If we read Tarot cards for long enough, we will eventually pull a bad reading. Sometimes it’s a really, really bad reading. You know: Death, The Tower, 10 of Swords, and maybe a few other horrible seeming cards thrown in.
After all, everyone has ups and downs. Everyone goes in and out of the light. Bad things happen to good people and vice versa.
The completely natural reaction to that is to freak out and think, “Oh, I’m so screwed.” And then we may batten down our psychological hatches, load our pockets full of protective crystals and charms, and go forth into the world, fully expecting to be hit by a bolt of lightning.
IT’S NOT CARVED IN STONE
A better approach is to remember that Tarot readings are never carved in stone. They’re a snapshot of the present moment, a prediction of how things are going to turn out if they continue along the present course.
Yes, they are eerily reliable. If the Tarot predicts that something is going to happen – good, bad, or neutral – it usually does.
But that’s primarily because we forget that we have free will and we can make choices. By acknowledging what’s happening right now and getting to work on it, we can alter the outcome of those readings. In a phrase, we can look at the problems that the Tarot is predicting and reverse engineer them so that they don’t happen.
HERE’S AN EXAMPLE
Let’s look at a simple three card reading. The question of the reading is, “Where am I aligning with my life’s purpose?”
1 – Where does the energy flow most freely? – The Tower reversed.
2 – Where does the greatest resistance occur? – The Empress reversed.
3 – What lesson needs to be learned at this point? – The Three of Swords
Now, if we were to just look at that sequence of cards as they lay on the table, it’s not a very positive reading. The Tower reversed warns of serious destruction. The Empress reversed is a loss of abundance. The Three of Swords is heartbreak.
If we were just reading this predictively, we’d say, “Okay, this person is going to get hit by something heavy, he’ll lose his abundance, and it will break his heart.”
When we look at it symbolically, in the context of the actual reading, though, we see a far different message.
The energy is flowing most freely where the person is consciously dismantling false foundations and lies in his own life (The Tower, reversed.) He’s unable to receive abundance because he can’t open to it (Empress reversed.). AND the reason that he can’t open to it is because his heart, his trust, has been seriously wounded in the past (Three of Swords.)
REVERSING IT
Now, as I said, none of this is carved in stone and all of this can be changed. So, what does this person need to do to flip the reading to something more positive?
We look directly at the last card – what lesson needs to be learned – for guidance. This person needs to heal his heart. When he heals his heart, that will enable him to trust the world and receive the abundance that he deserves. When he heals his heart and learns to trust the world, then the false foundation of The Tower reversed becomes a real foundation that’s based on love.
If we were to put in purely energetic terms, this person has been deeply wounded emotionally, resulting in his heart chakra being blocked. His heart chakra being blocked has kept him from being able to receive abundance. His inability to receive abundance has caused him to question the basis for his existence, which is the falling Tower.
CAUSE AND EFFECT
When we use this approach, we cease to look at a Tarot reading as if it’s just a prediction and we start to look at it as a puzzle that can be solved. We don’t just see that bad things may be about to happen – we see WHY they’re about to happen.
And if we can change the WHY, we can change the HOW.
There are about a kajillion different Tarot spreads out there, but most of them will have a, “lesson card.” That card may be called:
– what needs to be learned;
– hidden forces;
– causal factors;
– opposing forces, etc.
That’s the card that we want to focus in on when we’re trying to reverse engineer a bad reading. We don’t want to take an attitude of, “Well, shit happens.” We want to figure out why it’s happening and then reverse those forces with an opposite energy.
In the example above, the client had a broken heart (AKA, a blocked heart chakra) and so the solution was to bring love into his heart. A simple Metta meditation, done every day, began to cultivate more compassion, understanding, and love.
The, “lesson,” will probably be different with each client, of course. It may be that their issue is addiction (The Devil) or a need for more solitude (The Hermit) or a lack of direction (Seven of Cups.)
Whatever the lesson card may be, that’s the keystone that holds the whole reading together. Figure out what the client needs to learn, and you figure out what’s happening to her and why.
Don’t just look at the effect – look at the cause. And that will change the effect.
Just the Tarot 