How worried should I be?

[Pauline Kilar]

I keep getting "bad" cards in my readings. Like, over and over. 9 of swords. 10 of swords. 3 of swords. Two of cups reversed. 7 of wands. Upside-down kings and queens all over the place.

I'm trying not to let it get to me, but I'm a little concerned. Right now my life is actually going pretty well.

The only thing I can think of is that I spend a lot of time online reading about climate change, Ebola, species extinction, and other really big, awful things. Could the cards be reflecting my feelings about what's going on the larger world?

Maybe I should narrow my focus to my own life for a while, stop reading about disaster, and see if I get cheerier cards.

Any thoughts?

 

[Kristyjnh]

I have had the experience of my deck holding onto certain energies after readings, albeit not as much as yours seems to be. Maybe cleansing your deck after doing readings like that will help kinda dispel that energy from sticking with your deck. I usually just set a cleansing stone on top on mine when I'm not using it. I've heard sound works well too, like a bell, tuning fork, or tapping a wine glass (gently) with a fork. If you have a spare deck, maybe use it for the disaster readings?

 

[Pauline Kilar]

If only I could blame one deck! It's coming from different places, though. I do a lot of one-card readings; I have several tarot apps on my phone and I like to do one-card draws to learn the deck or take the temperature of the day. Maybe I should cleanse my iPhone?

But I've also been seeing these cards in my draws from physical decks, and in readings given to me by others.

Seven of Wands, especially, which is frustrating as I don't fully get what this card implies.

 

[PAMUYA]

I had a thought. Do you meditate? If you have monkey mind, meaning you are thinking and worrying about eveything and stressed, your energy is stressed. Start trying to settle your mind, meditate, you cannot control your thoughts from coming, but you can learn which ones to concentrate on. Maybe your cards are a reflection of your energy. If your emotions are all over the place, how can you possibly hear the whispers of your intuition?

Here is a simple breathing meditation:

http://www.how-to-meditate.org/breathing-meditations.htm/

 

[Farzon]

I'd say, focus on your "real" decks. In a situation as yours, I would give them a cleansing, too. I simply do so by putting the cards back in their original order.

Your own take on this is maybe closer to the truth than you are aware of. Negative emotions affect readings strongly in my experience.
Stop reading the papers for a while. It's so depressing anyway....

Also a meditation a day keeps the ugly cards away (or something like that). I like a short meditation before reading our, even better, a daily meditation. PAMUYA's link is really great, read it! :thumbup:
Short example from my experience: Today I drew the ten of swords in a daily draw. Nothing the like happened. The card was, I think, a remnant of yesterday, when I had a quite disturbing encounter.

Last but not least: there was a study on happiness these days. Every evening, try to remember a few points that were good this day. Even better: tell somebody. You will feel more lucky in a few days.

 

[Water Lady]

Well said, Farzon, I was think along all those lines as well.
especially the positive verse before bed and on rising, perhaps your worried about something that is showing up in the readings that your not aware of.

 

[cSpaceDiva]

I don't think I would worry because like you said, it's all over the place. If you were getting the same 1 or 2 cards in the same spread position or type of position then I would say you need to figure out what is going on there. Seven of Wands suggests to me that you are managing to stay on top of it all. You are aware of and affected by world events and life's daily battles, but you are able to manage and overcome these obstacles. It sounds like you are doing and getting lots of readings, negative cards are bound to come up.

 

[NightVision]

If it makes you feel any better I had a bad hand with a ten of swords last week and I just got lower back pain and diarrhoea. TMI? I know, I know...

 

[Grizabella]

What kinds of questions are you asking? And how often are you reading? and how many of the readings are with an actual deck? Cleansing a deck really doesn't do anything except makes you feel better.

I suggest using a real deck and just doing one real reading a day with a real question and some named positions to it. Then see what happens for you. If you're just drawing random cards all the time without a question and you're not using a real deck, then it's not surprising that this is happening.

 

[Farzon]

Cleansing a deck really doesn't do anything except makes you feel better.

Oh, I wouldn't say that. Having a deck mixed through all the time, my readings start to get shallow and lose precision. It maybe psychological but reordering as done sort of cleansing helps me.

After posting here yesterday evening I rearranged my new Alice Tarot; this cleansed the deck, got my thoughts focused again (putting cards back into order feels like a short meditation to me) and I has something to feel joy over, too! Just being able to enjoy a deck can change your attitude to reading as well.