Everything You Should Know About Tarot
If you've spent any amount of time online, you've probably come away with one of two impressions about tarot. Either it's portrayed as an all-knowing tool that can tell you every detail of your future, or it's dismissed as nothing more than a deck of cards that people project meaning onto. I don't think either of those perspectives is useful to anyone, and grossly simplifies the incredible benefits I’ve seen from using Tarot both in my own life and in the lives of my clients.
I've been reading tarot professionally for years now, and one thing I've noticed is that most people's questions about tarot aren't really about the cards themselves. They're trying to figure out what tarot actually is, how much faith they should put into it, whether readers are legitimate, and where the line is between intuition and making things up. Those are all good questions, and unfortunately they're questions that don't always get honest answers.
I also think it's important to start with something that might seem like a strange admission coming from someone who reads tarot for a living: nobody actually knows how tarot works.
There are plenty of theories. Some people believe the cards are a way for God, spirits, ancestors, angels, the universe, etc. to communicate. Others think tarot works because of synchronicity, intuition, or psychology. Some people don't believe there's anything supernatural happening at all and instead see tarot as a framework that helps us organize thoughts we already have but haven't consciously recognized yet.
I don't think those ideas have to compete with one another, and I don't think it's my job to convince you that one explanation is objectively correct. One of the reasons I think I've stayed with tarot over the years is because I'm comfortable admitting when I don't know something, and when the cards have reached their limit on helping me. Spirituality has never been about pretending to have every answer anyone could possibly have.
Despite what you may hear online, I don't believe any reader can honestly guarantee that they know exactly what's going to happen in your future. That's not to say tarot can't be predictive, it absolutely can be, and very often is scarily predictive in readings I’ve done and had. If it couldn't, I probably wouldn't still be reading after all these years. But prediction and certainty are not the same thing.
When I read for someone, I often describe it as me “borrowing knowledge from the universe” rather than self-synthesizing it from my ‘super powerful awesome elite best-in-the-world psychic mind’ (lol). What I’m saying is, I don't believe I manufacture answers out of thin air. Whatever information I receive is something that is, for lack of a better phrase, allowed to come through. Sometimes that information is surprisingly specific, sometimes it isn't. I've never felt the need to force an answer just because a client is paying me, and I think more readers should be comfortable saying they don't know instead of pretending otherwise. But I digress, I’ve always offered to refund clients if they felt that the reading didn’t make sense for them, and I’ve never in all my years had that offer taken up, for what it’s worth.
The further into the future you try to look, the more variables begin to stack up. Every day you make choices. Other people make choices. Circumstances change. Because of that, I generally find that the 3-6 month window following a reading is where predictive tarot tends to be the most accurate. Beyond that, I become much more hesitant about making definitive claims. Could something further out still come through? Absolutely, and it has happened. But I don't think it's responsible to present long-term predictions as though they're guaranteed.
The real value of tarot has never been in proving that I can predict the future. Those moments are exciting when they happen, and they happen often enough that they continue to surprise me, but they're not the reason I think tarot is worthwhile. The greatest strength of tarot is the perspective that it gives us.
Most of us spend our lives so close to our own problems that we have trouble seeing them objectively. We repeat relationship patterns without realizing we're repeating them, we stay in jobs that no longer fit us because they're familiar, etc. Tarot pulls you back far enough to see the bigger picture. Sometimes that naturally leads to predictions. If someone has spent years repeating the same pattern and nothing about that pattern changes, it's not particularly difficult to predict where it will continue to lead. But that's very different from saying their future is fixed. In my experience, tarot doesn't exist to convince people that they have no control over their lives. It exists to help people recognize the path they're currently on and decide whether they'd like to stay on it.
That's also why I tend to avoid questions that don't ultimately help someone move forward. Years ago someone asked me if I could predict when their pet was going to die. My response was that their pet is going to die someday. We already know that. What would improve about their life if tarot gave them a date? Would they become a better pet owner? Would they enjoy the time they have together more? Or would they simply spend every day anxiously waiting for that prediction to come true? Even if tarot could answer a question like that, I don't think that means it should.
The same philosophy is why I don't read medical diagnoses or encourage people to use tarot in place of other professionals in the respective field in question. I don't see science and spirituality as enemies, but I do think they answer different kinds of questions. One asks how things work, and the other asks what they mean. Confusing those two has the potential to do real harm.
At the end of the day I don't think a good tarot reading should leave someone feeling afraid or dependent on the reader. It should leave them with a broader perspective, a better understanding of the choices available to them, and maybe a few blind spots they hadn't noticed before. Where you believe that guidance came from is ultimately up to you. I don't think you have to answer that question for yourself before tarot can be useful. If there's one thing I hope people take away from this post, it's that humility is probably one of the most important qualities a tarot reader can have.
