Readers Studio 2007: Dr. Elinor Greenberg

Our first session of the Readers Studio weekend was led by Dr. Elinor Greenberg … who just happens to have written the introduction to my book Tarot Journaling. Nobody mentioned that during the workshop, but I was secretly very proud.

Here are my notes from her session on Tarot Counseling:

Elinor: I don’t like it when something I take as seriously as tarot is mocked, relegated to entertainment. I’m just tired … at breakfast, guys at the next table, when I said I was here as part of a tarot conference, they got that look, What are you, a bunch of gypsies. I went into psych speak. I briefly explained a prepsychoanaltic system of personal growth, back to the hermetic order of the golden dawn, just as I got into the renaissance parade of floats, they started to back away. I didn’t want to scare them away, but I don’t like that response.

Part of what I’m doing is going back and forth between the two communities. We’re all concerned with tapping into something that’s helpful for the other person. Future readings, decision readings can be helpful. This is another kind of reading. What I do is a synthesis of everything that I’ve learned. A whole western mystery tradition that feeds into what I’m doing. There’s all kinds of tarot traditions. If one of you says that’s oh, that’s really my idea, you’re right. I’m just a synthesizer. Somehow in the blending something new might come out. You’ve got plenty of plain tarot teachers. So that’s my first piece of the intro. Now I’m goint o take ap oint of view. No matter what happens to us, no matter how awful, not matter how much we dislike it, it’s an opportunity to evolve ourselves. My motto is it’s a shame to waste a bad problem. I symbolize it by the fuit. So people are going to bring around bowls of fruit. You may wonder why the lovers card is on thefron tof your folder. One I’m a lovers devil. But Eve was the first person to consciously decide to enhance her consciousness. She was a bold traveler where no one went before. The fruit from the garden is metaphorical as well as physical. A problem is part of a sequence. My life experience is I’m not very subtle. Things have to hit me over the head with a stick before I pay attention. I’m sure al my issues came calling in subtle vibrations that I overlooked. I needed to have a big dog, I have a G Shepherd, because big dogs will remind you to feed them. Problems are kind of like that. They come in many forms. Little gentle issues that we ignore. Perhaps you’re better at it than me. They came to me in som many forms I didn’t like that I had to do something with them that I did like. The Devil is fun. The function of the lovers is smell. It’s all about discrimination. Choices. Which choices wil lead … We’re kind of scientists. We do this lab experiment called life. We’re not even starting with a hypothesis. We start with the experiment, and the only way we know we’re finished is we get a problem. Problems are results we don’t like. I suggest using the fruit as symbols of being a conscious gardener. Goal not finding out what will happen in the future, but what the hell is happening now. Thank you Eve. When I looked at the readings that I’ve given and gotten from people, started to integrate tarot in practice, realized I was doing a different reading than the type I was getting. They weren’t coming to me for the future, they were coming to me to get a better present. Started to play with spreads, to get positions that would tell them what they need to know now. I knew these people. Friends, clients. I had a pretty good idea about their backgrounds. Plus I have some interviewing skills. All the readings I had were good except for two. They were bad because the person made an assumption that therapists are trained not to make. You’ve probably heard about therapeutic neutrality. Not about being a post. First of all assume nothing. You don’t know what’s going on. You’ll project. They’re going to have a transference reaction to you. Transference: the feelings we transfer onto a person unconsciously. When someone comes, they transfer. Authority, rebellion … Someone comes, doesn’t want to tell you the problem, anything about it, dare. That’s a transference issue. You omay have counter transference. This person may remind you of your mother, your sister. Therapeutic interview first session. Some will write down every word. I realized that tarot readers are not taught to interview their querents. That’s fine if you’re a perfectly clear channel, a hierophant dealing w/the mysteries. Most people can’t. I get spurts of it but I need a little help with it. So I’m going to teach you how to interview. Two methods, mention three. 1. The open focus. You ask a leading question, like What brings you here today? You don’t even label the problem. You wait to see what the person says. The list of interview questions method, they ask every single client. You either are given the list by your agency or you inherent it from your teachers, it’s very structured, everybody fills it out. And then theere’s one stimulated by someone’s list of the major arcana, how to use the 22 m.a. to generate questions to ask your querent. Today, open interview, and then 22 m.a. interview. In your file, what therapists do routinely, mandated by APA. Keep a separate folder for each querent. Background information, info about what they come for. Sometimes people won’t come back for months and they remember perfectly well. The first suggestion: Have those folders.
Handouts: overview of a tarot counseling session.
The first thing that you need to know about what we’re going to do to day is we’re going to start w/channeling divinity. I believe there’s something deivine in divination. A form of prayer. A higher source. Hos it comes about I don’t now. To be a channel through me of some wisdom. Something my querent can use right now and something that’s appropriate for them. Since I don’t know, I’m relying on a higher power. You’re going to be saying a prayer in whatever language you speak. If that’s an uncomfortable thing to do for you. If you’re a secular tarot person I invite you to sit quietly and set an intention for your own subconscious mind to be a channel for your own hgigher wisdom. Lovers as model, energy circuit: man subconscious looking upward toward woman toward divinity, Ravael, the perfect psychotherapist. I pray before every reading for divine guidance. I may not do it as formally as this, but I do it.
You’re going to be doing an interview. The reason, I find, in 33 years I’m doing psychotherapy, it’s very rare for people to know what they need. What they ask for initially is so far away from where they need to go. Jung described it. When your client is opposite from you, and there’s one simple step, and you tell them, youo have to understand there’s an invisible landscape. They can sense it. If you urge me to step. For you, your landscape has a bridge. My landscape has a drop to the ground. I can’t describe what I’m sensing. I just know I can’t go forward there. I can’t place much credence on having people tell me what is their questions. Most of the time … the question tells me the next area they’re going to have their serious life lesson. That’s where they’ll learn something. They’re frustrated. That’s where their concern is. If someone comes for a relationship reading, they’re motivated to learn something they need to evolve. Money, motivated by money at this moment. When I’m listening to question, I’m thinking about their life lesson. Wands issues, cups issues… they may need to go through a lot of landscapes, a journey, before they get that cup. Question tells me about motivation. The interview you’re doing is around the issue. You’re going to ask your querent to talk to you about an issue. Crossroads issues. When someone has come to the end of their rope about something. Out of tools. If they had the tools to deal with the situation better they wouldn’t be asking me that question. The other ind of reading is when you’re leaving some area of your life and you’re about to enter new territory. Taking a new job, moving to a new area, kids are growing, you reach a new stage, could be something new has happened in your marriage … any area where you want to do this thing the best way possible for you. You don’t want to stumble around. It’s an opportunity.
Pick an issue now. This is not the type of reading to do, should I get the new car.
Pick a crossroads issue: lack of tools, or a new type of life, can be an internal move, you could be moving into professional tarot, becoming a writer, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically … It could be negative territory. How can I make the best use of my apple? It doesn’t have to be positive territory.

Mirroring: When someone says something to you … tell me more about that … let me see if I understand you correctly, you’re telling me … the querent corrects the reader. Mirroring is the opportunity to check your understanding of what the person is telling yoy. As querent, keep correcting them until you feel understood.

What issue are you interested in having a reading about today. Then invite them to tell you more in an open ended way.

About 20 percent of tarot readers enamored with counseling, would make excellent therapists. Some could go back to school and sometimes requirements very minimal to get license, for pastoral counseling.

Next: 22 majors. Ask the majors for something major. Shuffle, draw three cards, those of you who are very comfortable looking at a mjor card may realize it’s telling you to ask something specific. A list of suggestions, a list to help you generate possibilities. Where there’s more than one question, use your intuition, your sens of what the person needs from the interview. Design a spread on the spot incorporating the issues, sub issues the person is concerned with.

50-50 rule: You have to pay as much attention to the querent as the cards. When I had readings, I noticed that the readers were looking at the cards, not me.

Q: Time constraints.
A: Then it’s not for this kind of reading. No one expects me to do psychotherapy in 10 minutes. Why are we expected to show up and in ten minutes have and give more wisdom than anyone else? For me it’s about training querents. Not all of them are trainable. People show up for psychotherapy and I have to train them to be a client. “I don’t want to do any work.” Therapy a cooperative venture. “I just wanted to complain.”

Break

This is not to predict the future. This is to have an Ah-hah moment. Tarot a wonderful tool because in a reading you can get suggestions. Normally I would have a workshop on designing new tarot spreads for every situation. Today a general spread that’s in your paket. Three levels of guidance built in to every tarot counseling … my particular blend. Everybody here is capable of bringing something to the table and adding to it. Tarot counseling teorists. Everyone will have a different perspective. You all have your own skills. That’s something you can do the next workshp on. In the spread the first level of guidance built in to the spread your getting is what does the querent need to learn about his particular situation now? What’s embodied? Second level, every situatio part of a larger issue in life, something need to learn about, could learn about. If they’re having a problem with this particular husband, if they’ve been married before it suggest to me that there’s alarger issue about relationships in general. There’s a position for the larger issue. We’re going to go out in concentric waves. Then I always want to know what can I do about it? Something positive. What action can I take. I think of tarot readings as weather reports. They’re a nsapshot I took out the window. It’s a moving picture. Cold front that sweeps something away, a psychic front. What Can I do to affect it in a direction that eternal wisdom would think is in my best interest? Being a psychotherapist I’ve learned that people often try to solve their own problems and make them much worse because when we run out of tools we use the same tool over and over again, no matter how inappropriate. I divide the world into confronters and avoiders. I’m an avoider. Faced with the same issue I go blank and numb. Maybe I’ll get distracted and never come back. I as an avoider had to learn how to confront because some situations avoidance wouldn’t cure. Those of you who are confronters, know sometimes that you have to avoid. So I added a position, what not to do. Could be a legacy. We all have legacies from our families. It takes a while to shed these. There’s a fourth option, depending on who you’re reading for and your own mood. That’s a spiritual. You could do that with a second deck, just with majors.
Instead of just coming to associations, point to the card, tell them where you’re getting it.