Helpful Tarot Love Readings

Whether you are a tarot pro, a tarot enthusiast, a tarot client, or merely curious, you know the trope. There is a perception that the primary consumers of tarot readings are the lovelorn.

There are real reasons for this. There are many, many cautionary tales of psychic addiction that stem from the pain of uncertain relationships and the false belief that a tarot reader can tell you, for certain, the destiny of your relationship. There are an equal or greater number of people who rely on wisdom from tarot to help them navigate difficult situations with great success.

We humans tend to over-spiritualize romance, often to our detriment. I think that is because so many of us are driven, either by hormones, societal conditioning, or genuine desire, to find a workable relationship. At the same time, workable relationships can be hard to find, and hard to maintain.

When an attraction or connection with another person catches us, it can feel spiritual, whether it is or not. That crush, or new relationship, or amazing sex, can be captivating. That sense of connection with another human generates for us all sorts of questions. Where better to take those questions than to your own tarot deck, to a friend with a tarot deck, or to a professional reader?

Skillful work with tarot can indeed help us with all aspects of navigating relationships. That includes finding love, choosing a partner, building a healthy relationship, ending what doesn’t work, healing problems in a long-term relationship, healing from a breakup, and handling the grief of widowhood. Yet, tarot in the hands of naïve or manipulative people can sometimes make things harder.

How Unskilled Tarot Hurts Us in Relationships

Sometimes people stay in abusive relationships because they believe that tarot told them they were meant to be together. Sometimes people mourn the ending of an unhealthy relationship because they believe tarot told them that they were soulmates, or that their lost relationship was their only possibility for partnership.

I have seen readers encourage clients to believe that a spiritually ordained ‘soulmate’ relationship would be without any conflict or difficulty and would not need any maintenance work to prosper.

I have seen readers give false hope to clients for relationships that are obviously over, never to return.

These are but a few of the ways that unskilled use of tarot can hurt us in relationships. In this age of livestreamed collective tarot readings, there are also those who conflate a collective reading on YouTube or TikTok with a specific one-on-one reading. This can lead to a great deal of misunderstanding and misguidance for those already in emotional turmoil.

How Tarot Can Help

Good practices in relationship readings require asking the right questions and managing expectations.

Collective readings on social media can be fun, interesting, informative, and even profound. However, do not assume that the collective reading about “where your relationship is going” is necessarily a valid piece of helpful information for your individual situation.

Do not assume that the future of a relationship is always predictable at all. Love is a choice that each partner must make every day. It may be impossible, in a single reading, to predict what two people will choose each day for the rest of their lives.

 “Will we stay together?” “Is he the one for me?” “Is this the right relationship?” “Is this my soulmate?” are very often not helpful questions, or questions that can easily receive an accurate answer.

On the reverse side, if the cards clearly suggest that a person might be dangerous or abusive, and you have other substantiating information or history, it might be a good idea to trust the cards and use caution, no matter how attached you may feel in your heart. If this is the case in an ongoing relationship, asking the cards about options and solutions can be very helpful.

When we ask, “What does this person feel about me?” or “What does this person think of me?” we may get a valid answer that is helpful. Or we may get an answer based on a passing thought or mood. Even in very stable relationships our moods and feelings can shift from moment to moment. A snapshot of a particular moment might be misleading. Asking that sort of question could also be a gross invasion of privacy.

There are many questions we can ask of the cards to help us navigate relationships.

A single person may receive great counsel by asking, “What can I do to attract the right partner?” or, “What can we know about the possibility of a new relationship for me in the near future?”

Tarot can be helpful in vetting possible candidates. A reading can give us a heads-up about potential good matches, and those who might be incompatible and inappropriate.

When you want to access the potential of a new relationship, a two-question reading is helpful. Ask “What is the worst this relationship could be?” and “What is the best this relationship could be?”

Another helpful question to ask any time in a relationship timeline is, “What can I do right now to make this relationship the best it could be?”

In a relationship, tarot can help us improve communication with our beloved, and can help us meet their needs, and get our own need met. “How can I help my partner?” can be a great question to ask. “How can I communicate my concerns to my partner in a way that they can hear me?” is another helpful question.

Tarot can help us know when it is time to leave a relationship, and how to heal. Tarot can keep us in communication with our loved one in spirit after they leave this earth.

If you have questions about love, romance, and relationships, tarot can provide helpful answers, but only if you have the skill to ask the right questions and interpret the cards thoughtfully, or if you find a good, intuitive, intelligent tarot reader to do those things for you.

If you are reading for yourself on your own relationship, it is helpful to remember this. No matter how intuitive you are, no one should fully trust their intuition when it comes to matters of their own heart. It is almost always impossible to discern the difference between desire and intuition when we are in the throes of heartbreak or attraction.

Follow your heart, certainly, but keep your head, and attend the wise counsel of tarot in a way that is healthy and healing. It is better to use the cards to help us make wise decisions, understand our feelings, find solutions, and know our options.

Many relationships feel like fate and destiny, but only a few of those truly are. Even a relationship that is a brilliant match can suffer from neglect and poor communication.

Many people think that the cards can help us know our fate. I think the cards do a better job helping us understand ourselves and those around us so we can make good decisions for the best possible future, in love and in life.

How to Read for Keyword Questions

How to Read for Keyword Questions

“‘Love life’ is not a question!” A fellow reader shared this thought in frustration after working a lengthy gig where she had to quickly read a long line of impatiently waiting people.

I understand the frustration. When doing short readings, a clear question is much easier to work with.

Yet, when we have some time to spend with a client, I enjoy the keyword questions because they allow us to expand into many different questions.

Here’s how it works. If a person simply says that their question is ‘love life,’ we can expand that into the following questions.

What has been the energy or experience of love in the past?

What relationship modeling was provided in childhood?

What is the current relationship situation?

What can be done to improve or nurture the current situation?

Here’s another example. If the keyword question is ‘career’ you have no idea whether the person is unemployed, happily employed or unhappily employed. You have no idea if they are doing what they want to be doing, or if they have a dream they have yet to fulfill.

It can be an interesting exercise to simply ask a question such as, ‘What is the energy around career at the moment?’ and pull a few cards. Share the energies you see in the cards and see how it fits with the client’s situation, and the way the client perceives their situation. Then you can ask further questions to help the client set goals for next steps and understand what could be possible for the future.

In readings that need to be short, keyword questions are the bane of readers everywhere. When you have some time to explore, keyword questions allow the reader to develop the narrative by asking multiple questions in a way that can be extremely helpful and enlightening.

Answers to Your Questions about Tarot: Why wouldn’t you want to do a reading?

This question is from Katie, who wondered why she was reticent to perform a specific tarot spread about a new child in her life.

The spread was called “A Child is Born”, and had a very predictive tone to it.

I believe there are times when all things are possible, and predictions just aren’t helpful. The energy wrapped up in a brand new baby is like that – why try to limit the possibilities with predictions?

At these sorts of times, it might be best to ask different questions of the cards, such has, “How can I help this new person?” or “What do I need to know about this new person?”

Often, when we are reticent to go to the cards, it’s really the questions we are asking, or the spread we are using, that create the problem.

Enjoy the video!