My first professional tarot card reading was from a reader named Matilda.
She had long, dark, hair and a bohemian style with silver jewelry that matched the streaks in her hair. She was exactly what a tarot reader should look like. I, on the other hand, was burned out working in tech support and longed to make websites and jewelry.
“What am I meant to do in my life?” I asked.
I kept my notes from that reading for years, I might still have them somewhere. Little chicken scratches of incomplete notes because I was so at odds with what she said.
“You are a teacher.” She saw it in my cards.
Readings can be like that. Vague questions bring answers without timelines.
I had no desire to be a teacher. It would be many years before that changed. Ironically at a retreat following psychic training.
“And now Rebecca’s going to teach us about Human Design.”
What? I wasn’t going to teach. I prepared a hand out and brought charts for everyone but had no forewarning and no idea I was going to teach. I wasn’t an analyst after all. And yet I did teach it. Without preparation, I just sat down and I shared what I knew, what I could.
It felt good, it felt right.
Then a few years later a client said to me, “Why don’t you teach what you do to be so calm.”
The coursework downloaded right then and there. I knew exactly what to teach. I started teaching meditation courses soon after and remembered that reading from long ago.
“Oh, that’s what she meant!” I wasn’t to be a school teacher, a teacher of another form, and it’s slowly coming true. I enjoy sharing, initiating, teaching.
One of the things I know now and teach, is that how you ask the questions is often more important than the answers you receive. It’s a part of skillful practice, knowing what questions will yield the best results for what you want to know.
Especially when learning. It takes an easily trackable question, so you can follow over time what the result was. Whether it is what you saw or not, over time you will learn more about how your tools speak to you. Then at other times a more vague and open ended one is beneficial. In short, you want to learn how to have a conversation with your tools. You can vary your reading and get way more depth through the use of both open ended questions as well as precise, simple, time pertinent ones. Of course you also have to consider your tools as each usually has a strength one way or the other.
Tarot cards are great for open ended questions because they have such a depth of response. Pendulums are best for yes and no structured questions. But if you know your tools, you may learn there is room for this to not be a rule.
I’m teaching divination now . . . much more simple than tarot cards and yet, it’s a system you can use in a very practical way and it can grow to include greater complexity. It has the capacity for a bit of both.
It came out of a challenge by a mentor of mine. “Teach it in 90 minutes,” he said.
That’s not possible I thought. And then what do you know, the next morning, I downloaded exactly what I needed to do and the steps to teach it.
But it works and it turns out that Mitilda, all those years ago, was right. I am a teacher.
I also know that even when a reading doesn’t seem right in the moment, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. I’ve witnessed this with my own clients. I give them information and their first response is, “No way.” Then times goes and their lives shift in the direction I saw, or they explore that thing they didn’t even know was an interest back then.
Staying curious about anything you receive in a reading, or through intuitive information, is the way to get the most out of it. Curious about how it may unfold, how it may show up in ways you might never have expected, and be conscious about the questions you ask.
Rebecca Teeter 