A year and a half after I first started embarking on learning more about tarot, I tried my hands at reading tarot for others. That was end of 2015. By the time we entered 2016 I found myself exasperated. Everything felt wrong, but I did not know enough to say what or how that was so. Granted that I was working with a pool of clients that was not of my own choosing. These clients were those of a large tarot company which savvy marketing relies heavily on a game of numbers. Free training, free reading, free marketing. Fast turn around. High volume. Win, win, win. Care to guess the kinds of questions I received over and over again in this environment?
By the time I decided that reading tarot for others is not for me, I had come to a point of such numb boredom and disappointment that not even the few precious clients that I had come to work with who were ready to take charge of their own future and lives were able to redeem the situation. Part of me knew what I was getting myself into. The other part hoped that I could persuade others to use tarot in a way that I had eventually found myself using. In a way that I had gleefully discovered is tarot's continuing evolution beyond taromancy and cartomancy into something more psycho-spiritual, psycho-poetic, symbolic, and reflective that can be sharpened into a tool for creative problem solving that I came to know it to be.
Nope.
Not with the majority of that particular pool of clienteles. With very few wonderful exceptions, of course. Why did I not stay with them as a way to forge ahead with more like-minded people?
I am going to put the matter of carving your own tarot reading niche aside for the moment. I shall go back to that later.
SYMPTOMATIC RELIEF
There is nothing wrong with symptomatic relief from time to time. Throughout the course of my adult life, I seek it often myself. For over two decades I seek the counsel of a wonderful tarot reader for exactly that. You should have heard the questions I asked. She was always patient and compassionate, and in the end that was what I needed, at that time.
In moments of emotional crisis, I seek only to FEEL better.
A short term solution, which on its own, rarely ever take us further than the chasing of our own tails.
I know for a fact that a symptomatic relief can very quickly become an end in itself. The world is littered with public health issues that are the aftermaths of this reality.
It is a function of human nature. The human condition.
We are often driven by our biology to continue to seek short term relieves. Blocking our own opportunities to see beyond the immediate. Preventing us from stepping out of this primal experience into a more strategic and deliberate place of productivity to find longer term solutions which very often lies within the grasp of our own two hands.
In many professions, those who are suppose to provide help can often enable rather than empower. Be it for financial reasons, as well as more "abstract" reasons. "Abstract"? There are various emotional rewards that can be obtained from engaging in a relationship dynamic where professional service providers, healers, by the very nature of their profession, essentially have the emotional upper hand.
THE EMOTIONAL HEALTH OF A PRACTITIONER
In psychotherapy and counseling 101s, the first few terms we were often introduced to (very early on in the game) would have been transference and counter-transference. Due to the very real impact of these phenomena within the context of a therapeutic relationship, in some countries, those seeking to be licensed to practice psychotherapy (for example psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health counselors, and clinical social workers), are often required to undergo psychotherapy themselves for a period of at least six months. (This was many years ago. I am not up to date with the current requirements). Although the terms are heavily steeped in psychodynamic (a school of thought I was never trained under) transference and counter-transference are phenomena commonly found in various healing professions. Especially those where the relationship between the healer and those seeking to be healed is an integral part of the healing process.
I would count professional tarot reading as one of these.
How to turn potentially unproductive dynamics such as transference and counter-transference, among other things, into productive raw materials for healing is highly dependent on the level of self awareness, emotional intelligence, and the emotional health of a healer. Not to mention the technical knowledge and skills which allow for a sufficient level of visibility into these factors, before the skills to turn these around can even kick in.
Various healing professions often have to incorporate these realities into their method of practice. (Although potentially working with different theoretical frameworks and using different terms).
How about in the case of professional tarot reading?
I have no idea.
So far, I have not seen anything, other than leaving things in the hands of individual tarot readers, their own moral compass, their capacity for insight (or lack thereof), and hope for the best. Is this good enough?
You tell me.
Other than the reality of human emotions, there is also another element related to human nature that is often a subject of various regulatory and ethical safeguarding. Money.
MONEY
Modern healing practices are very often tied to modern commercial principles. This means insisting on the idea that time is money.
When every dollar is attached to the clock ticking for longer rather than not, and with every tick of the clock's tock is someone's dependence on the services you provide as the source of it, then there will always going to be various ethical dilemmas to contend with. The danger of going off balance as we toe the line between empowering and enabling is very real. As your financial welfare continues to be directly tied to your clients' needs of your services, ethical considerations become a serious variable for obvious reasons.
(See: The Emotional Health of a Practitioner)
ETHICS
Returning to human nature (always returning to human nature), the question for me is this:
Can individuals, who is not accountable, professionally or otherwise (Spiritually?), to anyone else but themselves, be trusted to hold on to what is ethical, when there are competing needs between practitioners and clients? That is to say, in cases where the financial or emotional wellbeing of a practitioner is directly and INVERSELY related to the wellbeing of their clients? (For example. In cases where the more unwell the clients are, the more income is generated. Or. In situations where the more clients are dependent on you, the more fulfilled you feel emotionally, because this feeds into a sense of power over others that you might need at the time. Or...).
The existence of various ethical committees everywhere would suggest to me that the answer is:
No.
QUALITY ASSURANCE & BEST PRACTICE
See: Ethics.
Change "ethical" to "best practice".
Change "ethical committees" to "professional governing bodies".
TAROT NICHE
Putting professional accreditation, quality control, best practice, and professional (or spiritual) accountability aside for the moment, in the various discussions on the matter of ethical tarot reading that I could see so far, many have cited the idea of carving a market niche. A conscious focus on clients which will facilitate the shaping of a tarot reading practice that can align with one's ethical standards and belief system regarding the improvements of the quality of lives of others, and how tarot reading, or tarot readers can fit into this picture.
The words we often hear within this context is helping others through "self empowerment".
To me, this means strictly putting the power back in the hands of our seekers.
I came from a background of a healing profession where the separation of spirituality from mental health is heavily enforced. As I bounce off a decade or so long training and experience with human emotions, conditions, and relationships, the same bread and butter topics often explored with tarot, my natural sway is predictable:
Strictly no woo-woo.
This would have been my niche.
(Despite my own spiritual beliefs. I am in the process of trying to find a bridge between the woo-woo side of my belief system, and the no woo-woo side of it).
However.
For my particular circumstances this means putting tarot head to head with other healing modalities. Namely, in my particular case, the science and art of psychology.
For someone with my background, this put tarot in a difficult position.
TAROT VIS A VIS PSYCHOLOGY
Often, the questions for someone in my circumstance are then: (1) How to do both (2) Can I do both (3) Should I do both (4) If not, which way is best (5) Why.
I have only answered question 4 and 5 so far, and am in the process of answering question 1.
I suspect this conundrum might be true for others who are trained in other healing modalities as well. I am not sure.
It might be very clear to you by now which way I would go IF I have to choose. At the moment, I am in the process of trying to do both tarot and psychology in a way that is true to my own beliefs about the potential adaptive use of both.
I can't speak for others. However, as a former practicing psychologist, I can predict which way question 4 and 5 will go for one who has a similar professional background as mine, if the answer to question 2 and 3 is "No".
TO WOO-WOO OR NOT TO WOO-WOO
Here, I am not discussing the merit of woo-woo. What I am interested in exploring is what the implications might be, with regards to its incorporation or exclusion in tarot practice, within the context of our discussion about an ethical tarot practice.
When the woo-woo is incorporated into a tarot practice, it is precisely when I often see tarot as providing a unique tool for healing that other similar healing modalities are not able to provide. (See: To Woo-Woo: "Spiritual").
In a manner of speaking, woo-woo can often be a tarot practitioner's competitive advantage.
If or when we exclude the woo-woo from tarot (let's call this "secular tarot" for the moment), as I have, the question is then: what is it that remains, and why keep tarot, or whatever is left, at all.
I am aware that for some, the answer is very clear. To keep "secular tarot", because tarot without the woo-woo is still helpful to the self and / or to others. Or, to discard "secular tarot" altogether as an option, because without the woo-woo, tarot would have lost its competitive advantage, and there are better ways out there to do what needs to be done.
The other route is to work with tarot "spiritually". This is a little tricky. You either believe, or you don't. Our belief systems came to play here, and there is less room for negotiations. Personally, I believe this is possible, and ini the right hands, can be productive. However, my own belief system dictates that working through spiritual matters through tarot is not "best practice" due to reasons I briefly discussed above, and further down this post.
(See: "Ethics", "Quality Assurance & Best Practice", and "To Woo-Woo: "Spiritual").
So that leaves someone like me with "secular tarot", which value lies in its ability to be an alternative to an impossibility: Being your own psychotherapist or counselor. From my own experience, secular tarot has been rather productive as a reflective and insight seeking tool, in moments of needs when I can not think clearly for one reason or another (usually because of extreme fluctuations of emotions).
As for using "secular tarot" for and with others, I am back where I started: tarot and psychology came head to head.
(See: Tarot v.v. Psychology)
It does not look like I am not alone in this dilemma.
TO WOO-WOO: "SPIRITUAL"
The arguably over-used label we see in various marketing literature used by tarot readers (and other such profession) is the word "spiritual".
(Is "spiritual business" not an obvious oxymoron? How does "spiritual accountability" look like? Is there such a thing? If not, what are the implications? Is the word "spiritual" a mere marketing label? Is there anything truly spiritual in "spiritual"? I will have to discuss these in different blog posts).
The word "spiritual" seems to me to be the "loophole" through which some tarot practitioners escape into an area outside of, and away from, the gaze of professional standard policing. Under the banner of "spiritual" counseling, the word "spiritual" makes it clear that quality control, assurances of best practice, harm reduction, and ethical considerations are between you, your tarot reader, and / or your various divinities.
You can't sue your spirit guide for malpractice. Can you? I was going to say you can sue your tarot reader, but since - as far as I know - tarot reading legally and/ or technically falls under the category of "for entertainment only", you clearly can't. (To put this in perspective, even the almighty Roman Catholic Church does not have the pleasure of this immunity).
The way I see it, this "loophole" serves as both strength and weakness in the tarot reading profession.
The pairing of the word "spiritual" with "tarot" in spiritual counseling with tarot gives this particular brand of spiritual counseling more than a lot of distance and freedom from the dogma and other restrictive measures demanded by spiritual counseling in its more traditional institutionalized religious sense. With the word "spiritual", counseling with tarot frees itself from the demands of professional standards which exist in other counseling professions.
Win-win or lose-lose, depends on your context and where you are coming from in offering help and in seeking them.
HELPING OTHERS
We often hear from tarot readers they are very much motivated by the desire to help others. Again, this is not unique to tarot readers. We often hear this from social workers, psychologists, psychotherapists, counselors, teachers, community workers, and from those in some other professional fields which despite accompanied by the typical promises of overworking and under-funding nevertheless continue to attract idealists everywhere, young and old. Helping others. Changing the world. We are willing to suffer the consequences of our ideals.
NOT TO WOO-WOO: MY PATH IN HELPING OTHERS
For me, this area was (is) psychology.
After a relatively high flying corporate job, I dropped everything, spent my savings, begged and borrowed my way through graduate school in order to have the training and qualification to "do my part" in the world. During and after that, I worked with the "criminally insane" (an unfortunate legal term which mental health professionals thankfully do not use), those with intellectual disability, addictive behaviours, substance dependencies and abuses, mental illness, those charged with sexual and violent offenses, those placed under community probation, those who were incarcerated, and detained in state run youth homes (Read: prisons for kids).
I was blessed to have been able to choose fields of work with the sole focus on helping others. Many do not have the luxury. Bills have to paid. Thankfully, I had (have) other ways to fulfill those obligations. A lot of resources were invested in my training and education so that I can assist those with no power, no money, and no voice, in the best way that I knew how. Not so much a great fiscal move on my part as my return of investment, financially speaking, was non existent. But as far as making a difference in small ways, that often become openings for waves of changes that resulted in more significant differences in the world of a few others, I am satisfied.
TAROT READER PSYCHOLOGIST(S)
What happened during the course of those two or so months reading for others, was that I found myself regularly recommending seekers to seek assistance elsewhere. Particularly, to seek the advice of mental health professionals. For their own sake. I was genuinely concerned. It was a bit stressful, and very frustrating.
The thing is, even if I am no longer a practicing psychologist, I remain a staunch believer of the science and art of psychology. So I concluded, after about two months experimenting with reading tarot for others, that I was too much of a psychologist to ever be able to be a useful "tarot reader". (That is not to say I can not be, or am not, a good one. But then, what is a "reader" anyway? Topic for yet another blog post!).
Sometimes I think that once a psychologist, always a psychologist.
You may not be able to carry that banner professionally without the nod of your local regulatory body. But once you see the mechanics behind the curtains, it is hard to see the puppets and not think of those. In the occasional moments when you allow yourself to forget, the knowing remains in your brain.
From what I can see and have experienced, the trouble with being a psychologist, or once a psychologist, is that in seeking to assist others with empowering facilitation, there is always going to be psychology competing with tarot "reading" as a way to do this.
For various reasons, including those I mentioned briefly above, I dare say, that in my own mind, psychology always wins the argument.
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Note: Psychiatry, psychology, psychotherapy, counseling, and clinical social work often overlaps in areas of practice, but each is its own field of inquiries. They are separate disciplines, regulated under separate professional bodies.
This blog post has partly been inspired by the various conversation which I have encountered online (see links below). It has also been motivated by my own frustration and reflection during my hiatus from this blog page, about where to go next with tarot after almost five years.
http://mnomquah.blogspot.com/2018/06/everything-wrong-with-professional.html
Carrie Mallon
https://youtu.be/DskyCnYlE-A
Pandora Le Cora
https://youtu.be/ksuKiPh_O-w
