• Margo Benson, who reviewed Maria’s book Tarot Tableau Revolution, brings us this exclusive interview with the author. Use this link to buy the book directly from the publisher.

Margo: I love how in the book you talk about predictive reading – as predictions divide the cartomancy world in many situations, could you explain what you mean by or how you define a prediction in this context? Or what is your take on predictions?

Maria: The subject of prediction definitely divides readers, and we have very strong feelings on both sides. From my perspective, prediction is ingrained in our lives in many ways. We all carry phones with a weather widget that tells us what the next fourteen days are going to look like. Economists speak about the next crisis or the next recovery and give their forecasts. Our mothers have told us that we were going to fall from that swing in the playground if we continued to be reckless, and we often did. We test our DNA to check for diseases that we are likely to experience, and trend forecasting is a whole profession.

With that in mind, it makes no sense to question the predictive aspect of divination. It is not a matter of can it or can’t it be done. I can totally get behind readers who say “This is not how I choose to use this tool”, but I do have stronger feelings when someone declares that “Tarot can’t be used for prediction” or “That is not what Tarot is for.” To me, it’s the equivalent of me saying that square roots aren’t real just because I never understood how to do one, or what they are even for.

This doesn’t mean that prediction is a hall pass to deny responsibility, or that it rebukes choice. Prediction and personal agency can and do coexist. As readers, we have a responsibility to our querents that is not to make them feel devoid of personal power, to care for the vulnerabilities that they choose to share with us, and do so in a manner that doesn’t misrepresent the extent of what we can help with. But, that doesn’t mean that the querent is exempt from using the information responsibly too. In my opinion, a reader who portrays themselves as inerrable and almighty is at fault, but a querent who makes a reckless choice for themselves because someone else said so is at fault too.

We each need to hold our own side of responsibility for it to work, and I believe that prediction is so frowned upon because there’s a risk for it to be misused by either party (or both). But, at the end of the day, that kind of misuse can also happen with other approaches to tarot, and I would be as bold as to say that it does get misused very often in approaches that are deemed as therapeutic, or psychological. The thing is that it is easier to get away with it, because when you are using tarot in a non-predictive way, you are not actually committing to giving a concrete answer, so it is much easier to say “I didn’t say that” or “That was your own conclusion” while the reading enters reader-playing-therapist territory.

Margo: You say that any question can be asked of the tarot, but what experiences have you had where the Tableau read has been particularly challenging?

Maria: While I sustain that any question can be asked (and answered, if one knows what to look for), the challenge is not in the reading technique or the choice of spread, but in the reader’s own knowledge of the subject of the reading.

At the end of the day, we are translators of sorts, and we can only interpret what we know exists. I struggle when my knowledge of a subject is broad or non-existent, because when I lack knowledge in the subject, the reading becomes broader because half of it is a wild guess. If I am reading on a subject that I am very unfamiliar with, I will likely have a few relevant hits, but when I know what I am talking about, the interpretation becomes more precise because it is relevant to the specific context.

To give you an example, something that I struggled a lot with were readings about house sales and purchases. In broad terms, attempting to buy or sell a house has two potential outcomes; either you do or you don’t, but there’s much more that goes into it than that.

I have never bought or sold property, nor have I even tried, so naturally, I didn’t know the first thing about the process. That’s not something that you fix learning more about tarot, that’s something that you fix learning more about the subject. So I decided to investigate a bit about what are the steps to take when one buys property, at which points it can fall through, what may be the deal breakers, how does a smooth transaction look like, and what are the things to consider. And, when I know that, I can translate it to tarot, and I can give a better reading about that subject.

This is something that I recommend a lot to my students. To become a better tarot reader, don’t just learn tarot, don’t just read about tarot, read and learn about experiences, subjects and situations that might not be of personal interest to you, but that will be for your querents, so that, when faced with a question, you have the information to make a relevant interpretation with it.

Margo: Talk us through your Tableau prep and practice… and do you have a list or set of principles that you follow when doing such a reading?

Maria: I am quite un-ceremonial when reading, if I’m honest. My preparation, more often than not, involves pushing whatever is cluttering my table to the side so that I have some surface to pull the cards, and removing cats from the premises because they do love walking all over a spread for some reason.

As for the set of principles I follow, they are two. The first, that any question can be answered if you know how to interpret the cards in that context. The second, that the reading is always about the question asked and not something else. This is the part where I might not make any friends, but I believe that assuming that the reading is about something else and not about the question that’s asked, is failing to interpret the cards on the table in the context of the question.

I’m not saying by that that they cannot be relevant to a different subject that also applies to the querent, or that they cannot add insight on other subjects because that happens. But “the reading is actually about something other than what the querent asked” is like going to the hairdressers asking for a trim and ending up with a bob cut because the scissors had a different style in them, which I now wonder if it’s what actually happens. It would explain a lot!

Margo: For those new to the practice, what would your 3 recommendations be before starting..?

Maria: The answer would be different from those new to the practice of tarot in general, and for those who are new to the practice of tableau reading, so let’s do both!

For new tarot readers, my first recommendation is to focus on understanding the cards, not just memorizing them. There’s a certain amount of memorization that goes into learning tarot, but it’s easier to expand your meanings when, aside from memorizing, you are also understanding, internalizing what the cards mean. For this, I recommend the Core Meanings exercise that I describe in the first chapter of the book.

Second, there’s an exercise I do a lot, and it is pulling a single card (even though I’m not a huge fan of single-card readings) and choosing a question at random from a list, then making myself answer that question with that card in less than 90 seconds. That’s a great way to expand your meanings and to work with understanding the cards in different contexts.

Third, I tend to recommend avoiding clarifying cards, for they often end up bringing more doubt than clarity in those early stages. And of course, having fun with it, expecting that it’s likely going to go wrong before it goes right, and sticking to the process.

For readers who are new to the practice of reading tableau, my first recommendation is: Don’t try to do it all at once. Begin with one layer at a time. There are a lot of different techniques that one can apply to tableau reading, and it can be quite daunting to incorporate them all the same time. Choose a layer to begin. I recommend beginning with the elemental disposition, which contains a lot of information that often goes unnoticed in positional reading, and then building up from there.

Second, preferably use a deck you’re well acquainted with, something that you look and know what is and what isn’t on the table at a glance. When you’re easing into this system, this simple gesture saves a lot of brain bandwidth.

The third is, be very clear about what you’re going to do before you pull the cards. This is, decide beforehand what your timeline is going to be, to avoid second guessing, which is a killer of readings. If you are going to use a significator or give a certain value to a particular card, or if you are not going to. What is the goal of your reading? And what kind of question do you have? Is it an if, a when, a how? Having that kind of clarity before the cards are pulled gets a good portion of the work done.

Margo: As a deck creator yourself, do you find certain decks work better in tableau than others? I know you work with Lenormand, which is often read in tableau, but how about other oracles, such as the Belline for instance, which you also read with (and is a favourite of mine!)?

Maria: I use tableau with everything, not exclusively, but almost exclusively. Whether that’s an oracle deck or any other system like Lenormand, Belline or Kipper. It’s a very adaptable method that suits every system of reading even if you have to give up some layers, like the elemental or the directional one, depending on what it is exactly that you’re reading with.

If we look at Belline, since you brought it up. You don’t have elements with the Oracle Belline, but you do have planetary correspondences, so you can easily switch that, and instead of observing the elemental ratio and its interaction with the question, you can look for presence and absence of planets and how they interact with the question, following the same principle described in the book but adapted to the method that you’re using. It’s not so much about the deck itself being better or worse, but about adapting the method to it.

That’s one of the things that I like the most about Tarot Tableau Revolution. While it is a comprehensive guide that focuses on tarot, it teaches a method that is translatable to other ways of divining.

For a review of the book, please see Margo Benson’s review HERE