Liz Worth ~ Tarot + Astrology

I always pay attention to the patterns that come up in my client readings. It never fails that clusters people tend to be going through the same things at the same time.

We are all part of a collective consciousness: Of course there will be common threads and themes that some of us, seemingly at random, are all experiencing simultaneously. 

But I also think that tarot shows us just how similar we often are to each other. Yes, humans have their differences, but we also have a lot in common.  

Most people want to be happy and fulfilled. Most people want to love and be loved. Most people want to feel accepted and connected.  

One of the common themes that’s come up among my readings so far this year is how drained people feel. There is a lot happening in the world right now, and the pressures of life are relentless.

So many of us are caught in a whirl of go, go, go, rushing from one task to the next. And so often, it seems like as soon as one thing is...

If you’ve had a tarot reading with me, or taken some of my classes, you’ll already know that my go-to tarot technique is the three-card open spread.  

This wasn’t always my go-to technique: I used to swear by positional tarot spreads. The bigger and more complex, the better. I would even make custom spreads for my client work to personalize each session.  

But the more my client base grew, the more I had to adapt my tarot practice. I don’t know what triggered the shift, but it seemed like all of a sudden I was getting more clients coming in with longer lists of questions.  

I often found myself having to think on my feet during each reading, shifting quickly from one question to another, sometimes without any relation between topics my clients wanted to cover.  

It was no longer working for me to create custom spreads in advance: My clients wanted a reader who was adaptable, fluid, and flexible. Going in with one or two...

The tarot space is a crowded one. Especially in the last few years, when it seems like everyone got into tarot and launched a TikTok account…

One thing I’ve talked about a lot with fellow readers offline is how to stand out in such a crowded environment. Especially when it seems like everyone is doing daily card readings online, or going live on YouTube or Instagram to read for the collective.

“Do I have to do that, too?” you might have wondered if you’ve been trying to build up your presence as a reader.

My answer is no. If you follow me on social media, you’ll see that I don’t do a lot of collective readings. It’s on a rare occasion when I’ll pull a card or two for an Instagram live. But otherwise I enjoy talking about different topics and I like to leave space for other things.

Kind of like what I do here in my newsletter: I want to give something that might be helpful to those of you read these emails (thank you for being...

One of the hardest things to do as a tarot reader is to feel like you’re the bearer of bad news.

People come to readings with a lot of hope. Sometimes they want to hear that a rough situation is going to turn around, or that an old flame is going to reappear in their lives. 

But it isn’t always in the cards – at least not as far as you can tell once the reading has started. 

I once had someone get quite upset with me when I told her that I didn’t see what she wanted me to see. 

“I’m not here to lie to you about what I’m seeing,” I finally had to tell her. “Would you rather I do that?” 

This wasn’t a defensive question – it was honest. I genuinely wonder if some clients want readers to just tell them what they want to hear rather than interpret the cards as they are. 

More often than not, though, people are open to receiving whatever may come. Even if the news is disappointing. 

...

In some of my recent readings, a few of my clients have asked, “How much information should I tell you?”

This question doesn’t always come from a desire to stay secretive or to test a reader: I’ve actually found it’s the opposite a lot of the time.

People come to tarot readings because they are trying to work something out within themselves.

Sometimes they are at a difficult or confusing crossroads.  Sometimes they are trying to make sense of an illogical scenario.

I’ve always seen myself as a neutral party for my clients. I’m not here to steer them in any one direction. I’m just here to listen and to understand what will be most helpful for them to take away from our time together.

If that means they want to explain where they’re coming from with a question, or they just want to talk things out for a minute without anyone jumping to conclusions, I can be that person for them.

You never know what a querent is going through....

Something I have been hearing a lot this year is that things just aren’t working out the same way they used to. 

A lot of small business owners are going through some of their slowest periods yet. 

People are finding that the things they used to rely on for comfort or joy aren’t cutting it anymore. 

Passions are changing. What used to feel inspiring has lost its shine. 

As I hear these similar-but-different scenarios, these conversations often circle around the same questions: 

“Is it time for me to focus on something else?” 

“Is it time for me to expand my interests and hobbies?” 

“Is something else calling me instead?” 

This month’s new moon arrives soon - on Tuesday, May 7 at 11:22pm Eastern Time. It joins up with benefic planets Venus and Jupiter in the same sign. 

My hope is that this new moon will bring a fresh perspective and a much-needed boost of optimism to anyone who is...

If you read tarot for others, or want to one day, this is a question you might already be familiar with.

I’ve been thinking about accuracy in readings a lot lately. Recently I’ve seen the question come up in online conversations, especially around whether it’s okay to check in with your querent as you go along. 

Sometimes readers hesitate to check-in because they feel like they have to show that they know it all. A lot of us come into this path with unrealistic pressures on ourselves to be all-seeing.

But if you don’t give your querent an opportunity to at least tell you whether a message is relevant or not, you risk wasting time and energy following an interpretation that might be totally off.

It’s not uncommon to pull cards and see several different directions a reading could go in. 

When this happens, I choose the one that feels most prominent and away we go. If it doesn’t immediately hit home, though, then that tells it might be...

Most of my client readings are focused on work or relationships.

I think that’s pretty common for most tarot readers, as those are the topics that people are usually most concerned with.

But every once in a while, I get some really fun – and unusual – questions.

I was reading at an event in a small town a couple hours away. It was nearing the end of the day when a young woman sat across from me said, “I’m not sure if you can tell me this, but is my house haunted? Because I feel like it is but no one will take me seriously when I tell them.”

I had been asked a lot of questions before this, but it was my first haunted house reading.

I shuffled the cards like usual and had my querent pull a few. When I flipped them over, we both peered down at them and paused.

The Seven of Cups, Wheel of Fortune and the Hanged Man stared back at me.

It’s not always easy to navigate such a direct question: Asking “is my house haunted” is essentially...

Several years ago, I was teaching a class at a little occult shop in the east end of town. The class was focused around my methods of using tarot to write your own spells and rituals.

I started creating rituals for my querents based on intuition and organic conversations during readings.

It’s not unusual for someone to ask how they can act upon the advice in a reading once they leave a session. Or they might want to know if there are certain “next steps” they can take to implement a piece of insight.

And sometimes querents will even flat out ask for advice about rituals that they can work themselves in order to release, let go or manifest something we’ve read on that day.

I started to build out personalized rituals based on my readings.

In the class I was teaching, I was taking students through some examples of previous rituals I had created. One involved inviting a querent to self-select tarot cards from my deck.

A student raised their hand: “What if...

I am in the process of doing something I never thought I would attempt.

I am learning to drive.

I know that in many parts of the world, and especially in North American culture, driving is a necessity. And getting your license is seen as a rite of passage by some.

But I was never interested in driving. Maybe it’s because very few women in family learned to drive, either. Something seems to run in our blood to avoid it as much as possible.

My dad drove, though not always very well. My mother was a nervous passenger, which probably didn’t help.

And her nervousness quite likely rubbed off on me: I have always preferred to be a passenger, or a pedestrian.

I also spent most of my life in Toronto, a city where you can often get by without a car. There are streetcars, subways and buses to take you where you want to go. I don’t have many friends there who own cars of their own; a lot of them have let their licences expire out of lack of use.

My husband and I didn’t...