Within the last two weeks, I have seen post after post of [insert celeb] consulting or carrying around a tarot deck, a flurry of tarot creators I hadn’t heard of before, and tarot readers at the corporate party.

As a long-time tarot reader, lover, and advocate, the sudden shift excites and disturbs me. I remember the tides around astrology shifting from a b******t hobby your esoteric friend would ramble about to all your faves suddenly having a personal astrologer.

The rise in astrology's popularity isn’t the core of today’s discussion. Today, I’m going to gently instill some tarot praxis in you before the current tarot trend wave devolves it into red-light therapy, hot yoga, silent-retreat nonsense. Meaning…

1: Tarot will not save you.

You are smart and beautiful and know this already, but I will say it again. Tarot cannot save you. No amount of readings can untangle the array of issues this life will sling at us. Learning tarot is not a loophole to living. Consulting a reader will not be the difference between you batting the crane out of the sky or not. Much like meditation, therapy, exercise, and every other reflective and regulating activity that grounds us and connects us to a larger web of living, that is all tarot can give you. Extra two cents on your predicament: you will ultimately have to face it or figure it out yourself. I pulled cards about which plane ticket to get yesterday and was left at the mercy of my booking website to decide in the end.

So why did I bother to pull cards at all?

2: Tarot is a mirror, barometer, and divination tool all in one.

When I pull cards on an arbitrary purchase or the details of an outing, I am not surrendering choice to the universe. I am using my metal detector to sense where there could be gold. Sometimes I get a new bracelet. Sometimes it’s just a cool rock. It would make little difference to digging up the entire ground to see what I might find or spinning in a circle and pointing. I outsource my intuition and decide if I will listen to the detection or not.

In this way, tarot is a mirror. Often the barometer signals something we sense within ourselves. I pull a card for each airline, and they reflect how each one feels energetically to me. Coincidentally, this energetic read mirrors how I feel about spending money on each airline, the amenities each one brings, and the familiarity I have with them. My cards tell me, “Hey, big purchases are hard, and this is how making a purchase with each of these airlines would likely feel to you.”

The divination aspect of reading tarot is overcomplicated and overlooked. I saw a therapist who uses tarot the other day try to slice off this divination aspect like it was excess fat. I understand the impulse, having made similar mistakes in the past. Divination implies prophecy and hidden mystical forces being tapped into whenever you shuffle and interpret the cards. That is intimidating for anyone who doesn’t want to claim the witch title. I don’t even want to claim the witch title.

Unfortunately for the witch-averse, divination is part of living. Whether or not you choose to tap into the unseen is your choice. If you are an artist, you are already divining. Scientists are borderline wizards who record the logic behind mystical phenomena. Somebody just bristled at that statement, and I get it. Post-Enlightenment, logic and data are king. If anything, the current state of the world has revealed the flimsy nature of “data.” Data and magic are not enemies. Magic is just data that isn’t yet legible to the human mind.

If you shuffle those cards with intention, even as trivial as plane tickets, you are divining a result. You are surrendering to being given a mirror to gaze into for an answer. Ritualize it with crystals, incense, and water. Whip it out halfway through your morning routine. Much like prayer, intention is the only meaningful ingredient.

3: Tarot does not respond well to nonchalance.

Sometimes, to downplay the overwhelm of brushing hands with the divine, people approach tarot like it is a fun party trick or a magic eight ball. If you are reading or being read for, you need to lock the f**k in. The cards are not going to read your mind because your mind is a library of confusion. If you have a messy situation with ten thousand questions, get to talking until you can list them one by one, then wittle them down to the essentials.

If you want a guide on forming a proper tarot question and even creating a tarot spread, I wrote a quick how-to here:

4: Tarot isn’t all about you.

Meaning, the cards aren’t there to answer every question you’ve ever had or tell you what you want to hear. The tarot will ice you out if you push a subject that cannot or should not be clarified. The tarot will hit you with a brick of truth during your fluffy love reading. The tarot will give you a completely unrelated message from what you originally prompted.

All of these responses during a reading are meant for your highest good. It’s your Virgo friend who precisely identifies the weak point in your moving plan and gives you a ten-step plan to fix it. It’s your Aries friend who knows all is possible if you pull your head out of your ass and believe in yourself, dammit. It’s your Taurus friend who won’t let you monologue about your ex from three years ago again.

This tough love will cut because it’s coming from an inanimate object. How dare a deck of cards read you so nasty! The cards don’t give a s**t who you are, what you’ve done, or how important it is. Treat your decks and your readings with the respect you’d give a sage.

5: Tarot is not your mom.

Like all divine messaging, take it with a grain of salt. If it resonates, keep it; if it doesn’t, leave it. If you need 3-5 business years to metabolize it, that’s okay. The cards don’t know all, and frankly, any interpretation involving a human should be treated as such. We use our intuition during readings for a reason. Don’t forget that.

6: Tarot can be a fun way to get the clarity you’ve been needing.

And then you may forget what you’ve discovered and move through the cycle again. Even throughout the tarot journey, we move through these cycles of discovery over and over. We don’t arrive anywhere because in life we don’t arrive anywhere. So let the discoveries be fun. Enjoy the process of noticing over and over again.

That’s all for now, but I’ll share more tarot musings soon. If you’re interested in my approach to reading, you can go through the Spiritual Chiropracy page on my Substack where I’ve shared monthly forecasts, reading guides, and more.

Feel free to share your musings on this current tarot pop culture wave. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the rising polycrisis we’re experiencing worldwide.

Can you hear the sarcasm?

‘Til next time!

Strands of hair on a mantle. Tied into a bow on my finger.Savoring the taste of someone once here. Obsolete nature. Ephemerality. We are dust and to dust returned. I am dust already. This thing in me that whirs all day like a computer filled with color and light and flowers. I am such a beautiful soul. We all have light in us. The greatest sin is to snuff it out. Seeing it dead in the eyes.

And we all have beauty ringing in our ears. But we will die. Inevitably unavoidable. And so if we become nothing, dust to dust, what is death and life and living?We live, laugh, pray, die. We die, and it’s so horrible because we are worlds who build containers we call “worlds”, but my god, we are a library and pool and a heart that bleeds. A city hall and a train stationand a heart that bleeds dry.We are so beautiful and fleeting and obsessive and lightning. And we spend all day trying to remember ourselves. We make art—“Please hold the beauty, my life, the thing in me I can’t get out, but in bursts, snippets, choices, memories intertwined with memories, I am nothing without you.” Reader, I am nothing if not yours, and you are mine and we are life breathing together. And we will die and become nothing, and it will not matter when or how or how fair or just it was. It will not because everyone dies. And some live to be eighty and others eight and we all will become nothing again. Except we are something right now and always and death is a cut electric line on the telephone. I want you so badly to feel and see me. And when I die, there will be nothing left to look at but the print of what I was. Not the raw moment, only light-burned paper, altering its chemistry, leaving a stain that creates a face, a moment. My life, now a picture. My light, stains on photo paper.

I am so much and so small in my muchnessand it never mattered. Never mattered where we go when we die because here, we are on a rollercoaster of humanity that Death cannot comprehend. We can’t comprehend our estranged extinctive sister and she doesn’t understand why we wear socks and listen to music. Sweet music. The feeling of it in our ears and spines and legs. Humming and singing and gyrating because alive alive alive! I am alive right now and when it is done, I won’t be able to hold the feeling so distinctly, like trying to remember being small. Distant memory. Xeroxed life.

I wanted to die, I wanted my life to stop because it is too much. All the feeling in your body alone, enough to start wars, create children, decimate the Earth for years to come. My body heavy and dull and always tired, hungry, tired. My life a blip of mistakes waiting to happen, mistakes passed.Why continue this fever of living? The feeling of writhing in hallucination, cold sweats. Frozen in the casing of this fever.

I said I wouldn’t die because dying is hard to do. But really, life is a drug given once and in waves. There’s so much life to hold; our bodies an illusion to this expansion. I want it all. I want to feel alive, I feel it so much it makes me want to die again. To find inner flatness, quiet, decimate the city in me to rubble.

I am a metropolitanwith an arts district and artisanal coffee. And I let the caramel smell knock me off my feet. I lie limp, playing dead, getting comfortable with the notion. I imagine my head caving in, my chest caving in, shrink-wrapping into a carcass.

But the light is too strong and fiery and filled with indignation. And soon it is lunchtime.

I’m alive. Blessed in this. Alive and thrumming. Ready to die and ready to live. And lucky to be here, sharing the universe with you.

– It’s a lost civilization every time someone dies

Inspired by the gentle breakdown caused by this section of this interview about my favorite book in my adult life. It’s already in the masterlist hall of fame.

I was a bottomless existential-dread teen. I wish more people talked about wanting to die, but when you do, people worry, and they should, so instead I sat quietly in my room for years, considering. Not always, but often. And while a part of me still wants to become nothing, nothingness can wait because right now life, even surviving, is everything. And it isn’t just mine; it is yours too. We are looking at each other, at everyone who is and was, to see if life is possible. So I will live for me and you and for those after us to know that they can live too. And that in itself is enough.

Living is enough, and I cry because I fought so hard to make life mean something and had been grieving it meaning nothing. But it means everything because the meaning is this moment and the next. And it will never be again once it is over. Even in heaven, life is not life.

I wish I had better words, but hopefully these will do.

(The music in the audio)

Video version (out Sep 2nd) ;)

And we’ve arrived at the endpoint. I can(‘t) believe it. I had hoped this project would unearth some change in me. To some degree, it did, and in other ways, it witnessed the changes that were scheduled to happen. I’m very happy and buzzing with possibility. I have new ideas to bring you, more gentle discussions to have.

More people to reach!

I’m leaving you with another meditation because I want to. I got the idea from the interest around Daydream Therapy, which naturally made me wonder what “daydream therapy” would actually be like.

Now, a quick August review.

* Reading — Coexistence: Stories by Billy-Ray Belcourt. I love a good short story collection and had it recommended to me after requesting ‘authors that write like poets (comme Martyr!). Enjoying the thread of themes so far but will report back when I finish it.

* Watched — Sterling Point, The Vampire Lestat, & We Are Lady Parts. I’ll give them 7/10, 6/10, and 7.5/10 in that order. I’d recommend Sterling Point for my lovers of soapy dramas, and We Are Lady Parts for those who miss that Chewing Gum era of sitcoms, especially from the Brits. I’d recommend The Vampire Lestat to no one, because I love you. If you watched Interview with the Vampire and have yet to explore it, you should forget what they brought to the original series if you don’t want to tear your hair out. I’m doing too much. It was fine, and I had fun because I love that show's universe. I will not watch it again.

* For movies, I’ll highlight — Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma & She’s All That. I gave them ratings and small reviews on my Letterboxd if that intrigues you. I liked She’s All That more, to be honest, but I’d recommend both. Honestly, you should see Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma before it’s gone.

* My album highlights — Blue Island by Ravyn Lenae, Starrgirl by Ayra Starr, & Music, Fashion, Film by Charli XCX again. I've been playing this album on loop all month, and every song is existential dread crack for me.

* Here’s this month’s playlist of other songs I came to love this month:

If you’re curious to know what the top post was for this project:

(Well, what do you know? It was the midpoint.)

I’ll be putting all of the voice notes behind a paywall by the end of this week (unless I change my mind again). Enjoy them while you can, or consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Thank you for indulging me these past two months as I’ve unraveled in real time. I love this space, and I’m glad to have you here

Video version ;)

Of course, this theme jumped out extra over this weekend. I almost pushed myself to get this video/entry up and together by this weekend because I was so determined to conclude it on September 1st. Only now, as I’m writing this, do I realize that I will still reach my goal even though I slowed myself down.

This keeps happening. If I just breathe, surrender, or stop, it becomes so much easier to get to the same place. Like those drivers who work themselves mad swerving around and cutting off people, only to end up maybe one car ahead, if at all. Trust this flow, whatever it’s trying to say.

Tomorrow will be the final voice note. And then the next and the next.

Whenever I record these, I feel very rambly and scattered like I’m throwing spaghetti at a wall. Listening back is like stepping away to find that the spaghetti is in the shape of a windy, Van Gogh -esque painting.

Video version ;)

I didn’t realize how rarely I give this lore until I started explaining it. So much has changed since that summer I learned how to use a tarot deck — the way I read, who I read for, what I ask, who I am as a reader and person.

I’m welcoming a new era in my tarot journey that I’ve dubbed “spiritual chiropracy.” This means that I want to use tarot to connect to and stabilize the core of myself and those I read for. There are so many ways to use tarot, and seeing what healing capacity has always interested me.

We’ll experiment with this idea more in the future.

I refer to “pop” and “pop stars,” and after recording, I realized this version of the pop star is outdated. Many pop musicians engage with the genre from a sonic perspective over commercial appeal alone. Many of the pop girls in particular have pushed back against industry expectations of them: Chappell Roan’s boundary-setting, Zara Larsson's recent pushback on a potential Grammy nomination, the mass negative reaction to the attempted machine of Katseye. The pop star we knew during the time of Britney and peak Gaga is dead. It’s for the best.

I find it funny that I ended up on an existential crisis ramble. My first blog as a teenager was dedicated to similar philosophical-adjacent ramblings on existentialism. We’ve returned to my overly meditative center.

Visiting the Betye Saar exhibition may have been just the final pinch that my brain rewiring needed. Here’s the timeline I was looking at.

Literally nothing big had happened yet before age 30! Never terrorizing my timeline ever again (I will, but this is the process).

The cards I mention in the audio (temporal twins!) (click to open ofc).

Video version ;)

You may notice that this audio is timely with current events because I am mixing up the order in which I’m releasing these entries into the world. There are three in the queue that can wait because this one is too time-dependent.

Consider this an eclipse season whack on the head.

This has a video version ;)

I revisited the Neighbourhood’s Wiped Out album last week, around when this was recorded. I used to loop it in my car until I knew all the words by heart, looped it in my room and on my new Spotify account, daydreaming to it, of course. I still know all the words and feel what I felt hearing it back then.

There aren’t a lot of things from that time I’m able to revisit with that effect. All these big definers of the era (I suppose 2016) fall short of creating the texture of what the day-to-day felt like. It’s the details that pull me back in — a shirt I would wear all the time, a random YouTuber I used to watch casually, a show I saw on a random Sunday and then never again. It’s the songs that played on the radio during the morning drive to school, especially the ones I hated, that help me remember the most.

Me at 15 feels like a vessel, a liminal vessel of the cross between an unfiltered child self and the curated young adult self. I owe her everything. She deserved more.