Empathy and the Tarot Reader

Will You Give Me a Reading? What You Need to Read Tarot with Confidence by Jenna Matlin

All new tarot readers will face that question someday: Will you give me a reading? No need to panic, Jenna Matlin has you covered. This incredible book guides you through the process, including how to handle common challenges. You learn to both connect more deeply with the cards as well as to wield them with grace and efficiency.

Based on her years of experience, Matlin explores three important skills of a good reader: handling criticism, engaging empathetically, and having healthy boundaries. I found what she wrote about empathy very interesting. Maybe you will to (from the book):

First, let me lay out this important distinction. Empathy is a skill distinct from being an empath. (Confusing, I know, as the words are so closely linked.) An empath is someone who can feel the emotions of another person, that ability can take on an extra-sensory type of sensitivity wherein an empath absorbs and feels the feeling of another person.

Empaths typically struggle to learn how to create distance between other people’s emotions and their own. As a tarot reader, being an empath makes your work harder. This is because as a reader, taking on their emotions could actively influence the reading. In my experience (that I later discuss in the book,) strong emotions hinder the clarity of a reading. People who are empaths need a lot of grounding, shielding, and training to contain their natural talent when it comes to reading tarot for others. I offer resources later in the book to help you if this is something you struggle with, too.

Empathy, however, is the trait where someone is able to put themselves in the shoes of another. Empathy is a cognitive skill that is partly inherited but can be trained, too. Empathy allows us to imagine what someone else is going through. Empathy allows us to feel for someone but not take on their feelings, per se. With empathy, you feel for someone. As an empath you feel as someone. It seems so similar, but the difference is huge.

But “empathy” and “empath” are not interchangeable terms. In fact, being an empath does not guarantee having empathy. Here is an example that illustrates my point: I’ve seen tarot readers say things like, “When she came for a reading, I was overcome with a dread and deep depression. I felt suicidal, and it was so intense. I just couldn’t take her energy.” This tarot reader is an empath, no doubt. But the focus turned toward how she now felt as a result of interacting with the querent. It stopped being about the querent and became about the reader.

If that same querent came to a reader who was practicing empathy, she might have said instead, “My querent’s head was hanging low, and her feet shuffled as she walked in. It is obvious that she is in a place of deep pain. She told me about her economic troubles, and I can just imagine how hard it has been for her and her family. My stomach is tight just thinking about her situation.”

Practicing empathy is a skill set a good tarot reader needs. In fact, it is empathy that can fundamentally make or break a session. Even if you are not so good with your cards just yet, the practice of empathy with querents will make up for that. Everyone wants to be seen and understood. One of your roles as a reader is to show them, by your presence and your actions, that they are seen and understood.

To prove my point, I recently pulled my reviews from querents over the years to see what they said about me and if there were any commonalities in their experience with me. I was surprised to discover that they actually rarely talked about the reading: how skillful it was, how accurate, or even how helpful. What my querents mostly talked about was how they felt as a result of spending time with me. This was a huge revelation.