How Do I Know Which Card To Pick?

When it comes to reading tarot cards, there is an issue that isn’t talked about enough. How do you know which card to pick?! You can shuffle the deck continuously, asking your questions and trying to sense which card feels right, but even then do you know it’s the right one?

When I first started reading with tarot cards, I used to just pick a card like you would if someone was asked to pick a card for a magic trick. I didn’t really put any thought into it. I mostly got the right results but the more I got into it, the more I started second guessing myself and worrying that I had chosen the wrong cards.

It didn’t take long for me to realise that I needed peace and quiet to conduct a reading, I needed to focus on my question and I needed to feel the cards and not look at them. When I did this, I started to feel a kind of energy around the cards, in my minds eye I could sense the direction if the card I was looking for, it just felt right. I’m not saying you should do as I do, but being completely focused and closing your eyes helps you to have faith that something will guide your hand. I can’t say for sure whether there is a magical force around the cards, it could just be in my head but it doesn’t matter if its magic, spirit guides, your higher self or your own brain, if it feels right then it’s good.

Sometimes even to this day, every now and then I’ll do a reading and one of the cards won’t feel right when I pick it, I then have to make the difficult decision to either put the card back and pull another, or stick with the card because I may have chosen it for a reason, even if it didn’t feel right. I hate it when this happens and other readers have complained about the same thing.

The best thing to do if you pick cards that don’t feel right is to stop. Sometimes you do just have a bad day. Sometimes the connection isn’t there. You could be suffering from stress and other issues in the back of your head and so the tarot reading is being affected. When this happens you need to go off, clear your head, ground yourself and maybe even meditate to try and prepare yourself to do a reading.

It gets a little tricky when you get that ‘wrong card’ feeling whilst you’re doing a reading for someone else face to face. You don’t want to look unprofessional and get another card and there is usually that feeling that maybe the card is right but you just couldn’t sense it. My advice would be to stick with the card. If you get it for every card and it’s just not working then you might have to be completely honest and admit you’re not feeling it.

Another problem with reading for others is, do you let the client pick the cards? I used to let clients pick the cards but Strangely with my latest working deck, I had to stop that. Some decks can be used by anyone and everyone and others seem to work best with the reader. I did a tarot reading for a friend when I got my latest deck, I wanted to practice with them and I let her pick the cards. The reading seemed way off and didn’t really yield any proper answers to the questions asked. At first I put it down to them being a new deck and having no connection with me yet, but then I tried choosing the cards myself and I got an incredibly accurate reading. The message here is, if you’re unsure whether to let the client choose a card, test the deck that you want to use professionally on friends and family to determine what the deck wants. I know it sounds crazy to put it like that, but honestly every deck is different.

If you’re new to the tarot, just remember that choosing the cards becomes easier and even if you have an off day, it will come back to you.