Planet Soul
What I Learned From a Year of Studying Tarot
To me, the cards are tools for introspection rather than prediction
I was never one of those kids who played with Ouija boards. Was it a game or a spooky prediction tool? I didn’t know and frankly, trying to predict the future scared me. I was afraid it might predict someone’s death, or my own. I stayed far away.
That changed when, as an adult, I turned to Tarot cards. I went to my first reading in an occult bookstore in New Orleans as a fun afternoon diversion. I left a believer and purchased my first Tarot deck that day. I told myself I was just having fun — but after a failed relationship and job loss, a little part of me wanted the cards to predict my future. I wanted to know if my bad luck would continue. I wanted more control over my future, or at least to know if something bad was coming. This way, I could brace myself for the impact.
One day, I got my cards read by a professional in the back of an esoteric shop in San Francisco’s Castro district. I got the Death card. I froze. “It doesn’t predict death,” the Tarot card reader reassured me. A month later, I nearly died from an infection that threatened to close my heart shut. When you’re dying you know it, and I was definitely hovering on the edge. When I coded, a…
