What to do if you cannot make sense of a reading

If the cards that are first laid out for a reading just don’t feel right, and you cannot get into an interpretative flow, bear in mind the following:

1. You can ask the querent to shuffle and cut the deck again. What inevitably happens is that salient cards from the first reading reappear in the second reading. This may sound unconvincing, but try this for yourself when you are self-reading and cannot attune to the cards you draw. A sign that reshuffling needs to be done is when the Ten of Wands arises: this often means that there is just too much going on, and the querent needs more time to consider his or her question by reshuffling the cards.
2. Just because you cannot intuit the relationships between cards in a spread does not always mean that the person for whom you are reading cannot; only they know what is really going on in their lives. Write down your reading for them, and at a later date ask if anything that you interpreted came about. This process will give you the confidence to keep going with a reading when you feel unsure, or to know that next time you could ask the querent to reshuffle the cards.
3. You may feel hesitant if the cards are “bad”: the Tower, the Devil, or Death, for example. Although they might seem traumatic, these cards often signal release and new beginnings. Within each is the gift of action and necessary change. And consider that, for some querents, the opportunity to talk about difficult situations is a release in itself.