The Querants Question- Do you hear it before or after a reading?

[reine de saba]

berrieh always comes through!

thanks for the analogies. Already I liked the very clear thinking of "the cost" idea and the spread that went with it.

I too find that I largely look at tarot as a sort of non-discursive language as well.

I had been extremely curious about the concept of "reading between the cards" and it finally came together for me as "syntax". I feel I have a fair vocabulary (like a foreign language exam when you read a passage without the dictionary and make a summary of it, or have to translate) but maybe stumbling syntax. I speak pidgin tarot.

I do reversals, but will probably have to learn dignities at anyrate anyway. Aargh. (I'm still scared of the Star thread but if I can get my thoughts togeher on that will post again there)

Thanks for the encouragement.

I would really love to hear from others how their early questionless tarot experiences (blush) fared.

It'd really help me not to feel like a fraud


-saba

 

[Merenwen]

I've not done many reading, but I have found that the cards will tell you what they want your sitter to know, whether you have the question or not.

I mostly ask if they have a specific question (if so do they want to share) or a general reading. I can cope with all.

The first time I worked not knowing the question it was a guy who had a specific question, but wouldn't tell me what it was. I found that very hard work, as he was also not giving much feedback, so I didn't know if what I was saying made sense to him. I thought first that not knowing the question was the problem, but I realised it was the lack of feedback I normally build on that was the problem. He said a few days later that he'd thought about what I'd said and that he's never had anyone who knew so little about him hit so much 'sore points'. It helped him immensely. But to this day I have no idea what the question was. And that's fine by me.

I've also had it where someone had a specific question (and told me), but we abandoned that within 5 min. It was clear that the cards had something else they wanted to talk about. We just couldn't make the cards fit to her situation around that question. So I asked if something else was going on in her life. She said yes hesitantly, and we proceeded to apply the cards to that situation. Spot on.

Most of the time, having the question helps me to get the right keywords for the situation and helps me interpret the first card or so in a way the quereant can relate to and we can get the feedback going better.

So I've found to me that it helps to have the question, but it is not needed. Even the 'general' reading people ask for tend to end up being about 1 or 2 things that worry them the most. I really do prefer to 'go with the flow'

 

[FaeryGodmother]

I'm definetly a questions girl. I think a well worded question makes all the difference in a reading. Especially when reading for myself. I can read for others with out them; if they say "oh just see what comes up" I'll do a very general spread. 99% of the time the general spread will bring up the issue they wanted to question anyway. A straight forward question saves a lot of beating around the bush i think.

Also, the way someone words a question tells you everything you need to know about what they are willing and able to hear you say. So, it makes life easier to give them an answer you know they'll understand if you know what they'll listen to.

At least thats how it works for me. I love that tarot works so differently for everyone

 

[Hooked on TdM]

I am so glad I asked this question! The replies are great and it's interesting to see other people's methods and experiences. I love learning!

Saba:

My first readings as a child were okay but not great. However I'm sure my latest experiences you will really find interesting. I'm learning the Tarot de Marseille right now. All the books, notes, any information is set aside. I'm simply looking at each card and going by what I get off of it. Some cards I can look at and get five things right off the bat, others I struggle to get one thing. Doing a reading right now is slow, difficult and would be embarrassing in a professional setting. Not knowing the question hasn't really registered on my radar. I'm rather used to it, but not knowing my cards is what's killing me. I'm not picking up enough information from the cards to determine the question or the answer right now.

My son is also learning his deck the exact same way. He is getting a lot more info from his! He has tried a few spreads for me, some for himself and one for my neighbor. Not having the question hasn't phased him in the least. His reading is bare (not nearly as bad as mine) but he seems to be hitting the questions despite this.

I guess you could say I expect to suck at this point. I don't know my cards yet and the learning process can be painful sometimes. I accept this as part of my journey of learning my cards.

Hooked

 

[Umbrae]

Sheesh…I shudder. Once again I’m in agreement with Scion. What is the world coming to?

Sometimes you have a sitter sit down and they start in. They don’t ask a question, they give you the whole backstory, what key the theme is in, the lyrics to the song, and all the dance steps. Then they look at me and expect me to read without bias.

I won’t be reading, I’ll be reacting to their song and dance via the cards.

It’s okay to ask a question, but keep it brief and to the point. If it takes longer than 15 words to express, you don’t’ want a reading, you want a reaction based on my opinion.

If you want a reading, sit down and ask, “I wish guidance on my love life”, or “I seek career advice”, or…

But if you sit down and start in, “My husband has a large caliber handgun locked up in the glove box of his truck that he purchased at a gun show last October, and he just discovered that I’m having an affair, but I thought it was alright because he’s seeing a stripper on the side, and her boyfriend is a drug addict with a Scorpio rising, but my son is headed off to college this fall and his girlfriend who’s mother is a stripper…will he get a scholarship?” that’s not a reading. You won’t get a reading. The cards will be just as confused as the sitter.

As a reader, I always tell folks that we (the readers) are not the important part of the equation. It’s all about the sitter. It’s about us getting out of our own way.

Well – unfortunately the same goes for the sitter. The more you hear about what they think the issue is, the more you’re going to get hung up in the problem set – not the solution set.

Mileage may vary.

 

[Scion]

I think I DID that handgun-stripper-scholarship reading a while back. LOL

 

[poivre]

I usually read without a question and find that their
"issue" shows up in the cards or they start talking about it before
the reading is finished.

"hand-gun-stripper-scholarship"... I had a lady recently having
issues like this. She kept talking over me throughout the reading
and also stood up, and showed me her tattoo of her husband's
name, which she tried to get rid of, it was on her pelvis bone!

ros

 

[Sinduction]

I would really love to hear from others how their early questionless tarot experiences (blush) fared.

It'd really help me not to feel like a fraud

I think we all go through this when we're learning. They key is just to do readings. On anything, news stories, tv shows. Call your friends, your family. I found it easier to tell people I was still learning and that took a lot of pressure off of me.

My early readings were done with specific spreads where the position held the context of the card. I no longer do that. I began to study gypsy spreads and lenormand spreads and liked them better.

I got more into the cards telling me a story. Seeing how they interacted with each other, progressions, regressions. Dignity helped a lot with this.

Now when I read I usually use Umbrae's 7 card spread but I've modified it a bit. Here

It may help for you to start with a three card spread and see how the cards interact, read the story they tell you. I usually pull 3 cards per position to get more of the story. You can start by past, present, and future as the positions.

It really is all about you trusting yourself and the cards. This comes with time, study, and practice. You will get there. It isn't about the perfect spread or the perfect deck. There is no such thing. Just try to find what works best for you.

 

[reine de saba]

Thanks everyone, for your comments.

I do read as much as I can, but it's mostly here at AT that I can get much practice in. I have indeed thought of following Umbrae's suggestion of sitting in a café, tossing cards until someone asks me to read. I would like, however, to be to a point that I could actually ask for some remuneration before I do this. (I have plans of suggesting to these places to even have me as a regular at some point, but that is evidently not going to be tomorrow): Other than that, contact is limited right now, so practice face to face as well, as much as I wish it were otherwise. I do go to the park and find takers that way.

Umbrae, I certainly understand what you're saying with the whole background story putting the cart before the horse and the cards become a moot (and mute?) point. In reading for friends (i.e. the practice everyone recommends, yourself included) for situations in which I know a great deal, as I mentioned it is unsatisfying because the cards seem to come as an after the fact illustration. Still, they do reveal some surprising things even so.

There is a gap however, it seems to me, in knowing NOTHING and having a very simple "my greyhound"s leg". Three words, a narrowed down subject, an implied predicate (we know it's something about health, movement). What if she'd said nothing and I'd thought it was her husband?

It was said, not long ago, in a thread you were in, that "context is everything". If I don't have an idea of where the basic furniture in the room is, I'm only going to run into walls. If I can at least place the couch and the coffee table, I can figure out the pathway. Have done. I've seen myself do it.

But almost nothing to go on?

A woman who says 'about my daughter' rather than 'about my daughter's marriage': If I'd had just that much, just one word more, I would have made sense of the reading. As it is, it was a flop...I'm not good enough to see that King of Cups then as the daughter's husband rather than the sitter's husband, thus daughter's father. To understand that this was not a mother-daughter reading for my sitter, who was in fact worried about her grandchildren (so another set of mother/child, the cups, the coins, but totally skewed by one generation, therefore it made no sense)

For an idea, I exchanged general readings, one with Franniee in Circle of Stones this week and one with Lady Squee on the exchange. Franniee's seemed to go fairly well, all things considered, but I'd say with LadySquee, I wasn't much more than stopped clock right, or not by much.

And, Sinduction (neat link, putting a bookmarker on that: thanks!), I cannot say how dissappointed I am, because the reading for me was SO coherent, flowed, the inner cogs locking together, the syntax, the binding, the 'between the cards' making a flowing clockwork kind of sense, like latin declension or algebra, when the equations just MAKE SENSE. But I wasn't particularly on target.

DUnno if that's The Zone, but y'know in French "la zone" is "the bad side of town" and that 's evidently where I was.

One member simply asked "on T". Gd only knows what mess I made of that.


I think in the future, I will at least do a semi-independent cross and cover to get the isssue down, as has been more or less suggested (can't find the post)

thank you all for letting me vent, trudging through all this. Perhaps I will eventually get to that questionless nirvana of card reading. I'd like to think of reading with questions as not less-than-valid, as if they are only play runs while the Big Kids can say 'look ma,no hands!'. Buut I do hope to be there one day, anyway.

warm thanks to all

saba

 

[balenciaga]

Saba,
Lighten that crown You do not have to be that specific when you are reading for strangers face to face in a coffee shop for no renumeration (!) Just say there is a man who ....(the King of cups) - describe him with what is there and let the sitter figure it out if it is her husband, or her daughter's husband, or whomever. Let the sitter fill in the details - it is their life afterall - you are not expected to know it intimately. Just advise them as the cards tell you to and let them figure it out
No stress