Confidentiality isn’t just staying quiet about your clients. It’s not just not gossiping. It’s an active duty, something you’re choosing to hold because you believe in it, not because anyone is making you. There’s no regulatory body for tarot readers. No legal requirement to practise confidentiality. We’re not solicitors. We’re not therapists. Which makes it, if anything, more meaningful: you’re doing it because it’s right, not because you’d get struck off if you didn’t.
That also means it’s entirely dependent on your own integrity. And that’s worth sitting with for a minute, because it means the standard you hold is the standard you set.
What Information Are You Holding?
There’s more of it than you might think. If you have a booking system, you’ve got names, email addresses, phone numbers, maybe payment details. You’ve got whatever information someone put in a booking form about why they were coming. You’ve got notes from the reading if you take them. Recordings if you make them. And then there’s everything that came up in the session itself: what they shared, what the cards said, what they were going through.
That’s not even mentioning ongoing clients. Someone who comes back regularly means you’re accumulating a picture of their life over time. That carries its own responsibility.
The practical side of this is data protection. In different parts of the world the rules are slightly different, but the principle is the same: client information should be kept safe and secure. Think about where it’s stored, what tools have access to it, whether your booking system or email marketing tool or website analytics are handling it appropriately. Think about your notes and what you’re doing with them. Your recordings, how long you’re keeping them and why.
How to Talk About Your Readings
This is where it gets genuinely tricky, because we do need to talk about our readings. I talk about readings I’ve done in this membership. I talk about them on social media. I use them as examples when I’m teaching. That’s not a problem in itself. The problem is how.
When I tell stories about readings, I keep them vague. I don’t name anyone. And I try not to include anything that could be personally identifiable, even indirectly. Because here’s the thing: you might anonymise the name, but if you share enough detail, someone who knows that person can still figure it out. If you post about a client who’s in a really difficult situation in their marriage, thinking about leaving their partner, and someone watching your social media knows that person, knows that person went for a reading with you, those dots get connected. And you’ve just put your client in a situation they didn’t ask to be in.
So I keep a bank of anonymised stories and come back to them later, when there’s been some time between the reading and when I’m telling the story. Sometimes I’ll change details that aren’t relevant to the point I’m making. Sometimes I’ll pull from two or three different readings to illustrate something about a card or a technique, without it being traceable to any one person.
The question that helps me decide is this: why am I sharing this story? Is it because it genuinely illustrates something useful about the reading, the card, the technique? Or is it something else? If the answer is clear, go ahead. If you’re not sure, hold off.
The One Exception
There is one situation where you may need to break confidentiality, and that’s when there is a genuine risk of serious harm.
In regulated professions, this is baked into your code of ethics and it’s a legal duty. For tarot readers it’s a greyer area, but it’s still important. Legally, if the authorities find out you knew someone was at risk and you did nothing, you could be liable. So if it becomes apparent during a reading that someone is going to harm themselves or harm another person in a serious way, that’s when you should tell someone. Whether that’s the police, a medical professional, a family member if appropriate.
But that’s a risk of serious self-harm, harm to others, or ongoing abuse. It’s not, this person seems a bit low, maybe they should see a therapist. You can suggest that, absolutely. There’s a significant difference between suggesting someone might benefit from professional support and deciding to report them or contact someone on their behalf. The threshold for breaking confidentiality is high. Keep it high.
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