Some Thoughts About the Questions We Ask Tarot

In building tarot skills, learning to develop questions is often just as important as learning card interpretations and intuitive techniques. 

Those who read tarot for others, either professionally or casually, seem to fall into two groups. One group wants to honor their clients’ question exactly as it is asked.

The other group wants to feel free to rephrase the question, and this for a variety of reasons.

I fall into the second group. For me there are many reasons to rephrase a question. We might rephrase for clarity, or for ethics.

Beyond rephrasing, I believe that sometimes a question needs to be broken out into more than a single question.

I did a short text reading for someone recently that illustrated the need to break out questions, and the need for tarot readers to be hyper aware that the question that the seeker is asking may not be the question that needs answering.

The question my seeker asked me was if she should go do a particular thing. The cards were very clear that this thing needed to be done, so I said yes, she should do it.

She then told me that she had hired a person to do this thing, and what she was really asking was if she should be present while the person she hired was doing the thing, or if she should just let the person do it without her. Clearly, this is an entirely different question.

Adding to the situation is that the thing she had hired the person to do had a very charged energy related to her specifically, so her presence there could be problematic.

Had I considered her question more thoroughly and intuitively, or had I probed a bit to get her to make her question clearer, I might have known to break the question into several parts, as follows.

Does the thing need to be done?
If yes:

What happens if she does the thing?

What happens if she gets someone else to do the thing?

What happens if she is there while the thing is being done by the person she hired?

As it was, she eventually clarified the question, so I was ultimately able to give her the reading she needed, rather than the reading she originally requested.

This experienced served to remind me that a single question reading truly is only as good as the question asked. I need to be vigilant in making sure I am asking the right questions of the cards. For me, and perhaps for many readers, more questions in a session usually works better than fewer questions. The original single question is often more of a topic, or a line of inquiry, than an actual single question.