cups was a beloved child doing his most beloved thing with joy and laughing at me talking about him batting some odd and incredible score. (Someone later told me kindly if he was really doing that good, the scouts would be scooping my nephew up for scholarships). Best wishes! Cerulean

Nevada	08 Jan 2005
I wholeheartedly agree with Cerulean, to pose Tarot more as a method and a question than as an authority in any aspect of anyone's life. We will never know all the answers and no Tarot reader is infallible. I think the querent has a right to understand that. I also like the attitude of involving the querent in determining the answers. It's better to use Tarot to help people recognize answers and patterns in their own lives than to use it to tell them what to do. Nevada

contradiction	08 Jan 2005
getting addicted.

Arnnaria	08 Jan 2005
That you can never understand it all. I've only been studying for three or four months now, and already I've dabbled in the Qabbalistic Tree of Life, Astrology, the Chakras, meditation, and other areas. The idea that I could study forever on this complex yet simple deck of cards is astounding. So, knowing when it is time to put the cards down is important.

Phaedra	08 Jan 2005
Dark Inquisitor wrote: -Not figuring out ahead of time how to tell your querent unpleasant news in a helpful way that is not scary. I agreed with you up to the last four words. Sometimes it may be helpful to scare someone, such as when confronting them about dangerous addictions or other inappropriate behaviors. Quote: -Becoming so overinvolved in various systems and attributions that you lose the ability to even answer a simple yes/no question or make your readings understandable to the average person. Hah! Too true! Quote: -Probably the lowest trap of all is just telling the querent what you know they want to hear. You had me up to the end of this sentence, then you said ... Quote: And/or resorting to reading body language and other slimey little tricks of the unscrupulous who prey on the trust of others . Giving a "reading" that is just you basically asking a lot of leading questions. Let's reframe this. Some excellent readers read body language unconsciously, and add it to what the cards are telling them. Therapists do this consciously, but we don't think of them as unscrupulous. I can give better advice to my clients if I consider their whole selves, not by arbitrarily forcing myself to consider nothing but the cards before me. (A difference, perhaps, between a reader and an advisor?) Not to say I condone any attempt to con or deceive, merely that it may be wise to use all that is part of our arsenal of being human. We are a social species who as a matter of course read many things about the people around us. There's nothing inherently unscrupulous about using the same skills when giving readings.

Dark Inquisitor	08 Jan 2005
Phaedra wrote: I agreed with you up to the last four words. Sometimes it may be helpful to scare someone, such as when confronting them about dangerous addictions or other inappropriate behaviors. Maybe it depends on you see your role as a reader. For me, I don't think it's my job to scare people. Just to present the situation as I see it and try to help find solutions that lead to a better place for the querent. Many people are scared before they even get the reading and scaring them more might only increase their resistance. And, one never knows how precariously balanced the person might be. Plus, I could be totally wrong , and then I have scared them for no reason and disrupted their life.

Adjustment	08 Jan 2005
FaeryGodmother wrote: In your opinion, what dangers or traps should we be aware of when studying tarot or in doing readings both for ourselves and others? I couldn't fall asleep because this question just kept repeating in my brain. Hopefully, now that I've asked it, I can sleep. :D FGM I would say you have to watch for acepting the readings you do for yourself or others with an open mind, i used to get depress specially when reading for mysef whenever i got a negative card, i almost stop my tarot study because i thought that the cards were making me depress, the i learned from a book that you have to be more open minded when reading so you don't get depress.

SunChariot	09 Jan 2005
FaeryGodmother wrote: In your opinion, what dangers or traps should we be aware of when studying tarot or in doing readings both for ourselves and others? I couldn't fall asleep because this question just kept repeating in my brain. Hopefully, now that I've asked it, I can sleep. :D FGM Depending too much on the book meanings and not using your intuition enough, listening to it, and letting it grow. Bar

SunChariot	09 Jan 2005
Tara Deck wrote: I would say you have to watch for acepting the readings you do for yourself or others with an open mind, i used to get depress specially when reading for mysef whenever i got a negative card, i almost stop my tarot study because i thought that the cards were making me depress, the i learned from a book that you have to be more open minded when reading so you don't get depress. That's true. When I was just starting, I used to get depressed or more scared actually at what I felt were negative cards or even at any reversed cards. I remember in my first reading the Death card came up as the possible outcome. I was too scared to think what the reading could mean. I knew it was not real death, but I did not want to know what it meant for my question. I was just too scared to look. I wrote down the cards, put them away. It took me 4-5 days to work up the courage to take them out again and try to figure out what they meant. :-) Couldn't be happier that I did though. They have been constant source of joy ever since, and when I think of what I would have missed if I had not picked them up again...! In time I understood that there are no negative cards. They are all of them there to help us to live our best lives. And that even if an answer shows up that is not what you have hoped for, it is not written in stone. Most times this just shows you where the problem lies, and the cards can show you a way to fix it. Bar

Nevada	09 Jan 2005
Tara Deck wrote: I would say you have to watch for acepting the readings you do for yourself or others with an open mind, i used to get depress specially when reading for mysef whenever i got a negative card, i almost stop my tarot study because i thought that the cards were making me depress, the i learned from a book that you have to be more open minded when reading so you don't get depress. I had the same problem when I started out. I placed too much importance on both the positives and the negatives, but those perceived negatives could really get to me. I wonder if many of us first turn to Tarot when we're intensely searching for answers, or possibly depressed to some degree about our lives, so we ask more of the cards, or something different from the cards than they can possibly provide. That is a real danger to watch for in ourselves and to prevent if we can when reading for others. We have to keep things in perspective. Nevada

SunChariot	09 Jan 2005
Nevada wrote: I had the same problem when I started out. I placed too much importance on both the positives and the negatives, but those perceived negatives could really get to me. I wonder if many of us first turn to Tarot when we're intensely searching for answers, or possibly depressed to some degree about our lives, so we ask more of the cards, or something different from the cards than they can possibly provide. That is a real danger to watch for in ourselves and to prevent if we can when reading for others. We have to keep things in perspective. Nevada Good answer Nevada.I know that was my case anyway. Bar

Ivy Rhiannon	10 Jan 2005
Dark Inquisitor wrote: -Assuming everyone is as open minded as you are about tarot. This is not the case and can cause you a lot of problems you might not have any idea exist. -Thinking you have nothing left to learn . I agree with Dark inquisitor..these are the two most important things I can think of. It is sad we live in a world that doesn't accept tarot openly. If you do a search you can probloly find a hundred or so posts about bad experiences from outside groups not understanding the tarot. So go forth in caution. And also...remember we always grow with the tarot. This may mean your deffintions for the cards may change. You may also "outgrow" your deck. Good thread FaeryGodmother! :D

The Dangers to be aware of... thread was originally posted on 08 Jan 2005 in the Talking Tarot board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Talking Tarot, or read more archived threads.