When the answer is unclear...what to do?

Say if someone is considering multiple jobs...how do you know which "option" are the cards telling you about? I have done a few readings and having asked the question about one specific job, I cannot help but wonder if the reading may point to another job.

Has anyone experienced this before? When asking about one situation/job/person and have the cards allude to something else?

You're in the driver's seat so just make your spread and your questions into named positions and lay your cards out for each one. For instance, you have an option of three different jobs. Just put out three cards for each job option and see what they say.

Job 1: card, card, card
Job 2: card, card, card
Job 3: card, card, card

You get the idea.

It's really very easy once you experiment around for a little while with your cards. I've found that I like a named spread with named positions because it makes it so much easier to keep your focus and know what the cards are saying about whatever it is you need to know.

angelf1sh said:

I have done a few readings and having asked the question about one specific job, I cannot help but wonder if the reading may point to another job.

Has anyone experienced this before? When asking about one situation/job/person and have the cards allude to something else?

Click to expand...

If the Tarot/your intuition keeps trying to tell you about a particular job to the point that it muscles-in on the others and you recognize it, there's probably good reason... So if the cards are favourable, go for it; if not, avoid that job, if possible.

If it's a more general feeling of uncertainty, just not trusting that the cards are answering to what you asked them, Grizabella's suggestions should help.

I usually use one card for each option PLUS one more card to see if there are options we missed. It should show the best option. If your subconscious is kicking you about one particular job option, you need to listen to what it is saying.

barb

It's in the phrasing of the question. Be ruthlessly specific.


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angelf1sh said:

Say if someone is considering multiple jobs...how do you know which "option" are the cards telling you about? I have done a few readings and having asked the question about one specific job, I cannot help but wonder if the reading may point to another job.

Has anyone experienced this before? When asking about one situation/job/person and have the cards allude to something else?

Click to expand...

Of course, it's happened to me and I would say to most readers. Especially when we are just starting out. Happens a lot then.

To answer your question, the way we know which if several possible options a card is actually talking about is intuition. That is one of the reasons that intuition is as important as it is to a reader. That is one of the important functions that it serves in readings. When logically we could see more than one thing the cards could be saying, then we need to use our intuition to tell us which it is. That involves turning off our thoughts entirely and jusu feeling which answer is the intended/right one.

Other than that, if you feel unsure there are two other options I can think of. Either put the reading away and come back to it later. It sometimes seems clear later when it not at first. That happened to me a lot when I was starting out at a reader. Sometimes i had NO idea what the cards were trying to say, but I just saved the reading and what I thought it said in my journal and weeks later looked back and it was clear as a bell. That taught me to be a better reader by doing that.

Or alternatively, if you really can't make out what a card is trying to say you can always pull a clarifier. To help you clarify the message and make more sense of it. Lots of readers do that. I tend to ask something like "I have no idea what you were trying to tell me with that last card. Could you please tell me the message again in a different way?" Then just pull another card. And it should give you the same message in a different form which may then be clearer for you.

If I have ever asked about something and have the cards allude to something else? I won't say it never happens, but it's pretty rare in my experience. IF there is something that it is super super important that you know about your life and you are not thinking to ask, if you have your cards out they may choose to tell you this thing that you NEED to know instead of answering the question asked. In my experience it's rare. I've had that happen about twice in 12 years. Now they tend to instead just tend to tell me in a different way. I will find an extra card or two that were left in the box or pouch and I take that to be a personal message for me, unrelated to the reading.

Otherwise, besides that, no it's never happened. i once THOUGHT it did. I asked about staying at a job I was at. I was thinking of leaving but was not sure, so I asked the cards about my future there. The boss was super cranky and I was too stressed there. And when I did the reading, the cards that came up talked only about romance. I THOUGHT they were alluding to something else. I thought that was not what I asked about. Especially as there was no guys there less more than half my age and I was NOT having any romantic relationships with any of them. But the cards just kept talking about romance as my future at that job.

Made no sense to me. They even said that if I left I would miss out on an important life experience I was meant to have. Made no sense to me but, not wanting to miss out on any important experiences I was meant to have, I stayed. 10 days later a new employee started there who WAS my age and who I felt love at first sight for. I then left the job 2 weeks later but of course we kept in touch.

So sometimes, the cards seem like they are alluding to something else, but in reality they may well be answering the question accurately.

Babs

Ace said:

I usually use one card for each option PLUS one more card to see if there are options we missed. It should show the best option. If your subconscious is kicking you about one particular job option, you need to listen to what it is saying.

barb

Click to expand...

That is actually just what I usually do to. I pull one card for each job and ask the outcome of taking it. Then I try to take the job that leads to the outcome I find most enjoyable.

That does alieviate the problem too, since this makes is clear immediately which card is talking about which job. So yes, the phrasing of the question has a lot to do with how the answer comes up and how clear it is.

Babs

SunChariot said:

Of course, it's happened to me and I would say to most readers. Especially when we are just starting out. Happens a lot then.

Babs

Click to expand...

Wow thank you for sharing your insight and experiences Babs. I think a big opportunity of where I can grow as a reader is to learn to differentiate intuition and self doubt. When the cards looked positive (almost too good to be true), I started doubting whether it would refer to a the situation i asked about because from the way things are going, I really was not sure if it will go that way. My self doubt just kicked in and said this is too good can't be it...but so far things have gone well.

Really appreciate you sharing your story about your reading regarding work. Guess I have to see how things play out!

angelf1sh said:

Wow thank you for sharing your insight and experiences Babs. I think a big opportunity of where I can grow as a reader is to learn to differentiate intuition and self doubt. When the cards looked positive (almost too good to be true), I started doubting whether it would refer to a the situation i asked about because from the way things are going, I really was not sure if it will go that way. My self doubt just kicked in and said this is too good can't be it...but so far things have gone well.

Really appreciate you sharing your story about your reading regarding work. Guess I have to see how things play out!

Click to expand...

You are very welcome.

When I started out in Tarot I was FULL of self-doubt about my intuition. Trust me on that, I don't know how anyone could have more than I had. I had feelings about things that always turned out to be wrong. My intuition didn't work, I seriously doubted I had any at all. Didn't think I did. But in retrospect, I did but it was "untrained" and I had no idea how to access it, much less to use it. I believe we all have an intuition that can be trained and learn to grow stronger. Just that way to often we are discouraged from doing so by the society we live in which values most only things that can be proven scientifically...

Anyway, here is what helped me get over my self-doubt about my intuition and to trust it more and more. It was something I read somewhere in a book. I don't remember which book anymore but I do remember the gist of it and it changed my path as a reader.

The gist of it is that when you start to feel something may be the answer, the MORE self-doubt you feel the MORE accurate the intuition is. And that this is exactly the way it is supposed to be initially.

BECAUSE when your intuition is on and you are not used to using it, your mind is bringing up things from your unconscious mind and suddenly they become conscious for you so that you can put them into words. The result of that is that your conscious mind which has NO idea of what was previously in your unconscious, has no idea where the info that it is suddenly faced with came from. It can't quite make sense of it and it tries to tell you that you must have made it up. Whether or not you believe the answers come up through our unconscious minds or through some kind of contact with the Divine, it still boils down to the same thing. You are somehow still getting answers in a way that the conscious mind does not consider "rational" (not through your thoughts and reasoning) and the result is the same.

The more strongly you sense the concept intuitively the stronger the reaction to it.

I heard that early on somewhere. And it stuck in my mind. When I was starting out and learning I saved ALL my readings I did. Even and especially the ones I couldn't make sense of. And I noticed it more and more. The more I felt unsure of myself, the more accurate the reading was.

I got it. That that was the reason why and it made sense. That is was supposed to feel that way. Then over time, I started to trust my readings MORE when I felt doubt. I would feel doubt and KNOW that this reading must be REALLY accurate or I would not feel that way. And the more doubt I felt, the more I trusted the reading. And the more and more I trusted, the more accurate I became.

And the less I trusted my feelings of self-doubt, and took them as a positive sign, ...they just stopping coming over time.

And that is what most helped me get over the self-doubt.

I hope it helps you in some way too.

Babs

Similar to Grizabella's approach but more structured, I created a spread - the "Decision Stream" Spread - specifically for comparing two or more options in any decision-making situation. I wasn't happy with "decision-tree" models that assign separate forks to each option with the idea of choosing the one that looks the most promising. It has a focus card - basically the "decision" card - and a pair of input cards for each option - a "pro" and a "con" card. The "decision" card is read as the middle card of a three-card vignette, supporting the use of elemental dignities to show whether it's "strengthened" or "weakened" by the two inputs. It's then paired in series with an "action" card that feeds into an "outcome" card, creating another three-card scenario. The most encouraging set of comparative data could then be chosen as the right way to go with the decision.

The structure is a four-card line (the first card in the line is the "present situation" and acts more as a significator or "foundation" card than an active ingredient in the progression) with a pair of inputs for each option, totaling from 8 to 12 cards. Here's a condensed version of the first paragraph of guidance I wrote for it:

"Tarot spreads aimed at weighing the relative merit of two or more available options when making an important decision are often designed in a branching “tree” format, with the divergent forks arriving at distinct and separate conclusions. Here the design recognizes that inputs are “streamed” into the decision process in an additive way, rather like an experiment in baking a cake.

Decisions usually amount to making a choice between two competing success paths, although some involve several possibilities. For this reason, the “decision stream” approach offers up to four input chains. Any decision that contemplates more than four potential scenarios probably hasn't matured enough to be brought to a reasonably coherent conclusion."

I'm not going to post the interpretation guidance in the "Tarot Spreads" forum since it will be part of a copyrighted publication I'm putting together, but here is the layout.