Tarot

1. Introduction

Version followed: the Rider-Waite-Smith (RWS) tradition as A. E. Waite's The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (W. Rider, London, 1911 edition, plates by Pamela Colman Smith) presents it. The Thoth deck (designed by Aleister Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris) is described as a deck only. The therapeutic material follows Arthur Rosengarten's Tarot and Psychology: Spectrums of Possibility (Paragon House) and Lauren Z. Schneider's Tarotpy as she describes it. Tarot's reclaiming by Black women and queer readers follows the writers and scholars cited below.

Tarot is a 78-card deck: 22 Major Arcana (trumps) and 56 Minor Arcana in four suits. It is used for divination, meditation and self-reflection. Waite frames the cards as more than fortune-telling. He says they "belong in themselves to another region", meaning a symbolic, mystical order. He still treats divination as a historical fact and gives a reading method he calls previously unpublished [source: Waite, Preface, sacred-texts]. Practitioners hold that a reading helps the querent see a situation and its possibilities. Some add that the cards reflect a meaningful, synchronous order, a claim Rosengarten discusses in Jungian terms [source: Paragon House, Rosengarten].

This guide is not a method of tarot reading. It covers the psychotherapist's work when a client brings tarot into therapy. That work includes:

• the client's own readings as reflective or projective material;
• decisions made by cards;
• compulsive consulting;
• paid readers;
• grief;
• the practice as a valued spiritual and cultural identity, including among Black women and queer readers.

In this guide, change comes from the client's own meaning-making, from a safe exploration of what the images and readings evoke, and, where consulting has become compulsive, from learning to tolerate uncertainty [synthesis; source: IOCDF on reassurance-seeking].

Evidence status (one line): tarot's predictive claims are not established and its therapeutic use is "not well studied"; reviews point to the Barnum effect and cold reading to explain why readings feel accurate, and only small qualitative studies describe benefit for self-reflection [source: PsychCentral, which cites a review by Ivtzan 2007 [uncertain: not verified]; Hofer 2009].

2. Framework

2a. The method as its standard texts describe it (outline only)

• Structure. There are 22 trumps and four suits. RWS uses Wands, Cups, Swords and Pentacles. Thoth uses Wands, Cups, Swords and Disks, with court cards Knight, Queen, Prince and Princess [source: learntarot.com, Thoth description].
• RWS (Waite and Smith). Waite's book has three parts [source: Waite, Preface]:
  • the history of tarot, written partly against the French occult school;
  • the symbolism at its "higher" levels, illustrated by the "rectified" deck drawn under his supervision;
  • divination, with meanings compiled from earlier published sources and one reading method.
  The title page names Pamela Colman Smith as designer of the 78 plates [source: sacred-texts title page]. Smith's fully illustrated pip cards, with scenes on every Minor Arcana card, are what most later decks and guidebooks build on [uncertain: not verified]. Rachel Pollack's Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom (first published in two volumes, 1980 and 1983; Weiser edition with a new preface, 2019) reads the cards' archetypes through a modern psychological lens aimed at self-awareness; endorsements on the publisher's page present it as usable with Rider-Waite imagery or any deck [source: Red Wheel Weiser].
• Thoth (Crowley and Harris). Crowley designed the deck between 1938 and 1943, and Lady Frieda Harris painted it from his sketches. Its companion book is The Book of Thoth (1944). Several trumps are renamed: Magus, Priestess, Lust, Adjustment, Art, Aeon, Universe [source: learntarot.com]. This guide describes it as a deck only; clients who use it take its meanings from the deck's own companion book.
• History. In Frances Yates's 1981 review of Michael Dummett's The Game of Tarot from Ferrara to Salt Lake City (Duckworth), Dummett's central aim is to show that tarot was only ever a card game, one that appeared in the fifteenth century and spread across Europe. Dummett credits Court de Gébelin, in Le monde primitif, as the first to read the cards as occult (as hieroglyphs of Egyptian wisdom), and Eliphas Lévi took the idea up in the mid-nineteenth century; Yates doubts that Court de Gébelin was the first [source: Yates 1981, New York Review of Books]. The precise Italian origin is [uncertain: not verified].
• A reading, in outline. The querent frames a question, shuffles, lays cards in a spread (a set pattern of positions), and reader or querent interprets the images in relation to the question. Some readers also read upright and reversed cards differently. This guide gives no meaning tables or spreads. Clients use their own guidebooks.
• Therapist uses (attributed). Rosengarten, a licensed clinical psychologist and tarot teacher, wrote the first accredited doctoral dissertation on tarot divination (California Institute of Integral Studies, 1985). It compared tarot with dream interpretation and the TAT as routes to unconscious material. His book gives each card a "Spectrum of Possibility", a range of psychological meanings rather than one fixed meaning. It also covers:
  • healing contexts and "a Tarot method";
  • links to systems of psychotherapy;
  • a Tarot Research Project;
  • two case studies.
  [source: Paragon House; publication year and study findings [uncertain: not verified]]. Schneider (MA, MFT) began Tarotpy in 1983. It combines family-systems, hypnotherapy, narrative and dream work with card imagery used projectively, and is "not fortune telling". She founded the Institute of Dreams and Tarotpy, which offers a six-month certification [source: Dream Network Journal interview, 2014].

2b. The psychotherapist's process [synthesis]

No source gives phases or session counts for this work. The stages below are a working structure, not a protocol.

1. Notice and invite. Goal: learn that tarot matters to the client without judgement. Move on when the client has described their practice in their own words.
2. Map its place in the client's life. Goal: a cultural, spiritual and functional picture. This covers:
   • reading for oneself or with paid readers;
   • frequency and cost;
   • community, tradition and identity;
   • decisions the cards influence;
   • grief.
   Use the DSM-5-TR Cultural Formulation Interview. Its supplementary module 5, Spirituality, Religion, and Moral Traditions, can be used alongside the core CFI or on its own when the client reports a spiritual or religious practice [source: APA, CFI Supplementary Modules]. Move on when you and the client agree whether tarot is a resource, neutral, or part of the presenting problem.
3. Work with the material. If tarot is a resource, use the client's readings reflectively (4.2–4.4). If it is part of the problem, address decisions, compulsion, exploitation or grief (4.5–4.9). Move on when the client can hold the reading as one voice among others in their own deciding.
4. Consolidate and end. Review what the client keeps, changes or stops in their practice, on their own terms.

3. Guiding principles

• The client's practice, the client's meanings. Ask what a card means to them before anything else. Their guidebook or tradition is the reference, not yours [synthesis; Rosengarten's "spectrum" approach supports open meanings: source Paragon House].
• Attribute, neither endorse nor dismiss. Say "in your reading" or "in that tradition", not "the cards show". Never debate whether tarot works [synthesis].
• The therapist does not read cards for clients. You do not shuffle, lay spreads or interpret for prediction in therapy. A therapist who also reads tarot keeps the two roles fully separate and does not read for therapy clients [synthesis]. Published integrations such as Tarotpy are specialist methods with their own training, framed by their developer as non-predictive [source: Dream Network Journal].
• Projective, not predictive. When a client brings a reading, treat the images as material that draws out the client's associations, as Rosengarten and Schneider frame it, not as a forecast [source: Paragon House; Dream Network Journal].
• Respect a living spiritual practice and its communities. For many Black women, tarot sits within African-centred and ancestral spirituality and community. For queer readers it can be a space of self-definition and healing. Do not treat it as a symptom [source: YES! Magazine 2019; Failla 2019 via Academia profile; Magnett 2023; Lambda Literary 2023].
• Assess function, not belief. The question is what consulting does for the client: comfort, reflection, avoiding a decision, neutralising a fear. Believing in tarot is not a clinical finding [synthesis].
• Do not supply certainty. Where consulting is reassurance-seeking, neither the cards nor the therapist should become the source of certainty. Work towards tolerating uncertainty [source: IOCDF, Karr].
• Watch for money and secrecy. Escalating payments, "lucky" items and requests for secrecy are warning signs of scams [source: Bromley Trading Standards 2024].
• Ethics and competence. Spiritual and religious competencies apply: Vieten et al. (2013) propose 16 basic competencies, framed as attitudes, knowledge and skills, for all licensed psychologists [source: IONS publication page]. Consult and refer where tarot use links to psychosis, mania, severe OCD or exploitation [synthesis].
• Consent. Explore tarot material only if the client wants to, and say clearly what you will and will not do with it [synthesis].

4. Intervention inventory

The procedures below are the therapist's own work around a client's tarot practice. None of them involves the therapist performing a reading. Steps are [synthesis] unless a source is given.

4.1 Opening and mapping the client's tarot practice

• Purpose / when: When a client mentions cards, a reader or a reading. Also at intake, if the client names spirituality as important.
• Steps:
  1. Note the mention neutrally and ask whether they would like to say more.
  2. Ask about practice:
     • who reads (self, friend, community, paid reader, app);
     • which deck or tradition (RWS, Thoth, other);
     • how often;
     • what it costs.
  3. Ask about meaning: what it gives them, and where it comes from (family, ancestral spirituality, a queer or Black community space, online groups).
  4. Ask about function: what they bring to the cards, such as decisions, fears, relationships or grief, and what happens when they cannot consult.
  5. Use the CFI's Spirituality, Religion, and Moral Traditions supplementary module to explore affiliation and community ties, the practice's role in daily and family life, how often it happens and how much it matters, how it helps with coping, and any tradition-related stress, conflict or discrimination [source: APA, CFI Supplementary Modules].
  6. Summarise back in the client's words, and agree whether tarot belongs in the work at all.
• Example language (illustrative): "You mentioned you pulled a card about this. I'm interested in what your practice is like, if you'd like to tell me." / "What does reading give you that other things don't?"
• Watch for: the client bracing for ridicule, which calls for explicit respect. Frequency or spending the client is embarrassed about. Signs that the cards are "telling" them things personally beyond their tradition's frame, which needs differential assessment (4.10). Working when: the client speaks freely, and you can name together what role tarot plays.

4.2 Working with a reading the client brings (reflective / projective use)

• Purpose / when: The client brings a reading or a card, from themselves or a reader, and wants to explore it. The images serve as projective material, in line with Rosengarten's comparison of tarot with the TAT and dreams, and Schneider's use of imagery to draw out associations "without direct confrontation" (paraphrase) [source: Paragon House; Dream Network Journal].
• Steps:
  1. Ask the client to describe the card or spread as they saw it: what is in the image, colours, figures, and what struck them first.
  2. Ask for their associations and feelings, not the guidebook meaning. If they offer the guidebook meaning, ask which part fits and which does not, echoing Rosengarten's idea of a spectrum of meanings.
  3. Link the associations to the current issue, in their words.
  4. Separate what the reading "said" from what the client concluded and what they want.
  5. Close by asking what, if anything, they will take from it.
• Example language (illustrative): "Before we get to what the book says, what do you notice in the picture?" / "Which part of that rings true for you, and which part doesn't?" / "If this card were describing a feeling rather than an event, what feeling would it be?"
• Watch for: you drifting into interpreting the cards yourself. Stop and hand the meaning back. Feared cards (for example Death or the Tower) can provoke acute anxiety. Explore what the fear is about, and do not reassure about outcomes. Practitioners such as the writer Junauda Petrus describe coming to see such cards as part of growth and transformation [source: Lambda Literary 2023]. Working when: the client produces their own meanings and links, and holds the reading more lightly.

4.3 Reflective journaling around the client's own draws

• Purpose / when: For clients who already draw cards for themselves and want to use their practice reflectively between sessions. A qualitative study of four regular, non-divinatory users found that they used tarot for insight into current situations, for action planning and for comfort in hard times [source: Hofer 2009]. Petrus describes a writing practice built on cards: draw, describe what it evokes, then write a poem, memoir or journal entry [source: Lambda Literary 2023].
• Steps:
  1. Agree that the journaling is the client's own practice, done at their initiative.
  2. Suggest a structure: what they drew, what they saw, what it stirred, what it connects to now, and what they choose to do.
  3. Ask them to bring the writing, not the card, as the focus in session.
  4. Review it together using 4.2.
• Example language (illustrative): "If you're drawing anyway, you might write down what the image stirred and what you decided, so we can look at your thinking together."
• Watch for: journaling turning into repeated draws on the same question. That is reassurance-seeking (4.6). Working when: entries show the client's own reasoning and choices.

4.4 Affirming tarot as spiritual and cultural practice (Black women and queer readers)

• Purpose / when: The client's practice is tied to identity, ancestry or community.
• Background as writers and scholars describe it:
  • YES! Magazine (Biba Adams, 2019) reports Black women in the US using tarot within African-centred and Indigenous spiritual practice. This includes ancestor reverence and community groups that offer judgement-free space. The article frames the trend as moving away from churches that did not serve them and as challenging stigma about tarot in Black communities. It credits Luisah Teish's Jambalaya (1984) with reviving "Woman Spirit" practice.
  • Marcelitte Failla's "Black Femmes, Black Gods: Magic as Justice" (The Journal of Religion and Culture, 2019) argues that Black femmes use African-heritage religion and spiritual healing as resistance to anti-queer and anti-trans violence, treating Blackness and queerness as sacred [source: Academia profile]. The work concerns African-heritage religion and spiritual healing broadly; whether it discusses tarot itself is [uncertain: not verified].
  • Destiny Magnett (Harvard Divinity School conference, 2023) argues that tarot gives queer practitioners a space to work through past, present and future at once, and to heal [source: Harvard PES].
  • Petrus calls tarot "a queer technology" [source: Lambda Literary 2023].
  • The anthology Tarot in Other Words, a follow-up to Cassandra Snow's Queering the Tarot, collects queer readers' approaches [source: anthology description, Tarot in Other Words].
• Steps [synthesis]:
  1. Ask how tarot connects to their history, ancestors, faith or community.
  2. Name the community and practice as resources if the client experiences them so.
  3. Explore any conflict with family religion, or stigma, without taking sides.
  4. Where the client wishes, involve community elders or practitioners they trust as supports, with consent.
• Example language (illustrative): "It sounds like reading is part of how you stay connected to your grandmother's ways. What does that connection give you?" / "How does your reading community respond when you're struggling?"
• Watch for: your own assumptions, such as treating the practice as escapism or as a symptom. Family or church conflict and religious trauma. Online communities that are supportive, or that become sources of pressure or paid upselling. Working when: the client feels their practice is respected and can use it, and their community, deliberately.

4.5 Decisions made by the cards

• Purpose / when: The client has made, or is about to make, a significant decision on the basis of a reading: a relationship, a job, a move, money, or health care.
• Steps:
  1. Reconstruct the decision: the question asked, the reading, and how the client got from reading to choice.
  2. Ask what else is informing the decision: values, facts, other people, and their own wishes.
  3. Ask whether the reading confirmed something they already wanted, or overrode it.
  4. Explore what it would mean to decide "with" rather than "by" the cards. Use a values or pros-and-cons exercise in the client's own terms.
  5. Where health is involved, make sure medical decisions stay with their clinicians. Do not advise on treatment yourself.
  6. Agree a review point after the decision.
• Example language (illustrative): "If the cards had come out the other way, what would you have wanted to do?" / "How much of this decision is yours, and how much did you hand over to the reading?"
• Watch for:
  • decisions made to avoid responsibility or conflict;
  • a paid reader steering major life or money decisions;
  • readings used to stay in, or leave, a relationship under pressure;
  • abuse dynamics where a partner uses "the cards";
  • delayed medical care.
  Working when: the client can state their own reasons, and the reading becomes one input.

4.6 Compulsive consulting and reassurance-seeking (OCD, anxiety, magical thinking)

• Purpose / when: The client consults repeatedly on the same question, feels unable to act without a reading, re-draws until the result is acceptable, or performs card-related rituals to neutralise feared outcomes. It also applies to "manifestation anxiety" and scrupulosity about having "caused" a bad reading (see also 4.12). The IOCDF describes reassurance-seeking as giving brief relief while the doubt returns, often stronger, so the cycle maintains OCD. ERP helps clients tolerate uncertainty and resist compulsions, including reassurance-seeking [source: IOCDF, Karr]. Applying this to card consulting is [synthesis].
• Steps:
  1. Assess for OCD or generalised anxiety with standard assessment. Map triggers, the consulting ritual, how much relief it brings and how long it lasts, and other reassurance sources (people, apps, online searches).
  2. Psychoeducation: draw the doubt, consult, relief, renewed-doubt cycle using the client's own example.
  3. Agree targets collaboratively, with consent. Make clear this is about the compulsion, not the client's spirituality. For a client whose practice is spiritually important, agree what non-compulsive practice looks like for them.
  4. Response prevention as the IOCDF describes it:
     • delay the urge to consult with a timer, lengthening the delay gradually;
     • accept uncertainty instead of seeking certainty;
     • take breaks from phones and apps, including tarot apps and online readers.
  5. Imaginal exposure: the client writes out the feared scenario without seeking reassurance [source: IOCDF].
  6. Do not replace the cards as the reassurance source. Decline to say "it will be fine", and reflect the uncertainty instead.
  7. For youth, the IOCDF names parent work on accommodation (SPACE) [source: IOCDF].
  8. Refer to an OCD specialist if severity exceeds your competence.
• Example language (illustrative): "It makes sense you want to know for sure. Let's notice the urge to draw again and see what happens if we wait ten minutes." / "I could tell you it'll be fine, but then I'd be doing the cards' job. What would it be like to not know yet?"
• Watch for: distress spiking during delays, which is expected and needs a pace the client can tolerate. Covert compulsions such as mentally re-reading a spread or asking friends. Shame, which the IOCDF links to hidden reassurance-seeking, so meet it with a non-judgemental stance. Contraindications to exposure: active suicidality, psychosis, or a destabilising crisis; assess and stabilise first [synthesis]. Working when: consulting frequency falls, the client acts without a reading, and anxiety settles without it.

4.7 Grief and readings

• Purpose / when: A bereaved client seeks readings about the dead, for contact or messages, or about the meaning of the loss.
• Steps:
  1. Ask what the reading gave them: comfort, connection, guilt relief, hope.
  2. Accept continuing bonds with the deceased as the client experiences them. Explore what they want to say to, or keep of, the person.
  3. Ask about frequency, cost and who offers the readings. Bereaved people are targeted by paid readers (4.8).
  4. Screen for prolonged or complicated grief, depression and suicide risk using standard risk assessment, and refer if needed.
• Example language (illustrative): "When you read about your mum, what are you hoping to hear?" / "What would you want her to know right now?"
• Watch for: readings that keep grief from being processed, escalating spending, readers who claim the deceased wants something (money, secrecy, decisions), and a sense of being haunted or blamed. Working when: readings, if continued, support the bond rather than replace mourning.

4.8 Costs and exploitation by paid readers

• Purpose / when: The client pays a reader, a phone or online service, or a postal "clairvoyant", and spending is rising, secret, or tied to fear.
• Warning signs (UK Trading Standards): scammers posing as psychics promise good fortune, ask for money (sometimes for a worthless "lucky" charm), request regular payments, tell victims to keep the contact secret, and pass details to other scammers [source: Bromley Trading Standards 2024]. PsychCentral advises avoiding for-profit settings that make large claims such as predicting the future [source: PsychCentral].
• Steps:
  1. Ask about spending openly and without shaming.
  2. Compare it with the warning signs together.
  3. If the client wants to act:
     • in the UK: stop payments; call the bank (159) if financial details were shared; contact Citizens Advice (0808 223 1133); report to Action Fraud (0300 123 2040); forward suspicious emails to report@phishing.gov.uk; show doubtful letters to someone trusted [source: Bromley Trading Standards];
     • in the US: report to the Federal Trade Commission at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, which takes reports of scams, frauds and bad business practices even when no money was lost [source: FTC 2020]; for the billing tactics the FTC alleged against one psychic hotline, see 4.14 [source: FTC 2002].
  4. Consider safeguarding for older or vulnerable adults with the client's consent, or as your local duties require.
• Example language (illustrative): "Some readers are genuine practitioners and some services are built to keep people paying. Would it help to look at how this one works?"
• Watch for:
  • threats of curses or misfortune if payments stop [uncertain: not verified];
  • secrecy demands;
  • isolation from family;
  • shame that stops the client reporting.
  Working when: spending is in the client's control, and they know the routes.

4.9 Keeping the therapist's role: not reading for clients

• Purpose / when: A client asks you to read, asks what a card "really" means, or asks whether you believe in tarot. It also applies when you practise tarot yourself.
• Steps [synthesis]:
  1. Decline readings warmly and explain the role: your job is to help them think with what they bring.
  2. Answer "what does it mean" with "what does it mean to you, and what does your guidebook say?"
  3. Decide self-disclosure about your own beliefs or practice by asking whether it serves the client. Keep it brief.
  4. If you also read tarot professionally, do not read for current or former therapy clients, and do not advertise one service within the other. A client who also became your tarot customer would be a multiple relationship, to be assessed under APA Ethics Code standard 3.05 [source: APA Ethics Code].
  5. Using cards as an in-session projective tool (as in Tarotpy) is a specialist integration. Use it only with specific training, explicit informed consent, a non-predictive frame stated in advance, and the client's choice to decline [source for Tarotpy framing: Dream Network Journal].
• Example language (illustrative): "I won't read for you, because I don't want my take to stand in for yours, but I'd really like to hear what you made of it."
• Watch for: the client experiencing refusal as rejection of their spirituality, which needs repair (5). Working when: the client brings readings freely and owns their meanings.

4.10 Differential assessment without pathologising belief

• Purpose / when: Card content becomes fixed, self-referential or frightening. Examples: the deck "sends" personal commands, the client is certain of catastrophe, or there is a drastic, out-of-character behavioural change.
• Steps [synthesis]:
  1. Compare the experience with the client's tradition and community norms. Ask how fellow readers would see it.
  2. Assess for psychosis, mania, severe depression, OCD and dissociation with standard tools.
  3. Where the focus of care is spiritual distress without a mental disorder, the relevant code is ICD-10-CM Z65.8, Other specified problems related to psychosocial circumstances (includes 'Religious or spiritual problem') [source: Unbound Medicine]; DSM-5-TR wording [uncertain: not verified].
  4. Refer urgently where safety is at risk.
• Example language (illustrative): "How would other readers you trust understand what's happening when you read lately?"
• Watch for: sleep loss, grandiosity, command experiences, and risk. Working when: belief and illness are distinguished, and care is matched.

4.11 Children and adolescents

• Purpose / when: A young client reads tarot, or family members use readings to make decisions about the child.
• Steps [synthesis]: explore the practice as in 4.1, with the child's assent and parental consent as required. Watch for:
  • reassurance cycles (4.6, with parent accommodation work);
  • paid online readers targeting minors;
  • readings used in place of assessment or medical care, which is a safeguarding issue, so follow local procedures.
• Example language (illustrative): "Lots of people your age use cards. What do you like about them?"
• Watch for: secrecy, spending and fear. Working when: the practice is safe and does not replace care.

4.12 Religious fear, scrupulosity and faith conflict about tarot

• Purpose / when: The client's faith, or the faith they grew up in, treats tarot as forbidden or spiritually dangerous, and they feel guilt, dread of punishment or fear of having "let something in" after reading. It also applies when OCD has fastened on the practice: confessing or praying repeatedly to undo a reading, or seeking reassurance from clergy or family that no harm was done. The IOCDF describes scrupulosity as a subtype of OCD involving religious or moral obsessions, with compulsions such as excessive confession, repeated reassurance-seeking from clergy and loved ones, and praying until it feels "just right". It names exposure and response prevention (ERP) as the primary psychological treatment, and says treatment may involve leaders of the person's faith, where the person wants this, to separate OCD from their values [source: IOCDF, What is OCD & Scrupulosity?]. Applying this to tarot is [synthesis].
• Steps:
  • Separate a values conflict from scrupulosity. In a values conflict the client is weighing two commitments. In scrupulosity, intrusive doubt is followed by a ritual, brief relief and renewed doubt (map it as in 4.6).
  • For a values conflict, explore both commitments using the stress-and-conflict questions of the CFI's Spirituality, Religion, and Moral Traditions module [source: APA, CFI Supplementary Modules]. Do not rule on whether tarot is permitted.
  • For scrupulosity, give psychoeducation in the IOCDF's terms: "OCD can masquerade as religion" [source: IOCDF]. Agree that the targets are the compulsions (undoing prayers, confession, reassurance-seeking), not the faith and not the decision about tarot.
  • With consent, plan ERP as the IOCDF describes it: a hierarchy of triggers built together, gradual exposure, resisting compulsions during and after exposure, and practice between sessions. The client is never forced or deceived into exposure [source: IOCDF, ERP].
  • If the client wishes, involve a faith leader they trust to clarify what their tradition actually teaches [source: IOCDF, What is OCD & Scrupulosity?].
  • Where the fear comes from a high-control religious upbringing, work with the religious trauma at the client's pace, and refer to a clinician experienced in religious trauma if it exceeds your competence [synthesis].
• Example language (illustrative): "I hear two things. One is a real question about what your faith asks of you. The other is a fear that comes back however many times you pray about it. Could we look at them separately?" / "My job isn't to decide whether reading is allowed. It's to help you stop the fear from making that decision for you."
• Watch for: You taking a side in the theological question. Exposures that the client experiences as attacks on their faith: choose steps the client accepts, with their faith adviser's view if they want one [synthesis]. Fear of evil or possession that comes with command experiences, loss of insight or a drastic change in behaviour, which needs 4.10. Working when: guilt and rituals decline, and the client makes a choice about tarot that fits their own values.

4.13 Partners, family and readings used to control

• Purpose / when: Readings enter a relationship. A partner or parent decides for the client by "what the cards say". A couple fights over a reading about fidelity. A reader advises the client to leave or stay. A family disapproves of the client's practice.
• Steps [synthesis]:
  • Ask who reads, who decides, and what happens when the client disagrees with a reading.
  • Screen privately for coercion and abuse: threats, monitoring, control of money, and readings invoked to forbid contact with friends or family or to justify punishment. If you find them, follow your service's domestic-abuse procedures and safety planning, and do not offer joint sessions while the client is unsafe.
  • Where there is no coercion, help each person say what they want in their own words rather than through a reading. With consent, a joint session can separate the relationship question from the cards.
  • For family disapproval, map the dispute with the CFI module's questions on tradition-related conflict [source: APA, CFI Supplementary Modules]. Explore each side's meaning without siding.
  • Where a paid reader is steering relationship decisions, use 4.5 and 4.8.
• Example language (illustrative): "When the reading said he was hiding something, what had you already been worried about?" / "What happens at home when you decide something different from what the cards said?"
• Watch for: Readings used to isolate the client. Jealousy fed by repeated readings about a partner. Readings that keep the client in an unsafe relationship ("the cards say he'll change"). Working when: relationship decisions are discussed directly between the people involved, and the client is safe.

4.14 Apps, livestreams and online readings

• Purpose / when: The client uses tarot apps, daily-card notifications, livestreamed or recorded "pick a card" readings, social-media readers, or paid online and phone readers. Digital sources make reassurance available at any hour; the IOCDF discusses phones and apps as sources of reassurance-seeking [source: IOCDF, Karr]. Applying this to online tarot is [synthesis].
• Steps [synthesis]:
  • Map the pattern: which apps, creators or services; time of day; how often; and spending on subscriptions, in-app purchases, tips or per-minute readings.
  • Separate content the client finds reflective from generic content they take as a personal message ("this video found me for a reason").
  • Where use is compulsive, apply 4.6: agree delays, notifications off, and app-free times, as steps the client chooses.
  • For paid services, check billing against the pattern the US Federal Trade Commission alleged in its 2002 complaint against the "Miss Cleo" psychic-hotline promoters: "free" readings that were billed, misstated costs, billing for services not ordered and repeated unwanted calls (allegations, for the court to decide) [source: FTC 2002]. Use the reporting routes in 4.8.
  • Explore attachment to a particular online reader: what the relationship gives the client, and what it costs.
  • If generic readings feel increasingly addressed to the client alone, or messages seem hidden in everyday media, assess under 4.10.
• Example language (illustrative): "When a reading online says 'this message is for you', how do you decide whether it is?" / "Shall we look at what the app and the readers cost last month, just to see it?"
• Watch for: Late-night use and lost sleep. Spending that is hidden in small payments. Generic "your person" readings that keep alive hope about an ex or an abusive partner. Readers who invite private paid sessions or ask for secrecy (4.8). Working when: use is chosen and time-limited, spending is visible, and the client treats online readings as content, not instruction.

4.15 Referral and collaboration

• Purpose / when: The need goes beyond your remit or competence, or the client would benefit from someone in their own tradition.
• Steps:
  • Compulsive consulting or scrupulosity: refer to a clinician trained in ERP. The IOCDF says ERP is usually given by licensed professionals with specific ERP training, and suggests OCD-specialist organisations and checking a provider's ERP experience [source: IOCDF, ERP].
  • Suspected psychosis or mania: psychiatric assessment (4.10).
  • Prolonged grief: grief-specialist care. Prolonged grief disorder was added to DSM-5-TR in 2022; its core features include intense longing for, or preoccupation with, the person who died [source: APA, Prolonged Grief Disorder fact sheet].
  • Financial exploitation: consumer-protection and fraud routes, and adult safeguarding where the client is vulnerable (4.8).
  • Coercion or abuse in a relationship: domestic-abuse services (4.13).
  • Questions of practice within the tradition: a reader, elder or community the client trusts, if they wish (4.4).
  • Faith conflict: a faith leader of the client's choosing (4.12).
  • A wish for card work inside therapy: a clinician trained in a published integration such as Tarotpy (4.9).
  • Ask the client's consent before sharing any information, and agree what each helper will do [synthesis].
• Example language (illustrative): "This pattern of doubt and checking is something a specialist treats well. I'd like to tell you what that would involve, and you can decide."
• Watch for: The client hearing referral as rejection of their spirituality: say clearly that the referral targets the problem, not the practice [synthesis]. Referrals to readers or healers who charge large sums. Working when: the client takes up the referral, and the people involved coordinate with consent.

4.16 Ending, consolidation and relapse prevention

• Purpose / when: Therapy is ending, or the client has changed their relationship with tarot: consulting less, leaving a paid reader, or deepening the practice as a spiritual resource.
• Steps [synthesis]:
  • Review, in the client's words, what place tarot now has in their life and what changed.
  • For clients who did ERP, write a relapse plan together: early signs (re-drawing on one question, new apps, secrecy, rising spending), and first responses (delay, return to the last hierarchy step they managed, contact their therapist or ERP clinician). This keeps up the between-session practice the IOCDF describes [source: IOCDF, ERP].
  • For clients who left an exploitative reader, review financial safeguards and who they will tell if contact resumes (4.8).
  • For clients for whom tarot is a spiritual resource, name the community and practices that sustain them (4.4).
  • Agree how the client can return if they need to.
• Example language (illustrative): "If you notice yourself drawing again and again on the same question, what's your first step?" / "What do you want your practice to look like a year from now?"
• Watch for: The client hearing the ending as giving up their spirituality. You becoming the last reassurance source, through check-in messages that work like a reading. Working when: the client has a plan in their own words and owns their choices about the practice.

5. Handling problems

All guidance in this section is [synthesis] except where a source is named.

• The client expects ridicule and withholds their practice. Name your interest and neutrality early. Use the client's terms (deck, spread, reading) without irony. If they test you ("do you think it's nonsense?"), say your role is understanding what it means for them, not judging it.
• The client wants you to read, or to confirm a reading. Decline warmly (4.9) and return to their meaning. If they feel rejected, repair: acknowledge the disappointment and affirm their practice as theirs.
• The client treats a reading as fate ("the cards said he'll leave"). Explore the feelings the reading evoked and the client's own evidence and wishes (4.2, 4.5). Do not argue predictive validity, and do not confirm it.
• Resistance to reducing compulsive consulting. Re-check that the target is the compulsion, not the spirituality. Reduce the step size (shorter delays), and work on the client's motivation to change. Compulsions often move to other sources: notice when friends, apps or you become the new source [source: IOCDF on digital reassurance].
• Overwhelm during exposure or after a feared card. Slow down, use grounding, and return to the hierarchy at a tolerable level. Never resolve the fear by reassuring them about the future. Stop exposure if suicidality, psychosis or dissociation emerges, and reassess.
• Non-adherence with between-session tasks (delays, journaling). Ask what got in the way, simplify, and link tasks to the client's own goals. Check whether the journal itself became a ritual.
• A rupture after you questioned a reading or a reader. Acknowledge it, own your part, and separate concern about a service or a compulsion from respect for the practice.
• Family or religious conflict about tarot. Explore without siding. Where the client's tarot practice is part of reclaiming ancestral or queer spirituality, support self-definition [source: YES! Magazine; Failla 2019]. Offer family sessions only with the client's agreement.
• A paid reader with escalating demands, secrecy or "luck" products. Use 4.8. Prioritise the client's financial safety, involve trusted others with consent, and use the reporting routes [source: Bromley Trading Standards].
• Grief prolonged by readings. Move from readings to the relationship with the deceased (4.7). Assess prolonged grief and refer where needed.
• The therapist has their own strong views (devotee or sceptic). Bring them to supervision. Do not self-disclose to persuade. If you practise tarot, keep the roles separate (4.9).
• Signs of psychosis or mania in card experiences. Assess (4.10), involve psychiatric care, and keep respecting the client's tradition when talking with them and with other clinicians.
• The client asks you to integrate cards into sessions. Explain your scope. If you are not trained in a published integration such as Tarotpy, offer the reflective work in 4.2 to 4.3 instead, or refer to a clinician who is [source for Tarotpy: Dream Network Journal].
• The client fears a reading has harmed them spiritually or broken their faith. Separate a values conflict from scrupulosity (4.12). Do not rule on the theology. Involve a faith leader only if the client wants it [source: IOCDF, What is OCD & Scrupulosity?].
• A partner or relative uses readings to control the client. See the client alone, put safety first, and follow your service's domestic-abuse procedures. No joint sessions while the client is unsafe (4.13).
• The client feels online readings are addressed to them personally. Ask how they judge this. If the conviction is fixed or spreading to other media, assess as in 4.10 (see 4.14).
• Consulting returns after a good period. Treat it as a lapse, not a failure. Return to the relapse plan (4.16) and the last hierarchy step the client managed.
• The client declines a referral. Ask what worries them about it. Keep working within your competence, and revisit the referral if risk rises (4.15).

Sources

Online sources:

• The Pictorial Key to the Tarot: Preface (sacred-texts)
• The Pictorial Key to the Tarot: Title page (sacred-texts)
• Tarot and Psychology: Spectrums of Possibility (Paragon House)
• Crowley Thoth Tarot Deck (learntarot.com, Joan Bunning)
• Tarotpy: An Interview with Lauren Z. Schneider (Dream Network Journal, 2014)
• Hofer 2009, Tarot cards: an investigation of their benefit as a tool for self reflection (UVic)
• Using Tarot in Psychotherapy (PsychCentral, Fletcher 2017, updated 2024)
• Digital Reassurance Seeking in OCD (IOCDF, Karr)
• Trading Standards alert: clairvoyant scams warning (Bromley, 2024)
• Black Girl Magic: How Tarot Is Helping Women of Color Connect (YES! Magazine, Adams 2019)
• Marcelitte Failla, Academia profile
• Magnett 2023, The Tower Crumbles, but Now You Can See the Star (Harvard Divinity School PES)
• Petrus 2023, Explorative Black Tarot (Lambda Literary)
• Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom (Red Wheel Weiser)
• Yates, F. A. (1981). In the Cards. The New York Review of Books
• APA, DSM-5 Cultural Formulation Interview Supplementary Modules (psychiatry.org)
• Spiritual and religious competencies for psychologists (IONS publication page)
• What is OCD & Scrupulosity? (IOCDF)
• Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy (IOCDF)
• FTC Charges "Miss Cleo" Promoters with Deceptive Advertising, Billing and Collection Practices (FTC, 2002)
• FTC Announces New Fraud Reporting Platform for Consumers: ReportFraud.ftc.gov (FTC, 2020)
• APA, DSM-5-TR Prolonged Grief Disorder fact sheet (psychiatry.org)
• ICD-10-CM Z65.8, Other specified problems related to psychosocial circumstances (includes 'Religious or spiritual problem')
• APA Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct

Books and articles cited:

• Waite, A. E. (1911). The Pictorial Key to the Tarot. London: W. Rider.
• Crowley, A. (1944). The Book of Thoth.
• Rosengarten, A. Tarot and Psychology: Spectrums of Possibility. Paragon House [year uncertain].
• Failla, M. (2019). Black Femmes, Black Gods: Magic as Justice. The Journal of Religion and Culture.
• Teish, L. (1984). Jambalaya (as cited in YES! Magazine).
• [uncertain: not verified] Ivtzan (2007), review of tarot cards; the publication year of Rosengarten's Tarot and Psychology; Snow, C., Queering the Tarot.
• Pollack, R. Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness. Weiser Books (first published in two volumes, 1980 and 1983; new edition 2019).
• Dummett, M. The Game of Tarot from Ferrara to Salt Lake City. Duckworth (as reviewed by Yates 1981).
• Vieten, C., Scammell, S., Pilato, R., Ammondson, I., Pargament, K. I., & Lukoff, D. (2013). Spiritual and religious competencies for psychologists. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 5(3), 129–144.
• Tarot in Other Words: An Essential Anthology by Leading Queer Tarot Writers (editor and publisher [uncertain: not verified]).