Readings and Reference Materials
When I was taking Tarot lessons at a local store, the professional readers there said to never use a guidebook while reading for someone else professionally.
Generally speaking, I can see where they’re coming from. I have a hard time with memorization and I was still able to learn all of the traditional meanings of the Tarot. Most people can, and intuitive readers don’t even necessarily have to memorize the traditional meanings because they’re picking up meaning from the image on the card. Runes have less pictographic hints on them than the Rider-Waite-Smith or Thoth Tarot do, but there are only 24 in the Elder Futhark or at most 33 in the Northumbrian Futhorc. Lenormand has only 36 cards. And so on.
On the other hand, I have over 300 items in my charm casting kit. I have a Google Doc listing all of the meanings. I scroll through to find the meanings of the charms in the reading at hand, then use the placement on the reading map, the presence of adjacent charms, and my intuition to determine how that base meaning fits into the overall meaning of that group of charms. I’m not just reading from a reference sheet and I’m not giving cookie-cutter readings to everyone who gets the same charm. And I’ve learned how to take the information I’m given by that kind of reading and turn it into something unique and useful.
If a particular querent is turned off by the fact that I’m hovering over the map with phone in hand and looking back and forth between the two, to me that’s a mismatch in style and expectations, not an indication that I shouldn’t read that way. And it’s okay with me if they choose another reader; no reader is for everyone.
I’m developing a type of “elemental” reading where the querent gets a symbol of some kind for each element, to aid them with any work they’re doing in that element. It may be an animal, a constellation, a crystal. Those will probably evolve to have cookie-cutter text about the symbol that they can reference in addition to my original reading…but that text won’t replace the reading itself.
A reference text can be used to avoid learning the base level of knowledge that you need to divine with your chosen tool. It can make you feel you’re ready to read with a tool before you’ve learned enough to master that tool or master divination in general. (At this point, I think I could read with almost anything as long as I can find symbols in it!) But it can also be a tool in and of itself that frees you up to focus on your intuition.