Bad questions to ask tarot cards (and fixes)

A bad question to ask tarot cards is one that hands the deck a job it lacks: predicting an event, reading someone's mind, or giving a verdict. Every one of them can be repaired in about a minute. The repair is always the same move, which is to turn the question back toward something you can see and something you can do.

The wording matters because of what three cards on a table are able to do. They describe what is already moving in a situation, and they describe it from where you stand. A question sets what the cards are allowed to be about. Ask for a prophecy and you will read a prophecy into whatever turns up, which tells you about your hopes and nothing about the world.

Bad questions come in five kinds. One, the forecast, which asks the cards to report an event that has not occurred: “Will I get the job?” Two, the mind-read, which asks what is going on inside a person who is not in the room: “What does he really think of me?” Three, the verdict, which wants a ruling in place of a picture: “Is this the right choice?” Four, the loaded question, which has already decided the answer and wants company: “Why does everyone leave me?” Five, the pile-up, which is several questions wearing one question mark: “What about work, and my sister, and should I move?”

All five share a flaw. Each puts the subject of the sentence somewhere you cannot reach, whether that is next month, another person's head, or a rulebook that does not exist. An open question is a question that cannot be answered with yes, no, a name or a date. That is the kind a reading can work with, and nearly any bad question turns into one.

The repair has four steps. Write the question down exactly as it came to you, because the first wording shows what you are afraid of. Underline the part you can neither observe nor control. Replace that part with yourself as the subject. Then begin the sentence with What or How and cut it to 15 words or fewer.

Here is how that looks on the examples above. “Will I get the job?” becomes “What am I bringing into this interview that I have not looked at?” “What does he really think of me?” becomes “What do I do with the silence between us?” “Is this the right choice?” becomes “What am I trading away if I choose this?”

The loaded question needs one extra step, which is to take out the word that carries the conclusion. “Why does everyone leave me?” becomes “What do I do in the last month of a friendship?” The pile-up needs the opposite of adding: pick the one question you would be most relieved to have answered and leave the other two for another day.

If you are holding a question right now and cannot tell which kind it is, that is ordinary. Most questions arrive as a forecast wrapped around a worry, and the worry is the useful part. A three-card reading built on your own wording can only be as honest as the sentence you bring to it, so the minute spent rewording is the most valuable minute of the whole sitting.

Take Mara, who has rewritten the same email to her landlord four times. Her first question was “Will he say yes if I ask to end the lease early?” Reworded, it became “What am I afraid of in asking to go?” The Eight of Swords landed in the first seat, the one that holds what is already true: she felt more boxed in than the lease made her. The Page of Swords sat in the second seat, the one that holds what has gone unsaid, a request she had never put in writing. The Six of Swords in the third seat, the one that holds the next step, showed leaving as a slow crossing. She sent a two-line email.

A repaired question passes two checks. You are the one acting in it, and any of the 78 cards could turn up and still give you something to do. If only a handful of cards would count as a good answer, the question is still a verdict in disguise. Go back to step two and underline again.

Rewording is also the honest response to the urge to redraw. If you are about to put the same question to the deck a second time, change the sentence before you shuffle. And when a question resists every repair, there is usually a quieter question sitting under the one you wrote, and that is the one worth the cards.

Some questions stay bad however you word them, because the answer lives somewhere else. A lump, a dosage or a test result belongs to a doctor. A contract or a custody dispute goes to a lawyer. Whether another person loves you is theirs to say. Rewording those for the cards only delays the appointment or the conversation by another week, and the choice of when to have it stays with you.

Take the question you have now and write it in one sentence. Cross out every word that points at the future or at someone else's head, then start again with What or How until it runs 15 words or fewer and has you as the subject. Stop when you could act on any answer it gives. That takes about five minutes and needs no cards at all.