What makes a reading "accurate" to you?

I think that if the sitter relates to the words that are coming out of my mouth, that what I'm saying triggers memories, thoughts, and feelings that they identify with, then I'm accurate. In addition, knowing things that 'are'. But accuracy can be a scary thing. So if you're accurate, I'd rather know what you're going to do with it, and how you would approach someone with it.

I wonder what I should've told my chemistry professor to make him feel better (or should I have tried to prepare him?), although I had unintentionally predicted his father's funeral 4 days before his father's passing... I ended up not saying a word about it to him because I didn't want to crush his hopes (He was flying to see his dying father that day.) I didn't know why I got 'funeral' until I opened the email telling us why he was leaving for a week (now longer).

Just something for you to think about...

Aoife said:

To suggest that a sitter is in denial because they cannot relate to a reading seems a shocking arrogance, but I suspect it is more a reflection of the reader's lack of confidence.

Rather than imposing a reading, allowing it to be an interactive process not only involves the sitter and takes away the pressure to perform, but also allows for far greater growth for both reader and sitter.

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Good point, but when you get too interactive, doesn't it become cold reading of sorts. So, how interactive is too interactive?

I mean, I've read for friends who said I was eerily right, but then said, "But it wasn't the cards. You just know me" (even on future predictions). And maybe it wasn't the cards...maybe they're right, I just know them and have a good idea what will happen, the same way I know how a novel or movie is going to end when I get a few chapters in.

Maybe it's because I have an inherent skepticism about me (though I believe wholeheartedly in Tarot, as much as I believe in Gravity, frankly), so I immediately work to assuage the skeptical mind. Some readers don't read skeptics; I do. I absolutely do. I've turned many a skeptic into a believer. And I'm sure I've validated a skeptic's skepticism as well.

lilangel09 said:

So if you're accurate, I'd rather know what you're going to do with it, and how you would approach someone with it.

I wonder what I should've told my chemistry professor to make him feel better (or should I have tried to prepare him?), although I had unintentionally predicted his father's funeral 4 days before his father's passing... I ended up not saying a word about it to him because I didn't want to crush his hopes (He was flying to see his dying father that day.)

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Wow. What do you do? Good question. I don't know. If someone hasn't asked, it seems incorrect to tell them, unless you feel it can be changed. (I mean, no matter what, if I somehow saw a death that I could prevent in the cards, I would consider that a call to action---I have seen one sort of incident like that, a potential suicide, but that was for a close friend of mine.)

I don't really predict death. In fact, I literally ask my cards (higher self/subconscious/etc) not to show me death, unless it is to avoid it somehow, because it's not a topic in which I feel comfortable being the shepherd of the message.

I think my grandmother could predict deaths, and I think she occasionally did. (I say "I think" because I'm relying on childhood memory, which is always a bit fragile.) I remember several occasions. I'm not sure what her ethics on predicting death were, as we never spoke about it. She taught me a bit about the cards, but I never seriously studied them while she was alive. Though I will say she didn't have mainstream, New Age Tarot ethics...she had more of a fatalist/determinism attitude in general and her view on the cards much less empowering in some ways, from what I can gather.

There are many factors that can make a reading accurate - not only one. Sometimes, it's because it touches something vital and elemental in the querent. Sometimes, because it articulates something they know but couldn't express - something they recognise as absolutely true for them. Sometimes, because it analyses and illuminats a past correctly - bringing to light something that the querent hadn't quite understood until that moment; sometimes, because it predicts a future correctly (and so its accuracy can only be tested with time).

For the future - I've heard and made too many true future predictions to dismiss them. Choices made are only part of the picture. If the prediction is: "your son is going to move to Asia for his work and meet a girl there", or "your company is going to close", that's not your choice to make, and you can't prevent or bring it about, either - though you might participate in it. YOUR choice is how you act in these circumstances. In such readings, in addition to the measure of accuracy, I would say that the reading is only truly useful if makes the querent feel they are able take their life in their hands despite a cherished child heading thousands of miles away and their company closing down. Are they going to leave the tarot reader determined to make things work for themselves despite outer circumstances that have been predicted? To reach that point, a reading must be a conversation, a creative act between reader and querent.

Aoife said:

This must come back to, to quote the Ubiquitous Umbrae...

Why do you read?

To suggest that a sitter is in denial because they cannot relate to a reading seems a shocking arrogance, but I suspect it is more a reflection of the reader's lack of confidence.

Rather than imposing a reading, allowing it to be an interactive process not only involves the sitter and takes away the pressure to perform, but also allows for far greater growth for both reader and sitter.

Click to expand...

Well as long as I'm "Ubiquitous"...

Accuracy…what a giant load of crap (actually not crap, but since I’m against catachresis at this point, the correct term would be more like the Dutch ‘pappekak’ from which we get the word poppycock).

I think as long as the sitter understands what the reader's talking about and doesn't have to try hard just to figure out how the reading relates to a sitters life then it's accurate.

When I give a reading I am not so much interested on propitiating an intellectual understanding, but on generating an experiential transformation of consciousness in which new possibilities can emerge. Any rational words I may be using are only intended to get my client’s intellect out of the way, so I can freely speak to my client’s ‘belly.’ When I look at the cards I see a message. This is a message that I can show to the client, this is, I can point out where in the cards I am getting the message from. I don’t hope for my message to be right. My hope is that my message will elicit in my client the right resolutions.

Best,

EE

Wow, what great responses on this thread. I like Enrique's response, it reminds me, when the goal is transformation, how can "accuracy" fit anywhere into the equation?

Of course, if the goal is correctly predicting the winning lottery ticket, we have a different conversation .

(Oh and.... and just a little word for Mr. Umbrae: look buddy...I have almost almost a Phd in French, so I have heard the word "catachresis" before... but, as for remembering wot it means...)

firemaiden said:

(Oh and.... and just a little word for Mr. Umbrae: look buddy...I have almost almost a Phd in French, so I have heard the word "catachresis" before... but, as for remembering wot it means...)

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Sheesh! I had to go look in a dictionary for this one. Ahhh thank goodness for Merriam Webster's online dic.

firemaiden said:

...I have almost almost a Phd in French, so I have heard the word "catachresis" before...

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More to do with the 'drifting' of meanings as opposed to a malapropism.

Umbrae said:

Well as long as I'm "Ubiquitous"...

Accuracy…what a giant load of crap (actually not crap, but since I’m against catachresis at this point, the correct term would be more like the Dutch ‘pappekak’ from which we get the word poppycock).

Click to expand...

To me this statement looks like one intended to be extreme, and ridiculous, as a response to other presumed extremisms and absurdities. I wonder if that is true.
Cycles of reactions and counterreactions go on.
But truth still matters.

Accuracy: if one doesn't care what it is, or how to recognize it- there is a fundamental difference from some others in the way of approaching the world, which cannot be bridged.

And in those cases there is no point in talking and talking about it.

To my dismay I have learned that many people simply do not care about the very concept of truth (with which the concept of accuracy is inextricably entwined), and further than that, disdain those who would search for it. I find this incomprehensible because that search is the meaning of life, to me. And to me, "why do you live" is far more important and all encompassing than why one does anything else, including read tarot, be it for others or otherwise.

To me, truth matters, everywhere and everywhen. Each type of truth has its own sphere, and possible ways of approach- and truths which are judged to be more important do not cancel others out (if they really are true to the sphere they belong to), nor is it justified to compromise the truths of one sphere for those of another.

(By the way- truth does not equal black and white thinking, or ignorance of complexity, or pedantic grammatical nitpicking, or solely the results of the scientific method, or... etc, etc, other various things which some people try to reduce epistemology to, because they are so often confused with it when people get tripped up over the concept of accuracy when considering it.)

(And I am still convinced that "I" -and "you"- (meaning 'any individual') am/are not "the oracle"): http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=41791