What makes a reading "accurate" to you?

Accuracy has NOTHING to do with the reader.

Accuracy has to do with the sitter. Unless you only read for yourself…

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If you mean only the Sitter can decide when a reading is accurate, I agree.

However, a reading is an exchange (unless for yourself)---both Sitter and Reader must be present, and I don't think you can make the Sitter 'responsible' if the reading is less than accurate, useful, or fruitful. I think the Reader is 'responsible' for the reading, just as anyone is 'responsible' for their trade... though a responsible Reader will admit they never know when they'll be accurate or not. Because I've never met anyone who's always accurate.

I do find that the Sitter usually knows what readings are meaningful and which ones to toss out. So, that Baroli thought that reading was powerful and kept it even when she had no clue what it would amount to doesn't surprise me.

Edited to add: (Frankly – I really don’t think that as a reader, accuracy should even be discussed…unless you are able to quantify and qualify every aspect of Tarot reading in and of an objectionable mode. And as soon as you can do that, it’ll no longer be the lovely outlaw occupation that makes it so lovely…).

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But this brings me back to my question---what should be discussed? What is the value in a reading if not accuracy?

And I am not really discussing a Reader's accuracy, but a Reading's accuracy. (Two different things.)

When did ego get to be a dirty word? Hang around Tarot long enough and you’ll see. Readers will walk through parading their accuracy rate (which is usually a matter of self opinion and not quantifiable).

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I keep an accuracy rate, but really only on my self-readings (because the rest, I'll never know). I do it to see if I'm improving and getting better year after year, with different decks. I do it because I like numbers. Because I like to track things. I think, if you're honest with yourself, in reading for yourself, you can do this. Is it perfect? No. It's about as good as polling or market research... a science-like endeavor, sure, but not a perfect one. At any rate, I certainly don't do this tracking for my ego. My rate is not all that good. I do it because I like to track and log things. All sorts of things. It's how I am with everything, not just Tarot.

I've always assumed anyone who says they have perfect (or 99% or whatever) accuracy is either very naive or lying. Though you never know. Someone somewhere might.

But what is that to do with ego? Ego is sense of self, it is who we are... Sure, I suppose that's a manifestation of ego, but so is almost everything. Artists signing their names to paintings is great ego, in my opinion, but it doesn't cause any harm.

I think you have to have some ego to offer any service or opinion to another.

I have been following this thread with interest....

I personally think that "accuracy" has its place when doing readings professionally...I don't think anybody would go back to have a reading done by someone that told them a bunch of information that did not make any sense and they did not know how to apply to their lives....people go for readings usually at very delicate moments in their lives and expect some guidance and assistance...most have very specific questions that need to be answered or to receive guidance about....why go and pay someone $ 60 to listen to them talk? Good readers rely on reputation...when readings work people tell others and that is the way a good reader truly gets customers and keeps working...the babblers just don't...word of mouth, that makes a business of any kind grow...

being a professional reader is a job like any other, so why not also include "accuracy" as part of the deal?Or at least the guarantee that all will be done to provide a good service, that would be helpful...I don't recall my dentist "making mistakes" to give me the freedom of choosing another one or not to appear to be "that skilled"...or a massage therapist missing some strokes just not to appear too satisfied with his/her skill...there is nothing wrong with feeling pride for doing a good job, and saying the opposite sounds to me a bit like calvinist/protestant thinking...don't feel too good about yourself or you will be stomped over! Why?
Why do people do what they do? to feel badly about it?
Why do a job we don't take pride or feel passion about?

The very first professional Tarot reader I met many years ago was so accurate it was scary....the first time she read for my mom she saw something that had happened in my mother's childhood that she had never spoken about( a friend of hers had died while she was in a nun's boarding school, she was 10 at the time) and all what she told me about what was coming has happened to be true...all in a span of 15 years....she was accurate about politics( she predicted what president would win at the time) and I saw her give so much precise information to others( we became very close friends) that brough me to respect the Tarot as tool and to want to study it....Politiciasn would go to her as many business men...and those type don't strike me as the type that will just sit there and listen to a bunch of free associations and purposedly "wrong" statements....( I think doing that is a disservice)....one thing a reader can tell his/her customers is that eventhough using the Tarot as a tool can help solve problems or predict how things will go or where they are headed, also the future is fluid and there is free will...so eventhough the Tarot may be pointing towards a certain outcome the sitter also has free will to make his/her own choices...

I think it is the responsability of the reader to inform the sitter about all these issues, many people come to readings not having a clue what it is all about or how it works...people have certainly the capacity to understand the concept that the future is not written in stone and that there is something called free will and also that there is not usually one future possible, but many(without bringing them into a stupor explaining quantum physics)

I think striving to "be good" at what we do is plus, and in life a healthy dosis of "ego" is necessary, otherwise we would not place a step out of our door, not even shower or match the colors we wear..what for?

just my thoughts

xoxoxoox
magenta

magenta said:

there is nothing wrong with feeling pride for doing a good job, and saying the opposite sounds to me a bit like calvinist/protestant thinking...don't feel too good about yourself or you will be stomped over! Why?

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'Pride goeth before the fall' somewhere in the book of Proverbs, that was taught to me in Sunday school.

I think having a good healthy dose of ego and pride about one's work is indeed very healthy and what we all have to a varying degree. However, when the work becomes too "accurate" and the praise and adjulation just becomes heaped upon by the truckloads, this is where it gets tricky, I think. You start to really believe your own press. This is a good and a bad thing. To believe in one self, and know that you're you're accurate is one thing, but to live off of the praise and soforth, is something else.

I sang for my living at one time and I was damned good; I still am. I did my own musical arrangements and rocked a lot of houses with them. Funny thing is as much as I knew how good I was, I lacked something in my overall attitude. I felt I was "above all the other singers" because I was that good. I intimidated a lot of folks. I believed my own press to the point that being about telling a story through music that might touch someone, or just to be entertaining was no longer the goal. I began to covet the feelings of "Aren't I great?" The things I lacked were compassion and humility. I was technically terrific, but had no heart. Once I realized what I was doing and the people I was not touching, I stopped. Cold turkey. I stopped singing. Until I learned what it is to sing for the public or one person and tell a story and really tell a story from the heart.

It's the same with the Tarot. You can be as accurate as anything and you can receive the praise and adoration of the masses. But what good is it if you haven't helped a person to understand what it is they are trying to get? The cards are a tool. It is IMHO what we should be doing. Helping. I would rather have someone come to me for a reading simply because her/his friend said "I helped them through something that they just couldn't get or see."

Now that's accuracy. And again, it goes right back to the original. It's all about the sitter.

That's my 2 cents.

Baroli

Baroli said:

'Pride goeth before the fall' somewhere in the book of Proverbs, that was taught to me in Sunday school.

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that must have been a very fun school, I can tell....I am glad that in my Sunday school the priest preferred to put movies on for us like "To kill a mockingbird" and then have us discuss it....but you know, we catholics are the hippies of christianity compared to some protestant faiths....

I think having a good healthy dose of ego and pride about one's work is indeed very healthy and what we all have to a varying degree. However, when the work becomes too "accurate" and the praise and adjulation just becomes heaped upon by the truckloads, this is where it gets tricky, I think. You start to really believe your own press. This is a good and a bad thing. To believe in one self, and know that you're you're accurate is one thing, but to live off of the praise and soforth, is something else.

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I think we need to redefine the language we are using here...one thing is pride( which is not bad in itself...people can be proud of their country, can't they?)one thing is ego ( as a common psychological component of a human being) and another thing is self esteem....

Now when we have those 3 terms clarified we can have a conversation that makes sense....from discussing the importance and relevance of accuracy in a reading we have come to quote Bible passages and to radically assert that looking for accuracy is a matter of "ego", as something indesirable and negative...

I think there is a middle way and in that middle way there is the possibility for a reader to have a healthy self esteem and feel good about his/her level of accuracy without risking to become a self absorbed, egotistical monster that does not care about the "sitter" and has lost compassion and what is good and holy in life....what escapes my understanding is how talking about how accuracy might be of relevance, specially when people are paying you for a service or when you are trying to build reputation as a professional, has become a moral referendum on egos....

Is it possible for a person to be good at what they do and feel good about it without necessarily becoming a heartless egomaniac?

I have met plenty of people like that, including the woman I mentioned before in my previous post...by the way, this was a Tarot reader that made a living out of it in what on this side of the world it would be considered a "third world country" during very hard times of terror and political upveal and her clients did not go to her to know if Jerry was cheating with Tammy, but would bring to her heartfelt, tough, painful matters...many had had losses of all kind and when I went to see her, I too had lost all what was dear to me...so she was accurate, yes she was, and a wonderful human being that helped many find hope and move on with their lives,while everything was falling apart around them, and I am one of those people...without her, her "accuracy" I would not be where I am today...she did predict all what has happened in these last 15 years in my life and I bless her for that...it was about the sitters, yes, but that does not take away that she was gifted, brilliant and skilled and to dismiss people like her with some santicmonious rash statement it truly unfair....

I sang for my living at one time and I was damned good; I still am. I did my own musical arrangements and rocked a lot of houses with them. Funny thing is as much as I knew how good I was, I lacked something in my overall attitude. I felt I was "above all the other singers" because I was that good. I intimidated a lot of folks. I believed my own press to the point that being about telling a story through music that might touch someone, or just to be entertaining was no longer the goal. I began to covet the feelings of "Aren't I great?" The things I lacked were compassion and humility. I was technically terrific, but had no heart. Once I realized what I was doing and the people I was not touching, I stopped. Cold turkey. I stopped singing. Until I learned what it is to sing for the public or one person and tell a story and really tell a story from the heart.

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I am glad you are singing again....I think that we all struggle with such issues at some point, but the difference is how we deal with that...we can choose to harshly judge ourselves for something that is just part of our nature or aknowledge it and move on, learn to live with it...you know?
Even the Dalai Lama has an ego, he talks about it in his writings.

It's the same with the Tarot. You can be as accurate as anything and you can receive the praise and adoration of the masses. But what good is it if you haven't helped a person to understand what it is they are trying to get? The cards are a tool. It is IMHO what we should be doing. Helping. I would rather have someone come to me for a reading simply because her/his friend said "I helped them through something that they just couldn't get or see."

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I think we all agree that the client, the sitter counts for something, but what I don't understand is why granting the reader also the aknowledgement for doing a good job then becomes this issue about ego and lack of compassion and "not helping"?
Can a Tarot reader be accurate and at the same time care for the sitter?
Or is such option impossible to concieve?

Now that's accuracy.

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No, helping is not accuracy, I am sorry...you can be helpful by listening and
assisting the sitter understand the problem or the situation better, but accuracy is another thing....accuracy means predicting or stating precise facts....we are misxing two different things in these discussion, both important , but both different things...

And again, it goes right back to the original. It's all about the sitter.

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I don't understand this point either...when was it said that the sitter is not important?
When was it said that it is all about the readers ego and self aggrandizing in spite of the poor sitter benefit ?

PS:
by the way Michelangelo had an ego the size of the State of Wisconsin and that is not coming in the way for us to enjoy today his incredible art( he painted the sixtine chapel after not touching a brush since he had been 13....and in a few months, as an adult, he created the art we so love today....I can live with his ego, thank you Michelangelo)

Baroli said:

'Pride goeth before the fall' somewhere in the book of Proverbs, that was taught to me in Sunday school.

I think having a good healthy dose of ego and pride about one's work is indeed very healthy and what we all have to a varying degree. However, when the work becomes too "accurate" and the praise and adjulation just becomes heaped upon by the truckloads, this is where it gets tricky, I think. You start to really believe your own press. This is a good and a bad thing. To believe in one self, and know that you're you're accurate is one thing, but to live off of the praise and soforth, is something else.

I sang for my living at one time and I was damned good; I still am. I did my own musical arrangements and rocked a lot of houses with them. Funny thing is as much as I knew how good I was, I lacked something in my overall attitude. I felt I was "above all the other singers" because I was that good. I intimidated a lot of folks. I believed my own press to the point that being about telling a story through music that might touch someone, or just to be entertaining was no longer the goal. I began to covet the feelings of "Aren't I great?" The things I lacked were compassion and humility. I was technically terrific, but had no heart. Once I realized what I was doing and the people I was not touching, I stopped. Cold turkey. I stopped singing. Until I learned what it is to sing for the public or one person and tell a story and really tell a story from the heart.

It's the same with the Tarot. You can be as accurate as anything and you can receive the praise and adoration of the masses. But what good is it if you haven't helped a person to understand what it is they are trying to get? The cards are a tool. It is IMHO what we should be doing. Helping. I would rather have someone come to me for a reading simply because her/his friend said "I helped them through something that they just couldn't get or see."

Now that's accuracy. And again, it goes right back to the original. It's all about the sitter.

That's my 2 cents.

Baroli

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Standing ovation for Baroli!

Technically, it really isn't accuracy, but your post did address beautifully what this hooha about "accuracy" is really all about.

Moderator note:

Hello,

I have removed four posts that were off topic, in the sense that they only were directed at another member.

Having been following this thread I can see that meanings have been accidentally shifted or changed and it makes the discussion hard to follow.

Please, try and not take the discussion too personally, and above all, if you feel angry with another person report the post, but continuing angrily in the thread turns the thread into a discussion about the discussion, and about each others and it goes completely off the rails.

Thank you,
Marion
co-Moderator, Talking Tarot

How do we know he had an ego the size of anything big just because he painted the Sistine Chapel?

Everyone does have an ego. That's a fact. But an over-inflated ego isn't a healthy thing.

I don't worry about whether I'm accurate or not. I just worry about whether or not my reading is going to be helpful to my sitter.

I don't worry about whether I'm accurate or not. I just worry about whether or not my reading is going to be helpful to my sitter.

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But how can something that's not accurate be helpful? Isn't accuracy what a Sitter wants in a reading? (Not rhetorical questions... I just truly cannot think how a reading can be valuable but not accurate.)

Solitaire* said:

How do we know he had an ego the size of anything big just because he painted the Cistine Chapel?

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No, he did not have an "ego" because he painted the Sixtine Chapel...he was born with it and was a strong, powerful one...there is plenty of literature out there about his life....makes an interesting read.

also, forgot to add....some sitters need accuracy to feel that they are being helped....and some readers need to know they are being accurate to feel they are being effective...that is my question...how can we help someone if we are not being accurate?

By the way, I am not a professional reader so I am not personally invested in this issue...I am actually a sitter and I do expect some level of accuracy in a reading, otherwise I would go and see a counselor or a therapist if I was only looking for some emotional comfort or to talk my issues trough...

I didn't say I'm not accurate. I said I don't focus on whether or not I am.

I agree that the literature about Michelangelo is a very interesting read. I've read a lot of it. I'd love to be able to see his work that he did in the Sistine Chapel but I won't ever get to see it in person, I don't think.