This is the first one. I’m talking about guidebooks and whether you actually need them as much as you think you do. There are several guidebooks on the table, a live reading I do with no reference material, and I accidentally pull the Empress while literally talking about the Empress. I also waffle a bit at the end and drop a card. So. Standard stuff.
Most tarot readers start the same way: pull a card, check the guidebook, say what it says. It works well enough at the beginning. The problem is a lot of people never stop. Years into their practice they’re still reaching for the book mid-reading, still choosing the most eloquent interpretation from a list rather than actually reading what’s in front of them.
The guidebook tells you what a card means. A reading is about what it means right now, for this person, in this moment. Those are different things. And the instinct to override your gut with the little booklet is really the instinct to distrust yourself. And that’s the more interesting problem to unpack.
In this week’s Thought of the Week, I do a live three-card reading with no reference material at all, then show you exactly what the guidebook would have given me for the same cards. The gap between the two is the whole point.
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