Hi
I was wondering what people thought about doing yes or no tarot readings. I've read conflicting things in various web sites. Some (a lot) say yes or no readings are fine and a good, quick way to practice whereas other sites seem to recommend you ask deeper questions rather than a straight yes or no and actually say it's wrong to.
Also are there any questions that are out of bounds for the tarot. I understand about not asking the whole "what's the lottery numbers" type question but I've seen people recommend we don't ask things about health and "am i going to get better" etc. Or, "will i end up with this person" type question or "should i do this or that".
I like the idea that the tarot could be a free, open format where nothing is off limits as long as what you are asking is ethical but even that could be open to interpretation.
I am just learning the tarot so it's all new to me. I want to make sure i start off on the right track.
Any advice much appreciated.
Thank you.
Hi painty,
It is completely up to preference for readers to do Yes/No inquiries, don't let anyone tell you that you are wasting your abilities or your time doing Yes/No readings. Some spreads that address specifically Yes/No questions are actually rather detailed and intricate, it just depends on which you choose. I actually have just one for such an occasion. This spread, called Eden Gray's Three Aces Spread (For Yes or No Inquiries), from Mrs. Benebell Wen's book Holistic Tarot has easily become my absolute favorite "quickie" spread for Yes/No questions, and it can be drawn out as well, as per my own personal adjustment to it. Here it is.
Eden Gray's Three Aces Spread
As I imagine you can deduce, this spread utilizes Aces to answer either a Yes or a No to a specific inquiry; the answer depends upon how many Aces appear and their orientations – upright or inverted.
This spread utilizes card counting sort of: the practitioner deals 3 piles, each having a MAX of 13 cards, no more, UNLESS an Ace is reached either on or a number before the 13th card of either pile, then the practitioner begins the deal of the next pile in the same fashion until a total of 3 piles are dealt.
The Aces come in here:
- If only one Ace appears out of the entire count for each pile, that Ace's orientation is what determines the answer: upright = Yes, inverted = No. The surrounding cards and the suit of the Ace should be read to glean further details about the situation.
- If two Aces appear after the whole deal is done, the leftmost Ace (the Ace on the left, the first Ace to appear) is the immediate outcome of the inquiry. The rightmost Ace (the last Ace to appear) is the probable overall future outcome; I prefer to look at this as what is most likely to happen further out into the future, after the immediate outcome comes to pass of course. Inverted Aces will indicate setbacks or delays for that specific time indication, and the non-Ace card in the spread will reveal further details.
- Finally, if all three Aces appear at the end of the deal for each pile, then the answer is automatically a resounding Yes. Inverted Aces will indicate setbacks, delays, and/or warnings, however.
So, for example, say I ask this question: Will I marry Bill?
I deal, say, 5 cards and the 6th card is, say, the Ace of Wands upright. I stop and continue the deal in a new pile, the second pile, because I have reached an Ace and do not go any further with this pile.
In the second pile, I deal, say, the full 13 cards, the 13th card being the King of Swords, which obviously means that because we have all 13 cards here, an Ace did not show up in this pile. I stop the deal for this pile and move on to continue the deal for the third and last pile.
I deal, say, 12 cards and the 13th card is the Ace of Swords inverted. I stop the entire count because now all my piles are dealt and the actual reading can begin.
Looking at the Aces only right now, we can see that the first Ace, the Ace in the "immediate future" position is the Ace of Wands and it is upright, meaning that yes, it looks like I will marry Bill sooner rather than later. Had this been inverted, I would have said no, and then had the second Ace been upright, I would say I most likely won't marry Bill until later than I had expected; so in that case not soon, but eventually... You can consider the number in the pile of the upright Ace (was it the 4th card, 10th card, etc.?) to have significance on when that will most likely come to fruition in the further out future – before the 5th or 6th cards, sooner; after 5th or 6th cards, most likely much later.
Looking now at the second Ace for the overall probable future outcome, it is the Ace of Swords inverted. If I have two Aces at the end of this spread and the first Ace is upright, indicating that immediately I will get what I am asking about, my personal approach to the second Ace's position is to then interpret it as the probable outcome for the
long run in respect to what I am asking about. In this case, with marrying Bill, it looks like initially we will be getting married as the Ace of Wands upright showed and it will be a passionate and active marriage as per the Wands suit, but the marriage may eventually become strained with communication problems and/or ideological quandaries between us, as both are correspondences of the Swords suit and the Ace of Swords inverted in particular here.
Finally, I consider the non-Ace card that appeared as well and apply it to the overall interpretation: the King of Swords.
Say this is a woman asking this question originally, then most likely the King of Swords here represents Bill, in which case he would be somewhere in his late 30s-40s and possibly an Air sign, a strong, erudite, and astute man, determined and willful but whose mind can become his greatest enemy at times. He may have strong convictions and that may be what could cause the ideological quandaries between the female Seeker and Bill in their future marriage.
Another personal approach I have created when working with this spread is to consider the cards, if any, underneath any inverted Aces in the spread to be laid out and read as a progressing narrative to explain "why" that Ace was inverted and thus indicated a setback or delay of the outcome, or warning. This approach personally helps me to get used to reading the cards together and narratively without predetermined positions or interpretive limits. Of course this will take some practice, but it has worked great for me when I want a specific answer to why something may not happen. I guess one could do this for upright Aces, too, but I personally don't care to understand why something
will happen if I originally wanted it to happen; I just accept it as it is.
