“I had a year-ahead reading that says I’m going to have a bad year. Should I just accept that?”
Over the next few weeks, I'm answering your questions about the tarot.
“I had a year-ahead reading that says I’m going to have a bad year. Should I just accept that?”
When a tarot reading brings uncomfortable news, it can be tempting to either (a) acquiesce that the worst case scenario is in progress or (b) deny all the of the uncomfortable things entirely.
If you are reading tarot for myself and the cards are showing some unsavory situations, I like to think of these points of discomfort as invitations for further exploration. Why are the cards predicting this? What actions within my control are leading me here? What actions beyond my control are at play? Where and how can I exercise my self-agency to transform these possibilities into the best case scenario? If these situations are unavoidable, how can I support myself and make helpful decisions for myself as I move through it?
The tarot doesn’t offer us absolutes.
It offers to us what is most likely to happen, based on all that’s happened before, and what the reality of right now is showing us.
Tarot is a tool to help us communicate with our good guides, to see the options we have in front of us - no matter the obstacles or crossed conditions - so that we can make choices to align us with our destinies and desires.
If you are receiving a reading from a practitioner when this happens, then I have to wonder - Did the reader provide context for the predictions that caused a disturbance in your spirit? Did that practitioner offer you practical, spiritual, or magical remediation to help you manage or change the uncomfy stuff that was being predicted? Did they empower you to take control of your life? Did they show you the ways your good guides encourage you to exercise your freewill?
As a practitioner, I’ve had to deliver news that’s not so fun many, many times. When difficult information presents itself in a reading, I deliver it with the same warmth, kindness, and grace that I hope others would extend to me. Most importantly, I deliver it along with steps suggested by the Good Spirits to help you navigate through it. With the help of the Good Spirits, we encourage you to be an active participant in your own life. We show you the many steps, big and small, that you are invited to take to cultivate a life of joy and pleasure.
Finally, it’s important to remember that in the process of creating a beautiful life, hard things happen.
People die. Partners breakup. Destiny draws friends in different directions. We are challenged to change unhelpful habits. We are invited to pull apart and destroy unhelpful beliefs. We are encouraged to create and enforce much needed boundaries.
These callings are not glamorous. But they are a part of human existence, and often they are formative experiences on our journeys.
Just because it’s not fun to have the experiences reflected to us in a reading, doesn’t mean that the reading is bad.
When it comes to readings that you receive from me, other practitioners, or even the ones you give to yourself - give these messages some time to marinate. Sometimes a message will come through in the moment of a reading, and it feels like it means one thing, but as you sit with it for a few hours or days or even weeks, you may come to realize it means something completely different.
The last thing I'll say is that you're allowed to be frustrated with the information that comes through your divination tools. You're allowed to get mad. The Goddess is the Light and the Dark. They are our Blessings and our Burdens. Our Joy and our Pain. When we ignore or suppress the uncomfortable, we can find ourselves complacent in situations that we actually do have the power to transform. Those difficult feelings are sometimes the exact spark of energy we need to create change in our lives - the type of change that brings us all the closer to our True Dreams and Desires.
Of course every situation is different. Every reading and querent has history and nuance that goes into how I would interpret their specific reading. But I do hope that some (if not all) of what I shared above has given you some reason for hope in a better-than-bad New Year, and some guidance on how to take some matters into your own divining hands.
So my darling, my prayer for you is that you find the clarity to recognize the ways you are called to take action in your own life, the courage to do what is asked of you by your good spirits, the optimism to believe that life can be more than suffering, and the capacity to carry the blessings that your spirits shower upon you.
Xo,
Kaitlyn
P.S. Want to submit your question about the tarot? Click here.
