I liken them to the air pockets that drop your aircraft enough so you feel a bump: those times when Tarot reports very optimistically or very pessimistically. If you are reading on the phone for others, you are likely to feel this in the cards that show up: all the good stuff, unadulterated with, uh, common sense or downsides, or a doom-and-gloom report on something that 'doesn't seem that bad in the real world.'

This is the nature of the tool, and/or the nature of interacting with people who are focusing on their personal life.

BUT you can't write it off because sometimes we are in one or the other of those moods because something really is brewing in our real-world events life.

What I usually do is identify the bubble ... and just about every time the caller is very aware of it. We deal with the picture and check later too.

But, Reader, be aware that it can be your mood that is throwing the sunshine or storm on the terrain.

I've been noticing this for years, and I think Tarot may be unusually well designed to attract exactly the person whose romantic uncertainty has turned into repetitive thought.

Happy situations don't generate many questions. Certainty suppresses inquiry.

“He loves me, I love him, we're having dinner Friday” doesn't create much informational hunger.

But:

Why hasn't he texted?
Is he thinking about me?
Is there someone else?
Will he come back?
What did he mean?

The mind keeps reopening the case.

Romance makes this especially potent because another person's interior is inaccessible. You can inspect your bank balance. You can see whether the car starts. You can get a medical test.

You cannot directly inspect what another person feels about you.

Tarot appears to offer access to exactly that inaccessible territory.

Then there is intermittent reinforcement. Someone who is simply unavailable eventually gets boring. But someone who is affectionate Monday, absent Tuesday, sends a heart Thursday, disappears Friday and returns Sunday can become psychologically sticky. Every little signal becomes evidence.

Tarot can become another way of checking the signal.

There's also a cost difference:

Does he want me?
Ask him—and risk hearing the answer.

Or:

Does he want me?
Draw cards.

The second gives you something to do without requiring the dangerous event of getting a definitive answer from the person concerned.

And Tarot is infinitely repeatable. You can't reasonably call the fellow fourteen times today and ask if he still loves you.

But you can ask Tarot fourteen slightly different questions about him.

At that point, repetition can disguise itself as investigation.

There's also simple selection bias. People seek divination when something is unknown, missing, threatening, desired or consequential. Contentment doesn't require much investigation.

Even:

“We're getting married! Will we be happy?”

isn't really a question about present happiness.

It's about the possible loss of it.

And Reddit probably magnifies the effect. Cheating, ghosting, exes, secret motives, betrayal and reconciliation are stories strangers want to enter.

“My husband and I have been contented for 22 years” may be excellent human life.

It's lousy spectator sport.

So what do you think? Why does Tarot seem to attract so much romantic uncertainty and repetitive questioning? And do you see the same pattern among people who actually read Tarot—not just on Reddit?

HOW TO READ TAROT VERBATIM

Tarot Verbatim has a simple reading procedure:

Look at the picture; relate it to the question; put it into words; put the cards together; watch what the other cards do to it.

1. Look at the picture.
What is actually going on in that picture?

2. Relate the picture to the question.
A card can say a lot of things. The question tells you which of them matters here.

3. Put what you see into words.
Use ordinary words for what the picture is doing.

4. Put the cards together.
Don't give me three separate card meanings. Read the cards together and make a sentence that answers the question.

5. Watch what happens when cards get together.
Cards affect one another. A card around different cards can say something different.

That's how you read Tarot Verbatim.

Tarot communicates. Tarot is eager to communicate. You don't corner Tarot and make it talk; it is looking to share its wisdom with whoever contacts it. YOU can have a bad Tarot day, but that's at your end. YOU can lack understanding; Tarot itself understands. Thinking Tarot is difficult is counterproductive for learners. The difficulty is at the human end. RATHER, think of Tarot doing charades with you to get it through to you.

Tarot is speaking clearly in a language that is at first foreign to you. There are ways, there are techniques, that you can use to familiarize yourself with the process. Most of us do not think in those terms.

The age of a spread, a deck, and I guess any factor determines how well it operates generally. Celtic Cross is ancient and everybody uses it. The old decks (RWS, Marseilles, Thoth, maybe Gypsy Witch) function better than the ones made by one person recently, just as the old spreads predominate and the newly minted ones stay as a seed.

**Four of Wands:** A couple and marriage to me; it depicts a wedding.

**The Lovers:** Says "lovers."

**Two of Cups:** A couple declaring their upcoming marriage, so obviously it's a romantic card.

**Ace of Cups:** Unconditional love, true love.

**Queen of Cups:** Loves and admires her man.

**Knight of Cups:** The affectionate, helpful boyfriend who takes initiative.

**King of Cups:** The emotional or affectionate man.

**Ten of Cups:** "Happily ever after" marriage, cohabitation, or relationship.

**Six of Cups:** Obviously romantic, what with him giving her flowers.

**Three of Cups:** Dating and enjoying life together as like-minded people.

**The Star:** Says "I love you" and is "crazy about you."

**The Devil:** Down-and-dirty sex.

**Temperance:** Equal, intimate partnership relationship.

**The Hierophant:** Commitment, an official status.

**The Empress:** The beloved.

How to handle the disruptive new people in our department.

Chariot - Two of Swords - Two of Cups

Your strategy is to stop them through the very people they are affecting.

Your strategy is to - Chariot

stop them - Two of Swords

through the very people they are affecting. - Two of Cups

Two of Cups is a sophisticated member in Tarot Verbatim, which interprets the picture literally and makes a sentence that way. The caduceus was an age-old symbol back when Moses was royalty in Egypt. (He used a form of it to prevent people in the camp from being bitten by venomous snakes.) You see the spirits of a spell here: intertwined snakes around a rod, topped by a lion's head. So this is sorcery. Sorcery is affecting a situation indirectly, secretively, behind the scenes, so this Two of Cups card stands in for any kind of third-party interference or disruption ... and that is a category with a whole lot of unrelated miscellaneous items in it. There's a rattlesnake in the woodpile. Surreptitious influence is wide open these days.

The caduceus is suspended above a couple who are declaring their upcoming marriage, which was dead serious back then: It was marriage. So Two of Cups is a romance card, is seduction and sexual attraction, is even a 'hot love affair.'

It doesn't take long. You do Tarot for, uh, 'a few minutes,' and you realize each card has more than one meaning. After all you got only 78 of 'em to represent anything and everything that is, was, will be, might be, never is, never was, and never could be, anything anyone believes, imagines, disbelieves or loathes. So after spending some more time in Tarot Town, you get at first a glimmer of the spectrum each card has, with another glimmer that there are categories this spectrum has for each card ... and later on, after another while, that, heck, some of these categories are contradictory or partially contradictory.

When you reach that level of spectrum sophistication, you are now expert and the whole thing flows as it never has before.

Just know that when you hang in there, the light comes on and your world view expands to ... I guess maybe the whole world? (You never know for sure until you leave the world and can look back on the whole trip.)

Six of Pentacles is an exchange. The picture shows the employer paying the workers exactly what they have earned, what they deserve (weighing the coins with a fair scale).

So Six of Pentacles is about getting what you deserve, which can be money attention, or anything your question calls for. Six of Pentacles can be you giving them what they deserve, no more and no less.

This theme of fairness is central to Six of Pentacles. A paycheck.

Six of Pentacles is an exchange. The picture shows the employer paying the workers exactly what they have earned, what they deserve (weighing the coins with a fair scale).

So Six of Pentacles is about getting what you deserve, which can be money attention, or anything your question calls for. Six of Pentacles can be you giving them what they deserve, no more and no less.

This theme of fairness is central to Six of Pentacles. A paycheck.

This pair of cards made no sense in her reading. Many of my Querants read Tarot because I mentor people who want to adopt Tarot Verbatim. Behind (in Celtic Cross) was Sun, paired with Ahead, Ace of Cups. The most likely interpretation in the context of that reading was 'free of God,' which made no sense, and I named some other less likely phrases for it but left it open, left it out of the reading's message. The person the reading was about was the vice president of a major company who was in both professional and personal crisis, an edgy fellow. The reading was for his mother.

When his story unfolded, she knew exactly what it said because her son said exactly that 'he was so happy, that it was God.' (Sun, happy ... and free, and relieved; Ace of Cups in RWS is obviously God.)

The most common translation for Hanged Man is 'realize' in all its forms: get it, aha moment, epiphany, inspiration, seeing ... that sort of thing.

Since the story behind all these myths is the hero or god wanted what we call ESP, spiritual powers, psychic ability ... which in ancient times was 'wisdom,' this Hanged Man Card is THE card for a psychic person, psychic idea, psychic inspiration. His hair is on fire with the delivery of these powers/abilities, which also expresses how you feel when you first see things in this different light: upside down with your hair on fire!

Another page in Hanged Man's book of meanings is to be turned on, which often happens in romance questions.

My theory: The pictures align with the subconscious. The meanings are words, align with the conscious. That's ALL the parts of Tarot Verbatim, so over time a person immersed in the use of Tarot who reads pictures directly as words aligns the 'two sides of the mind' and thinks consciously using the subconscious. (People report, often around 3 months of regular practice.)

The way I created a unique (heretical) Tarot system that doesn't rely on intuition (it's on tap, of course). Been doing it since 1980. This system is logical, mechanical, and language-based. It bypasses speculating pretty well. Each card has to have a part in the sentence they make, and no 'extra' phrases. Discipline.

Immerse yourself into each Rider Waite Tarot card. Its scenes are things that happen ordinarily between people. BE each character in each card. Write each observation on index cards and file them so you can retrieve them the next time they appear. These are YOUR meanings in YOUR language, my mystery, nothing you have to relate to ... it's already inside you.

Next do the same with two cards at a time. There's more than 3,000 combinations. Some combinations will harbor phrases you are used to, harbor things that happen often. Some others hardly get together for various causes. So now you know that, say, Nine of Wands or Page of Swords with Seven of Pentacles are going to say 'anxious and uncertain' most of the time. See them in your new spread: You go there first ... comfort zone.

Over time, you become an accurate expert, especially if these foundational questions are about EVERYTHING, not just love and money. Over time this method has a strong side effect: The images engage the subconscious; the language engages the conscious; and now they get in sync ... in real life. You connect dots you never connected before.

I keep threatening to write a book about The Question. 20 years court reporting the best lawyers interrogating witnesses of different types taught me a thing or two about asking questions. I wonder whether that book will attract enough interest to make it worth the time it would take to organize and write it. It's a painstaking effort but I've been meaning to do it for twenty years or so.

Eight of Cups - Seven of Wands - Four of Wands

Eight of Cups - It's over with now,

Seven of Swords - the thieving

Four of Wands - at your house

Eight of Cups - Seven of Wands - Four of Wands

Eight of Cups - It's over with now,

Seven of Swords - the thieving

Four of Wands - at your house

Six of Wands - Eight of Pentacles - Justice

Six of Wands - Things are not the way they seem now, but

Eight of Pentacles - it's a work in progress to

Justice - being straight the way it's supposed to be.

Eight of Cups - Seven of Wands - Four of Wands

Eight of Cups - It's over with now,

Seven of Swords - the thieving

Four of Wands - at your house