What to do When the Cards or Leaves Aren't Working for You

Well over ten years ago, I worked at an after school program and helped to plan activities for the students. Every year, one of those activities was a Halloween party and I, of course, volunteered to do tarot card readings for the kids. Everyone enjoyed it and so did I. While I was committed to being truthful, I was also committed to having fun and the kids were definitely in it for the fun, too. Everything was going well until the nicest and sweetest girl had her turn to be read. I laid out the spread and it was awful. I apologized and tried again and got another set of cards that was just as bad. Now, I may have been committed to the truth, but I was not committed to ruining someone’s day or being cruel, so I told her I couldn’t read her.

Would I do that now? No - first of all, I don’t know that I would want to do a full tarot card spread for an elementary school student. And if I’m reading for an adult, I might be apologetic, but I would read the spread. However, I went with my gut that something was wrong. (Of course, no one knows what is going on with any one individual, so perhaps the doom and gloom reading was accurate and not wrong at all.)

The key thing to take from this story is that I went with my gut. If I’m feeling as though the cards or tea leaves aren’t working for me on some level I need to decide if it’s worth continuing with the reading it or scrapping it.

If I choose to continue, I might start the reading over (with the same cards or leaves) and try to give myself a new perspective. I definitely want to talk to the client and see what, if anything, had resonated with them so far and try to dig a little deeper.

If I choose to scrap the reading I can either start fresh (longer process with tea leaf reading), or I can decide that the problem is me, apologize and cancel the reading. The latter of course would lead to a refund or rescheduling. For the former, I might want to try to reframe the question, double check with the client that this question is really something they want answered, and maybe try to get a little more information in order to make the question more specific. This may lead to using a different spread. When doing the 2nd version, I do want to take note if any of the same cards or general patterns show up again, as that may be telling.

Unfortunately, sometimes, I as the reader am just not “feeling it” making readings hard to do across the board. So what do I do when this happens? Breathe. I close my eyes, take a deep breath and hold it before releasing it along with any negative thoughts. And then I repeat this at least two times. If this doesn’t work and I’m able to put off doing a reading for a few minutes I will, just to get my head in a better place.

Every once and again, a reading feels off and I don’t know why so I keep pushing through. I do my best to give the client the best reading possible and if I don’t feel that it’s up to my standards I won’t pretend that it is. For example, I did a party a few weeks ago where I read tarot cards for 7 people. Knowing that they might also want tea leaf readings I brought tea with me. By the time we got to that, without realizing it, I was too tired to do the readings. I did my best and at the end of the night didn’t charge for the tea leaf readings. I still made money, but only for the service that I performed at a high level. It wasn’t until I got home (after a somewhat scary drive in the dark on a rainy night with lots of twists and turns) that I had time to reflect and realized why I didn’t feel great about those tea leaf readings. It was too late to tell the client and her friends that I had been too tired to give deep insights while reading the leaves, but I was happy that I didn’t charge her for them either.

Reading cards and leaves is deeply personal, for both the reader and the client. If something doesn’t feel right you need to pay attention and be flexible enough to switch gears as necessarily. Luckily for me, this hardly ever happens, but at least I have enough experience to be prepared should it happen.