Shifting Your Tarot Reading Mindset from Scary to Safe
Photo by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels
Lots of people find tarot readings scary. I get it.
“I don’t want my cards read, something scary might come up!”
“Are you going to tell me I’m going to die?”
“Why does the 10 of Swords look like that, I don’t want something bad to happen to me!”
“I’m scared of the 3 of Swords, I don’t want a heartbreak to happen.”
I’ve heard these questions bounced back at me when I offer to pull a card for folks or whenever I talk about how I do tarot readings professionally.
The tarot makes a lot of people uncomfortable and even if I’m personally okay with it (I mean, duh, I do this for a living), I understand where people’s fear comes from.
We’re inundated with movies that hawk tarot as a precursor to death, fatal scandals, or love affairs gone wrong. Tarot is often touted as taboo and scary-witchy—something that “regular people” don’t dabble in. If you come from a particularly religious culture that immediately associates tarot with devil worship and other nefarious practices, then of course you’d be running for the hills the minute you see a deck of tarot cards (no matter how pretty or “modern” or non-scary they look).
Sometimes, it’s precisely the mindset that “tarot readings are scary” that draws people in.
Because tarot is still seen as some underground, rebellious, weird practice, it intrigues people… who more often than not find themselves pulling away at the last minute because they go into a panic about what the cards could say.
When I first started to realize that I wanted to do tarot readings professionally, I would try to get in as much practice as I could by going around the publishing office where I did most of my freelance work.
I was friends with editors, writers, and art directors there and I was sure that at least a handful of them would let me do free 10-minute readings so I could get used to reading for different people on the spot. I’d spend an hour or two at the office, often jumping from one cubicle to the next or securing a semi-permanent spot at the pantry on off hours, and try to get situated with reading for strangers, friends, and for issues I could never have planned for.
So what do you do when you’re met with someone who’s interested in a reading but doesn’t feel like it’s safe enough for them to try?
First, know that it’s not your job as a tarot reader to convince anyone that what you’re doing is legit or not. If they’re not into it, they’re not into it. And if they’re still deep in fight-or-flight mode when it comes to shuffling cards, then perhaps they really aren’t in the frame of mind that will allow them to open up to the great unknown (because as all you PM friends know, the cards don’t hold the solutions—it just helps us ground ourselves in the wild unknown a little better).
Plus, the last thing I’d want to do as a tarot reader is project some cult vibe and want to turn people into recruits, you know? *lol*
If others aren’t into it, then I smile and let them go their own merry way. But if, despite the fear, they show that they’re keen… and if the people I do read for are game to have some bystanders around (especially if they’re friends with them), then I tell them they can sit in and watch so that they get a sense of what happens.
Second, if they express interest but get apprehensive about the fortune-telling bit, I tell them all about my #practicalmagical approach. I think we all have our own unique way of explaining how the cards work in a non-predictive way. The more we repeat the whole spiel about how cards reflect what’s going on inside us, how they help clarify the present so we can get a better sense of how to move forward in the future, how cards help us see our past a little more clearly, and how they help us connect deeply to our intuition (which usually knows the solution when our brains are full-on going into panic mode), the more we’re able to streamline our message.
I’ve talked about how I read the cards so often, it’s almost automatic to me! I remember getting grilled by a woman who was sitting beside me in a cafe one afternoon. She saw me reading for someone and when the person left and I was off finishing my coffee, she began to ask me what I was doing and I gave her my elevator pitch. (Little did I know that she was a super religious person and offered to “pray over me” right then and there—true story).
Your elevator pitch works well when it succinctly explains how tarot can be safe in two to three sentences. If you over-explain, you’ll probably lose their attention and interest so you’ll want to keep it short and simple!
Third, share your experiences. I do a tarot daily draw not to predict what’ll happen over the next 24 hours, but to give me an anchor that can help me become more mindful about my thoughts, feelings, and actions everyday. Talking about how you use the tarot for yourself in a safe and non-scary way could give people some real world context. Put your money where your mouth is :)
Fourth, I talk about archetypes a lot. I tell them that tarot cards aren’t scary because they’re actually just pieces of paper that symbolize feelings, thoughts, and situations we move through everyday. The Fool’s Journey is just a more woowoo way of seeing literary devices that have been used through centuries! The reason why you can and can’t identify with characters in a book, people on your fave TV show, movie franchises, and the like is because of the tropes that we find in all these tarot cards.
Doing a bit of research about how the brain works, how anxiety builds up, and why panic mode exists also helps you frame tarot in a way that’s safe, relatable, accessible, and practical and magical to people.
I did a meditation teacher training years back, where we devoted half the course to studying brain chemistry, how trauma can affect us, and the science behind meditation. I’m by no means a neuroscientist or a licensed psychologist or therapist (tarot readers can be professionals but we’re not licensed therapists until we actually are…) but I do have some rudimentary knowhow about what’s actually going on in our bodies when people get anxious. And the more you know about the physical stuff that fires off in one’s head when they get anxious about a tarot card showing up, for example, the better equipped you are at handling the perceptions that immediately come up and the fight-flight response that gets set off.
Let’s face it. Not knowing the future can be scary.
I think most people spend most of their days trying to control what can’t be controlled, and the idea that a single tarot card can set them off into unexpected directions can be absolutely terrifying.
What tarot does is help us breathe through the unknown—which is and will always be a constant in our lives. Tarot readings put some space between us and our anxious thoughts, our overwhelming feelings, our unspoken guilt and regrets, our paralyzing indecision, and the gajillion “what ifs” that plague us without us even knowing it.
Shifting your tarot reading mindset from SCARY TO SAFE means meeting yourself wherever you are and breathing through whatever’s on your plate.
It is knowing that your reader has your back, your cards have your back, and that your intuition is going to do everything it can to show you that you can meet the current moment with eyes, heart, and mind wide open.
It is knowing that cards don’t carry any meaning in and of themselves—they’re merely a tool to help you see yourself, to honor yourself in all your imperfection, and to know that people across the ages are intrinsically tied together by shared experiences, emotions, and evolution.
A practical magical approach to tarot will always make you feel like you’re coming home.
It’ll remind you that the answers reside within you and that you do have an infinite amount of space within to hold yourself in whatever circumstance comes along. :)
I hope this was helpful to you, reader!
If you know anyone who’s interested in tarot but is terrified by it, feel free to share this post with them <3