‘Do you always tell people the bad news if you see it in the cards’?
This is a question I often get about my cartomantic practice of reading cards. What is often inarticulate in this question is a certain anxiety with how we define the ethics of card reading.
On this, after I simply answer the question with ‘yes, I tell people exactly that which I see is happening’, I add this: ‘Being ethical in card reading amounts to being neutral.’
By neutral I mean to say, completely disengaged from getting personally involved in whatever people put on the table. You get involved, you lose power.
I see it as the highest in my practice, namely, to be as detached as possible. I read cards, not people’s emotions about the cards.
I acknowledge emotion and the rational content about a situation that a querent may present me with, but I don’t take it upon myself to be ‘nice’ – that is, emotional – or smart – that is, rational – in the name of compassion, where compassion is often as misunderstood as ethics.
Reading cards is all about creating a neutral and balanced space between the reader and the querent. For compassion to work, and be more than a cliché, it needs to take place in this space, neither mine, nor the other’s.
As this is a space we share, it is about listening, not about possessing. This space is about getting beyond emotional and intellectual states. It is about recognizing mirror states, reflections, and projections; in other words, it is about seeing things clearly.
It is especially the reader’s responsibility to keep a cool head in the face of real crisis that the querent often faces. In this sense, a reading is not a democratic country.
This is something that fortunetellers of old understood. They demonstrated a tough spine, penetrating vision, and the capability to sit on the dot, unimpressionable and detached.
What makes you a good reader of cards?
In addition to teaching people to read the cards like the Devil – a promise I’ve kept, according to many who have followed my teachings so far – I teach people about what makes a solid, robust, clear, and precise reading.
I teach the power of visual language, the power of truth in cards, and the power of daring to deliver the message that makes an impact. In other words, I teach magic, though in the context of Cards and Magic, there are cunning folk rituals that we engage with and devise in our own names.
Due to popular demand, I’m thus running the online course Cards and Magic once more in the successful format of last year.
Registration opens on August 24.
Join a marvelous group of dedicated readers. Become confident in the art of reading cards, and learn why the Marseille Tarot has been celebrated throughout the ages.
Stay tuned via the newsletter, or the courses page. When registration opens, you can read about the course, the premise, aim, structure and curriculum.
TAROFLEXIONS 
In order for a reader to speak the truth to a client, the reader must first know truth and how to find it. For most people in the Kali Yuga, this is a near impossibility. Low consciousness, projection, greed, deception, confusion, and a separation from the Divine rhythm of life and a separation from the Great Spirit is the norm.
These days, almost all readers are New Agers. They wake up one morning and think: “l want to be a Tarot card reader, It would be so cool.” Then they buy a Rider/Coleman deck, a book, and begin to read for self and friends. After a few months, they go “pro.”. Little do they know that one cannot “choose” to be a Diviner. No, the Muse of Divination must choose who they wish to become Prophets. This usually happens after great suffering, and the potential reader must be dragged kicking and screaming to their fate as a Diviner.
So the reading from the new ager has little or no power, and it is infused with insipid platitudes, political correctness, and endless projections.
For example……
A client comes to a reader and says: “My husband beats me. He has already put me in the hospital. Each time he cries, and promises to never do it again. Will he ever stop beating me?”
The new age reader deals 3 cards and the last card Is Death. The client freaks out at the sight of the Death card, and the reader says: “oh no, don’t worry. This card does’t mean death, it means your relationship is going to go through a great transformation.” This kind of garbage does nothing good for the client, and may in fact, give them a false sense of security.
The reader with courage deals the same cards, and answers the same question: ” Yes, your husband will stop beating you…..after he has beaten you to death.” Now the client knows what she is facing if she continues on her current path. The reader has not told the client what to do (I never tell a client what to do), the reader has presented the truth, and now the client must decide.
In closing, let me say that most clients do not want truth. They want validation for their beliefs and fantasies. This is understandable. However, truth is the greatest gift that a reader can give to the client. It may hurt like hell, but it may also set them free.
Indeed. As they say, truth is never popular. The language of the cards, however, is so great that it leaves you no choice than to take what stares in your face. That gesture in itself is as great a gift the querent can offer herself, as it is for the reader to deliver the useful message, not the one that comforts illusion.
Exactly. And…….card reading and truth telling is about to get a lot more interesting, because from a certain Vedic perspective, the Kali Yuga is coming to an end.
The Magician lays 3 cards on the table: The Tower, Death, and Judgement.