Sympathetic Resonance in Tarot

Sympathetic Resonance is a term we use in music. It’s a harmonic phenomenon that happens when, for example, a string on your guitar vibrates when it’s not being played because you have hit a note that has a harmonic likeness.

We use the term ‘resonance’ when we speak of tarot readings and psychic work to mean that something that comes up in a reading affects you, makes sense to you, or brings you to an ‘aha moment’.

An interesting fact about that sort of resonance is that it can happen even when the reading is not specifically for you.

This happens in group readings like psychic galleries or social media live broadcasts. It happens when readers do general cards for the week, or for astrological signs. Sometimes a message, though it wasn’t specifically meant for you, lands home in a way that is impactful and helpful.

Any tarot reader who reads for other people, either casually or professionally, can tell you that this happens for us during our readings for others, as well. Sometimes we will be reading for someone and deliver a message that is pertinent to them, but hits home for us, too. Sometimes we will find, hidden in the cards like an Easter egg, a message that seems to be directed to us. Usually we will not reveal to our querent that this has happened. We will simply take the message and mentally file it away for our later rumination.

A mistake that some readers make is to assume that since the message so strongly resonated for them, the reading they are trying to give their querent is actually for and about them, not the querent. This can cause unfortunate and unnecessary confusion.

When we read for others, whether professionally or casually, we must be prepared for the possibility that, sometimes, we will receive a message for ourself wrapped within the reading we are giving our querent.

This can be a tricky situation. It is important that we do not insert ourselves into our clients’ readings. We should, in general, refrain from talking about ourselves, or thinking about ourselves, during the process of reading for a client.

The most profound experience of this sort of resonance I ever had happened many years ago, in the mid-1990s. I was reading casually for a co-worker at a part-time job. She asked about her brother, a teenager, who had serious kidney problems. The cards I pulled for him were not at all encouraging.

I silently asked the cards for another option. I received the Six of Pentacles, which is about charity, the Page of Cups, which can be an offering of love, and the Queen of Wands, my significator. I told my querent not to worry, that her brother would be fine.

The message I received in those three cards was clear. Five months later, I gave my co-worker’s brother my right kidney.

How can we tell when we are receiving a message for ourselves as we read for a client? I assume it feels different for each reader. The trick is to identify what it feels like, and then be willing to silently take and remember the message for later reflection, while staying present for the querent and their reading.

Very often, for me, the feeling is laser-sharp and unmistakable. It is one of the few ways I am clairaudient. It might happen that I will be giving a client some clear advice, and hear strongly within my ear a message like, ‘Physician, heal thyself’. There can be a physical sensation as well, that feels like a percussive thud in my heart chakra.

Good tarot readers have to do a lot of mental multi-tasking. Being able to receive the occasional resonant message delivered during a tarot session is just one of the many possible miracles for which we must hold space.

What I Learned from Twelve Days of Tarot Epiphanies

What I Learned from Twelve Days of Tarot Epiphanies

Some of you know that during the Twelve Days of Christmas, December 26 through January 6, I did a daily live broadcast on Facebook Live, where pulled a card looking for a tarot epiphany.

After I did my own card, I spent some time finding tarot epiphanies for others.

You can review these videos on my YouTube channel, or here on my website.

Each day I used a different deck. It was fun to look through my collections and pull out some old favorites, along with some newer decks I haven’t explored well yet.

I asked each person who committed to do the Twelve Days with me to keep track of the cards they received each day. Then, at the end, we would each have a twelve-card spread for the new year.

Here are the twelve cards I pulled, along with some thoughts about them as a spread.

If you did this exercise, please share your cards, and your thoughts about them, in the comments!

Day One: Hanged Man, Morgan Greer Tarot

Day Two: Four of Swords, Crystal Visions Tarot

Day Three: Queen of Swords, Ancestral Path Tarot

Day Four: Knight of Cups, Encore Tarot

Day Five: Knight of Cups, Illuminati Tarot

Day Six: Knight of Wands, Spirit Within Tarot

Day Seven: Three of Wands, Golden Tarot

Day Eight: Strength, Ghosts and Spirits Tarot

Day Nine: Knight of Cups, Hanson Roberts Tarot

Day Ten: King of Cups, Tarot of Dreams

Day Eleven: King of Pentacles, Moonchild Tarot

Day Twelve: Devil, World Spirit Tarot

Seven of the twelve cards were Court cards, and three time the Knight of Cups appeared. To me, the predominance of Court cards offers two important messages for the year. First, I must make serving people my top priority. Second, I must embody the characteristics of the particular Court cards that appeared. Since the Knight of Cups was predominate, that card will be my guiding light this year. I must be a warrior for love.

That’s a huge challenge. I must contemplate how love presents itself, and how to present with love in each situation. I don’t expect to be able to completely live up to that challenge, but I will surely try.

There were more Wands and Cups than any other suit. This pleases me, and makes me think that this can be a year of creativity, as I work to share love with the world.

The two cards in the beginning, Hanged Man and Four of Swords, remind me to be meditative and thoughtful before springing into action.

When I look at the three Major Arcana cards, I remember that Strength is my birth-card, and also the card associated with my rising sign, Leo. That the first and last cards are both Majors seems significant to me. They seem to act as bookends on the reading. I must enter the year with surrender, contemplation and meditation. The Devil as a final card seems to both warn and encourage me. The Devil warns me against obsessive thinking and attaching to things that don’t serve me. At the same time, the Devil seems to encourage me to approach my work this year with a strong sense of duty. I must make myself a slave to my purpose. My purpose, apparently, is to be the Knight of Cups.

For me, this will be about enslaving myself to my love of tarot, my desire to spread good and helpful information about tarot, and to read for as many people, and teach as many people, as possible. And, I must do all of this with genuine love in my heart. In some ways this might be a hard thing to do. Yet, because my love of my work is so very authentic, in many ways it will be the easiest thing I could do.

There is something else that strikes me about the Knight of Cups in this particular context. The Twelve Days of Christmas mark the time from Christmas Day to Epiphany, which is celebrated as the day when those mythical Three Wise Men, or Three Kings, brought their symbolic gifts to the Christ child. Could the fact that the Knight of Cups appeared three times symbolize those three kings, known as Balthazar, Caspar and Melchior, and the three gifts they brought, gold, frankincense and myrrh?

It is interesting to note that today, those three items are still used in the magical rituals of many cultures. I will think about the symbolism of those three magical tools, and how they might enter in to my life and my work this year.

Some Thoughts on Three-Card Tarot Spreads

Some Thoughts on Three-Card Tarot Spreads

When I took my first tarot classes thirty-five years ago, three-card readings were one of the first things we learned to do, after learning the seventy-eight cards.

Many cultures consider the number Three to be the most powerful and sacred number. We might say that the power of that number is conferred to the reading when we use that number of cards. Perhaps that is one reason three-card readings are so popular.

Three-card readings are a great tool for teaching tarot because it is the smallest number of cards one can use to teach complex reading techniques that connect the cards together to create a cohesive message or story.

Three-card readings can be positioned or non-positioned. A positioned spread is when each of the three positions has a meaning that gives context to the card that falls within in. A non-positioned spread is when you simply pull three cards and find messages within them, without ascribing positional meanings to each card.

It is important to learn to do both kinds of tarot spreads.

Three-card readings, both positioned and non-positioned, are great exercises for tarot students at all levels of study. Three-card readings, both positioned and non-positioned, are a great tool to answer specific questions within the scope of a longer tarot-reading session.

There are many great three-card spreads, such as Past/Present/Future, Body/Mind/Spirit and Morning/Afternoon/Evening. I very often devise tarot exercises that are based on three cards.

When reading a three-card positioned spread, we need to work the context of each position into our reading.

Many people use Past/Present/Future to answer questions of any kind. The technique to do that effectively is to think about how the Past card reflects the situation in the past only if that makes sense in the context of the question. If it doesn’t, use the Past card to think about the energies you are bringing into the situation. Perhaps you have encountered similar situations in the past. Things that have happened in the past could inform the current situation.

The Present card will give direct information about the current situation. What is going on with it right now? How do you feel about it? How does this card match your feelings about the situation?

The Future card will give a prediction for how the situation will resolve or offer advice for the situation going forward. This card may help you make decisions about the situation at hand. Often, a view of a possible outcome can wisely inform our decisions.

When using a non-positioned spread, you have the freedom to move the cards around and see how they fit together in various ways. You can form a story, or a sentence, or you can take aspects of each card and see how they tie in together.

Working with both kinds of three-card spreads builds our skills as readers.

Lately, I have noticed that some readers seem to stop developing skills at this point. They don’t learn to interpret larger spreads, or to incorporate other tarot divination techniques. I notice readers offering three-card spreads in professional settings, and very often complaining that their businesses aren’t growing as quickly as they would like.

If you are a tarot pro and have found a three-card technique that is working for you, that’s excellent. Don’t fix what isn’t broken. But, if you aren’t happy with how your business is going, consider that your reliance on such a small spread in the professional setting might be part of the problem.

I often use three-card spreads in professional sessions, but only as part of the session. I use multiple spreads and techniques in any tarot session, even if that session is a five-minute reading in a party setting.

If you are interested in growing your skills as a reader, or growing your business as a tarot professional, work to master the three-card reading, and grow beyond it. That doesn’t mean you should stop doing three-card readings, it means you should develop numerous divination techniques and learn to combine them as each situation dictates.

Three-card readings are an important tool in our tarot toolbox. But they shouldn’t be the only tool we have.

When are Third-Party Readings Helpful?

When are Third-Party Readings Helpful?

The practical ethics of reading about people.

In the world of tarot reading, a third-party reading happens when a client asks for information about someone who is not present, and who did not consent to be read.

Early in my tarot career I had a mentor who advised against third-party readings for a very practical reason. He said that clients would often ask for information about someone who doesn’t exist as a way of tripping up the reader. For example, a person with no siblings may ask for information about her sister, to see if the reader can tell that she doesn’t have a sister.

Sometimes the cards will appear in such a way that the reader will be able to tell that the client is messing with them. Sometimes the cards will give information about a friend or other relative who has a sisterly relationship with the client. Regardless, my mentor’s take was that these readings are best to be avoided.

There are other reasons to consider avoiding third-party readings. Many people believe that to read for someone without their consent is patently unethical.

I believe that, as with many things in tarot, a good reader must evaluate each request and make decisions on a case-by-case basis.

As a professional reader, I have to say I do a lot of third-party readings for a lot of good reasons. There are also some requests I will deny. I make sure that I never shame my client for asking a question that I feel might be unethical or unhelpful to answer. I will usually find a way to rephrase the question or find an appropriate question to ask about the client’s concern.

Tarot ethics are important, but there is no Ministry of Tarot Ethics that decrees what is right and wrong for each of us. As we become ready to read for others, either casually or professionally, we each must figure out what feels right and wrong to us.

What I will share next are my parameters around third-party readings. I am not suggesting that these be your parameters. However, perhaps this will inspire you to consider your own ethics around this important topic.

First, for me it is impossible to read for someone without mentioning the people around them. Our relationships are part of who we are. There are many cards that very often specifically reference other people, most notably the Empress, the Emperor, and the sixteen Court cards. I have to believe that if third-party readings were never to be done, these cards wouldn’t work to describe people so accurately.

One branch of psychic work concerns itself completely with speaking of other people; those who have passed on. Readers who, like me, use tarot in mediumship work would be unable to function if they refrained from third-party readings.

For me, it is fine to discuss our client’s relationships with others, including problems in familial relationships, and solutions for better communication. I think it is fine to discuss the behavior of children, the care of elders and the maintenance of marriages.

I think it is fine to use tarot to strategize our exit from love relationships, and to strategize our relationships with people at work.

When clients want to speculate about the new relationships of their exes, I draw a line. If you are interested in knowing about the intimate details of your ex-husband’s new marriage, the most important question to explore is about why this is bothering you, and how you can heal and move on.

For me, whenever third-party readings might serve to keep a wound open, we need to instead heal the wound. Whenever third-party readings take on a tone of gossip rather than a of healing and helping, we need to figure out what is being triggered in the client, and how we can help heal it.

We also need to be careful not to base readings on assumptions clients have about other people. “Why does my boss hate me?” is a question that can’t be answered until you first ascertain what might really be going on between boss and employee. Perhaps the boss doesn’t hate their employee at all. Then, the question can be turned into two important questions. “What is your boss doing that causes you to feel unappreciated, and how can you change your behavior to create a better working relationship?”

Sometimes friends and family members give clients permission to ask about them. “My daughter wanted me to ask you about her new job.” My husband wants to know if we should get his mother into assisted living.” These sorts of questions are also third-party readings, but to me have no ethical issue since the reading has been requested by the individuals themselves.

Does it harm a person to have a reading conducted about them, without their knowledge? I once saw someone on social media refer to this as a violation akin to “spiritual rape”. To me, that is a bit over the top. The fact is, people talk about people behind their backs constantly. If it is done with meanness and a desire to gossip, it’s probably neither helpful nor healthy. Yet, if it is done with a desire to heal, to help and to understand, I think there is no harm done, and often a great deal of help provided.

When You Feel Disconnected from Your Tarot Cards

When You Feel Disconnected from Your Tarot Cards

The biggest complaint I hear from newer tarot students is that they just don’t feel like they are ‘connecting’ to their tarot cards. I see this problem every day in tarot groups on social media. Sometimes it is a tarot deck, or a specific card, to which a person is having a hard time feeling connected. Sometimes the frustrated tarotist explains that a week ago, or a month ago, they were feeling very connected, and getting great readings with the deck, and now, suddenly, they are not.

Often this phenomenon leads to a tarot student feeling badly about themselves. Sometimes they spiritualize the problem to the point that they feel like the cards are punishing them by refusing to speak with them. Worse, students will sometimes use this perceived lack of connection to discount important messages from the cards because they feel their cards ‘don’t like them’.

Much of this problem comes from confusion because tarot works on so many levels, and can be so amazingly powerful. It is possible for a person who has never seen a tarot card before, and has no idea what the cards traditionally mean, to give a profound reading based entirely on what they see in the pictures and how the pictures intuitively make them feel. It’s also true that there are some very good pro psychic readers who use tarot in their readings without ever having studied the actual meanings of the cards.

Why is tarot such a powerful intuitive tool? I believe this is for two main reasons. The first reason, simply, is the brow chakra, or third eye. The brow chakra supports our eyesight, which views the tarot image. It also supports our imagination, which allows us to connect the image with a story. The third eye is also the seat of our psychic vision, which allows us to connect that story with something happening in life.

The second reason, from my perspective, is the unique thing that tarot has become over its six-hundred-year lifespan. Tarot began as a game which personified and illustrated characters and virtues of medieval spiritual thought. Over time, we found within those characters and virtues archetypes of human experience. Those archetypes can speak about us, and to us, on a visceral level.

The problem comes when we aren’t able to tune in intuitively, perhaps because we aren’t feeling well, or because we are too emotionally invested in the problem we trying to sort out with tarot. It could also be that the problem we are tackling is very complex. Lacking enough intellectual understanding of the cards, we feel disconnected from them, simply because we are, at the moment, disconnected from our intuition. That intuitive disconnection is an unavoidable occurrence from time to time. And, sometimes intuition simply isn’t enough to give a great tarot reading.

Something that exacerbates this problem is the rampant lousy advice that new tarot students should choose as their first deck the cards they feel ‘drawn to’. I have a huge personal dislike for this tired trope. In what other field of study are students told to choose a tool because they think it’s pretty? Imagine a carpentry student being taught that the right hammer for the job is whichever one they find most attractive!

Tarot art is a wonderfully diverse and powerfully evocative thing. Yet, your first deck should be the one you can most easily learn and understand, not the one you find the most attractive. The reward is this. If you develop a solid understanding of tarot archetypes, traditions, systems, associations and practices, you have a lifetime to collect all the beautiful decks you want and can afford. You will discover, too, that only some of the decks you find alluring, clever and beautiful are decks that you like using for readings. You may also find that some decks whose art you don’t really enjoy read magnificently for you.

When we emphasize art over archetype, we start to believe our connection to tarot is with individual images rather than the whole of tarot itself.

Objects, symbols and art all carry energy, and each deck has its own way of presenting the tarot archetypes. It’s also true, and a good practice, that tarotists ceremonially make an energetic connection with their decks. It would be erroneous to say that there is no such thing as a tarot reader’s connection (and therefore possible disconnection) with their cards.

It’s also true that we do make personal connections with individual cards; cards that become our stalkers, our significators, our magickal tools and expressions of our feelings, goals and experiences. This process of connecting with our decks is an important part of being a tarotist.

However, when we are having a hard time understanding a reading, lack of connection with your cards may not be the issue.

When you are giving a great reading, you are connecting with more than your cards.

A great intuitive reading may be informed or evoked by the images on the cards and the way they make you feel. Yet, there is a connection between you and something higher. However you see that mystical connection, be it with angels or consciousness, deity or higher self, I believe that tarot reading is a spiritual process supported by, and evoked by art, imagery, symbolism and the third eye. Tarot reading involves something beyond us and the cards.

I believe that a best-case tarot reading is really five connections. The first three are the connection we make with the images of our deck, the connection we make with the tarot archetypes, and the connection we make with higher consciousness, whatever we believe that to be. The final two are what many newer readers miss; the keywords and associations we connect with each card, and the way we connect what we see in the cards to what is actually happening in life. Without all five connections, your tarot reading isn’t everything it could be.

If you aren’t feeling the flow in a reading as you usually do, stop worrying about connecting to the cards, and think about your connection to spirit. Breathe, and invite your angels, ancestors, loved ones, higher self, or deities to speak through the cards. Consciously take a step away from your own attachments and be willing to hear truth, for yourself or for another.

Over time, take your tarot studies more seriously. Learn keywords for the cards and understand their archetypes. Work with more than one deck to see how the archetypes are expressed differently and add that to you understanding of each card.

Stop judging yourself or your cards for the lack of connection. Use that disconnected feeling to inspire your meditation and study.

Some tarotists will suggest that backing away from tarot is a way to cure this sense of disconnection. If you are anxiously reading on the same topic repeatedly, it might be good to take a break. Otherwise, the best advice is to lean in, study more, practice and expand your understanding of the cards. In each reading make an effort to make all five important connections. I promise you that the results will be insightful and informative.