Pet Peeves of a Tarot Reader

 

More specifically it was a dream that I was at my table on Church Street doing tarot readings.

Once upon a time if you were to walk down Church Street you can see my large easel holding the sign "The Tarot Club" with me sitting in a metal folding chair reading a book. I'm always looking up and smiling, asking how it's going to passerby in the hopes that they'll take an interest and sit down for a reading.

During the month of July I raked it in as usual and of course with the school year looming overhead and college students getting ready to metriculate my business came to a slow hault. But alas the dream isn't so much about the business or lack thereof.

So the first two "customers" in my dream were very vauge. I had a slightly over weight woman and I was reading her past and present cards. The words "sedentary lifestyle" kept coming up and I was trying to step around them to keep it from seeming like I was biasing the reading based on her weight, even though that was what the reading meant.

For both customers I did past and present readings, but when I turned to their future cards I had nothing.

The third customer was irritating, and this is the important part. Because this woman represented every annoying thing a client does when I'm giving a reading. Allow me to elaborate.

1: Telling me how to do my job. Or more to the point, when I make a remark about the number of major Aracana, or the number of Queen cards, or how certain cards form a sequence, every so often a customer will get haughty and say something like, "Okay, now tell me what these cards mean."

I am getting to that point. If you're in a rush you shouldn't be sitting at my table. Bottomline.

2: Not following simple instructions. I asked a person once, to not give me any information during the reading as it might bias it and I want them to have the best experience possible. As soon as I read the first card- "Oh yes, you see my father just got out of the hospital and-" WTF? What did I just say about not giving me information?

3: Interrupting me. Imagine a constant barrage of "what does this card mean? What does this card mean? Should this card be here? Is that facing me? No, that's not true at all." Bonus points if you pick up the cards at any point to place them in another part of the table.

In the dream this woman did all of these things. Including picking up the cards, telling me to put them here and there and what each one meant. It got me to the point where I finally just said, "Forget it. Get away from my table. I'm done with this."

And yes, clients do this to me in real life. Once a day or better yet once a week I could deal with it. But some of them are outright annoying and the fact that I can't charge them when I'm on Church Street didn't help at all.   That's also why I refuse to work on a donations basis anymore. But that's another story entirely.