Shebelle said:
I read tarot, am good at reading for others. This fall I was obsessively asking my deck about a new relationship with a guy I had been interested in for some time. We had begun dating. The spreads I drew were consistently, shockingly negative, which in turn made me second guess all the positive signs he was giving me. It was so bad a friend asked, "What is it about M that makes you turn into this negative person? Why can't you believe he likes you?"
1) Do you generally put more stock into the readings you give yourself or do you start to just use "real world" common sense?
You *have* to use real-world common sense. It evolved over a million years to help us find food and not get eaten by predators. It is about doing things right. It ensures survival - physical and emotional.
Also, I have a problem with your opening paragraph. You say that you were "obsessively asking your deck" about this guy. could it be that you got one or two halfway positive readings in the beginning, but you didn't trust them and kept asking over and over, and throwing negatives at you was the deck's way of saying "stop asking already"? I find personally that if I ask too often about a given issue, the deck feels as if I doubt its previous answer, and gets quite unpleasant with me - which I think is fair. After all, if you were a kid in a schoolroom and you put your hand up and asked the teacher how to spell "green" once or even twice they'd tell you, but if you asked fifty times in two days they'd start to get pretty angry.
Shebelle said:
2) Is it just a bad idea to ask the tarot stuff like this for yourself if you are too close to the situation?
That's why I tend to swap readings with someone I don't know all that well every so often. A part of my practising code of ethics says something like: "I will receive a reading from a competent reader once a year and act immediately on any issues they see." It is much easier to read for someone you don't know than for someone you do know, and it is much easier to read for a friend than for yourself. It is bloody hard reading for yourself, at least about the Big Stuff. Why? Because you sit down with your own ideas and feelings about the situation before you even shuffle. Any thoughts you might be having about other people's input, any emotions you may be feeling, will get shuffled in, even if they are purely in your own head and in no way reflect the situation around you.
Shebelle said:
3) Can negative thoughts and feelings on the part of the querent affect the reading the cards give? Like, my hopefulness being met by discouragement turned me upside down and I wonder if I'm now no longer able to draw a reading re: my love life that is positive.
Absolutely they can!
My advice is this. Stop reading about your personal life for a while, just go out and live it. If he is nice to you, do NOT assume he is hiding something. If you have fun, don't be suspicious of the fun. Live a little. You'll be a lot happier than pushing someone away who from this distance seemed to just want to enjoy your company, and fuming over a set of cards that feel unrespected because of the constant repetitions anyway.
Cleanse the space you read in - redecorate if possible. remove associations of your recent unhappiness from the who arena of Tarot in your life. Do readings for your neighbour's canary - but leave your love-life alone for a while, just go out and enjoy it. Then in a little while - see how you feel then. Only "ask the cards" if there is an actual problem to ask about.
