How much detail should a reader be provided with when conducting a reading? Should they need any information at all if they are doing their job properly?
Some people consulting Tarot readers, or any other kind of reader, do not think they should have to give that reader any information whatsoever about the particular question they want answering, or their lives in general, as they feel that the reader should know all this simply because they are ‘psychic’, or ‘clairvoyant’, or whatever.
To a certain extent, this is true. It is often possible to ‘sense’ a great deal about a person (their character, past events in their lives, etc.), through psychic means. However, whether this happens or not is dependant on quite a few different factors.
For a start, it is a lot harder for many readers to obtain information this way if they are not in direct physical contact with the subject. This is understandable if you equate it with a doctor trying to diagnose an illness via information received in an e-mail, rather than being able to examine the patient in his surgery.
Not all readers have a problem with this, however, and I have found that in many cases, I obtain more accurate results with ‘distance readings’ than I do with normal ones, although it can depend a great deal on what the subject is doing at the time I conduct the reading.
If they are relatively calm, perhaps sitting quietly reading a book or even better, sleeping, it will be easier for me to access their subconscious mind than if they are in the middle of a hectic hour at the office. For this reason, if when I begin a distance reading I find that all I am receiving is jumbled messages, I abandon it until later, in the hope of finding the subject in a calmer frame of mind.
In many ways, there really is no reason at all why a reader should be expected to answer a question for which no detail is given. For a start, it takes a whole lot longer if the reader has to spend ages working out things that have already occurred, which the subject could have told them about in the first place! For reasons of time alone, it is better that the reader has at least some details of the situation to date, even if these are only very brief.
Returning to the doctor analogy, it is highly unlikely that anyone would attend a doctor’s surgery, sit down in front of the doctor and announce “I have something wrong with me but I don’t want to tell you my symptoms. I want you to work them out for yourself, then tell me what is wrong with me.”. Most people would tell the doctor what their symptoms were, in order to obtain a quick and accurate diagnosis.
By the same token, if the Tarot reader receives details of the ‘symptoms’, he or she is far more likely to be able to come up with an accurate interpretation of the reading. If no one expects a doctor to guess at their symptoms, why should they expect a Tarot reader to do it? The Tarot reader might have more luck than the doctor, but there is still too large a margin for error.
Basically, what it comes down to is that the more accurate the subject wants their reading to be, the more detail they need to give. It helps, for instance, to know a subject’s marital status, that way if a divorce is seen and the subject has not experienced a divorce, the reader can then try to ascertain whether this is a future event for the subject, or whether it relates to someone else. Similarly, knowing that the subject has already been divorced would enable the reader to decide whether or not the divorce shown in the cards was this divorce or another one. This is even more important when widowhood is involved, for obvious reasons.
If you are consulting a Tarot reader therefore, especially via e-mail or post, try to give as much detail as you can. Simply saying “Can you tell me about my love life?”, for instance, does not help the reader very much. They will have to try to work out whether or not you are in a relationship, whether you are married, living with someone, seeing someone … even whether you are straight or gay!
A far better way of phrasing this question would be “I was divorced just over two years ago and since then have not had any serious relationships. I am wondering whether the cards show any sign of such a relationship developing in the near future? I would love to marry again one day”. This way, the reader knows you have been married, that there is no one in your life at the moment, and that you are looking to meet a member of the opposite sex rather than the same sex!
As far as the sexual orientation of a subject is concerned, it really is strongly advisable to inform a reader if your sexual preferences are not what is considered ‘within the norm’. No reputable reader is going to suggest that a client is homosexual or bisexual, even if they are convinced that they are, for fear of offending them. Similarly, a homosexual client may be just as offended if the reader assumes they are heterosexual.
Without definite proof of a client’s sexual leanings, the reader has no choice but to assume they are part of the majority. A good reader will then refer to the love partner throughout the reading as “your partner” or “the person you are going to meet”, rather than “him” or “her”. How much better it would be (not to mention easier!) if they could give this person a more personal identity.
The simple matter of time has also to be borne in mind. Certainly where free readings are concerned, you cannot expect the reader to spend longer working out things you could have told them in a couple of sentences than they do on the reading itself! This is unfair on the reader and also unfair on you, especially as your reading is likely to be less detailed and probably not as accurate as a result.
If all you are doing is trying to catch a reader out, then you shouldn’t be asking for a reading in the first place! This is unfair on everyone concerned and also totally wastes the reader’s time, time that could be spent on helping people who really need help.
It is also worth mentioning, when asking for readings concerning romantic matters, whether or not you have any children and if so, how many. Working out the number of children someone has or is likely to have is not always easy and I do not like doing this for a very personal reason. Mentioning this may go some way to explaining why detail can make such a difference.
When I first started out reading cards and the like, I looked at the palm of a woman who was four months pregnant, who was visiting a neighbour I had also gone to see. I told her that I felt she already had one child and would have two altogether (in other words, she would not have anymore children after the one she was carrying).
Because I was inexperienced and not at that time aware that you shouldn’t assume anything when it comes to predicting the future, I was puzzled as to why the woman looked upset and went home shortly afterwards. It wasn’t until after she had gone that my neighbour told me that she already had one child and was expecting twins. She had obviously been upset because I only saw a total of two children in her palm. I tried to fob this off, saying I wasn’t really very good at palm reading anyway and I had only been doing it a few months, so I was probably completely wrong.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t completely wrong, I was completely right. Sometime later, I was told by my neighbour that, at the age of six weeks, one of the twins her friend had given birth to had died in its sleep for no apparent reason and she was therefore left with just two children. She was therefore convinced that the twin she lost (which was the younger one) was never meant to be born in the first place as it hadn’t shown-up in her palm. Although this happened over a quarter of a century ago now, I doubt the mother of the twins has forgotten it anymore than I have.
The point I am making here is that, if I had known that this lady already had a child, even at the age I was (about 20, give or take a year or so) and given my overall lack of experience, I would hope I would still have had enough consideration and tact not to have basically announced to a pregnant (and therefore very vulnerable) woman that, even though she was having twins, she was only going to end-up keeping one of them.
All I would have needed to have said was that there may be a problem connected with one of the babies, but it would all work out as it was meant to work out in the end (or something alone those lines). Believe me, I can guarantee that when this poor woman lost her baby, she would have instantly remembered those words and probably realised that I had known all along that one of her twins was not going to live very long.
This would have saved this mother from spending the second half of her pregnancy and the first few weeks of her babies’ lives worrying about the fact that one of them did not show up in her palm. After all, who can say what effect worrying about this might have had on these unborn children? Could that worry have been instrumental in the death of her younger twin? Not very likely I know (at least not physically, although there are also the psychological and psychic effects to consider), but when things like this happen it causes unnecessary suffering for everyone concerned, including the reader if they hear about it.
For this reason alone, the more information that can be given to the reader by the subject, the better. In helping the reader, you are also helping yourself.
Finally, remember that everyone makes mistakes. Just as doctors sometimes mis-diagnose a patient, so Tarot readers, palmists, astrologers and so on will sometimes get it wrong. They may be ill, they may be having an off day, they may simply misinterpret the cards. Nobody, however psychic they may or may not be, is ever perfect! Nevertheless, you can more or less guarantee that less mistakes are likely to be made if you are willing to supply that little extra bit of detail when applying for your reading.