Yes/No questions

[angelika]

On my quest to learn more about tarot I bought another book which is supposed to be more 'advanced' i.e. it is not about the cards and what they can mean so much as bringing in other dimensions and combinations. The book opens with quite a bit on yes/no questions (ones that signify yes and ones that signify no) which I was quite surprised about because from what I have read on this forum there are many who are quite against using tarot for these questions. What do others feel about yes/no questions ?

 

[Amanda]

I do them. You have to approach them like the Temperance angel... veeeery carefully. But I believe there is usually (not always!) some nugget of 'yes' or 'no' to be found somewhere in the cards.

 

[iAmRiotEyes]

I do them and draw a card that I'll interpret generally. For example if I pulled the 6 of Wands I'd take that as a yes, 8 of Cups? No, etc. Sometimes the card will be a yes/no and be it's own explanation why.

 

[nisaba]

which I was quite surprised about because from what I have read on this forum there are many who are quite against using tarot for these questions. What do others feel about yes/no questions ?

Tarot cards like to chat ABOUT things, not say yes or no. If a client really insists, I'll pull a couple of cards for what is likely if they choose yes, and another couple of what is likely for if they choose no, then let them make the decision in the light of the cards' chat around those two options.

Other things work better, like pendulums or even tossed coins. If you want a Tarotically inclined coin-toss, take your Ace Pentacles (coins) and flick it high in the air above the table, using your fingertips to put some spin on it. If it lands face-up, it's a yes. If it lands face-down, it's a no.

 

[angelika]

Thanks for your replies and they make much more intuitive sense than the method expoounded in the book I was reading. The simple formula there that was being used went so much against my instincts (odds - no, evens, yes etc)and I would much prefer to look at the messages in the cards for the possible answer than use a formula.

 

[Nytebugg]

I believe we can answer yes/no questions but tarot is kind of chatty. sometimes it will be direct but most times it wants to tell a story. I tend to read them like a story.

 

[Sulis]

Tarot cards like to chat ABOUT things, not say yes or no. If a client really insists, I'll pull a couple of cards for what is likely if they choose yes, and another couple of what is likely for if they choose no, then let them make the decision in the light of the cards' chat around those two options.

Other things work better, like pendulums or even tossed coins. If you want a Tarotically inclined coin-toss, take your Ace Pentacles (coins) and flick it high in the air above the table, using your fingertips to put some spin on it. If it lands face-up, it's a yes. If it lands face-down, it's a no.

This completely.

Tarot is descriptive, it mirrors a situation back at you so that you can see it from new and different perspectives. It shows you what has happened and how that affects the present and what is happening now and how that will affect the future.

I think to get the best from the something you have to work with that thing's strengths and not try to make it do something it's not really very good at. I think that putting a little thought into a question before doing the reading will give you more understandable results whereas asking a question that needs a yes or no answer will leave you with loads of guess work. So if someone asks me a yes / no question I discuss it with them and reword the question to try to get them an answer that's useful to them.

 

[nisaba]

After all, consider this hypothetical client.

He comes in and says he thinks he's met Miss Wright, and will he marry her. A yes/no question.

Now, the marriage could go two ways: they could be blissful together, or after the first honeymoon period wears off, they might be totally miserable together. But he hasn't asked that. He's asked if he will marry her.

If he's going to marry her, the cards (or pendulum, or coin-toss) will tell you "yes" to a pure yes/no. But it won't fill in that they may spend a totally miserable lifetime together, both of them missing out on opportunities to be happy.

Or if he's not going to marry her, the yes/no answer would be no. But if he doesn't marry her, has he missed out on the right girl, the girl he could have loved deeply and enjoyed living with for the rest of his life?

I can't think of a single yes/no question that isn't poorly framed to give you the information you *really* need.

 

[tarotbear]

Although I agree with most of the above, nisaba and Sulis say it best- Tarot is 'chatty' - wants to tell you about what led up to this point and what will happen after this point, and give you a few pointers along the way.

Although I am sure the yes/no aspect is very definate in some of the cards, 'YES/NO' does not have a compontent of what led up, will come after, or have pointers attached to it. It is like having a chandelier in your dining room but only putting one light bulb in it to save on your electric bills. Why not use a one-bulb table lamp instead?

 

[Amanda]

nisaba, Sulis, and tarotbear are right. If you aren't prepared and don't know tarot well enough (you said you just started not long ago?) then yes/no questions are going to be extremely difficult. It's far, far easier to just avoid them altogether, and a big pain in the butt to try to figure out how they are working for you. But then, if you are the type who likes to push the limits and experience new learning by trial and error, you just might succeed with them in your own way- I believe that I have.

A woman asked me, "Will he contact me?" And the cards told me "No, because he doesn't want anything to do with you or the child you share." I got all kinds of details that were correct to the situation (like the guy's father was telling him to step up and be a man) from the yes/no spread that I was using. It's all how you work it. And so she got mad and contacted him. Was I/tarot wrong? Nope. When she contacted him, he yelled at her and told her to leave him alone- she was crazy, she was *this, she was *that... blah blah blah. It was quite obvious he didn't want to own up to that kid. I'm pretty sure he was never planning on contacting her. But they did have contact because she initiated it and her response to me before contacting him was along the lines of "I can't believe we will never have contact again" and I said "I didn't say you would never have contact again, I said that he wouldn't be contacting you", and so you see, she didn't ask me the question she really intended to know which would have been "Will we have contact again?" and that is the problem with yes/no questions... the people behind them. Tarot will most definitely split hairs and answer the exact question you ask of it, so it's important to get the question right from the start because yes/no questions leave very little room for one to mess up. That's probably why others don't like them so much; yes/no questions leave very little room for cushion-of-error on the reader's part without a round-a-bout story to fluff things up and it's much more difficult to be exactly right.

But I like the challenge. Maybe you will too.