Readings on relationships are one of the most significant kinds of readings a Tarot practitioner performs. Catalysts of our evolution, development and awakening, romantic intimate relationships cannot but be paid the highest attention in the human collective experience.
I decided to brainstorm the ways in which the Tarot can help us improve our experience of our romantic intimate relationships. This list is by no means exhaustive.
Working with the Tarot can help you to:
– Understand your energetic contribution to a relationship in a more conscious way
– Reflect on, and deepen your understanding of your needs within a relationship
– Understand the dynamics between you and your partner
– Understand the trajectory of your relationship
– Improve your communication within your relationship
– Understand your fears and gain the tools to address them
– Put you in touch with your core beliefs about relationships in general
– Understand the expectations you hold within your relationship
– Better understand the needs and expectations of your partner
– Get clear on and erect appropriate boundaries
– Foster honesty, openness and trust
– Foster self-love and self-nurturance in your relationship
– Understand how to attract a loving, mutually fulfilling relationship
– Understand how your attitudes within a relationship might be undermining the emotional fulfillment you would like to experience with your partner
– Begin the healing process after the dissolution of a relationship
– Understand the condition of your emotional body, and how open you are to giving and receiving love
– Evaluate the extent to which remaining with your partner serves your highest and best interest
– Integrate the lessons of past relationships
The type of reader one consults will have a very definite impact on the kind of relationship reading one receives. For the purpose of this post I’ll demarcate readers into three broad categories:
1. Readers with a more predictive focus.
2. Readers with a more counselling focus.
3. Readers with a more spiritual focus.
(Note that in actual practice, the lines may not be so clearly drawn; a spiritually focused reader may be likely to incorporate counselling).
Readers with a more predictive focus will emphasize outcomes, the actions that parties are likely to take, and future/probable events with respect to the relationship in question. Readers with a counselling focus are likely to take a more “troubleshooting” approach, and assist you to figure out what you can do in your relationship situation, and the positive action steps you can take going forward. Spiritually-focused readers will provide information and guidance about your relationship which tends to look at energetic causes, which prioritizes your holistic well-being, which encourages you to pay attention to your thought process and emotional body, and which encourages your connection to your spiritual self as a way to meet challenges, and to take positive action.
For my own part, I myself am less concerned with “the future” of a relationship, and more concerned with the energy of the present (which of course becomes the basis of any future projection of the relationship). Relationship readings, when I conduct them, are slanted toward evaluating what energies are at play, and prioritize courses of action that are in spiritual alignment with the individual’s best interest.
I also make it clear that I do not provide information about what the “other person” is doing or thinking. Not only does this violate my ethical boundaries, but it is fundamentally at variance with how I, as an individual, conceive personal power. I believe that disproportionate focus on what the “other person” is doing and thinking is disempowering (also, why not just ask them?), and prevents one from examining one’s own inner motivations, expectations, emotions and thoughts. This type of approach stems from my deeply held conviction that we each are the “master weavers” of our experience. Therefore, the individual self, the quality of the individual’s thoughts and emotions, become my starting point for any relationship reading. This is not to say that that the role of the “other person” is ignored – it simply can’t be. But, for me, the focal emphasis of a good relationship reading will always be the state of the person who has come for the reading.
Be mindful of these broad differences when you seek out a reading – be honest with yourself about the type of information you really want. From my experience, counselling and spiritually-focused readings will actively challenge you in a variety of ways: They may ask you to examine your deeply held assumptions and beliefs about yourself, and the relationship you are in. They may ask you to honestly examine the kinds of attitudes you bring to relationship. They may raise issues that you were not previously able to see clearly, and bring up emotions that need to be healed and integrated. They may ask you to take action in entirely new and different ways from what you have been accustomed to.
A few questions to help you prepare for a relationship reading:
1. What kind of information am I after?
2. What kind of information would I welcome about my relationship?
3. What do I hope to come away with from a relationship reading?
4. Why do I feel I need a relationship reading right now?
5. What problem or challenge would a relationship reading help me to solve or address?
With love,
Want to understand the underlying dynamics of your relationship and receive guidance to move forward? Work with me.
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