How to Create Client Profiles and Turbo Charge Your Tarot Study!

Have you ever noticed how doing a Tarot reading for yourself can be..well, difficult?

I can tell you all right now that everyone experiences this from time to time. Whether you’re being paid to read the cards for someone else or are just reading them for yourself, in general, for whatever reasons – confidence goes!

Reading for yourself is one of the biggest reasons people, when studying the Tarot, start to lack confidence. It’s so easy to second guess the cards, to question yourself, your interpretations, and to doubt the accuracy of your readings. Over time, this will have a detrimental effect on your confidence.

Some of the comments that people have left on this blog have talked about problems with confidence and attacks of self-doubt. They’ve talked about uncertainty, and a lack of belief in their own abilities.

I remember when I was first learning the Tarot, doing readings for myself, asking about really important areas of my life, and not having a clue what the reading was telling me – feeling like I should be better at Tarot reader! When I look back at those times, I realise that it was all just a question of perspective.

I didn’t give myself a chance to use my intuition.

Every reading I did involved so much self-reflection, so much checking of books, so much double-think, that in the end, I’d distracted myself so much that I hadn’t tried to really read the cards. Don’t get me wrong, I’d looked at the cards, I’d thought about the cards, I tried to remember what the cards meant, but in the end, 90% of my attention was on “checking myself”; watching myself read and criticising how I was doing it.

A solution

Eventually, I learned that the best way to practice Tarot readings was to either read for someone else, or imagine myself reading for someone else.

Sometimes it’s not possible to read for other people, so here’s what I did to turbo charge my Tarot Practice:

I focused my imagination on an imaginary person with an imaginary life, imaginary problems, and imaginary decisions that needed to be made.

Throughout this blog I’ve tried to advise that the best way to practice reading Tarot cards is to imagine yourself reading for someone else. However, I wanted to provide a more helpful solution than just saying, “imagine yourself reading for someone else”.

I wanted to help make your Tarot practice a bit more bulletproof – and I think I’ve found a great solution.

Create Client Profiles

The technique is simple – open up a word document, or grab a pen and paper, and start describing the kind of person you would like to read Tarot cards for.

I’ll show you an example of a client profile below, but in short the task is to describe who they are, what their interests are, why they might be needing a Tarot reading, and what their needs might be.

The idea is that you end up with a comprehensive profile of an imaginary client that you can then use to help recreate the conditions of a live Tarot reading.

For example, one profile might describe a student, while another might describe a Police Officer. In either case, the Emperor card for instance, will represent something unique to those two individual profiles – helping you see the Tarot in a much broader spectrum; this will help snap you out of interpreting the Emperor as something very specific to your life.

Imagine that someone reads the Tarot for their friends only; in this case, the Emperor will always represent something that you can understand. By reading for completely different types of people, people that you wouldn’t necessarily be friends with, the Emperor will become something that you can only just grasp; in extreme cases, it will be a complete opposite manifestation.

Before I talk too much about the benefits of creating profiles, let me show you an example of one that I created for myself last night.

This profile describes a typical client that I usually do readings for – someone that is distrustful of Tarot readings, successful in their careers but lacking in their close personal relationships.

This profile describes how he’s never had a Tarot reading before, is only doing it for fun, is looking to meet someone he could fall in love with but, at the same time, has a secret desire to be back in a relationship with his ex-partner. There is some additional background information that can be useful when imagining what certain cards, combination of cards and Elemental Dignities are hinting at.

For instance, this imaginary profile hints at James’ troubled background – which makes his eventual success as a businessman all the more interesting.

Did you notice the contradiction I put in the profile?

How can a successful businessman, who must be ruthless to some extent, be easily influenced by other people?

This is a big contradiction, but one that I’ve witnessed many times. This profile, or perhaps I should say persona, is unlikely to have many close friends, but the ones he does have, he’ll most likely have known for years (perhaps as far back as his early school days). If one of his friends makes a negative remark concerning a love interest, this could cause James to feel like it has become tarnished, that his love interest is not as special as he once thought. In other words, he is easily influenced by others – but in a very specific way.

Why create client profiles?

It allows intuition to become part of your study; to flow into your imaginary readings.

1. It personalises your Tarot studies: By spending time creating a profile of an imaginary client, you’re allowing your mind to step outside of itself. This is a powerful technique, but it also allows your Tarot study to become a little bit more personalised, a little bit more real. Rather than simply reading for yourself, or mechanically dealing out combinations, you can now connect to an imaginary client who has a name, face, identity, certain problems, needs, fears and anxieties about the future.
2. It informs your techniques: Reading for an imaginary client will help you trial out techniques under loads of different scenarios. The bigger the difference between profiles, the sharper your skills will become. Reading Elemental Dignities, or using card pairing, or card counting, or any other technique in conjunction with a variety of different profiles will help create a breadth of knowledge and understanding of how, when, and why to use certain techniques, at certain times, and with certain clients.
3. It identifies potential strengths and weaknesses: It may be that you’re more comfortable reading for people who have had a similar life to yours, a similar upbringing, have similar ethical or moral views, have similar ambitions for the future and who have similar expectations. However, the only way you’ll get better at reading Tarot cards is to practice reading for people who are completely different to you.
   The bigger the difference between the world view you create in your profile and your own personal world-view, the greater the scope for using intuition.
   To a large extent, the more you practice doing this, the more you’ll start to become aware of your strengths and weaknesses as a Tarot reader. This will help you pin point areas of study that need more work, whilst giving you confidence in the areas that you’re strong in.
4. It identifies ways to communicate with the client: One of the key skills of a great Tarot reader is in how he communicates with the client.
   Often, there are times when I don’t know what a lot of the cards “mean”, but through communication I seem to enter into a state where connections and “meanings” just seem to unfold. When you create your client profiles, it is very important that you speak the reading out loud and allow this part of giving a Tarot reading to be expressed.
   A tarot reading isn’t a mental process, it is a dialogue between the cards, you and the client. It is under those conditions that intuition flourishes.

How do I create client profiles?

There are no real rules – as you can see, I’ve developed a certain way of creating profiles but this is truly a personal process.

I like to add a picture to personalise the profile and I often like to include at least one obvious contradiction just to make things interesting. There are a variety of different approaches you can take, and if you’ve done this sort of thing before, I’d love to hear some of your suggestions and tips.

Here are a few things to consider when creating a profile:

• Demographics
• Financial situation
• Needs/challenges
• Ambitions
• How familiar are they with Tarot readers
• Background information (hobbies, family, relationships and so on)

One of the critical parts to creating a profile is the time spent doing it. In fact, this is the most vital aspect of the whole exercise. It’s really important that you spend time visualising the client, entering into a deep state of imagination.

The use of imagination is well known for its positive, life changing benefits. When we fully engage with our imagination, especially with regards to this exercise, we utilize unknown aspects of our consciousness; we allow an element of “play” to become a much needed aspect of our Tarot study and practice, and, this is the most important point, when it comes to actually doing the pretend reading, our intuition is already primed for expression.

I’ve noticed, when I’ve fully entered into this kind of study, that it can almost feel like I’m reading for someone else. Here is an example of what I do:

1. Create the profile (I like to spend a while doing this)
2. Place the profile in front of me and ask the imaginary person if they would like to shuffle the cards. This allows my consciousness to take part in this exercise as if it was “real”.
3. I then speak to the imaginary person before I deal the cards out; going through a pre-reading ritual.
4. I also speak ‘as the client’ in response to what I have to say.
5. During the reading I’ll speak aloud to add effect to the exercise – both as “myself” and the “client”.
6. When I speak as the client I try and become that persona and raise any objections to the reading, or ask for further clarification, in a way that I think the client, if they were real, might do.
7. As the Tarot reader, I try and answer any questions the client might have, allowing my intuition to be expressed.
8. When I’ve finished the reading, I record any insights that I’ve made in a Tarot journal

Try not to look at any books during this exercise – really try and imagine that this is a live Tarot reading. After the practice session is over and you’ve recorded the most relevant bits of information in a Journal, then by all means compare the reading with your favourite books. However, this isn’t necessary. What is more important than short term validation is the development of self-confidence, and a trust in your own intuition. This will come through this exercise if you allow it.

Alternative exercise

Some people advise using celebrities as an alternative to this exercise. I don’t like this approach because it ignores a very important aspect – the time spent using the imagination to create the profile.

If you like the idea of using a celebrity that’s fine. Just make sure to spend some time before hand creating the profile; putting some time into thinking about this person’s requirements for a reading. It’s important that the imagination be used throughout this exercise and using a celebrity can sometimes mean that this preliminary step is forgotten.

Have you already done something similar to this? What suggestions or tips do you have that could help makes this exercise even better? Do you think doing this exercise is even necessary, or is it a waste of time? What ever your thoughts or ideas are, I’d love to hear them. I’ll see you in the comments

(Theoretically) Related Posts:

• Why Reading Tarot Cards Like A Book Doesn’t Work
• How To Communicate With The Client
• Improve your Tarot Readings Activley with the Rule of 2 — Guaranteed
• Eon Quiz and Robust approaches to Tarot Readings
• A Simple Method for Interpreting Two Court Cards

Tagged as: Professional Tarot Reader, tarot card readings, Tarot reader, tarot reading