KAJAMA.COM NEWSLETTER

How to Ask Yes-Or-No Tarot Questions, by Jack Chanek

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

It's something people say all the time: Don't ask a yes-or-no question in a tarot reading. Just about any introductory tarot book you pick up, or any reader you ask for advice, will deliver this counsel sooner or later. There seems to be a broad consensus that tarot is just not good for yes-or-no questions, that it can't (or won't) answer them, and we should never bother to ask them. But most people don't talk about why that's the case.

Tarot is a narrative medium. Whatever question you ask, you get an answer in the form of pictures, symbols, and abstract themes. A tarot reading tells a story with its own characters, conflicts, and even a progression from the past through the future. This means that in order to get the most out of tarot, you want to ask questions that can properly be answered with this kind of story.

In divination, it's tempting to ask small, narratively closed questions—things like, "Will I get the job?" or, "Is he going to call?" After all, we come to divination because we want answers about our lives; more often than not, we'd prefer a straightforward yes or no over something more complicated. However, these questions don't give tarot room to do what it does best. They don't lend themselves to the narrative expression that characterizes tarot as a divinatory medium. Asking tarot a yes-or-no question is like asking Michelangelo to draw a stick figure; sure, he can do it, but he'd much rather be painting the Sistine Chapel.

The best questions for tarot are the ones that give your reading room to breathe. These are, generally speaking, open-ended questions: who, what, where, when, why, and how. Questions like these can't be answered in a single word. They require elaboration and context. To know, "Is X going to happen?" you really only need a yes or a no. To know, "Why is X happening?" on the other hand, you need a much fuller picture. You need to know who the people involved in the situation are, what drives them, and what effect their actions have on you. You need to think about what's happened in the past, the relationship between the past and the present, and the way that current events will continue to shape the future. In short, you need to tell a story.

This is the kind of question with which tarot excels. Tarot is adapted to answer open-ended questions that encourage you to take a step back and consider the whole of your situation. Even if you sometimes just want an answer to a smaller question like, "Will I get the job?" you'll find that your tarot readings provide narrative context anyway. If you ask, "Will I get the job?" and you pull the Six of Swords and the Eight of Wands, that tells you not only that you'll get hired, but that you'll hear back very soon and the whole hiring process will move very quickly. If you ask, "Will he call?" and you pull the Three of Swords and the Queen of Cups, that tells you not only that he won't call, but that he's more interested in someone else. Tarot always tells a story.

Does this mean you must never ask a yes-or-no question in a tarot reading? No, not necessarily. You can ask tarot anything you want to know. However, if you ask a small question without room for storytelling, you may find that interpreting your cards gets a lot harder. Imagine asking, "Will it rain on my vacation?" and drawing the Three of Pentacles. Is that a yes or a no? The answer is ambiguous. The themes associated with this card are teamwork, creativity, and mastery, but it's not obvious how any of those things relate to a question about the weather. You could plausibly look to the specific imagery in your card to see if the weather is depicted as fair or foul, but it feels like thematically, the card is trying to express something that just can't come through.

Now think about the card, not as answering, "Will it rain?" but as answering, "How will the weather affect my vacation?" Here, the themes of the card leap out: You'll find yourself around other people. The weather won't isolate you or keep you stuck at home; rather, it will push you toward other people and encourage you to find a dynamic social setting. Chances are good, then, that the sun will be shining and you'll be able to get out and about.

In a way, the card still answered the closed yes-or-no question, but it did so by telling a story. That is to say, the best way to answer the smaller question was to take a step back and answer a bigger question first. This is how tarot shines. Even if we only want a yes-or-no answer, we often get that answer by asking a narrative question and using tarot to tell a complete story. We get better, more satisfying answers by letting tarot do what it does best. The way to get the most out of your tarot deck is to let it tell you a story in every reading, rather than trying to confine it to a strict yes or no. If the yes or no is what you really want, you'll find that the story leads you there eventually, and does so in a more satisfying way than if you try to take a shortcut and avoid the story altogether.

The advice to avoid yes-or-no questions in a tarot reading is solid, but it doesn't mean that we can never ask those questions or that tarot will break if we try to use it for something specific and concrete. Instead, it means that even if we're looking for a yes-or-no answer, we'd do well to keep ourselves open to other information, and to look for the ways the cards supplement a simple "yes" with information about who, what, where, when, why, and how. What we really mean when we say, "Don't ask yes-or-no questions" is, "Don't only ask yes-or-no questions." Don't look for the yes or no to the exclusion of everything else your reading might be telling you. That extra information tells a valuable story, and you'll understand your situation better for having listened to it.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2022. All rights reserved.

Around five years ago, my husband gave me a lovely pair of diamond earrings. Last morning morning, I lost one of them. I was in my bathroom at my sink and I took the earring off to clean it. I always close the drain so it doesn't drop down it. As I dried it with a Kleenex, I had other things on my mind. I don't remember if I placed it back on my sink. I couldn't find it anywhere. I checked the Kleenex but my earring wasn't there. My husband and I have searched several times for the earring with no luck. This is not the first time I've lost one of them. My husband gave me the earrings around five years ago. Some time after that, in the middle of the night, I suddenly sat up in bed and grabbed my ear lobes. One of the earrings was gone! I searched where I'd been in the house and went back to bed. For some unknown reason, I told myself to get up and look in front of my dresser, and there it was. The second time I lost my earring, I had been at the doctor's office that day, so I called but they hadn't seen the earring. A few months went by. One morning my husband woke me up, and in his hand was my earring. He had found it in front of my dresser, just like the last earring. My bedroom is vacuumed regularly, so I have no explanation for how it turned up months later in front of my dresser. Can you help me find my earring this time, and perhaps explain to me what happened the other times my missing treasures turned up?

Carol

Susyn:

There is a higher purpose behind the way your runaway earring frequently disappears and then returns. In fact, once you recover it, you may want to mark it in some subtle way, for I sense that it is always the exact same earring that tends to vanish and then inexplicably return weeks or months later.

Like all natural gemstones, diamonds carry a certain energy. Diamonds represent clarity, truth, passion and inspiration; this is why this stone is so often chosen to represent true love. In addition, diamonds tend to have a mind of their own, so when you get an independent one, they can go missing at a moment's notice. They are also often recovered in the most interesting places.

I myself have earrings that tend to separate themselves from each other; I often locate one in the place I left them but not the other. I usually have to go on a hunt before I discover the missing one in a place I wouldn't normally leave it. I have a theory about these wayward diamonds; I think their main purpose is to grab our attention, heighten our awareness, and refocus our priorities.

It's a common metaphysical experience to encounter renegade jewelry. When these items disappear, they may lead us on an interesting search that often reveals other things we've been missing or reminds us of how important these items are to us. Because these earrings were a gift from your husband, they hold greater value to you than if you had bought them yourself. You would never want to lose your husband, so when you lose something that represents his love for you, you feel compelled to find it in order to restore your sense of emotional well-being.

I feel this particular earring of yours likes to hide in your clothing. If you can recall what you were wearing the day it disappeared, you may find it there. Whether or not you dress and undress in front of your dresser, when your attention needs to be grabbed, the earring may choose to let go in that spot, for it knows that you will find it there. I'm sure that your precious earring isn't lost forever, and will return when you least expect it.

Each time this earring goes missing, it is trying to tell you something. Whether it is reminding you to keep your relationship with your husband safe and secure, showing off to call your attention to some important insight or issue, or simply trying to jolt your awareness, it is sending you an important message. Once you get the message, it will reappear either in front of your dresser or in some other unusual place.

*****

Oceania:

Though I've experienced the strange disappearance and reappearance of physical objects many times, I'm not sure how to explain it. Sometimes there are mundane explanations. (Pierced earrings have been known to fall into pockets, drop into turned-up pant legs, or even get stuck in the gap of a ridged shoe sole and stow away unnoticed.) Other times, it's a mystery! Either way, I like to focus on the spiritual lesson behind the lost object.

I play music with a group that recently got together to rehearse. As the guitar player was sitting down, he dropped a brand new, specialized guitar pick. It had not fallen into his guitar - it had utterly vanished! We all began crawling around on hands and knees to look for it, even laying our heads on the ground so our eyes were at floor level in case the pick was blending in with the pattern of the Persian rug underfoot. After a noble but unsuccessful search, we gave up and returned to our seats to begin playing. Just then, a latecomer walked in, casually bent over to pick up the elusive object, and said, Anybody lose a pick?

I marveled at how this baffling incident brought us all closer, bonding us through laughter and a common goal. In your case, the lesson may involve the truth that the connection you share with your husband is more steadfast, real and valuable than any object.

Diamonds symbolize our greatest potential. Tons of dirt must be cleared away to uncover a single carat. Diamonds are the hardest naturally-occurring substance. When cut and polished, their pure, colorless facets disperse white light into sparkles. Given all of this, a diamond is a great symbol of our own strength, beauty, potential and connection to Spirit.

Your matched set symbolizes your marriage. There may be times when one or the other of you goes missing (becomes distant or preoccupied), but you're still a pair! The lost earring episodes could be exercises in trust. It's a circular, cyclical universe: things and people have a way of oming back around.

There's a sweet scene in the movie Harold and Maude where the two main characters sit by a pond, watching fireworks. He presents her with a metal token with the message Harold Loves Maude stamped on it. She smiles and admires it, then tosses it into the water. In response to the shocked look on his face, she explains: So I'll always know where it is! Whether the earrings are in your ears or out of sight, the love they represent is always present in your heart.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.