Chances are if you said "yes" to all 3 then you came across a pretty darn good reader! If they can pick up on the past and present without asking you:
I would say you can feel pretty all right in paying the reader and seeing if their words do indeed come to pass. But ... (you love it when folks do that huh?) please recall, what you do after you leave the reading with the information relayed to you is entirely up to you now - the reader is no longer involved. You cannot determine a reader's accuracy solely upon the future portents - but on ALL three areas of time frames involved. If YOU decide to overstir the pot, speed things up, put on the brakes, or whatever - that was your decision and will (probably) play a hand in the outcome of the future. The future isn't written in stone - nor is a reader's words. *handing you the chisel and hammer for the stone carving*
Personally, I tend to use the past and present tense of what the reader says more so as a judge of a reading versus the future portents revealed. I think that if a reader can tell me something about myself without having to fill them in on it - especially if I had never met that reader before - I then feel I can trust the reader's abilities and feel comfortable with the reading. If it is a reader that I do know and they pick on something I don't often talk about or even kept secret, well - well - well, this reader had doubly impressed me and I feel comfortable with letting the reading proceed.
If the reader asks you a question during a course of a reading, answer it - but keep the detailings to a minamum. For one thing, the reader wasn't asking for the whole story about that certain area of thought. Second thing, you don't want to give away too much or distract the reader to thinking only of that area and perhaps inadvertently overlooking something else shown to them in the reading as they centered too much on that one area. So try to keep your answers to any questions to "Yes", "No", or "Maybe" and if the reader is stumped acting, have them tell you in more words what they are trying to say and not try to share what you think they may be trying to say.
What is sometimes hard to uncover is if you came across what is called a "cold reader", these are a slippery lot indeed and sometimes hard to detect until after you have paid and left - and sometimes can take up to a week for you to suddenly stop and thwap yourself on the side of the head as you exclaim "They only repeated what I asked!?!" Yep, these are the Kings and Queens of "how to twist the words" game playing.
A mellow example of a cold reader tactic:
A young woman enters the room for a reading ... hmmmm, must be about love interest. So the reader asks her, "I bet you came for a reading about love ..." *Gasp* She nods, oh this reader must be psychic indeed if they knew that without her asking - right?. Reader is thinking to themselves "Whew, I guessed right on that one ...."
"What can you tell me about my boyfriend," she asks hopefully. Reader is thinking to themselves for a moment as they sort out the two options in their minds for the girl asking this. "Ah, I see you haven't felt that the two of you been seeing eye to eye on some things and you are debating his sincerity ..." BINGO, the reader says to themself as the girl looks up with startled eyes and quits twisting the ring on her left hand for a few seconds - her unknowing the twisting of the ring gave a silent signal that she was wondering about the relationship's longstanding - as if silently asking "should I keep this on or take it off?".
Reader pushes onward, "Has he been spending more time away in your opinion lately ... like more busy or something?" The girl get tears welling up in her eyes by now ... oh this reader is so good! They know things about her already without her having to say anything ... so she spills her guts by now, filling the reader in on tidbits of information and such that the reader will use now to rephrase it and make it sound so ... well, prophetic. Did you pick up on the usage of the phrase "in your opinion"? *winkety wink as I chuckle*
A cold reader may use a multitude of things to divert your attention from what they are doing ... fancy card lay outs, slow turn of the cards in a layout as they talk to you in between turning of the cards, pendulums, cystal balls, etc. What you don't realize until you have left is how easily duped you were that you conned out of a reading and into a "talk with a mirror" type thing, you actually just paid money to have your words rephrased and spit back out at you and the reader didn't really employ any of the "props" shown to you (aka cards, pendulum, etc.)! The cold reader uses not only your words but also your body language in with common assumptions. If they assume wrong, they will quickly try to cover it up with saying "Oh, it must be someone close to you I picked up on there for a moment ..." or rephrase it to make fall into assumption #2 area of thought.
If you feel that you been duped by such a reader, just join the club ... they are good at this game and can fool many a person, even a fellow reader at times. All you can do is the following to help curtail their money making aspect in this arena:
"Cold Readings" was actually started out as a kind of parlor game used during party or carnival settings, where a person (not necessarily an actual reader) may have felt "rushed" or overwhelmed by the amount of people wishing to have a reading or being put up for a "show". They used a list of 20 areas of thought for men and women to get themselves started off in a "reading" for fun - but they generally kept it short, sweet, and simple. Like 5 minutes or so in length. Over time, though, con artists and scammers got wind of this and decided to use for less than fun intents ... just added a few props then set out a sign saying they were this awesome psychic persona.
© 1998 Secretive aka Carol