Having enjoyed Liat Silberman’s insight and sense of humor at the meetings of CB1’s Tribeca Committee—as well as in her comments on this site—I was tickled to learn that she’s the Tribeca Tarot Reader. She’s clearly interested in people, seeing as how she has also worked as a therapist specializing in relationship and addictions, a life coach, and a model booker—not to mention a stint as president of the PTA at P.S. 234. Originally from Sydney, Liat moved to Tribeca in 2002 with her husband, Adam (currently executive producer of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark), and their 13-year-old son, Boaz. I asked if she’d answer a few questions about being a tarot reader.

Liat Silberman at Le Pain Quotidien

How did you get started with tarot? Do you get certified or anything like that?
When I was 16, I used to play cards with my grandmother, and I shuffled like a card shark, and one of her friends said, “You have an affinity for the cards, you should learn tarot.” What 16 year-old doesn’t want to hear that she has a special, magical talent? So, knowing nothing, I bought the entirely wrong pack (I still have it in storage in Sydney somewhere) and started. It was really hard, but something kept me there and I persevered, reading for friends and family. I started reading for strangers in my early 20s. There are schools but no central, reputable certification process that I am aware of.

How do people react when you tell them you read Tarot? What do your compatriots on CB1 think?
Well… my husband has asked me in the past for it not to be the first thing I say to people at his business events, but even there, people react really favorably. They’re always interested, and they want to know my stories. One of my funniest moments was when I told someone at the Community Board meeting that I read tarot cards professionally and he said, “But you appear so intelligent.” And I laughed and said ‘I’m intelligent when I read cards too.’

What do you to say to people who are skeptical?
I don’t need to “convert” or impress anyone. If they want to come, they are welcome; if they don’t, they don’t have to. I read for strangers every day, they expect me to know stuff about them, but I’m astonished each time again at how accurate the cards are. I had a reading the other day where I said to the woman that her marriage card is reversed, it’s unstable and causing problems, and she said she wasn’t married, and I was genuinely surprised. Then, halfway through the reading, she said she was married 10 years ago (when she was 18) and separated from him five years ago, but they never got divorced. I looked at her and pointed at the card, and she laughed and said that yes, it actually causes her some anxiety when meeting new men, how to explain that early marriage.… Those cards, they never lie.

What do your clients tend to come looking for? Do you see any patterns of what Tribecans, in particular, want insight on?
People come for three main reasons—love or money or just checking if they’re on the right path. There are either questions about their love life or questions about career/business. When the 2008 financial crisis hit, there were a lot of really anxious questions about money, not all of whom had good answers, but the cards are definitely lighter and clearer (not all sunshine and light, but definitely better) about career and money now. One thing that people say in my reviews on Citysearch—and this surprised me initially—is that I don’t sugarcoat the cards. I’m not there to spin a happy tale; I only tell what I see. I have women asking me about finding love this year or having a baby, and if the cards say no, I say that I can’t see it. And then we discuss what we have to shift, where change is needed, in order for them to get the outcome they want. So I don’t just say no and leave them hanging, but neither do I say everything will be rosy if the cards don’t say it. I find it interesting that when I give bad/difficult news, people always believe me, but if I give good news—the cards do see a tall dark stranger in your future—they don’t!

What’s the strangest question you’ve been asked? What’s the strangest tarot-related experience you’ve had?
Oh… one guy came to me with such a complicated scenario—he had an ex who was in Europe, he met a new girl, was with her for six months, the ex came to visit, he slept with her for a week (it was wonderful!), and the new girl found out, and dropped him. And his question to me was whether I could find out the name of the person who told the new girl about the ex staying with him. I looked at him and I said, “I think that’s the wrong question.” He was genuinely broken up about the ending of the new relationship but taking no responsibility at all, or at least trying not to! As for the strangest tarot experience—and luckily this very rarely happens—a very young girl, just 19, came and kept meandering around this point, and finally straight out asked if I could curse her married lover’s wife so they would break up and she could have him. And I said that that’s very bad karma, you don’t want to do that, but she kept asking. I can’t curse people and wouldn’t if I could, but she really creeped me out.

Have you ever done a reading that was just horrible? Where the client’s future looked bleak beyond belief?
Sadly yes, more than once. And I’ve spent the hour talking about the situation and how we can change/deal with it. I’m very glad for my therapy training when that happens. One quite fragile woman came to me to talk about her marriage and all I saw was it ending. She cried, asking if she could change it, but she had come to me too late, that path was laid. Had she come a year earlier, my really quite straightforward advice—find some more friends, don’t make him your sole source of human contact on the earth, find other interests, don’t rely only on him—might have helped. But he was putting nothing into the relationship and it was clear from what she said to me that he wanted out, which just made her cling more furiously, which just made him want out more.… In the end, they separated.

Could you also do a reading for a business or a place, or does it have to be a person?
I could do a reading on a business if I was talking to the owner, whose energy is very enmeshed with that business, and I can do a reading about your work place and get an accurate vibe on it (it’s supportive, it’s competitive, full of frenemies, somewhere to grow—that sort of thing), but if you want to know if Bloomberg will do well and you aren’t Bloomberg, then I can’t help you.

Where do you do the readings?
I go to three or four cafés around the area. I’m so lucky because the staff in all of them are really sweet and welcoming. I never go at lunch, when they’re seriously busy, only at their quiet times. I started at Kitchenette (people from outside the neighborhood love going there—it’s charming, and the cookies are delicious!). I also go to Le Pain Quotidien, which is now my home away from home, I think I’ve eaten every single thing on the menu (current fave: quinoa salad). It’s really buzzy at meal times but serene and quiet in the late afternoon. And I go to the Cosmopolitan Café, which people also love finding out about, and it has real flowers on the tables and serves excellent tea (having lived in London for eight years, tea is very important to me!). I also go to Whole Foods’ upstairs, which sounds odd but the tables are the perfect size for a reading, and it also gets quieter after rush times.

On your blog, you’ve written about every card in the tarot deck. Was that for yourself or for clients?
I started as a way of showing people I’m informed and serious about the tarot, but as with all good things, while I wanted to inform my clients, I also clarified some of my own opinions. What I love about the Internet is that there are so many amazing images out there of the various cards, and I sort of curated through them, selecting ones that spoke to me. It also turned out to be enormously helpful, as I send the links of pertinent cards to my clients afterward, and they have something that helps them remember the reading better.

Do you have a favorite card? A card that creeps you out?
No, I love all the cards, they all give serious information. I think of some of them as more “New York” than others—I get the 7 of cups more here than I did in Sydney (that may also be a function of time, as the 80s may have been a less overwhelming time). I like it when people get the 2 of pentacles, showing they’re in the flow of New York City.

Is Tarot your main profession?
It didn’t used to be—I used to read on the side—but now it is. I used to long to be able to bring the cards in when I worked as a therapist in the hospital system, but they would not have taken kindly to it! I think I could cut through the first six months of therapy with one good reading. It goes deep, fast.

What do people tend to ask you that I didn’t?
One question that people often ask me at the end of a reading is how often do people come to you and I say this—people come as often as they want/need. Many come three or four times a year, some once a year (usually around a birthday or important date, and some once only. But some people, who are going through a difficult patch, come more often. I’ve had people come monthly, while they try to sort something out. There are no hard-and-fast rules, though I wouldn’t do a reading weekly. Once, after giving some quite hard advice to a girl, she wanted to come back the next day having followed it (telling her parents about the boyfriend they wouldn’t approve of), and so of course I let her—I don’t want to leave people hanging! (The dad wasn’t happy but he would come around faster than mom would.)