I always make sure my clients know I’m not the kind of Tarot reader who claims to be able to predict the future. My readings aren’t about trying to prove that I know something about them that I couldn’t have learned any other way. In fact, since I view the cards as a tool for psychological insight, I encourage clients to share anything they care to about whether the cards resonate with them, and why. If they want to share data about their real-world situation at any point during the reading, we can use that to get more specific and detailed about the cards and their potential relationship to what the client wants to know.
But, even with all that, I must confess my heart sinks a little when a client looks at the first couple of cards I’ve described in a reading, wrinkles their brow, and says it doesn’t resonate with them at all. Because I’m human, and subject to insecurity, and afraid that this person’s going to go away feeling they wasted their money and time.
The most important thing for me, the few times it’s happened, is not to get defensive. Don’t try to change the client’s mind about it. Instead, I go on to the other cards in the reading, trusting that it will come together in the end. Something, some new interpretation, will appear in the context of the other cards or the reading as a whole and cause the seemingly irrelevant cards to make sense to me and to my client. It always seems to happen, or at least it has so far. It may be strange to a client to see me say “Oh! That’s it!” and give a different take on things as the reading progresses. But that’s what works for me.
My Tarot Conversations 