I had a discussion with another Tarot reader recently who insisted that every card was positive and none of them should be read negatively. Even the Tower card. And reversals? Forget it.

Since the human imagination is limitless I can envision a pathway to taking that approach, but it doesn't strike me as either realistic or healthy. Pretending that negativity doesn't exist by refusing to recognize it, in fact by forcing only positivity on Tarot readings, strikes me as fakery. Positive forces are balanced against negative forces, a foundational concept of eastern harmony. Focusing only on positivity seems wildly out of balance.

Personally, I'm willing to let honesty rule the reading, releasing my intuition to feel negativity or positivity as presented by the cards. It's not my purpose to impose intentional outcomes through my conscious will. That honest approach to intuition makes the reading free of intentionality and willfulness, thus releasing me from moral issues about any messaged negativity rebounding.

I suspect my views are in the minority. My friend's positive-only approach may be more extreme, but most of the Tarot readers I've met seem to focus strongly, at least, on positive readings and shy from negatives. What say you? Always focus on the positive, or just let the cards lead where they may?

Bad stuff happens. We can't deny it.

What are the lessons to be gained from the events that occur that we don't like, i.e. the "bad"?

Positivity would (in its best form) be to identify the reality of the situation but point to where the individual needs to grow. We often don't like to face ourselves, but the cards can see us and our patterns clearly.

For example, change and letting go is hard, and we often don't want to do it "Death". Sudden realisations about how gigantic our ego is and how we lie to ourselves can be shattering - we put ourselves in some superior category out of an often unconscious need to compete (don our regalia) and then get knocked off our perch and get caught out somehow in humiliation (Tower) hopefully making us humble and behave more like our true uncloaked self with all our emotions and subconscious/unconscious movements (Star).

We're on a journey and while all of it is - or can be - good for something, we don't see it as good.

There may be some need to clarify about the focusing on the positivity - is it the lesson that is the positive thing? My intention when reading is to help. I think that's the important thing. But we don't want to say "everything's fine" when we could be warning someone about something, do we? If taking someone's money to give advice and we don't, we are possibly doing the ego thing wanting them to like us - but the sitter would have every reason to despise us for taking their money. "You should have warned me!"

Thank you for raising such a good topic, @Croat .

Life is a mixture of good, bad—and very often simply indifferent or trivial as well. I find I am not attracted to tarot decks that emphasise one end of the spectrum at the expense of the other. I don't like 'dark' decks, but I am equally unmoved by 'rosy' decks.

Usually you can get some positives from an overly negative reading if you include a space for it in your spread. Something like 'what is best to do in this situation?" or 'what is helping me in this situation?' This kind of thing. This is another reason why I don't do one-card spreads, or spreads that don't have enough cards in them to give a nuanced view of a situation. And why I ALWAYS include an 'advice' card in every spread.

Of course when you're reading for somebody else (or even for yourself) and you sense that an overly negative reading will shatter them rather than help them, it's good to be able to soften any blow without being dishonest. I think that's where practice comes in, and also the ability to interact with your querent. Talk the situation through, and get them to look at as many aspects of a situation that you can. How many different directions an 'outcome' can lead. You can even do a second reading to clarify any aspect of the first reading that needs a bit more information.

It's also helpful if you can point out how many times you've received or dealt negative cards for yourself in your time as a card reader ...and yet, here you (still) are!

My own tarot journey has recently led me into practicing how to de-catastrophise a reading. That's where the tarot journal can really help. How did Death manifest itself in readings where it actually appeared? Ditto 10 of Swords, The Tower, etc. Cards that are traditionally seen as 'negative cards.' What ACTUALLY happened AFTER the card reading occurred?

That approach helps me to understand how melodramatic cards hardly ever presage everlasting grief.

OMG. Death! In a position of 'what will happen today.' Somebody is going to die! Nope. Turns out I finally threw away those shoes that never did fit me right—and now there is a space on my shoe rack for another pair. Death. Transformation. And we move quickly on ...nothing to see here....

Edited Tuesday at 12:08 AM3 days by Chariot

Alla @geoxena - bad things happen. Such is life.

But in order for a reading to be useful to the querent - one must de-catastrophize alla @Chariot .

Self-fulfilling prophesy is all-too-real, and it's always helpful to the querent to give them some positive things to take away with them.

@Croat your aforementioned Tarot reader was a Doreen Virtue model? 😁 (Who removed all the "negative" cards from her decks, replacing with other imagery. It was all fluffy Angels and bluebirds... until she had some sort of personal breakdown [my assumption], denounced her practice & decks, and went back to being a stoic Christian. It was quite a drama).

Edited Monday at 06:52 PM4 days by Tanga

2 hours ago, Tanga said:

bad things happen. Such is life.

But in order for a reading to be useful to the querent - one must de-catastrophize

Well, of course. Acknowledging that some cards may indicate messy, dangerous, or less than ideal situations or outcomes isn't necessarily catastrophizing. Of course there must be perspective in viewing how all cards in a spread correlate with each other and how the combination of cards relates to the querent's question. And in just about every situation, there are options or choices to make in order to move forward or swerve out of the way of something that could have negative results or repercussions.

Self-fulfilling prophesy is all-too-real, and it's always helpful to the querent to give them some positive things to take away with them.

Sure. I never said that a reading which acknowledges possibly negative things wouldn't also include positive ways to handle or avoid them. I mean, to me, it kinda goes without saying that the reader would also look for a solution, next steps, way out of a mess, etc. and advise accordingly. I would never just tell a querent, "Bad sh!t's gonna happen!" and leave them with a sense of foreboding and fear of some kind of disaster heading their way. But, as someone sitting here with a fractured ankle, I can attest to the fact that life isn't all rainbows and puppy dogs.

Edited Tuesday at 12:39 AM3 days by geoxena

After my mother died (decades ago) I got Tarot of the Origins (now Primordial Tarot) because it featured death as a daily possibility. When things are already bad, I find an overly positive deck or reading depressing in how unrelated it feels. "You'll feel better later," doesn't really hit for me in serious situations. I want a message for now. I'd rather see the 3 of Swords and be reminded that I am not alone That this is the way life works, and there's nothing happening to me that isn't part of what everyone deals with. (Not because I want other people to be sad too, of course. But because that's the way it is, and accepting that reality gives me more peace than incorrectly feeling singled out or treated unfairly.)

If I get 9 of Swords, 5 of Cups, Tower, the positive is that things going to s*#t is going to force me to deal with something I definitely don't want to, even if it's on the small scale. Lke being nauseas and needing to throw up, it's better to get it over with and get to the other side. So that's good advice. Even if I only drew one card and it was the 9S, I would read it as 'anxiety will be worse so remember your best strategies to cope with that'. In that way, to me all tarot readings are positive, because they're of use. Of course, that's not the same kind of positive as the tarot reader @Croat mentioned is talking about.

EDIT:also forgive me if you've seen this before. 😅 I've posted something similar here several times over the years. It's fundamental to how I see tarot.

Edited Monday at 10:58 PM4 days by Rose Lalonde

Dolly Parton (RIP) once said, "The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain".

That's the human condition, there are bad times and good, positives and negatives, we have to get through the ups and the downs.

About 15 years ago, I went through a bad depression and I turned to a Doreen Virtue Angel Deck to help me. I think she was at the height of her popularity around then and it was useful to me to take a card, each day for a positive message. Like I needed that positive boast. Looking back on it, really I was getting a positive affirmation and you can get cards with them on or just make up your own or a positive intention for the day. They were not good at doing readings or spreads because they were so themed one way.

I think positive only decks or readings are useful in a very specific way but you cannot use them for regular or general readings. You need the "bad cards" (I don't even believe personally they are bad cards). Sometimes they give the most important advice you can ever hear. You want to find love? Well maybe they are saying you need to dramatically end something from the past, change your whole mindset, get rid of all that baggage. Things could get worse before they get better (just an example).

I've noticed some Youtube and TikTok readers remove the 10 of Swords, Death and The Tower (sometimes also the Devil) from readings. I am not quite sure why but I think when they are pulling random cards for their readership, they don't want to make them feel bad or I dunno, but it's strange. I've written about it before but there is a prominent astrologer who has a blog and has a tarot card for the monthly readings for each sign and excludes the negative cards. They also have an astrological value, it really bugs me.

In my own readings, I try to give the message that comes up. It's not always positive and it's not always negative, I try to be honest to what I am seeing. I also believe that all cards can be positive / neutral / negative depending on how they turn up and read in position. So even if you remove those cards, The Sun can burn you, Lovers can be too codependent and relying on someone else. They all have a range. The greatest thing I have learnt in my readings is that the cards are nuanced and I don't think I can get that without the balance of all the cards in the deck.

9 hours ago, DanielJUK said:

Dolly Parton (RIP) once said, "The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain".

That's the human condition, there are bad times and good, positives and negatives, we have to get through the ups and the downs.

About 15 years ago, I went through a bad depression and I turned to a Doreen Virtue Angel Deck to help me. I think she was at the height of her popularity around then and it was useful to me to take a card, each day for a positive message. Like I needed that positive boast. Looking back on it, really I was getting a positive affirmation and you can get cards with them on or just make up your own or a positive intention for the day. They were not good at doing readings or spreads because they were so themed one way.

I think positive only decks or readings are useful in a very specific way but you cannot use them for regular or general readings. You need the "bad cards" (I don't even believe personally they are bad cards). Sometimes they give the most important advice you can ever hear. You want to find love? Well maybe they are saying you need to dramatically end something from the past, change your whole mindset, get rid of all that baggage. Things could get worse before they get better (just an example).

I've noticed some Youtube and TikTok readers remove the 10 of Swords, Death and The Tower (sometimes also the Devil) from readings. I am not quite sure why but I think when they are pulling random cards for their readership, they don't want to make them feel bad or I dunno, but it's strange. I've written about it before but there is a prominent astrologer who has a blog and has a tarot card for the monthly readings for each sign and excludes the negative cards. They also have an astrological value, it really bugs me.

In my own readings, I try to give the message that comes up. It's not always positive and it's not always negative, I try to be honest to what I am seeing. I also believe that all cards can be positive / neutral / negative depending on how they turn up and read in position. So even if you remove those cards, The Sun can burn you, Lovers can be too codependent and relying on someone else. They all have a range. The greatest thing I have learnt in my readings is that the cards are nuanced and I don't think I can get that without the balance of all the cards in the deck.

Re: Doreen Virtue. Yes. I was at a Tarot moot once and there was a lady there who was petrified of "negative" cards, but she wanted to learn to read. So I recommended a Doreen Virtue deck.

And HA! - people actually remove cards from the deck? Good grief. No further comment needed.

11 hours ago, geoxena said:

Well, of course. Acknowledging that some cards may indicate messy, dangerous, or less than ideal situations or outcomes isn't necessarily catastrophizing. Of course there must be perspective in viewing how all cards in a spread correlate with each other and how the combination of cards relates to the querent's question. And in just about every situation, there are options or choices to make in order to move forward or swerve out of the way of something that could have negative results or repercussions.

Sure. I never said that a reading which acknowledges possibly negative things wouldn't also include positive ways to handle or avoid them. I mean, to me, it kinda goes without saying that the reader would also look for a solution, next steps, way out of a mess, etc. and advise accordingly. I would never just tell a querent, "Bad sh!t's gonna happen!" and leave them with a sense of foreboding and fear of some kind of disaster heading their way. But, as someone sitting here with a fractured ankle, I can attest to the fact that life isn't all rainbows and puppy dogs.

Neither of the comments I made were directed at "correcting" your post - by the way (from the above, it appears that you have read it in this way). I was just giving my own succinct penny's worth to the OP 🙃.

Edited Tuesday at 09:54 AM3 days by Tanga

On 8/30/2026 at 10:43 AM, Croat said:

I had a discussion with another Tarot reader recently who insisted that every card was positive and none of them should be read negatively. Even the Tower card. And reversals? Forget it.

Since the human imagination is limitless I can envision a pathway to taking that approach, but it doesn't strike me as either realistic or healthy. Pretending that negativity doesn't exist by refusing to recognize it, in fact by forcing only positivity on Tarot readings, strikes me as fakery. ...

Everything is context. Going on a spiritual retreat where you WANT to tear down your ego structures? Tower is positive in that context. Remodeling your house and need to demolish the old floor to repair the rotted joist? Tower is part of the process.

Planning a wedding? Tower is probably some kind of disaster.

That promotion you really wanted? Tower is a hard NO.

Einstein's Theory of Relativity comes to mind. Everything is relative. And yes, it also strikes me as fake to pretend that context plays no role in whether a card is positive, negative, or neutral. Empress is a benefic card--but for an obese person who overeats sweets--it's too much of a good thing.

The phrase "toxic positivity" comes to mind.

On 8/30/2026 at 10:43 AM, Croat said:

I suspect my views are in the minority. My friend's positive-only approach may be more extreme, but most of the Tarot readers I've met seem to focus strongly, at least, on positive readings and shy from negatives. What say you? Always focus on the positive, or just let the cards lead where they may?

A few times I've had well-meaning friends try to put a more positive spin on malefic cards. As events transpired I could see the cards were accurate but my friends' affection for me gave a softer interpretation . This is just human nature. We want to be nice to our friends.

The YouTubers and TicTokkers? Removing cards? Figures. Nothing surprises me with social media. I've heard some readers do it for party readings too. And, yes, it is awkward when you get Tower for someone in a 12-minute bachelorette party reading. But I've managed to navigate malefic cards in party readings. Not everyone has the skill to do this. And if they are unskilled--prolly best they don't read malefic cards. If we were ice skaters--the malefic cards are a higher difficulty level. Benefic cards are a waltz jump. Malefic cards are a triple axel.

Edited Tuesday at 03:47 PM3 days by Misterei