What Questions to Ask Tarot
Twenty questions for a reading about your working life and your money, from the job you are sitting in to the thing you keep meaning to start. They are worded so a card gives you something to think with rather than a forecast of whether the promotion arrives. Relationships and single stuck decisions have their own lists on this site.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What is my work actually for at the moment?
Why ask it
Money, status, structure, and the work itself are four different answers, and most people are running on a mixture they have never audited. The card is a prompt to say which one is currently in charge.
What am I building that I no longer want?
Why ask it
Careers accumulate commitments faster than anyone reviews them. Draw this one when you feel busy and unenthusiastic at the same time, which is usually the signature of the problem.
What part of my job would I keep if I could keep only one part?
Why ask it
The answer is the thing to steer the next few years toward, and it is rarely the part your title describes. Useful before a review, an application, or a decision about hours.
What am I good at that I have stopped charging for?
Why ask it
Skills quietly slide into favours, and favours become expectations. The card gives you a way in to a conversation about scope that most people put off for years.
Where is my effort going that nobody notices, including me?
Why ask it
Invisible work is the most reliable source of resentment at work and the least likely to appear in any review. Naming it is the first step to either counting it or dropping it.
What would I do differently if nobody I know were watching?
Why ask it
A lot of career caution is really social caution about how a change would be read by people who will forget about it in a month. Worth separating the two deliberately.
What am I owed at work that I have never asked for?
Why ask it
Pay, credit, a title, time back, a different desk. The card is less important than the list you write while looking at it, and the list is what you take into the next conversation.
Whose approval am I still working for?
Why ask it
Often a parent, an early manager, or someone who has long stopped paying attention. The answer explains more about a career than any assessment of your skills will.
What ambition did I inherit rather than choose?
Why ask it
Some goals were handed over so early they never felt like decisions. This question does not require you to abandon one, only to notice that it arrived from somewhere.
What is the honest reason I have not left?
Why ask it
Money, fear, loyalty and inertia all wear the same clothes. The card gives you somewhere to look while you tell yourself the truth, which is the whole point of a solo reading.
What is the honest reason I have not started?
Why ask it
The mirror of the last one, for the project that has been six months away for three years. Look for whether the card suggests a missing resource or a missing decision.
What skill am I avoiding learning, and why that one?
Why ask it
The avoided skill is usually the one that would change the most, which is exactly why it stays avoided. The second half of the question is where the reading gets useful.
What does my calendar say I value?
Why ask it
Pull the card, then open last month and read it against what you claim your priorities are. This is the least mystical question here and often the most uncomfortable.
What am I not looking at in my finances?
Why ask it
Most people have one number they avoid, and they know exactly which one it is. The card provides the excuse to go and look at it this evening rather than next quarter.
What did money mean in the house I grew up in?
Why ask it
Spending, saving and earning habits are largely inherited attitudes rather than reasoned positions. Understanding the inheritance is what makes it possible to keep some of it and drop the rest.
What am I buying to solve a feeling?
Why ask it
Specific and answerable, unlike most advice about budgets. The card is a way of getting at the category rather than shaming the individual purchase.
What would enough look like, as an actual number?
Why ask it
Without a figure, more is the only available direction and it never arrives. People who have named a number make noticeably calmer decisions about work.
What risk is smaller than it feels?
Why ask it
Fear scales badly, and the reversible risks tend to frighten people as much as the irreversible ones. Use the card to sort one from the other rather than to get permission.
What should I be paid for that I currently do for free?
Why ask it
Applies to consulting, favours for friends, unpaid overtime and the work nobody has assigned. Frequently the shortest route to more money there is.
What is one thing I could stop doing on Monday?
Why ask it
Work readings collapse into large resolutions that nothing follows from. Asking for one stoppable thing with a day attached gives the session an outcome you can check by Friday.
Wording a question the cards can work with
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How the phrasing changes the reading
Ask about you, not about the future
"What am I not seeing" and "what happens next" are different questions. The first can be answered by looking at a card and thinking; the second asks the cards to be right about events, which is not something you can check and not something that helps you act. Keep the subject of the question yourself.
One question per draw
Compound questions produce readings that can be bent to fit anything, because there is always a card that matches one half. If you have two questions, lay two spreads and write two answers, even if the second is only a sentence.
Specific enough to be wrong
"What should I know about my life" cannot fail to be answered. "What should I do about the conversation I owe my sister" can. The narrower question is the one that tells you something, and it is also the one you can act on before the week is out.
Write the question down first
Questions drift while you shuffle, and a reading interpreted against a question you have quietly rewritten is only a mirror. Two lines in a notebook before you draw makes the difference between a practice and a habit.
Questions worth leaving alone
- What is another person thinking or feeling. You cannot check the answer, and the reading tends to harden a guess into a certainty.
- Anything about someone else's health, or your own, in place of seeing a clinician. Use the cards for what you are avoiding about it, not for the diagnosis.
- Legal, medical, and large financial decisions on their own. A reading can help you notice what you want; the decision still needs the professional who knows the rules.
- Third-party questions asked without the person's knowledge, particularly about their relationships or private life.
- The same question again because you did not like the answer. If you must ask again, wait a week and note both readings side by side.
- Timing questions phrased as dates. They invite a precision that a reading cannot give and leave you watching a calendar instead of acting.
A simple shape for a session
- 1Write the question in one sentence, and underneath it what you are hoping the cards will say.
- 2Decide how many cards before you shuffle, and stick to it.
- 3Describe each card out loud from the image before naming a meaning.
- 4Say which card you like least, and spend the most time there.
- 5Write one sentence about what the reading amounted to, in plain language.
- 6Write one action, however small, and a day for it.
- 7Close the notebook. Anything unresolved is a question for another sitting.
Afterwards
- Come back to the note a week later and mark whether the action happened. This is the only real feedback the practice has.
- If the reading talked you into something you had already decided, note that too. It is the quietest way a reading goes wrong, because it feels like clarity.
- Keep the notes in one place. A month of short entries is more useful than any single elaborate spread.
- If a reading leaves you more anxious rather than clearer, stop for a while. That reaction is a signal about the question, not about the cards.