As part of our Astrology issue, we chat to a crystal gazer from our city...
I started doing divination from a really young age. My grandmother taught me how to read tea leaves at the age of about four, and how to read tarot a bit later, so I’ve never known life without divination. Of course, I didn’t know it was going to be a career, and certainly in my early twenties I didn’t believe in myself enough to work in this field. I was very solitary in terms of my magic and tarot and didn’t start reading professionally until I was almost in my thirties. Like everyone, I was brought up to believe you have to get a career and a Monday to Friday job, but ultimately I had to follow my heart and creativity.
In my work now, I mainly use tarot to connect to the spirit guides. They are souls who have lived thousands of lives on this plane as mortals, and who then move into being spirit guides once they’ve learnt every eventuality of what we do on this plane. They know all the options of what could happen in the future, and that’s how I access the knowledge. We still have free will and your future could turn out any way, but the guides can tell you what will happen if you stay on the path you’re currently on. If you go to a reader and they try to tell you exactly what’s going to happen in your future, then they’re lying!
Aside from tarot I also communicate with those who have passed, but most of my day is spent reading tarot. I tend to read between four to six people a day depending on whether I have an event, and so it’s really key to be in the right headspace which I achieve by having a nice breakfast, a decent long shower and a session of meditation. All of which are important to get my energies right and straight. If I feel my house needs a cleanse I’ll do that too.
I started doing divination from a really young age. My grandmother taught me how to read tea leaves at the age of about four
I love seeing how the tarot affects people. Especially when someone walks in through my door and you can instantly see that they’re stressed or worried, as many people are. It’s great to see them leave standing up a little more straight and with a smile on their face, like the weight has been taken off their shoulders, because the reading has allowed them to come up with a plan a little bit. That means more to me than any of the other aspects of my job.
That’s not to say that I only focus on the positive elements of their future. There are a couple of rules that I stick by and I’ll never break them because they are moralistic rules. I will never tell someone how they die, when they die, or if someone close to them is about to die - because I just think that’s wrong. You’re really playing with people's lives when you read tarot. You’re in their head and you’re in their space which is really private and so you have to be careful. I want to help people with their lives, not frighten them. But I don’t steer away from bad news as such. There are times I’ve seen people's partners cheating on them in the cards, or a friend that’s talking behind their back, and I won’t step away from those conversations. If it’s in the cards I will tell them so they have forewarning.
I know a lot of people will be interested in how I actually read the cards and what I always say is that I read intuitively. This means that I get a feeling, an energy, or even a mini-vision popping up from the cards, which might sound mad when I try to explain. I’d be classed as crazy twenty years ago, but that’s how I experience it. As you can imagine, this takes up a lot of energy because you have to sit at a higher level of consciousness. That sometimes surprises people because they think tarot is easy to read, but it’s very intense because the readings come through the reader, not just the cards. I can literally read tarot through a pack of playing cards. I don’t necessarily need fancy pictures; the cards just put the story in order for me.
I will never tell someone how they die, when they die, or if someone close to them is about to die
In terms of the people I see, it used to be women between the ages of thirty and 45 but now we’re seeing a lot more men opening up to it, and a large number of young people. They’re becoming more open and spiritually aware. It feels really good when I get a call from an eighteen-year-old who wants a tarot reading to see how their life will be. I think that’s really great and I love it. I only wish that they weren’t getting all their information from TikTok, because though it’s great for getting youngsters interested, it’s all about quick fixes. Lots of the people there are reading tarot without knowing anything about the cards, and expecting all kinds of results without putting the time and effort in. That’s something that frustrates me, because they aren’t teaching the proper way of doing it.
That’s why, looking forward to my own future, I’d like to build more on the workshops and talks I currently do, because I love sharing my knowledge and experiences. That’s not to say that I want to stop doing tarot, but I’d also like to help people through learning.
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