Getting a tarot reading

I didn’t get a tarot reading from some one until years after I started studying the tarot myself. It is very possible that my first reading wasn’t until 2009, in Daylesford, Australia, the one that suggested I’d be moving abroad – and soon. (She was right. We had decided to move to Wales the day prior, and 9 months later we were in Wales.) I still primarily read for myself. For the last year or two I’ve begun taking advantage of the many other people I know who read tarot. Sometimes it’s a good idea to get a different perspective.

It’s not that I’m bad at reading for myself. In fact, I’ve gotten a really good feel for my decks and my intuition. But sometimes, for sticky, highly charged issues, I don’t see as clearly for myself as I might otherwise, either because I’m unwilling, or maybe because I’m hoping for a certain answer, or maybe because I’ve asked the wrong question.

When my friend Gwydion said he was offering tarot readings, I said yes immediately (full disclosure: he gave me a discount on my reading if I would blog about it). There were actually several issues I wanted some clarification around and I finally narrowed it down to one (and no, I’m not going to tell you what it was. Bonus points if you can figure it out based on the cards below!).

You might notice the cards are in German. Gwydion lives in Germany (and is German). He blogs in both German and English. It’s sort of a modified Celtic cross style reading.

While almost every tarot deck booklet, book on tarot, or beginning reader suggests a Celtic cross layout, I have found that no reader has ever used that layout for me. In fact, I rarely use that layout for myself anymore. As I’ve gotten more and more comfortable with tarot cards I’ve moved away from using it; I often create my own layouts, based on the question and the information requested.

When I received the reading my first instinct was ‘did I not ask the right question? This seems so…. thin/not right/too simple.’ I was really annoyed. I read the whole thing out loud to Adam and he looked at me and said, ‘no, that reading was RIGHT ON.’ Which made me even crankier.

See, that’s the benefit of having some trusted external insight: sometimes you won’t like what you hear. But it’s a necessary part of growth! So I sat with the information, and then I sat with it some more. And you know? He’s right on. I wanted Different Information. I wanted the How, the What. I was looking for different answers. This is why is was a good idea to have some one else do a reading for me.

He nailed a couple of things. There were a couple of things where I felt his insight gave me a new and surprising way to see something old and frustrating. Mostly I feel encouraged. I’m tempted to go back and pay full price for readings on the rest of my issues.