What's Average income Tarot Readers can make?

[astroandtarot]

I dont do Tarot reading for a living but i have wondered sometimes of what most Tarot readers really make.

It seems to be quite competitive because of so many readers out there now.
I thought of this question because this morning my hubby and I talked about phychic boom when Mrs Cleo was on commercial ads at night back several years ago.

 

[Umbrae]

...this morning my hubby and I talked about phychic boom when Mrs Cleo was on commercial ads at night back several years ago.

Quintel Entertainment (QTEL no longer listed) generated over 33 million calls at $3.00 a minute. They made a bundle before they were stopped. That was 1996.

PRN (Psychic Friends Network) owner Steven Feder made millions, and paid his psychics 20%. So he got 80% from thousands of 'readers'.

I think Sylvia Browne eats well...

Me? I gotta scramble to keep it all in one place. But you don't get to know my yearly income.

 

[Mitzy]

I charge but not to make money! I charge to get people to stop asking for free readings!!
I make an extra $50 to $100 a fortnight, depending on how needy my friends are and what kind of referrals I get. I don't do any kind of advertising, just word of mouth. I had business cards in Australia, but haven't ordered any since I moved back to the U.S.

 

[214red]

you can make as much as you principals allow, if you dont have any, sky is the limit.

For most people tarot reading is not a living, its part of a living, many use other talents like bag making, creating online stores, teaching etc

 

[astroandtarot]

you can make as much as you principals allow, if you dont have any, sky is the limit.

For most people tarot reading is not a living, its part of a living, many use other talents like bag making, creating online stores, teaching etc

thats true what you said here. i am sure its probably different on everyone depending on how they work.

 

[Probie]

You can read my recent review of a 1996 book, A Wicked Pack of Card: An Occult History of the Tarot here to get an idea of the hey day of readings (it was in France, early 19th century), but best to skip to this part of a later paragraph:

Papus also highlights a common thread seen throughout the historical records; almost all the major practitioners had an “and” in their profession. They were a professional cartomancer and a book publisher, a writer on the occult and a civil servant, and in Papus’ case an occultist and a medical doctor. So when contemporary professionals find an “and” in their title or struggle to make ends meet, it can be some relief to know it has been this way from the inception.

I finished the second volume last week, A History of the Occult Tarot: 1870-1970, and the "and" trend remained. Paul Foster Case engaged in an intentional illusionist/mentalist act with Ann Davies to make ends meet in California. A touching story was given of one his early East Coast/New York-Boston wives (he had 3 or 4) having one nice "public" dress that she mastered switching accessories on to give the illusion of having different outfits.

Unless one married well (Case's last wife) or had an independent fortune (Aleister Crowley till he squandered it) or a wealthy patron (Mathers was subsidized by a fellow Goldern Dawn member, Annie Horniman - who also gave fellow GD member Yeats his $$$ help too to get going), you tend to live a somewhat [fiscally] impoverished life. Christine Jette put out a book (seen here) on being a professional reader, but a careful reading of the text reveals she has four streams of income: (1) reading, (2) teaching Tarot [and maybe nursing too], (3) author royalties/commissions, and (4) being a registered nurse (RN). The "and" seems to remain.

Part of the problem, it seems to me, is the misguided attempt by some to judge persons fit/not fit to do this work and their ability to judge it as worthy or not. It's like thinking people featured in fitness or Yoga magazines sprung from the womb in that good of shape when we all know you have to work it to get it. We develop as readers (as well as having off days - don't get me started!) and this is often not publicly recognized until I recently came across this gem from a 20 year reader veteran from the United Kingdom (see Youtube video here). Stick with it and you'll hear he started out his professional reading career knowing only this: Swords = trouble. Sadly, few people question why these "judges" are worthy to say someone is good or not. Often they are affiliates to networks and get referral fees for channelling people to such and such a phone line. Another reason is for the subtle psychology exposed in the Epistle of James: if we can judge something then we have the pretension to have power over it (James 4:11-12).

"Instant psychic" also has another detrimental effect: it is untrained labor. Obviously if you either have it or not, then it is certainly nothing you worked for, hence unskilled labor. Untrained labor nets an untrained wage, which is further compounded by the early 19th century reader boom being mainly composed of women (e.g., "women's work" = "lower wage"). Lastly, Etteilla was the great theorizer for the fortune-tellers as all other proponents of theory were occultists (read: they didn't trade money for readings - quick aside - there's two main groups throughout history for these historians: fortune-tellers [sell readings for money] and occultists [readings are for spiritual work]). Carefully reading of the occultists will yield anything from mild disdain/patronizing to outright hostility towards the fortune-teller group (Levi was very hard on Etteilla and even effeminates him by erroneously calling him a hairdresser, was this subtle misogyny that "fortune telling = for women only"?).

Further, more books published on cartomancy and Tarot began to highlight its exclusive fortune-telling role (in exclusion to high magic/occult history & practices) and associating it almost exclusively as “a pastime for the ladies.” Even Papus in his 1909 work, Le Tarot divinatoire, makes an off-hand remark “ut this is not the side of it [i.e., Tarot theory] that will interest ladies who feel a curiosity about it [Tarot].” In conclusion, cartomancy had become a profession for a few as well as another amusement for women of financial means in the salons.

In some ways, I get the feeling we cut our own throats for the sake of a few nickels/shillings/pfennigs. That's my two quarters (two cents, adjusted for inflation)...

 

[Grizabella]

Excellent post, Probie.

I went to a forum a couple of years ago where there were women saying they make thousands a month just doing readings part time, mind you(!) working for online reading sites and my thought was that they were plants from the online readings sites just trying to drum up business for their bosses---or were the bosses themselves----whatever you call the people there who make all the money on the backs of the people who do the actual work at the online reading sites. Sure enough, pretty soon the online reading sites were full up and weren't looking for any more readers because people flocked there to try to make their (supposed) fortunes.

I think it's probably unusual for a person to be able to quit their day jobs and make a full living solely from reading the cards and nothing else, just like everyone else is saying. The rare person may be able to do it after a long time spent building up the business if they live in an area that's amenable to Tarot and if they don't have much competition---but that's quite a few "if's" there.

People who have spouses who work at a regular job may make enough part-time to consider themselves self-employed as a reader but if the spouse were to lose the job, or if they didn't have a spouse at all, then it wouldn't be a living wage for them and especially not for a family. Or people who are supplementing a pension of some sort may be actually employed only as a reader but they do have a steady income from another source.

 

[tarotcardrose]

I have been reading professionally for 12 year about. This is what I find. Depending on your area of living, & wage. If you charge a fair price, you would have to do a lot of readings a week to pay , house , bills, car, food etc.

You would have to do so many readings a week, it would tire you out.

Or you can charge a lot for the readings. Which 1. not everyone could afford to go. And you better be spot on. I know readers in my area that charge a lot and have no customers. People will often say "They better be damn good for the price". So they are expecting tons.

If your sole income is reading, it puts pressure on it. I did it so I know.
If this is your sole income, and you wake up one day, and aren't psychic or really up to it, that day. You may compromise and "read anyway" as you need the money.

I found a comfortable medium. I work part time as a teacher/tarot. I wrote a book on the Tarot (due of 2011) and I do my readings. They are 1/2 of income. To generate this, you need to have many years of experience. You can't write a book or teach unless you've had a lot of experience.

My take, I believe you should charge for readings, or else everyone wants free ones all day long. I charge. I believe you should. But one should never go into tarot for making money. It is a vocation, like a priest. Priests accept donations, to survive, they need food. But they don't become a priest for money. One should never enter any field for the money. You see this in entertaining. The great bands like the Beatles, etc. They are people who loved the music. Nowadays you hear kids saying, I want to be a singer or rapper because they are rich. They have no love for the music. Or I want to be an actor/ or athlete for the money.

To be rich at tarot you would have to charge a normal fee and read hundreds of people a week, which you couldn't & still be accurate.

Or you would have to charge an arm & a leg & have pressure on the readings.

 

[Probie]

Grizabelle & Tarotcardrose

Another item of concern came from a recent book review (here) from Cehovet, but here's the pertinent part:

Under objectives are such things as honesty, accuracy, empathy, non-judgment, advice/guidance, and effective listening. This is the section where I definitely had one of those “WTF!” moments. It was the only part of the book that bothered me, but bother me it did! The objective was to get the reader to pause at various stages of the reading process and take note of what they were doing. This was achieved by inserting the word “Stop!”. I cannot tell you how very annoying this was!

My friends, let me tell you how much that "annoyance" cost me that I can document - $850...no too little, have to add in the practicums plus that one course at Western Michigan University where I also video taped a 10-minute counseling session and had to transcribe every word by hand...so easily over $5,000.

This "WTF moments" are technically called metacognitions (i.e., thinking about thinking or "being a fly on the wall in your own sessions/readings you conduct") and what I spent $850 on was outside supervision by a licensed professional counselor & registered play therapist - supervisor, a licensed master social worker, and a licensed psychologists specializing in child [psycho]analysis (later had a doctorate, other two masters) where they would watch my videos with real clients and then push pause (can someone say "Stop!" anyone?) and say, "Now Michael, why did you do that?" or "What was going through your mind when you did that intervention?" Isn't wasn't just pauses for screw-ups, but at any major shift in the interaction. Oh yeah, that was the grad student discount as it would easily be double or triple for a practitioner charging fees. Get the drift? Huggens self-supervision (had a whole $1650 course on that too) is a real steal, takes a life time to master and about 6 months to get into a good habit of it.

If we also continue to call basic professional development like metacognition "WTF moments," then are we surprised there's no money in this? Sadly, I haven't had time to read Huggens but I do think she was trying to push the profession into something more respectable (note the Amazon description here, which is also sad in a way - she has a Masters in Religion in Late Antiquity), however the "professionals" are digging in their heels against the development.

Now the sad part, so again here's the pertinent part from the Amazon.com description:

She [Kim Huggens] lives in Cardiff, UK, where she works as a veterinary receptionist part-time to fund her university studies in Ancient History.

Added insult to injury, I received $4,000-5,000 in combined grants for two years in my undergrad for three reasons: (1) high GPA, (2) married male, & (3) declaration to go into Christian ministry [declaration required only, I didn't go in after all! It's worse than Tarot in different ways]. So not only doesn't Tarot make you a living or even put you through grad school, there's no scholarships or conditional loans [i.e., do Tarot professionally for five years with these proofs...(insert conditions here)...and loan will be forgiven - and yes, Xnty had those too] for scholarly development. Where's the Llewellyn Grant for Academic Advancement?

It's no shock that it took people outside our community to be the ones to have the academic accumen to write our histories...

 

[tarotcardrose]

Yes. And Probie, I just noticed your signature.

May I never lose the beginner's mind.

Haha...how true. Sometimes I long, to have the "virgin" tarot mind, where I was foolish enough to say what I saw, naive enough through caution to the wind.........Sometimes, now because of professionalism & law, I find myself stopping & editing the readings. ughhh.....how I miss my beginner's mind.