Ok I admit it. I got quite bored after writing daily blogposts for 18 of the questions in the 30-day Tarot challenge, particularly when many of the questions could be answered in almost one sentence. Perhaps, I am way too lazy and too distracted by so many Tarot reading appointments during the year-end festive period to afford all that blogging time. So, typical of my "Seafood Fried Rice" or in my husband's case "Bubble and Squeak" approach, I had decided to lump the questions for Day 19 to Day 30 into this blogpost, and I will do it as a question and Answer format.....all in a single blog post. I know my fellow Tarot blogging sisters will be palming their faces and groaning at this renegade again. I never seem to be able to follow the rules properly.
Do follow the rest of my entries in the 30-Day Tarot Challenge starting from here: http://sungoddesstarot.blogspot.sg/2012/12/30-day-tarot-challenge.html?m=1
To remind you of how I got started with this challenge, a fellow Tarot blogger posted the link to the challenge on the TABI ( Tarot Association of the British Isles) Facebook page, and threw this challenge at us. The link to the question is here: http://78keys.tumblr.com/post/36652622634/30-day-tarot-challenge
Question/Day 19: Do you feel/think the cards “think” or have their own consciousness? What do you believe makes the cards “tick?” (Is it magic/outside influences or all in the mind?)
Answer: This is a difficult question. My clients have often asked the same. Some were worried that I interpret the cards by invoking spirits, channeling them to get the message, in truth, the cards present a visual imagery of what my personal consciousness tells me. And my consciousness works off the energy of my client at that moment as we discuss his or her issues openly during a consultation.
Question/Day 20: Do you read for yourself and/or for others? Why or why not?
Answer: I pull a card du jour everyday for myself as a habit since I started learning how to read the Tarot. When I feel a need to do a more in-depth reading particularly when I am confronted with challenges, the readings always help provide me with clarity.
What I don't do is to read for people without their prior permission or knowledge. I particularly find reading for celebrities completely appalling. It's a complete invasion of their privacy and I don't want to play a part in that.
Question/Day 21: How do you feel when you do readings?
Answer: Before I do a Tarot reading, my requisite practice is to meditate, ground, centre and establish boundaries before I "walk" into the cards and interpret them through the "conversation" I would have with the images within the cards. It's truly exhilarating because I am able to interpret the cards and relate them to my client's situation or issues. Always, the advice provided by the interpretation is spot-on accurate and most needed by the client. To me, it's a blessing and I am thankful for this gift.
In the first few months as a novice Tarot reader, I often get migraines, having assumed the negative energy of some of my clients whose auras were surrounded by so much negativity due to the situations that they were in at that time. As I grew in experience and skills, the meditation had helped me a lot to form a protective boundary around myself when I conduct my readings.
Question/Day 22: Do you charge money (or other ways of compensation) for your readings/services?
Answer: Yes I do charge a fee for a Tarot reading session as it is a professional service rendered from immense time and effort spent on studying and honing my skills, like any other professional service rendered by say, a doctor, lawyer, or counsellor. However, due to a cancer scare that I had gone through a few months ago, I had decided to donate part proceeds of my fees from each Tarot reading session to the Children's Cancer Foundation.
Question/Day 23: What question do you most often ask the deck (or, ask on behalf of another)?
Answer: The 2 areas on which the questions are most focused on are career and relationship. Popular questions are like "Should I change jobs?", " What's the outcome of my career with this company?", " Should I switch career paths ?", " Will I be meeting a special someone soon?", " What's the outcome of my relationship with this man?". I did have a few odd questions before about how my querant's pet felt, and if someone's spirit would cross over, and a lot more even odder ones. However, whatever the question, I always insist that my clients provide a focused question, and not a generic one. This is to allow the cards to provide a focused advice.
Question/Day 24: How accurate do you believe your readings are (or, do they accurately convey messages from spirits/deity)?
Answer: My readings are often accurate. Accuracy increases with experience and deepening of my intuitive skills. I always believe, this accuracy is guided by the universe. Being a Roman Catholic, I can't deny that my God had a big part to play in guiding me along this spiritual path. If I had anyone to thank for the accuracy, my effort was 20% and His blessings was 80%.
Question/Day 25: What was the most dramatic/meaningful reading you ever did? (Not necessarily the most accurate.)
Answer: The most dramatic/meaningful reading I had done was for a client who was a very capable lady entrepreneur. She's well known in the public social circles and leads a high-flying, jet-setting lifestyle brokering multi-million dollar business deals. She had a very strong character and always projected an image of leading a perfect life. Her first Tarot consultation with me was spent having her mock my skills and she was so skeptical that she would test my skills with frivolous questions. In fact, she belligerently told me she booked a session with me because she just wanted to find out how "real" I was. She was quite obnoxious that I was prepared to walk out on that session to save my self respect. However, my intuition told me to just be patient and hear her out.
That session lasted 2 hours. By the end of the session, I established that she was suffering from clinical depression and was on medication for it. This was caused by years of suffering a breakdown in her marriage and the corporate stress she was going through. More importantly, towards the end of that session, I had managed, through the cards, to coax her out of investing in a dud property project offshore ( 2 months later after that reading, the developer absconded with the downpayment for the property paid by several investors), helped provide her advice to hold her family together, sussed out that one of her sons was suffering from a lot of resentment over the broken marriage and her decision to send him to boarding school ( thankfully she changed her mind about that boarding school).
It was one of my most fulfilling read, not because I was accurate, but because I had turned a skeptic into a believer and even better, I gained a friend in someone I previously thought was a complete bitch. She's one of my most regular clients today.
Question/Day 26: Have you ever regretted a particular reading, either for yourself or another?
Answer: I haven't regretted any of my readings yet. And I hope I won't ever. I think this is because I adhere closely to my code of ethics and wouldn't do readings that make me feel uncomfortable or goes against my values.
Question/Day 27: Do you have a special time and/or place that you use your Tarot? If so, do you reserve the deck specifically for that purpose?
Answer: I do my Tarot readings usually in the evenings as I do hold a full-time job as a marketeer. My evenings are often flat out with mentoring sessions with my protégés, Tarot reading appointments and email readings thereafter for the Free Tarot Network. One of my proteges asked me once if I ever slept. I think age has allowed me to operate on very little sleep!
On weekends, I tend to do my readings first thing in the morning or mid afternoon and spend the rest of the day writing my Tarot journal. For face to face readings, I use my Radiant Rider Waite deck a lot. For email readings, I use my Morgan Greer deck. There isn't a particular reason for this, and it's really driven by habit.
I have never done face to face Tarot reading for clients in my own home though. However, two nights ago, I accepted a late night appointment at my home for the very first time, as it was an emergency and I felt that I needed to help her as much as I could.
Question/Day 28: Does anyone you know not agree with your Tarot practices?
Answer: I meet with skepticism everyday! There are many friends and family members who don't approve of my Tarot reading out of fear or lack of understanding of the skill. I blame it on errant readers who tout themselves as fortune tellers. They give genuine Tarot readers a bad name. I am particularly annoyed at those who do celebrity readings, freely dispensing summations about the private lives of celebrities. Genuine Tarot readers do not invade the privacy of people they don't know personally. There are of course the over-religious ones who saw my Tarot reading skills as a skill given by questionable spiritual forces, I can assure you, the only questionable force around me is the damn daily storms and rainy weather we have been having throughout this year end festive period. I am not afraid of skepticism and thank these skeptics from the bottom of my heart for hardening my resolve to be a bloody fabulous Tarot reader.
Question/Day 29: Do you have a Tarot mentor? Who are they (in relation to you) and how do they inspire you?
Answer: I have 3 mentors. One is Renae, my Tarot teacher who first introduced me to the wonderful world of Tarot. While I was "wet behind my ears" in that classroom learning the ropes as a reader, I remembered her teaching with so much passion, explaining the different aspects of Greek classical studies to us as she introduced us to each card within the Mythic Tarot deck. Renae was responsible for my qualification as a certified numerologist and she tight me to overlay numerology with Tarot reading to provide more depth and insights in the interpretations.
My other mentor is Brigit from Biddy Tarot whom I'd turn to for advice whenever I run into a snag, like an uncertainty of an interpretation. Being part of Biddy Tarot's stable of free readers also meant that I had a wonderful exposure to real client situations as I honed my email reading skills.
The third mentor is Hope who held my hand through my CPTR ( Certified Professional Tarot Readers) qualification as well as my work as a volunteer for the Free Tarot Network.
Question/Day 30: Do you practice any other forms of divination? If so, what is it, and do you use them alongside the Tarot as to gain more information and insight or as something separate entirely?
Answer: I use numerology extensively with my Tarot reading. I found it lent a lot more accuracy and depth to my Tarot readings. I bought a Lapis Lazuli pendulum as a birthday present for myself a few months ago but grew tired watching it hang down limply from my fingers for an hour on a windless day.
BONUS Question: If you could create one card to add to your deck, what would it be called and what would the card’s meaning be?
Answer: A common situation I find my clients encounter is one whereby if they do not get the job that they want or the girl that they like, they would just give up and surround themselves with despondency and despair. Often, my advice to them is " It doesn't matter. Just start your search again. If you can't get it by doing what you've always done, think out of the box and change the course of action. Just start again from ground zero."
I am not sure what the card will be called. Novitiate? Yes, perhaps it should be called Novitiate. To the Roman Catholics, Novitiate is a period of studies and training that a Novice undergoes. The card when picked would advice the querant to start again from a fresh perspective. Go back to the learning curve.
About The Writer:
The writer of this blog post is a marketeer by trade, and a tarot card reader by accident. She was awarded a Certified Professional Tarot Reader qualification from the Tarot Certification Board of America (TCBA) and was certified as a numerologist in Singapore. A member of the American Tarot Association (ATA) and the Tarot Association of the British Isles (TABI), she is also endorsed as a reader for the Free Tarot Network and is a mentor for the ATA. She can be contacted at www.facebook.com/SunGoddessTarot or www.sungoddesstarot.com
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