The Tao of Tarot.

The Tao of Tarot.

I have been reading cards since I was 14 some 20 years now (holy crap where did the time go). My friends Mum was a gypsy who lived in a council house in a small village near by. She taught me, my sister and her daughter at the same time. We used regular playing cards with varying degrees of success. Now I took to itright away not that my sister was shabby she just "didn't get it". Read as "this is a bit weird for me." At the time I read my friends and saw things, good and bad. At collage and then University I gave readings then too. At 18 I got my first tarot deck. At University I first got paid in money, though it always felt weird being paid. I got to the point that I was so broke I didn't care how weird it was. At the tail end of Uni I met a wonderful wizard, who was very wise and told me that "If you do not value your worth, no-one else will". At his advice I found the average rate per reading and charged that. I have done this on and off for years with marriage an babies, death, and moving more times than I care to count.
I have read hundreds of books on the subject, everything from the tarot being an expression of someone subconscious and tarot as psycho pomp therapy session to it being a way for the Old Gods to speak directly.
   My opinion is that it is the reader, not the cards that hold the key. People make a really big deal about the cards they have. I am not immune to this. I think they are beautiful and have many decks. Yet the deck someone picks often tells me the kind of question they want answers to. How I lay them has as much to do with the person I am reading as the size of the table. People enjoying the reading get lost enough in looking not at me, but the cards that I can see a reflection. These images, feelings and sensations are brief and difficult to describe. THAT is the true readers art. Translating honestly what they see while not scaring the pants off the person being read, leaving them healed, relieved and hopeful in some way.
I think it is therapeutic to place someones life on a table and tell them honestly how it is, how it could be and how it will come to pass. When someone having a party (no I have no idea why you would want a reader at a party either) and the host sits down smiling and I lay the cards and tell her that her soul crushing loneliness is right there, right there screaming at me and all the walls of pretense just fall away, it is magick. Something real happens because she has been seen. The events (because the good and bad of these depends on the reaction most often) that are to come or that have been are often viewed through teary eyes. This is a truly moving process and one that also moves me. The whole experience is one of true authenticity. People do not always like what I see, or what I say and if I know it is going to be a bitter pill I try and sweeten it as best as I can.
The cards are permission. They are the persons consent to have me peer into places within them and within their journey even they can not or will not look.
This is why you can use tarot as a meditation or spell work tool but reading yourself is pointless. You will always steer the cards, discount the ones you think or feel do not apply. You will willful ignore what you do not wish to believe.
I have done reading after reading, all ages, and genders and walks of life. Sometimes I do not see anything. This doesn't mean they are going to drop dead, (not that I am aware of). I am aware that sometimes, for whatever reason either I am blocked from seeing or they are not supposed to know. Sometimes I see so much that the person being read can not accept that I might as well see nothing. I speak honestly and sometimes I feel the tendrels of spirit whisper very specific phrases that the person needs to hear.
At 20 I went to a little psychic fayre and was told all kinds of useful stuff by both readers. One clearly knew I was going to be a pro, he even told me the colour of my reading cloth (gold silk).
While there are terrible readers out there (in every level top to bottom) reading and touching the most intimate moments of peoples lives is an honour and privilege, and something I always try and keep sights of.
If you want to use tarot, don't worry about the spreads, or the layouts, or the cards, focus on the person. Practice every change you get on as many people as you can. No not worry if you see nothing. Be as authentic and present as you can be.