Questions to Ask Tarot Cards About Yourself
Twenty questions about your own character rather than your circumstances: habits, blind spots, the things you are still proving, and what you might accept instead of fixing.
The questions
Open any question for the note
How would someone who likes me describe me?
Why ask it
An easy opener that still catches people out. If the description you land on is all achievements and no temperament, that is a hint about which of the two you think counts.
How would someone who finds me difficult describe me?
Why ask it
Ask it immediately after the previous one, while the flattering version is still fresh. The most useful answers here are traits that appear in both descriptions, worded differently.
What do I do when I am scared that I would rather not admit?
Why ask it
Look for the behavior, not the feeling. People go quiet, get busy, get charming, or get very reasonable, and whichever one you recognize will have been happening recently.
Which of my habits is doing the most work for me?
Why ask it
Usually something unglamorous and daily: a walk, an early alarm, texting one friend. Naming it matters because these are the first things dropped in a busy month.
Which habit costs me the most?
Why ask it
Note whether you jump to the obvious vice or to something quieter, like staying up to have time alone. The quieter answer is generally the more accurate one.
What do I use to numb out?
Why ask it
The answer is often socially acceptable, which is why it goes unexamined: work, exercise, tidying, other people's problems. Anything that reliably makes an hour disappear qualifies.
What part of myself do I hide at work?
Why ask it
Some hiding is just professionalism. What you are looking for is whichever part you have hidden so long that you have started to doubt it belongs to you at all.
What did I believe at twenty that I still act on?
Why ask it
Old rules about money, effort, and what you are allowed to want tend to survive without being reviewed. If you can hear the voice of the person who taught it to you, that is the one.
What am I still trying to prove, and to whom?
Why ask it
The audience is the informative half of this. It is often one person, sometimes someone no longer around, and occasionally a version of yourself from a specific bad year.
What kind of person am I when I am tired?
Why ask it
Tiredness strips off the version of you that gets managed. Whatever appears here is not the real you underneath, but it is what the people you live with encounter most evenings.
What compliment do I struggle to accept, and why?
Why ask it
The compliments that bounce off usually contradict something you have decided about yourself. Notice whether you deflect the ones about ability or the ones about being liked.
Where do I mistake control for care?
Why ask it
This one tends to sting in families and long relationships. The tell is doing something for someone in a specific way and being irritated when they do it differently.
What do I judge in others that I do myself?
Why ask it
The sharpest judgments are usually the closest to home. If nothing comes up, ask what irritates you disproportionately in strangers, which gets to the same place with less resistance.
What am I good at that I refuse to charge for or claim?
Why ask it
Skills learned young or picked up easily often get classified as not counting. Watch whether your reason for not claiming it is modesty or a fear of being asked to prove it.
What would change if I assumed people liked me?
Why ask it
A hypothetical that produces unusually concrete answers: messages sent, invitations accepted, questions asked. If nothing would change, that is genuinely worth knowing about yourself.
What am I doing because I am supposed to want it?
Why ask it
Look for the thing you describe with obligation rather than appetite. A useful sign is finding it easier to explain why it is sensible than to say you want it.
What have I already grown out of without noticing?
Why ask it
People carry identities long after the behavior stops: the anxious one, the flaky one, the party one. Ask when you last actually did the thing you still describe yourself as doing.
What do I need to accept about myself rather than fix?
Why ask it
Not every trait is a project. If the answer is something you have tried to change more than twice with no progress, the honest question becomes how to build a life that accommodates it.
What would the version of me in five years thank me for starting now?
Why ask it
Look for something with a long lead time: a skill, a relationship, a treatment, a saving habit. Answers that could be done next week are not really answering this question.
What is the truth about me that I would rather not have read out loud?
Why ask it
Save it for the end and stop there. Whether you feel exposed or relieved by the answer tells you something separate from the answer itself, and both readings are worth noting.
Reading About Your Own Character
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to work through these
Answer before you interpret the card
Say your own answer out loud first, then lay the card and see whether it agrees. Doing it in that order stops the card from supplying an answer you would not have reached alone.
Take these in pairs
The flattering and unflattering versions of the same question belong together, as do the habit questions. Read one pair per sitting rather than working through the list in an evening.
Write the first answer, not the improved one
The second attempt is always tidier and less true. If you catch yourself rewording, keep both and note which one you wanted on the page.
Revisit rather than resolve
Character questions do not close. Coming back to the same three questions twice a year shows movement in a way that a single sitting cannot.
What to watch for
Turning self-knowledge into a to-do list
Several of these are meant to end in acceptance, not action. Converting every finding into a project is its own avoidance, and a busy self-improvement plan can look a lot like not sitting with anything.
Reading in a low mood
Questions about your worst traits will find plenty of evidence on a bad day, and none of it will be proportionate. Save the harder half of the list for a steady week.
Confusing insight with change
Recognizing a pattern feels like progress and is not the same thing. If the same finding has come up three times with nothing different afterward, the problem is not a lack of insight.
Reading around something that needs help
If the answers keep circling the same distress, a therapist will get further than a deck. Use the reading to notice you have been putting off the call.
Three short sittings
How you come across
- 1Write the flattering description first, in full, before you touch the deck.
- 2Write the unflattering one in the same sitting, while the first is still in front of you.
- 3Underline any trait that appears on both lists. That overlap is the finding, not either list on its own.
- 4End the sitting there. Deciding what to do about it belongs to a different evening.
What you run on
- 1Name the habit doing the most work, then check whether it survived your last busy fortnight.
- 2Name the costliest habit and what it buys you, because nothing expensive persists for nothing.
- 3Name what you numb out with, and which hour of the day it usually replaces.
- 4Pick one of the three to leave alone on purpose for a month, and note which one you resisted choosing.
What you are carrying
- 1Trace one rule you still live by back to the person who taught it to you.
- 2Name the audience for whatever you are still trying to prove, by name if you can.
- 3Find a trait you have tried and failed to change more than twice.
- 4Spend the last card on how to arrange your life around that trait rather than against it.