I still offer free classes and meetups after almost thirty years of being a full-time tarot professional. Informal tarot gatherings offer me the invaluable opportunity to learn how to describe, quantify, and teach the techniques I have developed innately over years of full-time tarot reading.

When I gather with other tarot professionals at conferences like StaarCon I discover that many of my peers have developed some of the same techniques. They may have similar or different ways of naming them and explaining them.

Tarot reading techniques are incredibly personal. No two readers will have the same style, though many of us share similarities in our ethics and approaches.

One way that readers differ from each other in is their ethical comfort and technique in handling delicate questions. Something came up during our recent Cards and Conversation Tarot Meetup at Panera Bread in Palm City. The way we handled it as a group helped me understand a technique that I have used unconsciously for years. The meetup brought this technique into focus for me, so now I can succinctly share it.

What is a delicate question for a tarot reader? Very often, questions related to health, especially in dire or extreme circumstances, can be one area of concern for readers.

Some readers simply refuse to answer any questions related to health. Some readers refuse any third-party questions. That is, questions about people who are not present and did not consent to be part of the reading.

Other readers try to work with every requested topic but may choose to rephrase the question. For instance, “What will be the outcome of my mother’s upcoming surgery?” might be rephrased to “What do I need to know about my mother’s upcoming surgery?” or “How can I best support my mother during her surgery?”

There are also readers who believe that the question should be posed of the cards exactly as the querent asked it, without any rephrasing.

I try to answer most questions client ask me. I will often rephrase, but I will not always make an obvious point of rephrasing.

At the meetup, we were doing readings for each other. One person would ask a question, and then anyone in the group who wanted to ring in would pull one card and give their answer.

The question that came up was regarding a family member in a precarious health situation. I used this as a teachable moment. I asked for a show of hands. If you received this question in a one-on-one setting, how many of you would politely refuse to answer? How many of you would offer prayer or tarot magic instead of prediction? How many of you would do the reading on the question as it was asked? How many of you would rephrase the question?

I tried to conduct this discussion in a way that was supportive of the person asking the question, and supportive of everyone’s thoughts about how they each might approach this delicate question.

Not one person in the group of fourteen people wanted to answer the question as it was asked.

We worked together on rephrasing the question. Then, those who felt called pulled single cards in answer to the rephrased question.

As the process unfolded, I noticed something significant. The cards that appeared in answer to the rephrased question were helpful when interpreted within the context of the new question, just as one might expect.

Yet, each of those same cards also had specific references within them to the original question. Each of the cards pulled to answer the rephrased question, if interpreted in answer to the original question, offered very specific information relevant to the original question. Nicely, these interpretations offered hope, solace, and the possibility of a positive outcome.

What happened here?

We know that we need to interpret cards in the context of the question asked, or the spread position in which they fall. But we also know that the cards we pull can offer additional information. In a positioned spread, cards can pop out of their position to offer extraneous and addition information, advice, and predictions. When answering a specific question, the card can be interpreted to answer the question, and then re-interpreted to offer more insight.

In this case the insight clearly offered the best possible answer to the original delicate question.

In describing what I was seeing and feeling, I realized that this is a technique I have been unconsciously using for years.

Here’s what to do if you want to try this technique the next time someone asks you a delicate question.

Rephrase the question and read for the rephrased question. If the cards that appear seem to speak to the original question, decide if the information they are offering is helpful to the querent. You may relay this information directly, or simply use this new information to adjust your tone, and help them set their expectations.

In the moment at the meetup, I referred to this technique as “backing into the reading”. Rather than answering a potentially upsetting question directly, we set up a circumstance where we could offer helpful information without being predictive. When the cards themselves came up making a prediction, we were able to decide whether to share that prediction, or how to let what we saw in those cards influence what we said to the questioner.

Now that I understand that I have been doing this with delicate questions for years, I am happy to be able to quantify this helpful technique and share it.

Do you ever back into a delicate reading? Is this something you might consider trying?