crafting tarot questions

Today on CARD TALK, I’ll cover:
-how we use questions in tarot readings
-what makes a good question for the cards
-why good questions matter
-methods for building a great tarot question

Looking for pre-written questions you can ask your cards? Check out Priestess' Prompts. And if you want to dive deep into exploring big answers to personal questions with your cards, I've got a new tarot journaling series called Queens of Spirit.

For more on Meg, check out 3amtarot.com, and order your copy of Finding the Fool through Bookshop.org or your favorite local bookstore.

Find episode transcripts and more over on the CARD TALK website.

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Chapters

• 0:12 Formulating Questions for Tarot Readings
• 12:05 Crafting Effective Tarot Reading Questions
• 18:13 Developing Effective Tarot Questions

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

My name is Meg Jones-Wall and you're listening to Card Talk, a mini podcast for tarot basics and evergreen insights. I'm glad you're here. Today we are going to talk about formulating questions for your tarot cards. Now, what I mean by that is that when you decide to do a tarot reading, when you decide that you want to pull some cards for yourself, when you decide you want to have a little chat with your cards, often one of the first things that we do or think about is our question. In other words, it's important for us to begin by formulating or clarifying what we want to talk to the cards about. Our question, the question that we bring to the cards, the question that we ask of the cards, is really what frames out our tarot reading, gives it some shape and purpose and direction. Our question starts the dialogue that we're going to have with the cards, and it gives the card something to respond to and react to, really paving the way for the answers. Now, I love questions. Okay, questions are kind of my whole deal. So I've been really excited to do this episode and talk about this subject with you, because I think questions are so interesting and they can reveal so much about where our head is at, what we're looking for, where we want to go, what we want to accomplish, what something means to us, et cetera. Questions give us something to bounce off of something, to react to something, to play with something, to explore areas to expand. They shift the direction, they change course. They really can do so. So so much.

Speaker 1: 1:42

But I want you to remember tarot readings are conversations, right, our tarot readings are conversations that we're having with the cards or through the cards, if you believe that when you're reading cards, you're talking to something else. And so that is why I want to emphasize it is very much okay to pull your cards to do a tarot reading and just want to chat, engage, connect and check in. You don't have to have a super clear ask or a hyper-specific question in order to do a tarot reading. I actually think it's great to sometimes pull cards just to say hello, to check in or to introduce a topic for discussion, without necessarily giving a really specific question, so that you can see what comes up. You can get the card's perspective on something without necessarily trying to shape it in one direction or another. In other words, not having a big, clear question does not mean that you cannot read tarot.

Speaker 1: 2:36

I think readings without questions or readings that are just topical are a really legitimate way to bond with your cards. Letting a more general spirit of curiosity drive your reading rather than trying to focus the cards in a specific direction, can make for really lively conversations and can just be a beautiful way to strengthen your connection with your cards. But sometimes oftentimes we're looking for specific advice or support around a particular topic or area of our life or challenge or obstacle or decision, and in these cases, building and clarifying the question that you bring to the tarot is a really important part of the process. If you're going into the reading knowing that you need help around something specific or wanting something to be given back to you, but you're not bringing a clear, solid, realistic, well-formulated question, it's likely that you're going to be frustrated by the reading because your answer is likely to be confusing or subtle or hard to understand, and I don't want that to happen to you. So we're going to talk through what makes a good tarot question. We're going to talk about why it's important to ask good questions and we're going to talk about how you can form your questions.

Speaker 1: 3:46

First, what makes a good tarot question right, what even is a good tarot question. The first thing I think that it's important to think about when you're trying to formulate your question, or just analyze a question that you might think could work, is is this possible to answer? Is this an answerable question? In other words, is the answer to this question something that can be known, or something that you believe can be known? If you don't believe that tarot can tell the future or that the future is something fixed that can be known, then asking your cards about whether or not something is going to happen isn't really in line with your tarot beliefs, right? This is why I did a whole episode on tarot beliefs. I think it's my most popular episode to date. Paying attention to your tarot beliefs and making sure that the question that you're thinking about asking aligns with those beliefs is a really important first step.

Speaker 1: 4:37

Another thing to ask is does the question make assumptions? Is it a leading question? Does it presume something that may not be true? Asking when will I get married if you're not in a relationship that might be moving towards marriage assumes a lot of things, and there's a lot of steps in between where you are and what you're assuming is going to happen, which means that there's a lot of space for wiggliness and confusion and stickiness, and the cards might not be able to respond very clearly. Another thing to consider is is the question respectful to you, to anyone else that's involved in the situation you're trying to ask about, to the cards themselves, and or to whatever you believe is communicating with or through the cards? Is the question respectful? Does it honor your agency as a human being, does it honor the free will of other people involved in the conversation? And does it honor the cards, both their strengths as well as their limits?

Speaker 1: 5:36

Good tarot questions are also rarely yes or no questions. Generally, with tarot, it's better tool for open-ended questions. In other words, is the question that you're thinking about asking a question that the tarot is capable of answering in a way that is clear? Is the tarot going to be able to tell you what they think with the tools available to them, with the cards that are in the deck? It's also just important to note clear questions are good questions when it comes to the tarot. Is there a clear ask built into your question? Is it possible for the cards to misunderstand or misinterpret your question? Is it too broad? Is it too general? Is it too vague. Is this question as specific as it needs to be? If you have a question about a specific relationship in your life, but you just ask about relationships in general, you're not necessarily going to get the answer about the relationship you're seeking. So you want your question to be specific if it needs to be specific. Now, I touched on this a little bit earlier, but let's think about why it's so important to ask good questions.

Speaker 1: 6:36

What do good questions do in our readings? The question that we bring to the cards is what the cards themselves are responding to. A good question really sets the tone for the conversation that we're going to have and lets the cards know what we want to know, what we want to understand, what we want to explore, what we want to think about and what we might want to receive from them in terms of support or advice. Good questions make a huge difference in how we engage with the cards that come forward, because they provide the framework for what we're navigating within the reading. Good questions can make all the difference in how our reading progresses, because once we understand what our question is, we're going to be able to better interpret the answers that come forward. We're going to be able to see the back and forth between what we brought and what the cards are offering in response. Another thing is that the process of figuring out our question that sitting with ourselves really interrogating what we're looking for, what we want, what we're assuming, what we're not assuming the process of figuring out that question can often provide answers or at least provide some additional clarity. Sometimes thinking about what we actually want or what we're looking to receive can shift what we ultimately look to the cards for and can also help us understand what would be the most supportive in a particular moment.

Speaker 1: 8:01

A lot of times when clients come to me for readings or when I'm reading for friends, we'll be reading about a situation that feels really complicated, right? There's a lot of layers, there's a lot of history, there's a lot of back and forth. The person wants to share a lot of details about what's going on with me, and all of that is helpful information in terms of building out the question. But sometimes I might get an hour of backstory and ultimately the question itself is actually quite simple. It's not that the backstory doesn't matter or that the information isn't important, but at the end of the day, it's really about figuring out what information is going to be most useful for the querent to receive, for example.

Speaker 1: 8:42

It's often a shitty relationship, right? A lot of back and forth, a lot of ill treatment, a lot of challenges, a lot of miscommunication, a lot of struggles, but ultimately the question is do I even want to be with this person? Right, that might be what the question ultimately boils down to, but sometimes we have to think through all that backstory. We have to think through all that history. We have to think through all those big emotions to really boil it down to what the actual thing that we want guidance for is. The question might not be how does this person feel about me which is also not something that I ethically believe is appropriate to ask the cards, but that's just me. The question might ultimately be do I even want to be with this person? Do I want to be in a relationship like this? Is this the kind of treatment that I think is worthy of me? Do I think I deserve this kind of treatment? These are hard questions, but they're not complicated questions.

Speaker 1: 9:33

In other words, it is not unusual to pick up our cards knowing that we want to read around a particular situation or a specific topic or a really nuanced kind of challenge, but we still have to develop the actual question in order to tell the cards what we want to receive or to tell the cards what aspect of the situation we want to talk about. Without doing that again, we can potentially have still a really great reading, but the cards might be more in charge of where the conversation goes. And, with a good question, we can tell the cards what we're really looking to hear about and what we want to talk about. So, with all of that in mind, how do we form a good tarot question? How do we form a question that's going to be clear, that's going to direct the conversation that we have with our cards in the way we want to go and that's ultimately going to give us the kind of support or advice or insights that we're looking for.

Speaker 1: 10:25

I like to start by identifying if I'm looking to receive something really specific from the cards or if I'm just interested in having a conversation or making a connection. Am I looking for support and encouragement? Do I want to like a pep talk from the cards? Do I need the cards to be my cheerleader? Am I looking for insights or truths? Am I trying to see something from a different perspective, or do I feel like I'm missing something and I want the cards to kind of point out some things that I might want to consider more closely? Am I looking for advice or guidance? Do I want the cards to help me decide what I want? Am I trying to understand a situation better or am I trying to figure out what action to take? Right? Could I use a perspective shift or an alternative viewpoint?

Speaker 1: 11:06

Do I want to hear what the cards have to say about something or do I just want to talk things through with the cards in a general way and see what they want to talk about? All of these are completely legitimate ways to move forward with a reading, but identifying your need can be a helpful first step in how you formulate that question. If you just want to talk generally to your cards, if you don't think that a question is super relevant, or if you're open to hearing whatever the cards might have to say about a specific topic or about a specific situation, then your question might be as simple as what do I need to know about XYZ? What do I need to know about my current job prospects? What do I need to know about this book I'm writing? What do I need to know about my current job prospects? What do I need to know about this book I'm writing? What do I need to know about my relationship with my mother? You can leave your question fairly open-ended in those cases and the cards are just going to tell you what they think and then you can kind of run from there and decide how you want to proceed. But if it turns out on some reflection that you do want to receive something more specific, then you can use that knowledge to shape your question.

Speaker 1: 12:05

If you know that you want an advice, focused query right. If you know that you want the cards to give you input on a specific course of action or offer you a next step to take, or or help you have a kind of tangible, practical approach to whatever you do, you can start your question with something like how can I or what can I do to, what's the next step I can take in my goal to X Y Z? If you know that you're looking for insights or perspectives, if you want the cards to offer you some deeper understanding or help you see something in a different way, you could start with what do I need to know about X Y Z and get really granular and specific about the aspect of the challenge or situation that is tripping you up. Or you could say what can you tell me about X Y Z? Right? What can you tell me about this particular thing that's happening? What am I missing?

Speaker 1: 12:56

When it comes to X Y Z, if you know that you are in the midst of a journey or process and it's not quite going the way you want, or if you feel like you can't see something clearly or you're getting tripped up on something, you want to understand an obstacle better, you could start your question with something like what is blocking me from? Or what might I change to achieve? Right? You can really build that into the question in terms of what's tripping me up? Or what do I need to adjust. And if you're looking for encouragement, if you're looking for support, if you're looking for some cheerleading, you could start your question with something like what are my strengths in the area of X Y Z? Or what can I celebrate about where I am? Or how can I find joy in this? Or even just something like where are my skills serving me in this particular area?

Speaker 1: 13:46

By doing this, by keeping what we want to receive in mind when we're formulating the question. We really are telling the cards directly what we want to hear about, right, and what we want to talk about. And even whether you're pulling one card or multiple cards, you're going to be able to get that response from the cards because it's baked right into the question. I also want to remind you that open-ended questions are a better fit, right, and so a question like will I get my dream job is not necessarily going to be a great tarot question, because your dream might change. The job you get you might think is your dream job, but it might turn out not to be, you know, whatever, there's a lot of things that could go wrong in the delivery of that answer. But a question like what can I do right now to help me find my current dream job, or what skills will serve me in my current job search, or how can I take care of myself while job hunting, or is there something else I should be looking for when it comes to finding a job? Those could be helpful questions, right? Those might be more specific questions, depending on what you're looking for Now.

Speaker 1: 14:49

I think that formulating a question is generally helpful, no matter what kind of reading we're doing with our cards right, whatever techniques we're using or structure we're using. But I want to specifically address whether or not you need to have a detailed question formulated If you're using a tarot spread. The answer is it really depends. It depends on the spread, it depends on the question, it depends on the topic and it depends on you. You might like having a question when you're using tarot spreads or you might prefer to let the spread be the entire framework of the reading. It's entirely up to you. But I will say that some spreads are really designed to work without needing any additional information. The spread itself might be so hyper-specific that it really guides the reading in a particular direction and you don't have to bring much to the table in order to use the spread In those readings.

Speaker 1: 15:36

You can kind of just pull the cards and work through the reading. In a general way, it's going to guide it to where it needs to go. But other spreads are really designed to specifically help you work through a particular situation or challenge or decision or idea and in those cases having a question might not be necessary. But being clear about the topic you're reading on could still be helpful and in some cases having a really specific question still might feel really good and supportive. If you're concerned that the spread feels too general or too vague and you want to, in some cases, having a really specific question still might feel really good and supportive.

Speaker 1: 16:03

If you're concerned that the spread feels too general or too vague and you want to make sure the cards know what you're looking for feedback on what you're looking to have a conversation about, for example, you could absolutely read a three card spread the situation challenge advice, like classic spread. You could absolutely read that in a general way and just let the cards identify which aspect of your life they might want to talk about. Right, you could just pull cards and, in the situation position, look at that card and deduce okay, it's probably talking about this part of my life, it's probably talking about my love life. It's probably talking about my career. It's probably talking about my relationship to my body, whatever it is. But you'd have to do a little unpacking to kind of figure out what the cards are talking about. But you could also tell the cards hey, I want specific insights and advice on, again, like looking for my dream job, right, and to use earlier example, and you could use that spread specifically to shape the conversation of the situation with your job hunt, the challenges with your job hunt and advice on your job hunt. So pulling those cards and applying whatever comes forward to the connection between the spread and your question and be able to get some clarity that way. But if you wanted to get hyper-specific, you could write a detailed question to use with that spread so, for example, you could say how can I best manage my own anxiety around my job hunt right now? And then use the situation, challenge and advice positions to help guide, specifically finding encouragement around protecting yourself, managing anxiety and sitting in that uncertainty and discomfort of being in a job hunt. Right, and all of those readings are going to be great, but they're going to give different levels of specificity around the situation.

Speaker 1: 17:45

I always like to wrap these episodes by offering a little tip or a trick, and so for this episode I want you to remember the developing questions to ask your cards that are good for you and your unique individual practice takes time and experimentation. You're probably not going to nail this right away. It's going to take some trial and error. It definitely did for me. So I want you to practice using broader questions for general, open conversations and also to practice writing more specific questions for your readings.

Speaker 1: 18:13

The more you do this, the more you kind of test different formats, the more you'll start to develop a preference for the kinds of questions that feel really good and that really work for you in terms of shaping your relationship with the cards. That's all I have for you today, but, as always, thank you so much for spending this time with me today, and I will be back soon with another episode of Card Talk. Card Talk is committed to staying ad-free for everyone, which is possible thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. To pledge your monthly support or make a one-time donation, click the link in the show notes. You can also find episode transcripts, more about me and additional tarot resources through my website, 3amtarotcom. See you next time.