I was a skeptic, but learning to read tarot cards changed my life

When my friend Kat asked a little over two years ago if she could practice reading tarot cards on me, I hesitated.

My previous divination experience hadn’t been good – a palm reader once followed me to a Christmas party and ranted about my eczema, and more recently I had a colleague read my runic stones, only for her to declare loudly: In a crowded pub, that I was about to have a sexual dysfunction. Needless to say, I didn’t crave another fortune-telling experience.

But I love Kat, and I’d never tried tarot before, so I said yes.

Kat, a fellow writer, suggested we draw cards for guidance on the novel I was writing at the time. It felt like a safe option — one that would either help me build the motivation I needed to keep writing, give me permission to give up on the thing, or maybe even offer an entirely new idea.

The story of the cards felt accurate. yes I used to be struggled to balance my energy between my work, my personal life, and my creative pursuits, just as the Six of Coins pointed out.

And I used to be standing still on my book, just as The Hanged Man was suspended.

And I did I need to refocus my creative energies on what I loved, rather than what I thought I should be making—the Queen of Cups advice that I still hold close to my heart today.

But it was more than that. I was electrified by the experience of finding a true story based on the images in front of me. It felt fun, it felt natural, it gave me the space to think, fantasize and solve problems in a way that I had never done before. It felt stretched out.

That same evening I bought my first tarot deck online. Some people will tell you you can’t, buy your own deck, but some people are obnoxious gatekeepers and I say add to cart.

I chose the Rider Waite Smith (RWS) deck – a beautifully illustrated edition created in 1909. The RWS is the most widely used and most recommended tarot deck for beginners.

The most important thing I learned in that time is that there is no right or wrong way to read tarot. Every reader has his own approach. Some rely heavily on occult traditions, some swear by the accuracy of the maps in predicting the future, and some readers, like me, see maps as prompts for reflection.

The only thing that really stays the same from one reader to the next is the deck itself, which consists of 78 cards and is based on a medieval parlor game popular with French and Italian nobles.

But even that can vary – hundreds of different artists, from Salvador Dali to cartoonist Tillie Walden, have created their own version of the tarot.

You can read the tarot yourself, or you can see a reader. I like to do a little bit of both – I sit down with my own cards regularly, when I need a little perspective or feel a little lost.

I usually make an appointment with a reader for special occasions, like my birthday, or when I feel like I could really use a fresh look at an issue.

For example, I recently saw a reader because I felt overwhelmed with my many responsibilities – the cards she drew and the shared brainstorming we did together helped me take a useful step to solve my problem: I needed to hire a virtual assistant .

Over time, I began to connect my lifelong love of storytelling with a unique take on tarot cards that were all mine. I drew cards to inspire short stories and poems and used them to increase my understanding of the characters and themes in my novel.

Recently, while developing a new project, I connected each of my four heroines with a tarot queen – this really made me have different personalities and journeys, and gave me loads of new ideas about how they think, act , move, and speak.

Throughout my life I had used paintings and photographs for inspiration, so tarot naturally fitted into my creative practice and provided perfect directions for writing. The images are just the right mix of rich detail and dreamy, abstract images that are open to interpretation.

My interest in the cards also created opportunities for challenging but meaningful conversations with my family – my mother came back at first after some understandable discomfort, and so did my grandfather, despite initially being shocked to see ‘tarot reader’ on my business card to see.

“Since when are you a witch?” he asked in a slightly accusing tone. But the conversation that followed, softened by the help of a niece who has her own tarot deck, led to a very sweet moment of connection in which my grandfather came to better understand my personal creative process.