Tarot Gold

Reading Tarot cards was a hobby I had picked up in graduate school, learning for fun with my other creative writing friends. The interesting part about the learning process was how easy it was. From the moment I looked at the faces of the 78 cards, I knew what they meant. At the same time, I held an unshakable certainty as to what to do in terms of spreads. I asked the questioner to spend as long with the cards as they would like — shuffling, shifting, smearing — trusting their gut until they felt ready to make a single pile. I looked at the three cards on the base of the deck, had them turn the three top cards, and from there, easily put together a coherent reading. Tarot was a practice that, unlike anything else in my life, I felt absolutely certain about.

Still, I was shocked when my poet and writer friends said I was good enough to read Tarot professionally, and that I should start my own business in Seattle when I moved there after graduation.

I balked. “There’s no way I’m moving to Seattle and publicly identifying as a Tarot card reader!”

This suggestion of a seriously bona fide woo-woo lifestyle diverted completely from the intellectual literato I fancied myself in those days. Even though everyone to whom I was close knew I read cards, I couldn’t make the connection that any stranger who would want to read my writing would ever take me seriously if they knew about my Tarot side. I let my friends’ suggestions end with the brilliant potential business name created by my poet friend: Bow and Tarot – Spiritual Archery.

My only other pursuit that had flowed as naturally as Tarot was teaching, a joy and true love. About five years into teaching Writing at North Seattle College, I was also reading Tarot for just about everyone I knew, free of charge, any chance I could get. 

But when the pandemic hit, and teaching became computer screen people in boxes giving little to no feedback on what you barked at them, I began to think about making Tarot a full-time career.

A few years prior, an astrologer friend in Seattle told me that a healer from the Congo had informed her that not charging for spiritual work actually put the questioner in a karmic deficit. This encouraged me to begin charging a small amount for my readings. By this point, I had cultivated somewhat of a client list, mostly friends and friends of friends in Seattle. At the same time, I remembered something an old friend of mine had said. She was vaguely psychic, and had always supported my Tarot business, even making a claim that had felt completely wild and unfounded at the time. She said I would take my Tarot business to NYC, and create a sort of “luxury” Tarot business light years away from the often insincere profit-driven fortune-tellers many people associate with Tarot. She even helped me come up with the business name: Tarot Gold.

To my utter gratitude and awe, six years later, I am a full-time reader in NYC, with a uniquely therapeutic and non-predictive philosophy on reading cards. My friend turned out to be right.