By Bailey Romatoski ·
The ten questions below will tell you more in one conversation than a month of scrolling someone's testimonials. Ask them before you pay, and listen for specifics: honest practitioners answer them easily and happily, while vague or defensive answers are your cue to walk. Most people hiring a tarot reader, astrologer, or spellcaster never ask anything at all, which is exactly what scammers count on.
What are the questions to ask before hiring a practitioner?
- What tradition do you work in, and where did you train? Serious practitioners spent years inside a coherent tradition, often with a mentor or lineage, and they love talking about it. A three-week online course is a different animal.
- How long have you been working professionally? Years in practice matters more than follower counts. Ask what they were doing five years ago, and see whether the answer has texture.
- What happens in a session? A professional can describe the shape of a reading or working: how it starts, what you'll do, what you'll leave with. McElroy's classic guide to professional tarot notes that a real reader explains their approach, style, and limits up front to avoid misunderstandings later.
- What won't you do? Every honest practitioner has edges. They don't read on third parties without consent, they don't predict deaths, they refer medical and legal questions to licensed professionals. Ask what their limits are and expect a real answer.
- What's your intake process? For spellwork especially, there should be one. A practitioner who takes your money and starts casting without understanding your situation is either lazy or cutting corners on the work itself.
- How do you price your work, and what does that include? Look for flat fees listed publicly, defined session lengths, and no surprise add-ons mid-session. If pricing is hidden until you're emotionally invested, that's intentional.
- What's your refund or rescheduling policy? Clear policies are a baseline standard of professionalism. Practitioners who can't say what happens if a session goes sideways are telling you something.
- Can you provide proof of the work? For commissioned spellwork, practitioners on occult forums recommend asking for proof the working was done and doing independent research on reviews, since AI-generated fake reviews are everywhere now.
- What do you expect from me? Good spellworkers give clients assignments, both magical and mundane, and the work rests on you doing them. If you're told to just sit back and wait, ask why.
- Can I talk to past clients or see testimonials I can verify? Anonymous screenshots don't count. Named reviews, a long posting history, or a reputation in a community you can check all do.
Do these questions offend legitimate practitioners?
The opposite. The experienced people in any esoteric tradition get asked these questions by each other constantly, and they wish more clients asked. A practitioner who bristles at "what's your training?" or "what won't you do?" is answering a different question: whether you should hire them at all.
Which question matters most?
Question four. What a practitioner refuses to do is the clearest window into their ethics, and articulated ethics are the mark of a serious one. There's a difference between someone who has thought carefully about what they will and won't take on, and someone who just doesn't want the hassle. The first can explain their reasoning. The second gets defensive or waffles.
What answers should send me running?
A few, drawn from what the practitioner community itself warns about. "You're cursed and only I can fix it." Any guarantee of a specific outcome, especially with a deadline. Prices that appear only after you've shared something vulnerable. Pressure to keep your sessions secret from friends and family. Requests for gift cards, wire transfers, or crypto. And anything that makes you feel smaller, frightened, or dependent: a good reading leaves you with more agency than you came in with.
How many questions is too many?
None of them are too many. A practitioner charging real money for work touching your real life should expect due diligence, the same way you'd interview anyone you hire to do intimate, consequential work. Two or three of these questions asked up front will filter out most frauds in the first five minutes.
A note on how to use the answers
You're not building a legal case; you're getting a feel for the person. Notice whether they answer with specifics or with mystique, whether they're comfortable with your skepticism or treat it as an insult, and whether they ever say "that's not something I do, here's who you need instead." That last one, a comfortable referral out, is one of the strongest green flags in the field. People secure in their training don't need to be everything to everyone.
The honest practitioners are easy to spot once you start asking: they're the ones who were already waiting for the question.