The fundamental requirement that tarot practitioners would uphold is that they do no harm to others. The ethics that control your divination, the motives for using the instrument and the resulting effects are of primary importance and must always be thought first before you proceed.
At best, you give advice and direction to your seeker when using the tarot. It is of utmost importance to take adequate caution as it will lead the person affected in the right or wrong direction depending on what you intuit or infer from a reading and the resulting time and energy or lack thereof that you might have put into the reading. If the seeker entrusts you with helping to make that option or a crucial and meaningful judgment, the life, karma and karmic reactions of that person are connected to yours. It may be dramatically altered as a consequence of reading the life of an individual and the course of action they take.
It is therefore of the highest importance to support, assist, direct and inform in your perceptions from reading to the best of your ability and with maximum respect about the person concerned. If the tarot is misused by a practitioner who does not specifically adhere by a code of ethics, the implications are real and have multiple dimensions for both the reader and the seeker.
- Do no harm, first and foremost. Refusing to do a reading for a Seeker while doing little to support the Seeker is safer than interfering, doing an irresponsible reading, and risking further damage than gain. Do not conduct a reading where there is a risk of greater harm and the probability of benefit to the seeker is minimal.
- Tarot is a profession and also a practice. It is important to comply with a strict ethics code. Students are expected by physicians, lawyers, accountants and several professional studies to commit to uniform laws. While there are no uniform rules of ethical conduct in tarot, they should be established by the practitioner for him or herself, and those rules should be very close to the rules I suggest herein.
- Seekers owe Tarot practitioners a duty of integrity and caution. Just as a doctor must promise to reflect his or her credentials truthfully. Do not ever proclaim yourself as a psychic unless you are a psychic in fact. When you're just a beginner, it's all right to try reading for others, as long as you clearly announce that you're just a beginner and make it clear that reading is for fun only and, what's more, you really don't completely grasp the tarot's depths and nuances.
- For the tarot, the inaccuracies lie with the practitioner, not the cards, another significant point. On occasion, even the most experienced tarot practitioner can misread the cards. It is vital that seekers know this, and it is the duty of the practitioner to ensure that seekers understand it.
- Do not lead the seeker to assume that the potential result that the cards forecast is absolute. It isn't that. The tarot cards correspond with the current energies and state of mind of a Seeker. According to the present outlook, they can only forecast a probable course. Yet, the Seeker will change all possible results. The Seeker has free will and can apply it to the fullest. Changes in actions and choices will affect the future.
- If you are an inexperienced practitioner, so let Seekers know that there would be a strong risk of inaccuracies. Also sophisticated and professional tarot practitioners should refrain from overstating their abilities. Humility is also a virtue and is well-regarded.
- Never start with the pretense of precision. Each practitioner of tarot has its limits. Let consumers know that the professional is individual and thus faulty. The practitioner may misunderstand or miss essential information, no matter how qualified.
- Fairly and critically perform any reading. Pursue the best efforts with impartiality. If there are conflicts of interest or previous acquaintance with the Seeker, let the Seeker know that the reading of the cards might be unwittingly affected by certain conflicts or familiarity. What is an interest conflict? If the effect of the Seeker's reading might likely in any way influence the tarot practitioner, so there is a conflict of interest. Warn the Seeker of a likely bias.
- Readings could never be delayed or hurriedly completed. The practitioner must dedicate absolute, undivided attention to the cards after a reading has started.
- Seekers can seek Tarot practitioners in tandem with professional therapy, but tarot can never be used as a substitute for a licensed psychologist or therapist. The responsible tarot practitioner will go to great lengths to explain to the seeker that good legal opinion, medical advice, or financial advice should not be replaced by the tarot.
- Although the tarot does not give legal advice, medical advice, or financial advice, it does provide vital insight into a condition that would seem impossible otherwise. It will offer insight into the history of a seeker and a better view of the challenges facing the seeker. It can also expose facets of the character of the Seeker that might be helpful.
- Still consider questions of secrecy. The reading of A Seeker should remain purely secret. The name of a seeker should also remain secret, unless the seeker gives the practitioner express consent to release such information. There is a right and obligation of secrecy between the tarot practitioner and the Seeker, just as there are physician-patient, attorney-client, and priest-penitent rights. Even if one may not be accepted by the laws of the country, the real tarot practitioner, out of reverence for the tradition and the art, should uphold the norm for himself.
- For inspiration, the tarot may be used and can enable a seeker to make more educated choices. The ethical tarot practitioner, however, would constantly stress to the Seeker that nothing in the tarot will replace legal, medical, financial, or therapeutic clinical therapy.
- Some claim that for fortune-telling, the tarot can be used, but I do not. I can not emphasize enough: With utter confidence, the tarot can not forecast the future. Nothing is probable.
- Remember what was previously mentioned: never use the tarot to read into the life of another without the clear permission of that person and complete knowledge that you are doing such a reading. It is a reprehensible espionage act, a reckless violation of the rights of others.
- By free will, the future is still malleable. There should, though, be no doubt that the instrument will provide great advice when the tarot is used ethically and responsibly. This is another explanation for the value of ethics: to preserve the integrity of tarot practice so that it can continue to be provided as a metaphysical or medical method.
- To force your will on others, never use the tarot. Misuse and misuse of the tarot is among those who perform spells or other related ways of manipulation of essential forces, using the tarot to try and influence another's situation without the permission of that person. Please appreciate the severity of the breach. The depth and width of the destruction that you can inflict is limitless.
- Tarot practitioners should usually, as a solid rule of thumb, never agree to do readings for seekers who ask detailed questions about sickness, financial issues, legal problems or violence of some sort (substance abuse, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, etc.). The problem is not whether the tarot should answer those questions at all. Human health and welfare are the concern. As seekers think about the tarot posing those questions, it is obvious that they are using the tarot to cover for serious clinical treatment. That is impermissible. These situations will not be facilitated by the ethical tarot practitioner because, for one, it will do more harm than good.
- To supplement current clinical treatment, the tarot can only be used.
- When a tarot practitioner supplies the public with his or her readings, continued education is important. His or her tarot experiments will never stop the ethical practitioner. The Seeker and the skilled tarot community owe Tarot practitioners a responsibility to be the highest, most experienced, most knowledgeable practitioner that his or her skills allow.
- There is, inevitably, the problem of fees. The ethical tarot practitioner will specifically state to the Seeker the cost of any reading, and once the Seeker has expressly acknowledged the cost, the practitioner will not begin reading. Also, clinicians ought to be self-aware.
- If you accept that during a reading you were not yourself, or if an accurate reading may have been stopped by any part of your emotional state or environment, it is up to you to refund the payments to the Seeker. In fact, when you know that your emotional condition or atmosphere is not what it should be, you should not be carrying out readings.
- There'll still be moments where it doesn't feel right to charge, so don't. The tarot is a sacred instrument, and please do so if you are offered the chance to support someone who is in need.
- The practitioner must devote as much time to ethical issues as to the other facets of tarot analysis as he or she does. What distinguishes the reputable tarot artist from the charlatan is the rigid adherence to a high code of ethics.
- Remember as many seekers attempt to deal with sorrow, loss, or uncertainty as individuals in a fragile state. Pairing such a person with a quack or irresponsible tarot practitioner would cause the seeker a great deal of harm, harm that may be just as extreme, if not worse, than a quack doctor who practices medicine without a license, a scum-sucking lawyer, or an accountant who has a tendency to skim a little off the top.
If a tarot practitioner has no intention of strictly adhering to a code of ethics, then for those instances I would conclude, the practitioner should at the very least consider being ethical, empathetic and fair as per their own moral compass and in their own conscience while reading the tarot. For those nuanced choice of actions are a self defining Truth that you have to continue to live with even after a reading.
