What do you do when a reading is totally off the mark? (+ the tricky Courtcards)

I looked at an earlier thread where one person talked about the time when she talked about actions the querants mother an father was going to do in the future, just to find out that they were dead! ) And I remember readings I did when I totally failed to read anything about a crisis one person had been going through, twice! Not a single card indicated a crisis!

So... I have two questions.

1) What do you do when a reading is totally off the mark and deadly wrong?

2) For me it seems that most mistakes has to do with the court cards, that I for some reason have more difficulties with. Especially I have problems judging if it is court card descibes a person or something else.. For one reason or the other it is so! (For me court cards can be both persons and characteristics/actions) What do you think about that?

/Torbjörn

I think this is a a great issue

I can think of two answers for that.

One is that the quarent can be empty at the time and is acting like a conduit for communication about one who is CLOSE to the sitter but not the sitter. Having been such a sitter, at the time I felt empty and open I was purposely trying to not jam my Tarot card reader. She went on about a lot of things that were not me but I didn't argue other than to frustrate her by nodding no to a lot of questions. She said "It looks like, it feels like, the house is going to fall on your head!" The very next day 3 hurricanes sequentially hit Florida and my mother's bedroom ceiling did indeed finally give way, her house did fall around her. Fortunately, upon instinct and her dog going nuts, she'd gone to the bathroom seconds before. Looking back, the entire reading was dead on...about my mother. I actually wrote a letter to the Tarot card reader assuring her that she hadn't missed at all. The guides were trying to talk, she was being a medium, its just that if the guides could send typed telegrams, they probably would have them pin-pointed addressed. In that case "mother of the house" just wasn't close enough for either of us to pick up on.

When doing readings for others, if something seems off, I'll say it outloud.
The testimony that you are refering to I just label "interferring transmission". Its like everybody sitting in a library and someone runs in and has an emergency. I figure that if the guides have something big to say, they're going to break in the lines.

The other answer has to do with the court cards specifically. If someone IS contrary, they're cards are going to be. The King of Pentacles for a contrary person is being a guest somewhere, or a "big take" A contrary person who is comfortable with living on the edge does not LIKE the 4 of Wands upward for example. If they are addicts and live for feeding King of Wands reversed for example, their out of controlness, for them the world is their oyster and they will want to create chaos upon chaos so that no one sees what they are up to.

These are just a couple of probabilities

1) What do you do when a reading is totally off the mark and deadly wrong?

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Three Things (in order):
1.) Do my best to make amends if anyone was negatively affected by my human error.
2.) Find out why/how I was wrong, if possible.
3.) Move on.

2) For me it seems that most mistakes has to do with the court cards, that I for some reason have more difficulties with. Especially I have problems judging if it is court card descibes a person or something else.. For one reason or the other it is so! (For me court cards can be both persons and characteristics/actions) What do you think about that?

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I have the same issue sometimes still. If I'm unsure, I prefer to draw a clarifying card to answer that point.

I find two common happenings for a "dead wrong" reading:

1) Sometimes the querent doesn't want to hear the truth, or isn't open to it. I have friends/family that come to me for a Tarot reading expecting me to drop out only cards of encouragement and hope. While those cards do exist in the deck, they do not exclusively represent the archetypes in life. The first thing I ask myself in a dead wrong reading is, "Do these cards feel like they're in the right place?" If the cards tell me their message gets to be told, I tell the querent to go home and really be sincere with themselves as they ponder the reading. Perhaps the querent isn't getting that their question is related to a deeper issue, or symptom of a greater whole. If they don't like this, I may sometimes ask the cards to present a baby-step for the querent in the form of a 1 or 3 card flop. (If I feel empowered to "nudge" them)

Something else I have found is that every person is experiencing every card to some degree in their life at all times. An open-hearted querent will be led to their truths by any reading, any spread and any layout. Don't be too hard on yourself if they aren't prepared to hear their message. I am delighted and inspired by querents who take the mysterious aspects of their readings as the topics for their personal meditation.

2) If I feel the cards aren't clearly telling me anything, or that I simply cannot make sense of them I tell them so (this looks something like me holding the deck, smiling, and thinking in my mind "uh, what's up with this, guys?"). I also will do a personal check for my neutrality - are my own energies blocking the reception? Do I have a personal matter that conflicts with my querent's? Perhaps I have something to learn from their reading that I'M not prepared to hear/say. At times like this it may serve to grab a seperate deck and do a quick one-card flop for myself. Also scan the reading for a personal hit - did the deck want to send you a message before it sent one to the querent? You may consider jotting down the spread, re-reading for your querent, and then later going back to the spread for your own study.

Tarot is entirely based on the premise that there's no such thing as an accident or coincidence. Cards rise to the top of your deck by some level of energetic orchestration! I feel a deep curiosity when I'm challenged to find out why!

Oh, and PS - court cards are mostly mysterious to me too Sometimes I get what they're saying, and other times I fumble around them.

First court cards: I also draw cards for clarification. I have a system that makes it possible for me to know more about the court card, and that also clarifies if indeed is a woman or a man that the card talks about.

When my reading is VERY MUCH off the mark I still have respect for the reading. It usually means something, but not for the person I was reading it for, perhaps more for me! I use clarfication cards too to tell me more about that reading!

More experiences, anyone?

/T

I'm with xhollysue... dead wrong readings, inevitably mean the querant is entirely in denial.

I very rarely if ever see courts as anything BUT people... so, needing to qualify them is entirely unnecessary in the way I read... complicates things if you ask me... But that said... If YOU believe there is something "wrong" with the reading... it certainly means you should be examining why you believe it is wrong.

As Ligator said, every reading means something, even if you, the reader, aren't quite getting it.

When I don't quite "get it", I will post it here for feedback.

I'm with xhollysue... dead wrong readings, inevitably mean the querant is entirely in denial.

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I wholeheartedly disagree. In fact, I think this POV is very unhealthy.

If the sitter is in denial, the reading will normally show that.

There are dead wrong readings, in my opinion. They are usually a lack of focus or a lack of compatibility, for one reason or another.

berrieh said:

I wholeheartedly disagree. In fact, I think this POV is very unhealthy.

If the sitter is in denial, the reading will normally show that.

There are dead wrong readings, in my opinion. They are usually a lack of focus or a lack of compatibility, for one reason or another.

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It's not been my experience.

If the sitter comes to me and is already in denial, then it will show in the cards, but if the sitter really has no idea of the truth, and then suggests that what the cards are saying is simply wrong, it's not like that, then the reading may "seem" dead wrong. But it never is.

My point was to not question the cards, but to question why the reader felt that there was something wrong with the reading... It is my NHO that the cards are never wrong.

The cards are never wrong... But the person interpreting the cards could be (like misinterpreting court cards or something)... And the person that one is reading for could be in a state of denial or simply lying...

But it would be interesting to here more from you about the first case, when the reading is wrong due to misinterpretation!

/T

Interesting topic!

I think I can agree with both sides. Most of the time when I fumble in th dark I get the feeling of that the card is right. Somehow I can see it in their pattern. But then, I have not been able for some reason pick up on that specific pattern which means that the reading can go way off.

The most recent experience with that was when I did a reading exchange here and I got 6 of Pentacles as the first card. I intpreted it as the woman I was reading for was striving to give back to the universe what she had recieved. It turned out it was the opposite. She was in desperate need for a gift from the universe. But after that was cleared out the reading was as I understood it very accurate.

But then I can also agree on that there are circumstances where you jsut rush in shuffle and toss out the cards with no focus at all and these times the cards rarely makes any sense. This have usually happened for when I have done readings for myself so I have rearely saved those readings. But I have got the strongest feeling that it was not me that time - the card just did not make sense because there was no sense to make out of it. Because I had been to unfocused on my intent to start with!