Ethics in Tarot: Saying What You Actually See

You can feel it in the room before the card’s fully turned. There’s something in how the person’s sitting. Something in how they phrased the question. Something in what they’ve already told you they’re hoping for. And when what comes up isn’t going to give it to them, there’s a pull. A pull to soften the read, twist it, skip the reversal, find a version of the cards that makes the next ten minutes easier on everyone in the room, including you.

I notice myself doing it when I’m reading for me. A card comes out, I don’t like it, and I’m already shuffling again. It’s the same instinct dressed up differently. When you’re doing it to yourself, it’s just a bit useless. It’s treating tarot like a magic eight ball: shake it until it gives you what you want. But when you’re doing it for somebody else, the same impulse stops being a private mess and starts being a choice you’ve made about what that person gets to know.

The Short Term and the Long Term

In the short term, telling people what they want to hear works really well. You say, “Yeah, you’re definitely going to get with this person.” Or, “Yes, you’re going to be pregnant this year.” (I’ve been on TikTok lately and the pregnancy version of this is everywhere right now.) The person leaves the reading lit up. You feel like you helped. Easy session. On to the next one.

But in the long term it lands somewhere different. Maybe they make a decision based on what you said. Maybe they go all in with someone they should have walked away from. Maybe they put their last bit of money into the thing they’ve been calling their last chance, because you told them the cards backed it. I’ve had people sit in front of me with everything on the line and the cards aren’t pointing where they’re hoping. That’s a hard thing to say out loud. It’s an uncomfortable reading. But it stops them making a decision they’re going to regret, and that’s actually the job.

If I tell them what they want to hear, sure, I can wash my hands of it. They’re probably never going to book with me again either, because they’ll figure out at some point that I didn’t give them an accurate read. But for me, that doesn’t sit right.

Compassion or Cowardice

This is the trick I want to name. Sometimes the voice in your head will tell you that you’re being kind by not saying the thing. That the person isn’t ready, that they can’t handle it, that you’re protecting them. And maybe sometimes that’s true. But more often, the thing you’re actually protecting is your own comfort in the next two minutes of conversation.

I did it this weekend. I was at my sister’s small wedding ceremony, the legal bit before the big day later in the year, and I was staying in a hotel with both my grandmas. Over breakfast my sister and her new husband were opening cards, and I realised I hadn’t got them a card. So I pulled my deck out and got them each to draw one. It was light, encouraging, not a serious sit-down reading. Then both my grandmas asked me to pull one for them too. One of them got the three of cups in reverse, which for me usually points to letting go of friends. And I just ignored the reversal. I told her to focus on her friendships. I didn’t want to have that conversation over toast. I’ve been turning it over in my head ever since, wondering if I gave my grandma false hope.

Compassion is being there for somebody while they sit with something hard. It’s holding the space so they can hear it and process it safely. Dishonesty is telling yourself they can’t handle it and quietly making the decision for them. You’ll know which one you’re doing if you’re honest with yourself, because dishonesty almost always makes the next bit of the session easier for the reader, not the client.

I’ve come across readers who do this constantly. They’re toxically positive in everything. Every reading is love and light and hope and goodness. Even the Tower somehow comes out as fantastic news. It’s a way to protect yourself. It’s also a way to keep your readings at a really surface level.

The Difference Between a Verdict and a Conversation

The language you use does more work than I think we give it credit for. There’s the verdict version of a reading: “Your relationship is doomed, leave that person.” Final. Sealed. You as the judge, gavel in hand. Then there’s the conversation version. The card hasn’t changed. The framing has.

Take the eight of pentacles in reverse. For me that’s often about not honing the craft. Settling for second best, or third best, or just good enough. The verdict version is: “You’re not working hard enough.” The conversation version is: “This card’s pointing at something around not quite trying your hardest. What do you think that might be referring to?” The first hands them a sentence. The second hands them a question and lets them put themselves into it.

Or take the two of pentacles, which for me is usually about balancing work life pressures. The verdict version is: “Your work life balance is fucking awful, you need to do something about it.” The conversation version is: “This is showing some pressure around your work life balance. What’s that like for you? How are you handling it?” Then you sit. You allow some silence. You let them be the one who brings it into the open.

Sometimes the person will start trying to soften it themselves, walking it back, moving it towards what they wanted to hear. That’s when you can gently come back in: “It’s clearly come up for a reason. Have a think about it as we move through the rest of the cards.” You’re not softening the read. You’re also not delivering it like a bang. You’re not the judge with the gavel. (I really wish I had a gavel right now. But you get the point.)

Honest Without Being Brutal

The opposite failure is just being a dick. The Empress comes up, and instead of “this card’s about nurturing, how are you nurturing yourself?”, it becomes “you need to fucking nurture yourself better, you’re being a dick.” That isn’t honesty. It’s assuming. It’s still taking the choice away from them, just from the other side.

The test I keep coming back to is this. Does what I’m about to say give them something to act on, or does it just leave them scared? If they leave paralysed and powerless, terrified of the worst case I’ve just outlined for them, I haven’t been honest. I’ve been frightening. The content might be accurate. The framing is doing damage.

When the Cards Aren’t Giving You a Clear Read

Sometimes the cards just don’t come together. You’re pulling them, you’re laying them out, and one of them doesn’t fit. A bad reader will try to salvage that. Twist it. Force it into shape. Pivot back to whatever the client wanted to hear and slot the card in there. “Oh, the Empress, I know you asked about work, but maybe it’s actually saying you need to focus on self-care.” And maybe that’s the reason. But maybe it isn’t, and the more honest move is to say so.

What I’ll actually say is something like: “I’m not getting a clear read on how this card fits in. I can see what the other ones are doing, but the Empress here, about nurture and growing things, isn’t landing for me yet in the context of your question. What do you think?” And I throw it back to them. Sometimes I’ll talk about the card in a slightly abstract way, not tied directly to their question. That can be enough to trigger something. They go, “Oh, actually, there’s a project I’ve been thinking about, very early days, I’ll need to put a lot of myself into it, I haven’t even talked to my partner about it yet.” And the whole reading opens up. None of that comes out if you’ve decided you’ve got to make every card make sense in the moment.

What I Say at the Start of Every Reading

I almost always say a version of this at the start of a session, alongside my other disclaimers. I’m not here to predict your future. I’m not here to give you financial advice, pregnancy advice, or anything in that territory. And I’m not here to sugarcoat shit. I’m not going to pretend everything’s okay if it isn’t. I mean it when I say it, and I try to live up to it across the whole reading.

I did a reading yesterday that was frankly not very positive. The cards were really beating this person up. Reversals across the board. And at one point I said, “I don’t mean to put this the wrong way, but it looks like you’re the problem here, not anybody else.” And they said, “Yeah, fair enough. I’ve been hung up on this thing. I’ve not been moving on. I’ve not been giving myself any space.” And that’s when we could actually start working with it. If I’d moved past that quickly, that conversation never happens.

Sometimes a card doesn’t make sense at the start of a reading. Usually it’s one of the first couple of cards. It doesn’t land in the moment. But by the time you get to the end of the reading, that puzzle card is the key that unlocks the rest of it. That only happens if you don’t try to force it into shape too early.

What I want you to leave with is this. People should walk out of a reading knowing you give a shit, knowing you care, knowing you’ve been honest. That’s the bar. Next time you’re reading for somebody else, or for yourself, pay attention to the pull. The urge to edit. The urge to soften. The urge to make the person feel comfortable rather than seen. It’s easy to tell people what they want to hear. It’s transformational to tell them what they need to hear.