Where do you draw the line?

This is a multi-faceted thought.

1. We are all familiar with the concept of "cold reading," yes? If not, give the wiki a brief look-over here.

We, as readers, are often encouraged to interact with our clients. The kinds of reading where we just zip off a bunch of keywords for the given card in the given spot (with or without a health dollop of intuition, as suits your style) are generally agreed upon as "bad." Rather, it is considered good to look at the card, talk about it, and then ask the sitter what they think about that meaning. Or to have the sitter be the first to chronicle their reaction to the card, and then go from there. Or anything else that involves the sitter.

Then essentially, the difference between a cold reading and a good tarot session seems so slight. How do you draw the line? Can you?

2. Related to this, do you consider a Tarot reading to be A) the reader drawing cards specific to the sitter and conveying information that is to be filtered by the sitter or B) the reader drawing cards specific to the reader, and filtering the appropriate information to then convey to the sitter? Or both? Or neither?

3. To draw those two questions to a broader level, what is the role of the reader in a Tarot reading? A mirror to reflect things the sitter already knew? A gifted supplier of knowledge unknowable to the reader? A sort of Schrödinger's Cat that changes at each instant during the reading, depending on feedback? Just another person who happens to enjoy throwing their cards, the results of which are nothing more than a product of chance?

Well, here's the deal as I see it:

The good tarot reader is there to read the cards. Not to ask the sitter what the cards mean. Not to practice psychology without a license (if they don't have one). Not to give the sitter their opinion of the sitter's lifestyle or what they think the sitter should do. They're there to read the cards.

Now, that does mean interacting with the sitter, of course. It might include the sitter telling the reader "oh, that card reminds me of....." (on their own without being asked) and that might be pertinent to the reading.

It also does mean that the sitter wants advice. But they want and should be given advice the cards say they need, not what the reader thinks they need. The reader is there to deliver the message from the cards, not pass judgment and "fix" the sitter. The cards are the reader's business---the sitter is God's business and we should keep hands off. (Insert Goddess or whatever you believe there.)

It does, to some degree, probably include a reader taking some notice of the sitter's economic situation, clothing, hairstyle, etc. like the wikipedia definition said, because those things are hard to miss if you've still got your eyesight. So the message from the cards might somewhat be influenced by that, I suppose.

You asked if we're just to recite card meanings or to read by feedback, going whichever way the wind blows depending on feedback. Well, no------if you've read long enough, you'll be past the point of only knowing how to parrot meanings and will be able to "hear" what the cards are really saying even without feedback, or in spite of it sometimes.

That's the best I could do with a multi-dimensional question like you posted, but I hope it makes sense.

You asked if we're just to recite card meanings or to read by feedback, going whichever way the wind blows depending on feedback. Well, no------if you've read long enough, you'll be past the point of only knowing how to parrot meanings and will be able to "hear" what the cards are really saying even without feedback, or in spite of it sometimes.

Click to expand...

This is my favorite part of your answer. The rest of it made a lot of sense.

I'm not at that stage in my own readings, but I would like to be there some day (wouldn't we all?).

It's interesting for me to see others' thoughts on such questions. I may not always have a conscious response or reaction handy, but I do think reading them and pondering them helps to inform my own answers, and in turn how I approach and work with the Tarot.

I should also clarify that my first section, re: cold reading isn't meant to be trollbait or anything of the like. Reading my first post, it's rather...robotic.

I got to thinking about a lot of this when considering a reading done by a Tarot reader for another reader. The reader is there to read the cards, as you said. But when the sitter can already read the cards, that's when it gets interesting. You take an ambiguous card (like 2 of Wands, that card always seems so vague to me) and the reader can take it one way, and the sitter completely another...how would one navigate that? Or do the cards operate in a separate sphere from both of the people involved, and both must attempt to interpret it.

Which, I suppose, leads to the question of: is there any "magic" inherent in the cards themselves that make the divination self-evident to anyone, or is accurate divination a reward only for those with a well-developed "psychic muscle"?

More questions! I've just finished with finals so now I have time to sit around and ponder this kind of stuff.

Kobarot said:

I got to thinking about a lot of this when considering a reading done by a Tarot reader for another reader. The reader is there to read the cards, as you said. But when the sitter can already read the cards, that's when it gets interesting. You take an ambiguous card (like 2 of Wands, that card always seems so vague to me) and the reader can take it one way, and the sitter completely another...how would one navigate that? Or do the cards operate in a separate sphere from both of the people involved, and both must attempt to interpret it.

Click to expand...

Let me see if I can tackle this one *LOL* .... no card (unless we are talking about a 1 card reding) is in a vacuum. Its meaning is colored by those cards that surround it, and the question asked. The surrounding cards and the question give your two of wands context. A reading is a picture, of the combined meanings of your cards that provide a message based on their context. Hence the reason reading by rote is not the ideal way of reading cards though it is how most of us start.

So now we get to the part where you have two readers, one reading for the other, and they see the meaning of a card differently ... well you have a couple of things going on (1) are both really readers??? well lets assume they are so .... (2) one is the querent, and has more intimate information relating to the question which in turn will expand the context for that person thus they could both be great readers and one simply has more context than the other in order to see a card somewhat differently in relation to the reading.

Think about it this way ... you and I could both see something happen at the same time but have a complete different take on it ... it is our individual perspective. The same applies to tarot.

Solitaire* said:

Well, here's the deal as I see it:

The good tarot reader is there to read the cards. Not to ask the sitter what the cards mean. Not to practice psychology without a license (if they don't have one). Not to give the sitter their opinion of the sitter's lifestyle or what they think the sitter should do. They're there to read the cards.

Click to expand...

YES!!!

As for the question on how to navigate those readings where the sitter is also a tarot reader.. Well, I think 'backseat' interpreting of the cards kind of defeats the purpose of paying someone else to read them for you

No two tarot readers are always going to read the same card the same way. In this case, I think one should approach the reading from the reader's perspective. Trust them that they know what they are doing, even if it seems unfamilliar.

Kobarot said:

I got to thinking about a lot of this when considering a reading done by a Tarot reader for another reader. The reader is there to read the cards, as you said. But when the sitter can already read the cards, that's when it gets interesting. You take an ambiguous card (like 2 of Wands, that card always seems so vague to me) and the reader can take it one way, and the sitter completely another...how would one navigate that? Or do the cards operate in a separate sphere from both of the people involved, and both must attempt to interpret it.

Click to expand...

my experience with others readers has been mixed. ive had a few cases where the other read, or my querent, takes on a 'better than you' attitude and steps on every interpretation ive given. once a woman even told me 'youre completely wrong on that card. it doesnt mean that at all.' when i mentioned that the two of swords could also mean the persons heart may be closed off at the moment. i explained how i came to this conclusion and all she did was arrogantly shake her head and go 'wrong.'
BUT, sometimes my best readings are with other readers. many times ive learned incredibly new possibilities with cards i never thought could mean certain things. as long as the reader-querent is open it makes everything run very smoothely. both people are teachers, and both people are students.

Hello Kobarot,

There are two definitions of cold reading:

- Cold reading as used in acting, this is, reading a script cold, without previous contact with the script. Applied to readings implies that you are reading for a person you have never seen before.

- Cold reading as the use of verbal deception to make a person appear as if he or she is able to tap into another person's mind/soul, revealing information in a way that seem impossible or paranormal.

In this kind of cold reading the reader uses several tools, starting by a set of small phrases that will fit everybody. The script is vague enough to fit anybody, but ambiguous enough to seem like if you are giving specifics, and it can be tailored to perfection if you modify it using demographics, observational power, deductive power, and educated guesses.

Technically speaking, anybody who reads tarot for an unknown person would be falling in the first type of cold reading.

In the other hand, if a person has a set of limited meanings she uses all the time she reads the Tarot, she is doing something very similar to deliver a fixed script to everybody. In a way, she will be doing the same thing a cold reader does. In fact, this kind of reader is not even reading tarot at all. She would be using the cards as a cue device to do cold reading, even if she isn’t conscious about it.

Now, if we go deeper, there is a process that occurs in cold reading that also occurs in divination: we propose images to the person we are reading for, and this person will have to accept and adapt these images to her personal situation. Anthropologist Richard Werbner talks about a very interesting concept: poetics of divination. He describes it like this:

"Such Tsonga divination is, in my terms, "microdramatic." That is, it exhibits, in the fine scenes of easily handled lots, a series of encounters between significantly opposed agents, such as friends and foes, prey and predators, the humane and the inhumane, the social and the anti-social, creatures of the day or night, of the domestic or the wild...

...We have to understand the microdramatics that exhibit the visual, along with what I call the poetics of divination. By the poetics of divination I mean the interpretation of the use of cryptic, condensed, and highly ambiguous language, such as in archaic, authoritative verse. What is the interplay between microdramatics and poetics over the course of a seance? How do the people themselves see that? And how are we to interpret reflexively in a way that takes into account the people's own interpretive activity? "

Here he is talking about African basket divination. But if you read what he wrote, you will see that is not necessarily different from seeing the cards, establishing relationships among them, and deliver our impressions about these relationships. In a way, cold reading works for the same reason Tarot, or any other divination system works: because the person who receives these impressions makes them her own. The person makes the impression her own because she finds truth in them.

So, in way, I would go as far as saying that cold reading is a valid divination system. A person can find truth and wisdom in a set of fixed lines, just as she finds truth in cards, runes, bones, etc. I think is very hard to draw a technical line. The line seems to me to be more of an ethical nature. If you are using stock phrases, posing as a psychic or a tarot reader, you are crossing an ethical line by not delivering what you are offering. But you will be crossing the same line if you place some cards on the table and parrot one single meaning you know for each one of them, of course.

As Solitaire said: we are there to read the cards. Do what you claim you are doing, and even when you may be diving in a gray technical area, you won’t be stepping into any ethical line.

Skeptics dismiss all kinds of divination as “cold reading” and I feel is our fault, not theirs. Is our fault because we tend to get stuck in how wonderful our oracles are, or on how accurate we are; without giving enough importance to the fact that half of the process of enlightenment and inspiration that a reading provides happens in the other person’s mind. A reading can only be understood in the context of a relationship we establish with the other person. This is a relationship in which we use symbols in the epistemological sense of the word: as meeting points between two minds. We go half of the way, and the other person goes half of the way. If we understand this, and still decide to claim that our cards or our intuition do all the work, we are deceiving others. If we don’t understand this, and decide that our cards, or our intuition, do all the work, we are deceiving ourselves.

Probably a lot of people will not like my opinion here,(sorry in advance!) but it is just my opinion after all. To me reading the cards is just about reading the cards. Asking the querent questions or reading their body language and facial expressions is not reading the cards, it is reading the querent.

I know I only read online for others and I can only imagine that in person you can't help being influenced by their reaction But to me reading Tarot is about reading what is in the cards, notin people's reactions. Where I personally draw the line is that all I want to know beforehand is teh question and the querent's name (and the name or first initial of anyone else involved in the question. And the names are only because they need to be included in the question.

Bar

EnriqueEnriquez said:

Skeptics dismiss all kinds of divination as “cold reading” and I feel is our fault, not theirs. Is our fault because we tend to get stuck in how wonderful our oracles are, or on how accurate we are; without giving enough importance to the fact that half of the process of enlightenment and inspiration that a reading provides happens in the other person’s mind. A reading can only be understood in the context of a relationship we establish with the other person. This is a relationship in which we use symbols in the epistemological sense of the word: as meeting points between two minds. We go half of the way, and the other person goes half of the way. If we understand this, and still decide to claim that our cards or our intuition do all the work, we are deceiving others. If we don’t understand this, and decide that our cards, or our intuition, do all the work, we are deceiving ourselves.

Click to expand...

I love the whole post, but this part is what really caught me. Very well said.

I think that we also have unveiled that there are different definitions for cold readings. Reading someone cold always meant to me that the sitter sat saying nothing, offering nothing and I read. If I was on target yippee, the sitter if a skeptic said, "Yeah, I knew it was all crap" or if not was disappointed that I could be so far off base. But in your definition EE, there is also emphasis and responsibility placed on the sitter. So that if the sitter walks away dissatisfied it may not always be the fault of the reader, and this may be fodder for an entirely different thread.

See if the sitter makes up 50% of the reading and they never actually get involved in the reading then is it really a reading, or is it a lecture? A monologue that may or may not have value or meaning to the one listening?

If I go to listen to someone speak/lecture on a particular topic I don't expect them to tie it in to my own life. And I can leave thinking it was interesting, perhaps even mentally challenging but there is not an emotional investment on my part. But with a reading the person paying the fee has a stake in the process, an investment in fact. They have come seeking the information, and I think that your comment squarely puts a whole new responsibility for getting the fulfilment of the investment on the shoulders of both parties...reader and sitter.

So it is no longer incumbent upon the reader to become a psychic contortionist and spew nothing but pertinent information from start to finish with nary a flicker of the eye brow from the sitter.

I think there is value in cold reading, it is a great way to learn lots of things about yourself and others, and also it is an exhausting way to read.

The other issue is the sitter who not only want the cold reading but offers no question. In my experience this type of client is a bit shut down to begin with. They are not an open book...and the general reading is a crap shoot. You don't know until you start flipping over those cards where you will end up. The other thing about the general reading is that you are almost being given permission to excavate any area of the life in front of you...and I have experienced that the meter will almost always land on the hotspot. Which is just what the sitter is hoping for. That you will somehow start talking about why they came...this is the "test the reader" syndrome I personally don't like.

I trust the process enough to know that almost always something turns up. Almost always. And in the instances when nothing does then the reader feels guilty as in "I couldn't read her". But in EE's definition we now have a new paradigm. It is 50% our fault, and 50% theirs.

Now. Who gets to tell the sitter this?

i believe it is a case (same as solitaire*) that we, as the reader, are there to read the cards and are not there to give our personal opinion or advice of what they should and shouldn't do. the cards are the counsellor, not us. and sometimes, especially at the beginning, this can be a hard thing to do, and sometimes you don't even recognise that you are doing it, and believe that you are interpreting the cards (but you are just adding your own opinion/advice in to it).
sometimes the sitter's body language/response plays into this, however, i often don't really notice it. as if they have defensive body language (the card's message is not what they want to hear at that time) i will still continue on my same path. and this also applies when it's reversed, when the card's message is the best the sitter could have hoped for and they are leaning in, particpating, verifying, etc etc, i will still continue on the same path.