The number one request I get from tarot newbies is (surprisingly!) not for a free card pull, but a recommended reading list. And somehow, each time I’m asked for it I get a little flustered, a little rambly, because I’ve never formally compiled said list. In fact, I barely remember what I read all those years ago. So I’ve finally done the work, rehashed my
Creation is the holiest activity. At the heart of every religion is a creation story. Maybe that story is about a singular god who whipped up the world with his great mind, or a sky goddess who mated with her brother earth, or a series of divinities who emerge out of the void in an orgiastic birthing frenzy. In myth, when creation happens it happens
So you’ve prepared for your reading like a pro, found the right reader, and had a great reading—but the work’s not done just yet. One of the most common oversights of tarot querents is to leave the sacred space of a reading and jump immediately back into the routine of their lives. They make lots of internal room for revelations during the reading itself, but
When you book a tarot reading you likely get that thrill of magic, eagerness for the luxurious specialness that awaits you in that room (or Skype chat or phone call), when all the tingly mysteries of the universe will spill themselves into the cards that the reader will perfectly pull, all for you and you’re precious life. But as beautiful as that feeling is, getting
My very first class of graduate school was titled The Faust Legend, and it was the entire reason I had signed up for two years of torture in the first place. I was a baby Jungian, a tried and true devotee to the brilliance of that old Swiss, and I had noted his fangirlish references to Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust over and over. So when
When I was a kid I could spend hours silently waiting to hear a whisper from God. I grew up vaguely Catholic, but the moment I “got” the ecstatic beauty and tragedy of what Christ actually embodied, I meant it. I went to church every Sunday, prayed dutifully before tests, closed my mopey 12 year old journal entries with, “Thank you, Lord.” I was, in
Everybody loves an oracle deck. Whether you’re a newbie witch or a professional cartomancer, a devout monotheist or an experimental pagan, oracle decks offer a concentrated dose of unbiased and often uplifting wisdom. But choosing an oracle deck is no simple task. They can be expensive, and sometimes even though they look pretty they never seem to “click”. That’s why it’s essential to understand how
Like a good witch, I’m going to start with the moon. One of my first memories is standing out on the wooden porch of my Queens home with my mom, looking up at the tiny silver disc waxing toward fullness, when an incredible thought exploded in my 4 year old brain: “I will never touch that thing, never hold or understand it. It will always
A butterfly landed on my head the other day. It was gentle as tissue paper, and yet my skin still gripped with the thought of tiny little bug feet in my hair. I stood, frozen, reluctant to swipe away the radiant creature and yet also throbbing with anxiety, until it decided on its own accord to move on to chiller pastures. The next day a
When I tell new people that I’m a tarot reader, typically their eyes light up, a smile jumps onto their faces, and they say something along the lines of, “I’ve always wanted to get a reading!” The next thing they say is that they probably never will, though. They’re too frightened of bad news, or feel weird about telling a stranger their secrets, or nervous