Interesting variations on doing Tarot readings

Recently a reader of this blog, a woman named Ruth who is a tarot reader who lives (as she says) “in the middle of nowhere,” wrote to me with an idea about an interesting variation on how to do Tarot readings.  What follows are her suggestion and my response to her. If, after reading this, you have a reaction or a suggestion you would like to share, please do.
Here is what Ruth said:

An idea for doing double readings just popped into my head, but I don’t have anybody to try it with. Since your blog is my favorite tarot blog, I thought I’d see if you had ever heard of anything like it. This might be something that I read on-line somewhere and just forgot, or maybe it really is a breakthrough in tarot technology. I don’t know.
This is my idea:

Two people (we’ll call them Bob and Ted) both shuffle their decks. Either they can focus on a common issue, like problems they’re having at the company they own, or they can each focus on a separate problem, like Bob’s trouble with his mother and Ted’s bouts of depression.

First Bob lays down one card that Ted reads, then Ted lays a card that Bob reads. If they have a common issue, the card could refer to the person shuffling or the person reading the card or just generally about the issue, but if they have separate issues the interpretation should be for the issue relevant to the person dealing the card.  This process can be repeated as necessary.

What would make this even more fun is if the two people use different decks.  This would be especially interesting if the readers aren’t familiar with the other person’s deck, or if they’re overly familiar with their own deck. Someone else’s interpretation of your deck might show you things you never noticed.

You could even do this with more than two people, with everybody putting in their two cents worth, but that could take all day if you’re not careful. Maybe there could be a time limit. Each person would just get 2-3 minutes per card, then the person who drew the card would have a chance to reflect a little before the next person drew a card.

Here is my response:

Hi Ruth,
The closest thing to this that I know of is the “conversational reading” technique that I discuss in my book, Tarot Spreads: Get the Whole Story.  This is a brief excerpt from my book about that:

One-card readings can be expanded into a series of one-card readings.  In that case, the querent and the Tarot reader engage in a dialogue that is facilitated by an occasional draw of a new card.  Each card that is dealt examines the question just asked until a new question arises.  This iterative process continues until all the querent’s concerns have been addressed.

If you want to see an example of this technique, see pages 220 – 223 of Tarot Spreads: Get the Whole Story.

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Besides being an interesting idea in itself, this also brings up the question of what other new, innovative techniques for reading the cards are out there? Do any of you, my readers, have ideas for different ways to do a reading?  Or do you have experience with either Ruth’s or my techniques and want to share how that has turned out for you?

I look forward to hearing from you all.

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