Hello there, Practically Magick, magical witches and wizards. Welcome back. We are on season four. Can you believe that? We've been recording three seasons, now four seasons of Practically Magick.

Amazing. I can't wait for you to see what we have in store this season. So many fun new topics and hopefully some really magical guests that I'm getting on. Today we are going to watch an episode of Make Me a Believer. I was a guest on their podcast recently.

We talked about tarot. So they like to take some maybe controversial or a little bit divisive subjects like tarot. Is it insight or illusion? Is it evil or is it healing? You know, and see what an expert on the subject has to say.

And I have to say the conversation with Lys and Tim on Make Me a Believer was one of my favorite episodes ever recorded of anything I've ever done. It was so fun to talk to them and I loved their questions. They were great at asking the really hard questions, digging in deep and challenging my knowledge. But at the same time, they were very respectful. They knew that this was my profession and they treated me like a professional.

And I love that. I love that because I love when people are curious and want to know and are willing to ask and also know that this is something that you, myself, takes very seriously. So we talked a little bit about the magic, the self-discovery, how to spot a fraud, the mystical tools other than tarot that we use and could use, the science behind manifestation and why I call all of it witchcraft, even if other people would have a problem with that word. It's all witchcraft, honey. Okay, so my favorite part of this episode is the unhinged questions.

Lys did her due diligence with research and looked on Reddit for some of the most unhinged tarot questions that she could find and they were fantastic to answer. A lot of them were yes and no. And then I had to explain. You guys know me. I'm not one for short answers.

I can't just give a yes or a no or a true or a false. So we tried, we tried, but it's kind of, it's a long one. So without further ado, this is the episode on Make Me a Believer, the pod collaboration with them, Make Me a Believer and Practically Magick. Your ex's name continually popping up might not just be a coincidence. That weird feeling you had last Tuesday?

Maybe that was an anxiety. Maybe the universe has receipts. Today we're asking, can a deck of cards actually reveal your future, your patterns and the things you're desperately trying not to see? Love it, hate it or think it's complete nonsense. Tarot has survived centuries of skepticism, criticism and controversy.

Why do people keep coming back to these cards when they're searching for answers? We're exploring the psychology, the mystery and the chaos behind tarot. Let's get into it. ["Make Me a Believer"] Welcome to Make Me a Believer. The podcast where no topic is off limits and no opinion goes unchallenged.

For each of our episodes, we'll be taking on a big idea, issue or a debate and then we'll explore it with different sides. We'll bring the facts, the arguments and maybe a little bit of fire. But at the end of the day, it's not about who's louder. It's about you deciding, what do you believe in? Because if you stand for nothing, what will you fall for?

So welcome back to the podcast listeners. Today we have a very awesome guest joining us. She is a practicing witch with a passion for tarot and helping people connect with their intuition. We're gonna dive into the fascinating world of tarot cards, explore what they can teach us and clear up some common misconceptions along the way. Please join us in welcoming our guest, Courtney, to the show.

Hi, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, we are so happy to have you. Absolutely. Courtney, for all of our listeners, can you introduce yourself and very briefly tell us what you believe and what it is you do?

Yes, I am a practicing witch. However, a lot of people jump straight to Wicca as the definition of witch. So they're like, oh, you're Wiccan. No, I'm not actually Wiccan. There are plenty of people who practice Wicca as witchcraft, but I myself am just a pagan Celtic witch.

So I do a lot of research in Celtic mythology, magic and healing work, actually, more than anything. I do a lot of energy healing work with Reiki, honey, energy healing. So tarot is part of a healing practice for me. And that's how I got started doing it, is it's just a really great tool to use for clarification sometimes and to kind of dip your toe into answering some questions that my clients might have. So I offer it as an option.

And there's a lot of different ways to practice witchcraft. So everything that I say today is kind of gospel according to Courtney, but I believe a lot of it really depends on the person and their intention behind what they do and what their practice is. And my belief system is basically everybody's a witch, they just don't know it yet. A bold statement, I love it. A bold statement.

I'm coming right at you. Right? When we chatted originally about having you on the show, I was so fascinated because you were like, I am this. And forgive me, I don't remember the title you gave yourself, but I was like, holy cow, what does this mean? What does she do?

I remember the word priestess. Yeah, fill us in. What are your official titles and can you define those for us, for those of us like me who have no idea what we're talking about. We're ignorant. And the list of titles could go on forever because there is no degree that I know of that you can get.

And even claiming the title of priestess took me some time because I felt that it was something that I took very seriously and didn't want to just, jump into this world and say, well, I'm a priestess. But I do also think that it is a title that implies service rather than a hierarchy of authority of some kind, right? To go through certain initiation processes where I felt these were the things I needed to do, taking a priestess course with someone I felt was reputable not just selling you an online course on the internet, but just going through those processes. I traveled and did a sacred sites pilgrimage in England where I went to Glastonbury and Cornwall and Wales and of course did a sunrise ceremony at Stonehenge. There were certain things that I felt were in my process of becoming priestess.

So I call myself Celtic priestess because I apply a lot of the Celtic mythology and culture and things to what I do. Abalonian priestess is another term more specifically, but there's also the title of witch, which I believe is again, everybody is a little bit of a witch. It just means someone who's in control of what they're doing and in their practice. But my favorite is the Welsh term swinrig. That might've been the one I used.

I can't remember. I say a lot of things. Swinrig is just kind of that cunning woman or the person that has some wisdom and knowledge, maybe ancestral that can apply to healing and helping people. So I like those terms a little bit better than healer. I do energy healing work, but I facilitate healing, meaning that I empower people in their work in and of themselves or inner work, but to say healer is my idea.

You don't necessarily do it yourself. That makes sense. Okay, so I do want to take a step back and kind of define a couple of things for our listeners. As far as tarot witch. We kind of defined what a witch is and what she does.

Yeah, we kind of defined what a witch is. And you as a healer, I also thought about Aragon and like the healers that are literally healing people. It's not that, it's helping people find the power in themselves to heal. Right, yeah. And I use the definition, so this is not mine.

I have a guest speaker I had one time. She used this term and I've repeated it many times. Healing is not fixing. It's not fixing something's broken. It means witnessing.

So in doing healing work, you're not looking inward or looking at yourself. And by the way, this can be both emotional and physical healing, but it's witnessing what is happening, what's going on and what are all the connections to your energy, your emotions, your ancestral work. I mean, inner child work, we could go on and on and on, but it's witnessing that, right? Right. I love that.

So you talk about healing a lot in regards to tarot. So does it have anything to do with the more common perception that people have out there as far as does it have anything to do with fortune telling or predicting the future, or is it mostly just helping people think differently about their past or their present and like you said, kind of helping them with their healing process? I think it's a little bit of both, but when it comes to fortune telling, I shy away from that term a little bit more because it gives people different connotation of what they're coming into. And a lot of really credible readers, like I hope that I am, I can put myself in that category. I often tell people in every possible way that I can is if you're going to a reader and they're like, I'm a fortune teller, I, you know, kind of treating it almost as a party trick, that can be a red flag, I think.

So when someone has said to me like, oh, well Courtney is a fortune teller. I go, what, what, I'm a tarot reader and there is some fortune reading in that, but even the way that I do it is more so healing, right? But I tell people like shy away from people that are using the cards or reading the cards to tell you how you should live your life. If it's shooting all over you, it probably isn't going to be higher vibrational frequency. It isn't going to be aligned with what you need.

And a lot of people are looking for that so desperately it's almost taking advantage, right? Because somebody might be sitting down at your table going, should I take this job or that job? Should I stay with my husband or not? Should I, and you're just like, that's not my job. It's not my job or the cards to tell you those things.

Now I can tell you- So you're not a lucky eight ball? I know, right? You might as well actually use the magic eight ball instead of- Well, we'll never call you fortune teller, don't worry. Right. I was going to say, there is something called the orleg and the veerd in the Nordic mythology, which is the idea that you are handed cards as your fate or your destiny, right?

You can't change them. They're the cards you are given. But the veerd is how you play the cards can be very different. And there's an infinite combinations of something that you could play. So there is something, fate and destiny about it.

And the cards might tell you what's coming up. What do you need to know about what's coming up? But that doesn't mean this is going to happen to you. And this is the way it is. It might be like, this is going to give you some choice on how you choose to handle it, right?

That totally makes sense. So in our immense preparation for this episode, because again, we are so, I don't know, I grew up in South Georgia. I could not wear, I remember getting in trouble. I vividly remember is the only time in elementary school that I ever got in the principal's office and was in trouble. I'm sure you were there every week.

Oh my, no. I got sent to the principal's office and had to call my grandmother to pick me up and take me to change clothes because I wore a Scooby-Doo shirt to school. And they said Scooby-Doo was witchcraft. So I could not have a Scooby-Doo shirt. And I was like that weirdo kid who's like Scooby-Doo 24 seven.

That's what I wanted. And I mean, I did not read the Harry Potter books until I was a grown adult, meaning like two years ago. Not even like a year ago is when you started reading them to me because I was pregnant. And- You consider yourself a grown adult? No, not really, but you get what I'm saying.

I had not seen the movies. I had not read the books, anything growing up as a kid. And now I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm such a Potter head. It was almost a deal breaker when I first met her. Yeah, what listeners can't see is that Tim has a full sleeve of one arm, like wrist, bones to shoulder and it's all Harry Potter.

So like the man is obsessed. But no faces, I hate, I don't like big tattoos. Yeah, he doesn't have any face. It's actually a really, really awesome tattoo. But he is a total like Harry Potter.

And I know it's not the same witch. I'm kind of going off on a tangent here. But witchcraft was such a don't ask, don't tell, don't acknowledge it. You are a horrible person for even thinking about it type of thing when I was growing up. So for me, I never had that exposure.

As an adult, I've had a lot more like energy healing and like hypnotherapy stuff and things like that. But still not a ton of exposure to witchcraft. And so when you introduced yourself, and we're talking about being on the show, I was like, oh, this is cool. So then I went and listened to several episodes of your podcast and I meant to mention that earlier. It's Practically Magick, correct?

Practically Magick, yep. Practical magic is one of my favorite movies. So it was a nod to that, but also trying to show that things that we considered everyday, natural, normal things are Practically Magick. Yeah, witchcraft in general is just a topic that was never even in my purview. And Tim, I feel like growing up in Utah, very similar situation.

Yes, you see the like magical happiness of Harry Potter and things like that, but you're not exposed in Utah culture. And I feel like in Utah, it's very unique. That's why I say Utah. You're not exposed to this very often. And so we did a ton of research.

So I don't know what any of these things are. And I've talked a lot now. So sorry for the like 15 minute backstory on why I'm asking this question, but can you tell us and kind of explain for the listeners, can you differentiate tarot and oracle cards, astrology, psychic readings? All those different things. All of those mediumship.

Yeah, all of these different things. Tell us about that. Oh my goodness. Oh yes, so many things. Well, I'll try to bundle it and be brief.

And astrology, I am only just dipping my toe into. I mean, it's the whole language, like really to dive in deep into it. But if you kind of know a little bit and you know your sun, your moon, and your rising sign, you can really tell a lot about yourself just in that. And so yeah, the tarot, a lot of people have associated a lot of astrology to it. Like certain cards have a sign or a planet associated with it.

So that's integrated into part of the reading. And I've done, I haven't done them myself, but I have had a reading where someone did a full astrology like your year looking ahead as an astrology spread, pulling cards for each phase of the next year. And so there is a lot of integration, threads in all directions with that. But to give you kind of a basic getting started with reading cards and divination, Oracle decks, I kind of think of as the gateway because Oracle cards, you can pick up a deck of Oracle cards just about any metaphysical shop or anywhere that you find them. And they are simply a deck of cards, whatever number, each card representing a different thing.

And it usually has a guidebook. So it can be whatever the writer or illustrator of the deck chose to have each card have its own meaning. Sometimes there's words or phrases on the card itself. Sometimes, I mean, there are themes out there like infinite number of Oracle card themes you can get. So it can be associated with the moon cycles.

It can be, you know, just about anything. So are these almost like the gift? Somebody sent me, it was funny, she was on vacation. She was like, I found this thing when I was shopping and I thought of you. And it's like a little deck of cards.

And it's like a bunch of explicit words, but it's basically like my beep beep beep beep beep deck of affirmations or something like that. And it's all like, you're great because blah, blah, blah. And you like are supposed to pull a card every day and then read the guidebook and everything else that goes with it. Would that be an Oracle card? That could be.

I mean, and that's just as basic, you know, you're gonna get a good feeling from whatever card you pull that day. And that's what it's for, right? It's an affirmation for today. But it also could, that's exactly how you use an Oracle deck as well. So it's the same thing.

In fact, one of the ways that I teach intuition, when I'm just starting out with someone and I'm like, you just wanna kind of develop your intuition and reading cards. I pull a deck of Dixit cards from the board game Dixit. It's a storytelling game. It does not have a guidebook because it's not an Oracle deck. Don't we have this board game?

What is it called? Dixit, like D-I-X-I-T. I think we have it. I think I got it for you for Christmas. I don't know.

And they're really like fun, artistic, weird looking pictures in it. This one is a guy walking across a piano with different pictures on it. This is actually the Disney Dixit. So this is from the movie Soul. I love it.

And I bought the Disney one because this is my favorite one to read from. But it's just kind of a little bit, you know, weird and odd, you know, like a giant ant eating pancakes or something on it or something like that. And I tell people, there's no guidebook that goes with these. So it literally is just whatever you pull, what feeling or message or what do you feel like it's bringing for you today? And that is right.

It's correct. Whatever it is, is what it's meant to be. So Oracle decks are really great for people just starting out who don't really have the time or want to study. They just want to pull a card and get a meaning from it that day. And your question might be, how's my day gonna go today?

Or what do I need to focus on today? Or whatever it is, and then you assert some meaning from it. I actually think that your own meaning before you even read the guidebook is more powerful and more important than the guidebook. So I often recommend, yeah, use the guidebook if you're learning and you want to know what the author wanted that card to mean. But eventually I suggest you just throw out the guidebook altogether or put it away because your meaning matters more.

And to do it that way. I would cheat and I'd always want to turn it into something what better than what it actually is and being honest. Well, why not? That's a perfect way to do it, right? Don't you want your day to go well?

I also feel like reading the guidebook is almost letting the author decide how your day goes or what you think about your day. Like you're introducing your own bias by saying, hey, what is somebody else's opinion of this? What is somebody else's meaning behind this? And yeah, okay. I mean, I bought an Oracle deck early in my journey where I bought a goddess deck, but that was because I was super into mythology and I wasn't as familiar with goddesses and the different traditions.

And so I used it as a learning tool. Like I was like, I want to pull a goddess every day and then I want to read up on her and find out more about her, who she is and what she represents and what she's connected to. So that I think is a great way to learn things if you want to use a guidebook that way. But as you know, to your point Tim, it's like, why not give it your own meaning? And that, by the way, to me is a spell.

What you described as like, I'm gonna pull a card and then I'm gonna make that card mean something great for my day. That's a spell. You're putting intention behind a ritual and you're saying, this is what I want my day to be. I love that. It's great.

So my next question, I was hoping to sound like I knew things and I was smart. Then I realized I can't even pronounce one of the words. So I looked this up and I cheated, but it said standard tarot decks usually have 22 major and 56 minor. Is it arcana? How do you say that word?

Arcana. Arcana. Can you explain what arcana means and why that matters? Yeah. So this is getting into the difference between the oracle and the tarot.

So this is a perfect follow-up question because the tarot does have a much more complex system behind it. It started out as a game, like playing cards. So it has four suits and then the major arcana, like you mentioned. And so the major arcana are kind of like archetypes. Like that's where you get the cards that people often associate with tarot, like the death card, the devil card, the lover's card, the high priestess, the empress, the emperor.

There's a whole gamut and they kind of tell a story. So the first one, the card zero, and there's a lot of numerology connected as well, because there's numbers and symbols on each card. The first card is the fool. So it's kind of like telling the story of the fool's journey, of how the fool becomes the magician. That's card number one.

And starts out on this journey of self-enlightenment and goes through a series of trials and temptations. That's where the devil card comes in. I never had any idea of that. That's really cool. Yeah.

Yeah, it can be really cool. And the combinations are endless. It's like 4.5 quadrillion different combinations you could have in a Celtic Cross spread. So readers have to know all of these different combinations and symbols. So it's really a study.

It really is a language. And so not to say you can't just pick up a tarot deck and read it intuitively like you would an Oracle deck, but for most people, if they're just starting out and they start with tarot, it could be overwhelming. Yeah, absolutely. I suggest taking classes. I suggest for people who really want to get into it, they would really take the time to practice all, really knowing all of that.

There's so much symbolism in every card. The basic Rider-Waite-Smith deck, which is kind of the first published tarot deck, Smith being the illustrator who made those original pictures. That's usually what people study first because there's just every animal, every flower, every color, everything means something. And then of course, there have been millions of variations and you can get like a Nightmare Before Christmas tarot deck or you can get a Golden Girls tarot deck now. So yeah, that answers your question.

Do you see it as something that's spiritual, psychological, intuitive or artistic or is it kind of a combination? Or none of those. Or none of those? Absolutely a combination of those things. I was just recently reached out to by a psychologist who was like, I want to incorporate tarot readings in my practice, but I don't know how.

I don't know what that would look like or how we would do that. And I said, there's a lot of spiritual psychoanalysts that are using more of these sort of mystical tools and healing tool and energy healing in their practice. So I think absolutely it can be psychological. I myself use honey energy healing, which is a, it's not honey as in like honey that you eat. Honey in Welsh means energy.

So the great work by Tiffany Lasek is where I study. I studied from her. She's a psychoanalyst who incorporated the wheel of the year, meaning all of the different phases of the year. And there are tarot associations to each of the wheel of the year as well. She also associates it with Erickson's developmental stages.

And so there's psychological connections into everything there. It's alchemical, meaning like transformation in the soul to its higher self. It is spiritual and it can also be really lighthearted. Especially tarot, I think a lot of people can do a tarot reading just on the most superficial level, something just fun. I did a reading once, one of my favorite readings ever, where we were just having fun and the girl was like, why do I like spicy novels so much?

She's like spicy romanticy novels. And she goes, why do I like it so much? And we started pulling cards and it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen. There was like five of wands, which is just like five guys chasing each other with sticks. You can kind of.

Sounds like a romanticy novel. Yeah. Welcome to the ritual. I'm like, well, you know, so far you haven't had anybody who knew what he was doing with his stick or whatever. You know, we kind of get into it.

And then the king of swords came up and I was like, we can all kind of like figure out. He knows what to do with a sword. He knows what he's doing. Yeah. So it was absolutely just kind of fun and lighthearted and it doesn't have to be so deep, right?

Okay. I love that. So what is the term that you give to a person that's having their cards read? Is it called a queerant? Yes.

I don't usually use that term, but that is technically the term. Okay. I use clients because they're healing clients in any capacity that they come to see me for energy work or anything else. So I just say, oh, it's a client of mine. Okay, perfect.

So my question for you is, and I'm sure there's more people out there that are than probably aren't, that are skeptical of tarot and everything that you do. So do you need to necessarily believe in the tarot to have it be helpful or can anyone have it? You know, I guess- Can it make you a believer? Yeah. I guess it'd be hard because, you know, they already go in with a mindset of, this is all cuckoo bananas and whatever, but- Woo woo.

Yeah, woo woo. So I mean, do you get my question? Do you have to be a- Do you have to believe in it for it to work? For it to work, yeah. I don't think so.

I don't think you have to believe in it. I think that there is, in anything that I do, there is sort of a consent of the higher self that has to be there in some form or another. Like I don't just read people that don't want to be read, but it's interesting- You should grab somebody walking by in a coffee shop and be like, excuse me, I flipped a card for you. Just like, I think mediumship as well, or anyone who does psychic ability, you know, things like that, there is sort of an ethical practice about it. There is some, and this is going off on a tangent a little bit, but there's some debate in the woo woo world that someone like Teresa Caputo, who does the Long Island medium, people may have watched her show.

The TV show. Yes, and the way that she stops people in the street and starts reading them, there's some question about whether or not that's ethical. And she's just like, well, I'm just trying to help people. And I know that there's a message they need to get. I don't think there's any question of this that's ethical.

I say absolutely not. Yeah, I mean, there should be some like, is it okay if I give you a message from someone who's departed? That would be more appropriate. I work in the laboratory sciences field and I'm finishing my doctorate right now. And it reminds me of the ethical questions around genetic research.

And basically like, just because we can tell someone they have this, is it ethical to do so? And so I had to navigate a lot of that with my project on at what point are you giving people information that they can't act on, or is going to unreasonably scare them, when really what your result is telling them is that they have a 1% higher likelihood of XYZ. Is it okay that you tell them that? And like navigating all of those things, I think it's the same thing. It's that informed consent.

Hey, I have a message for you from someone that's departed. Can I give it to you? No? Okay, bye. Sorry, can't tell them.

Like, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, but if they sit down and they're like, I don't believe in this at all, I'm gonna sit and get a reading, you have to assume that they're at least open to hearing what you have to say and that potentially whatever is said might change their mind, it might not. You know, it kind of is up to the experience that they have. But I will say readers like myself, we don't need to be tested. If I could just give that out there right away, a story I've just heard the other day where he was like, I hate it when they come and test you and they sit down and they say, I need to connect better with my daughter, for example.

And so you do a reading and you're like, these are the things that the cards are telling you to connect better with your daughter. You need these things in place and blah, blah, blah. And then at the end, she's like, well, my daughter's dead. And you're like, you didn't tell me that in the beginning because you're testing to see if I would know it. Like as a psychic, I should know those things.

It doesn't work like that. I'm hoping that people kind of get out of that. It's like, it's not a party trick guys. It's something that- That's so dumb. That annoys me just hearing about it.

Yeah, and it's kind of like, if I am going to tap in to connecting with your departed loved one, I need to know that's what I'm working on right now. In fact, a lot of us will wall up energetically, wall up to focus on like the reading because we don't want to be distracted by messages flooding in and having that gate just open. And there are different ways of going about that. One of our guides is usually, and you all have them too, is a sort of gatekeeper. Someone who gate keeps the messages so that you can focus on what you need to, what is going to serve there and your highest good, right?

I feel like I have no gatekeeper. Oh my. You just may not be connected and you may want to maybe work on that because then it can really help and serve you if you're like, hey gatekeeper, I don't want all that today. I don't want to be bombarded with energetic and emotional messages, empathic people that are just like, I'm constantly feeling what other people are feeling and you can't live like that. I was going to say, our daughter is an empath through and through.

She has a lot of feelings. Anytime she can read a room so well and totally get, I mean, I could try to hide my emotions as best as I can and somehow within a little bit of time of hanging out with her, she'll tap into that somehow and ask me about it and I'm just like, I don't know. I feel like there's adults that I interact with out there every day. They can't read the room. They would never be able to read the room or read exactly what I'm doing.

I feel like I'm pretty good at hiding some of my deeper feelings and emotions, but this kid can sense them. Oh my gosh. She'll walk in sometimes and be like, you sound like you've had a lot of meetings today. I'm like, wow, I feel like a horrible parent, okay. No, that's beautiful.

She's like, here's the diet coke. Good luck with the rest of them. I love that. And I'm like, oh my gosh. She's a kindred spirit.

She already can tune into what you need, what healing is required, what medicine is needed, which is a diet coke in this circumstance. I love that. And you're right. You won't be able to hide emotions from people like that. I mean, when they're tapped in like that, and it can be to their detriment, but it can also be their gift, right?

Which is like, learn how to board that up and also use it to your advantage of caring for people and being in tune and keeping yourself safe as well. So I think that's wonderful, but you won't be able to hide it from her. I don't think. So she's gonna begin her apprenticeship and she's going to be Courtney's new apprentice, it sounds like. When I start my own Hogwarts, it'll be like some Academy of magic or something.

I am not prepared for this kid to turn 11 because we're gonna have to make a letter for the school of Courtney. Like we're gonna have to do something. I'm on it. It might ruin her life if she doesn't get a letter on her 11th birthday. That would be amazing.

I did that for my son at 11 too. He gave me a reading one. Are there any situations where tarot reading is extremely helpful? Like are there certain people that it benefits more than others? And are there any that should really avoid having a reading?

That is a good question because I do feel like the reading will be, like I said, if it's a good reader, not somebody who's like, I'm gonna tell you how to live your life. It would be disappointing, I think, if you went into it with sort of a desperation for certainty. If you're going into it thinking, I'm gonna get a certainty on this answer of how I should do this or what decision I'm making or what's going on in my life right now, it would be disappointing because most of the time, and I've only had a few readings in all these years where I was like, it really is telling you to do this or like this card is really pretty adamant that this is the right path for you. Most of the time, it would be, here's what you need to know in making this decision. And that I think is more helpful and more empowering to them, not so much like the cards have all the power, it's this is going to show you what you need to know about it.

And most of the time, it is actually just confirming what they already knew, they just needed the cards to trust themselves. They needed that little bit of like affirmation and like, yes, you are doing okay, continue on your journey, yeah. Here's what you need to know about it, here's maybe a deeper subconscious thing you haven't considered might come up in the reading most often. So if they're just like, just tell me what to do, I feel like, that's not what you're gonna get. It's not how it works.

It's not how it works, exactly. So I have dabbled in the TikTok readings where I'll get on live and I'll just say, come with your questions and I'll pull a card for you. And I don't know how other TikTok readers are doing it and they're just like, yep, this is what it says, this is what it says, this is what it says. I can't do that. I can't even do like the yes or no readings because I'm like, well, actually, here's a whole bunch of stuff that you need to know.

And so I'll go off and it'll take me 15 minutes to get there. Which I feel like on one hand, you're like, I just want a yes or no, but on the other, you're like, the fact that you know these details or you know how to educate me about what I'm getting makes me feel like I'm getting so much more than a yes or no and so much better quality than someone who's just giving me a yes or no. Yeah, I don't know how to do yes or no. I really don't. I don't even know how that would look, but I get a lot of questions from people who are like, am I pregnant or is my boyfriend gonna come back to me?

And I'm like, you're gonna be disappointed by these answers because it's- Shake the eight ball. Yeah, shake the eight ball, exactly. That would be more like it. And then additionally to that, I feel like a tarot reading is kind of a good start to something, but because I do other things, I do energy healing, I do a lot of inner child emotional processing work that I have seen change people's lives so dramatically. It's neural reprogramming basically.

So for me, a tarot reading is a good first step or yeah, like get some clarity about a situation, but if they're coming with some really deep rooted patterns ancestral healing, inner child healing that's needed, I would maybe direct them to think about booking a full session. There's something more here that you're not gonna get in just a tarot reading. Yeah, that one tarot reading is not the end game for them. Yeah, so that sparks a question and made me think of something. Does tarot work online or over platforms like Zoom or is it much more effective and better to do in person?

That's the beauty of energy work is it does not matter where you are on the planet, I can read the energy from anywhere. Like it doesn't understand space and distance like we think of it. It doesn't work like that. So yeah, any of my services, any of them, the energy healing services, I can do online, I can do distance. I have in my closet just right here next to me, I have a big giant teddy bear that I call Reiki bear and I can measure chakras.

I can, it's just a proxy for whoever I'm doing the energy healing work with if I'm on Zoom or a distance, but the cards absolutely 100% just as effective online or on Zoom as it would be if you came and sat right in front of me. Cool, that's not what I would have expected. Yeah, yeah, I think that's awesome. So are you located in Utah? Yes.

Okay. As you were mentioning all of the difficulty about like culturally what it's like, I'm like try being a witch in Utah, right? It's a completely different animal than being anywhere else, which is why I'm like branching out to more online, broaden my audience, I guess a little bit, but. Utah might not be easy, but at least you're not in Salem in the 1600s. Yeah, you know, the similarities sometimes, there is something called the witch wound where the history of betrayal and bias and how we're seen and perceived with generations of propaganda against us, it does come into play.

And I have been ostracized from business groups and things like that in the area where they'll accept me if I market myself in just like an energy healing way. They're like, well, we're more open to that, but as soon as the word witchcraft or witch comes into play at all, they're like, nah. So I have chosen to adopt that title and stick with it no matter what, even if people have their own feelings about it. Yeah, of course, stick to your guns for sure. I think the authenticity and education defy location.

Yeah, and I think, I mean, I know I'm weird and different, but if I came across somebody such as you that come out with a bold statement, you know, like you said. Everyone's a witch. I'm a witch or everyone's a witch, yeah. I think that is so cool, whereas I think a lot of people are like, okay, freak, like I'll see you later. Yeah, I read him the comment that you put that was talking about, I'm gonna spin by Christus.

And I was like, Tim! After my eyes looked like it was Christmas morning. We have to talk to her! Yeah, she did. We were so excited.

That's helpful for me actually, because I'm a little bit like, do I dare say this? I mean, what is this gonna feel like or look like to people? And yeah, but I always say like when I give that claim, like everyone's a witch, I ask them questions like, have you ever enjoyed a sound bath? Have you ever put a candle in a cake and made a wish? Like literally, you could just look at like pulling a card for an affirmation every day.

That's something that's become pretty mainstream. Mindfulness practices, Buddhist practices that are, you know, creating good energy and mindfulness for the day. That's witchcraft. We just don't usually call it that. Can you sort of shorten it down, but can you kind of walk us through what a session with you would look like?

What does the tarot reading actually look like in practice? Yeah, so I like to pull, I mean, I have a pretty good card collection. I've got, not majorly, I don't like to overdo it. Like some people have hundreds and hundreds of decks. Oh wow, I was gonna ask, what's a lot to you?

I was gonna say, what's overdoing it? I haven't actually counted how many decks I have in a minute, but I have a shelf. I have a shelf, I know that. But I like to intentionally, I like to get to know my decks really well. I don't just collect for the sake of collecting, but I pull some decks for the reading based on what I think the client will resonate with.

And I like the client to choose which deck they like based on like the artwork. I have one here, you know, listeners can't see it, but I have the Mind's Eye Tarot. I have a lot of different ones with different images, different vibes, different feelings I pick based on the artwork. So I like to have a few choices and I like the client to pick what they want. And then I might ask them, you know, start asking them questions about what is your intention going into today?

What questions did you have for me? What are you coming with that you feel stuck or you feel like has been occupying your mind a lot? Cause I usually booked an appointment for a reason, most of the time. So then I'll choose a spread I think will be the most effective. I don't personally use the Celtic Cross too much.

That's pretty basic. Most tarot readers use that first, but I haven't used it that much because I like to do the energy centers. We're kind of looking at each of the energy centers of the body and what card is pulled for each of those is a really great one. I've had ones that will book a healing session right after our card session. So we'll do the card session and then go into a healing appointment.

So we know kind of what we're working with based on the cards we pulled. So there's a couple of different spreads that we'll use and then we'll just start going into pulling one at a time and talking about each one and what it means for them. Sometimes I'll be asking them questions, like I'll pull a card and the guide's telling me they need to tell you this. They need to say something. I'll say, here's a card with three people in it.

Which of these three people are you? Which one do you think you are in this card? Because that's gonna change the meaning of it. So it's a conversation throughout the entire session. That's really cool.

Mm-hmm, absolutely. So I want to kind of take a shift. Now that I feel like we've gotten a good understanding of tarot and witchcraft and we've sort of defined where we are and what we're talking about, I want to dive in a little bit with a few questions on tarot reading specifically and you as a reader. What drew you into tarot? And I feel like you have so much knowledge.

Was there a moment when you finally felt like, wow, this clicked, I get this? Yeah, I mean, I had been doing all of the studying and certifications and I mean, like I said, I am the type of person who would never just go out and start charging money for something or calling myself a name or a title without a lot to back it up with. And so I was already graduating from the Institute of Healing Arts where I learned integration processing technique of emotional processing, which is energy work. It's just a different type. And I was, you know, Reiki certified and I was already in that world doing a lot of that.

And tarot really appealed to me. I liked playing with it, learning about it. And so I dove in with it and I did years of just pulling a card for myself, just pulling a card every day, studying what that card meant. I have a notebook that's full. I mean, you'd be amazed at the notes I've taken on each page, a different card and just the notes I've taken about that.

And then someone said, there's a masterclass going on. You can take a class from a bunch of professional readers that have been doing it for like 50 years, written books on the subject. So I took that masterclass. Phyllis Currett was one of the teachers and she wrote The Witch's Wisdom. She's like 50 years of experience.

So I got a chance to really get a lot of really cool takes on it that not everybody does it the same. Like there is a lot of academia behind it, but then there's also this whole, well, I interpret it this way. For example, each of the suits, there's four suits and there's wands and there's swords. There's different variations of that. But most of the time associated with the element of swords is air, meaning mental and intellectual and communication.

And the wands are associated with fire. And that's the way most tarot readers will read that. But I never felt like that resonated with me. And this particular teacher told me she doesn't either. She does the swords are fire and the wands are air.

To me, that makes more sense. I feel like trees, wands are made of wood, which are trees, which make air. Swords are forged in fire. It just made more sense to me that that's the way we would read those elements. Yeah, I don't know why, but it's the same for me.

It makes more sense your way, I think. Yeah, yeah. And so I learned that there was a lot of room for interpretation and there's a lot of history behind all of the different suits and the way that tarot has come to be. Then one day, finally, like after all this education, I was at a party where somebody had hired a reader and she was taking us back one by one in her room and she was doing a little reading with us and she was great. She was excellent.

But when I got the reading, I realized I can do this. I can do what she just did for me. I can do that for people. And then I started adding it to my services in a lower rate. I'm just starting out as a professional.

I've been reading for friends and family and I've done enough of the free practice. But one of the things that I just have to touch on as we talk about that is when it's time to start charging, that is never just so cut and dry. But some people have a complicated feeling about whether to charge for something that should just be a healing thing and should just be free or should just come from the heart. The thing that I realized, and mentors have told me this as well, is yeah, I was doing it for free with friends and family and whoever wanted a reading, I would do it for free. But people who get it for free do not get as much out of it and walk away feeling like, oh, that was fun or interesting.

Evaluate differently. Yes. So actually I'm serving, if there is an energetic exchange and an actual investment in the work, they will take the reading more seriously and actually walk away with, oh, these are the things I need to know or how to change my life or how to apply this in my life. And so it is an energetic exchange and we've put in the work and the time and the education to learn what we've learned. And so I don't have any ethical qualms about charging money.

I just charged a lot less when I started out. And then as I became more and more professional and experienced, I raised prices accordingly. Yeah, I was gonna say, it reminds me of people, you can argue the ethics of dog breeding one way or the other, it's fine. But people that sell puppies are in certain ways vetting the people that are taking the puppies and saying, like, if you're buying a hard breed like a Siberian husky, you are selling that dog for a high value. However, the dog is a big investment in time and energy and years of your couch.

If you cannot afford the puppy, you cannot afford the mental load of the dog later. So there's breeders that will say a free husky puppy is one that's gonna go to a shelter, whereas one that is sold is going to a forever home. And I think you could argue either way in that, but that's what it reminded me of is kind of the idea of you are getting what you put into it. And if you put nothing into it, you're not gonna get much of anything out of it. Whereas if you're investing in that learning ability, you're getting something from that education.

And to your point too, with that example, with witchcraft or with healing work or with anything, this is the way that I do it, this is the way that I was trained and this is the way I feel about it. And this is how I go about it. And like I said, I'm just speaking for me. That's not to say, because we have a lot of bias, a lot of people thinking witchcraft is evil, terror was evil, it's the devil, demon, whatever. It's not to say that there aren't people who practice what I do in a different context that do believe in pexing and do believe in cursing.

And it's as diverse as people themselves and the intention that they put into it. How do people tell the difference between a genuine reader and kind of a glorified scammer, if you will? This is where I wish I could teach every person walking, no matter whether they consider themselves an energy or a woo woo person or not, is to follow their intuition, to learn how to know yourself well enough, to know what is the vibe you get when you meet this person, when you talk to this person, do they seem knowledgeable about what they're doing? And like I said earlier, if they are shitting on you in the reading, if they start doing like, well, girl, you just better leave your husband or whatever it is, and that's how it's gonna go, you start to feel it. You start to feel like this person isn't serving my highest good.

So yeah, like whether you're woo woo or not, I feel like everybody has guides, everybody has spiritual intuition. They may not call it that, they may call it just like their gut feeling. There's a lot to that, a lot more to that than we give credit to. So that's first and like charging way high prices. I keep my prices affordable for a reason.

Like, you know, there's just certain things like that that you look at and you go, does that feel right to me? I feel like that would be the way it is. You should like them as a person too, you know, your reader. That would probably help. Yep.

Yeah. So we've talked about a lot of common misconceptions about the term witch and things like that, but what do you think people most misunderstand about tarot readers specifically, such as yourself? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, just the misconceptions that we are working with evil entities of any kind or demonic, I think people do get scared when they see that there is in the major arcana a devil card and there is a death card. And, you know, that in some way, shape or form, that that's opening yourself up to something, especially if they were raised in sort of a Christian background or Catholicism, things like that.

There's very much like the devil is real and you have to be so careful because he could get you. Which, again, I'm not saying that there aren't readers and people who consider themselves witches and practice witchcraft that maybe dabble in that kind of thing. But in general, that's not necessarily associated with each other. I think that really reputable readers, they have a process of warding and protecting when they're getting ready. They have a ritual of their own when getting ready to do a reading.

And they know the processes of how to do that, energetically protecting the reading itself. And same thing with stuff like a Ouija board. Ouija boards in and of themselves, not evil and won't necessarily invite demons unless you're looking to do that or you don't know what you're doing. But if you know that it's just a tool for divination or communication with the other world or energies or frequencies, then it kind of dispels all of that connection, that it is inherently evil. Have you ever seen a person, I mean, I don't even know if it's possible, become too dependent on tarot?

It's absolutely possible. And I'll kind of dive into my other work in emotional processing, is that just about anything that can possibly be done in this world has the potential to give us a chemical need in our brains, right? Like dopamine, endorphins, and they're associated with our basic human needs. So whether we find that need or we get that need met in productive, healthy ways or not, because some people turn to drugs, some people overexercise to the point where their bodies are deteriorating from it. Some people excessively clean because they're looking for that hit of dopamine that makes them feel like they're in control of their life.

Right. And their addictions, basically. Exactly. And just like anything can be an addiction, I think that it's possible that tarot reading or pulling a card for absolutely everything and being overly dependent on it. It's very possible to get there.

For every decision you make in a day. Should I go to Wendy's or McDonald's? Let's see what the cards say. Form of OCD, perhaps, that that's their way of getting that need met, is to pull a card. So, yeah, it's absolutely possible.

OK. Interesting. Are there any questions that you refuse to answer for clients? I might help reword a question for a client if it isn't aligned with how the cards work or how they're going to get an answer. Because, like I said, I do those TikTok readings and I get a lot of like, am I pregnant?

And I just feel like, like, you just go to a doctor. Or a no, and they're testing you to see if you know and you can say yes. And then I'm like, I'm being tested. OK, well, you know, that's not how it works. But yeah, I might like reword it.

Like, what is it that I need to know about this situation rather than like, am I going to get this answer? I'm trying to think if there's anything I would refuse outright to answer. And maybe this is a little different than a tarot reading, but I do dream interpretation sessions as well. And I had a client who wanted me to interpret her dream that she felt was for her friend and actually invited the friend to be in on the Zoom call with us and kept reiterating that what she was seeing in her dream meant this about her friend. She wanted her friend to break up with her boyfriend, essentially.

She just wanted her friend to break up with her boyfriend. And she thought her dream meant that for her friend. And I kept having to reiterate, like over and over again, your dream was not a message for someone else. That's not how that works. Here's what you need to know.

Your dream was telling you about you. Like, what is the inner work you have to do? Your dream was saying maybe your boyfriend is acting like her boyfriend and you should take that as a sign. Or maybe there's a little too much codependency with you and your friend thinking you have the burden of this relationship on you to deal with. And it's not actually your stuff.

So this is inward work for you to do, not for her. Right. So, I mean, literally had to be like, I'm sorry she brought you in on this. You're not here to be berated about your boyfriend. I don't know.

So that may be kind of in that realm of like, I am not going to do a reading for someone else when you're the one who booked the appointment and is sitting in front of me getting the reading. Does that make sense? That makes sense. So it sounds like as a reader, you've got to have some like ethical or other types of boundaries with your clients. Would you say that's accurate?

I think that's smart practice. I think that's good because as readers or as energy healers, anything like that, you do have to have some level of boundary, like a wall or a professionalism or, you know, what you're willing to do. And that's why the training and the practice and the work beforehand, before you jump into it as a profession, is really important because how you represent yourself and how you run your business. And it really, really matters to the client and their healing and to you. Do the cards ever surprise you?

Every time. Okay. Tell us about that. I love that. It surprises me in such pleasant ways.

I don't know. I don't go into it with any expectation of what the cards are going to say. I mean, sometimes I have an intuitive kind of feeling of like, I'm thinking this is the way it's going to go, but I leave myself really open for I'm going to wait and see what the cards say and then we'll interpret from there. But I'm always as pleasantly surprised as I'm doing a reading. It'll be a very specific question, maybe about a family member or something.

And I'll have a card flip over that is so perfect. Like I couldn't have written it better if I'd come up with it myself. Kind of a feeling. You know, it might be like I've got some things coming up that are connected to my past. When I was a kid, you know, inner child work coming up that I've got going on.

And in the reading, I might have a six of cups come up, which I always associate with inner child work because it has two little boys. It's kids, it's youthful. It's like an emotional connection to your youth. So it's so perfect. When I flip that card over, it's something that's like, oh, and I usually react like that.

I'm like, what? Oh, my God. People laugh at me while I'm doing a reading because I'm so like, oh, my gosh. And they're usually like, what? What does it mean?

I won the lottery. Have you ever done a reading for a client that changed your life or your perspective? Oh, my gosh. Yeah. It's so interesting.

And I will say this, especially when I'm doing a Tarot for Tips event. I do once a month at the local coffee shop. I've seen your posts on that. Oh, good. Well, it's nice to know that people are seeing my posts.

You never know with social media, but I do like to just be there for a certain number of hours and people can pay me whatever, you know, so they get a little three-card spread, like a 15, 20 minute reading for whatever they can pay. You know, it's a great way to just get a taste of it without booking a private session. So I'll be there. And if there's like a group of women that have come in together, they often will get similar cards in their readings, even if they're doing it separately. And that's because their energy is so connected already.

And it's also because we are all so connected with the cycles and seasons. So a lot of times people, for example, in the springtime, we're doing a reading. A lot of stuff will come up that are like, it's time for you to awaken and bloom. And it's newness, it's creation, all the things. Right.

So it'll kind of align with that if everybody's kind of in that same cycle. So a lot of times when someone's getting a reading, I almost feel like the reading is for me, too, and I'll feel like, oh, the cards are telling you this. This is what message needs to come up. And then later I'll be like, that actually could have been a message for me, too. I absolutely can benefit from that right now in my life.

That's awesome. What's the strangest or funniest reaction you've gotten from a client? I mean, you said you're pretty reactive to the cards of like, oh, my gosh. But is there anything that your clients like an experience that sticks out? And like this client did this one time?

Well, I don't claim to be a medium. I think that everybody has a little bit of mediumship capabilities. And sometimes I do have certain things come through in a Reiki session, a healing session, a message might come through. But I don't say I'm a medium. But I did have readings, maybe a few.

But I'm thinking of one in particular that a card was pulled it was in the mythic goddess tarot deck that I have. And it had a little bird in the corner of one of the cards that had like a dove or something that was flying in the corner of the card. And for whatever reason, intuitively, I thought, do you have a friend that passed away? Was there a friend you were very close with? And I was pointing at the bird and she just started crying immediately.

She's like one of my best friends who and I think she even had an association with birds. There was something that that symbol meant something to her, too. And I said, this card is coming forward because the bird is flying above and behind the subject of the card watching over you. This is her coming through right now for you to say, I'm here. I'm watching over you.

You're not alone in this what you're going through right now. And that was really powerful. I mean, obviously that was very emotional and the reaction was really positive, like something she really, really needed to hear. That's so cool. I love that.

So you kind of told us that, you know, there's hundreds of different decks out there and so many different cards and everything. Is there a single most misunderstood card in these decks? It would be like a tie between the devil and the death card that people are afraid of. Should people be so afraid of the death card? No.

I mean, let me just say this. And this is, again, going back to the difference between Oracle and Tarot. There's a lot of jokes about this where Oracle is more probably going to be like an information deck. It's just going to be really positive and light and be like, you've got this. You are light.

Everything is wonderful. You know, and it's all kind of just building you up and making you feel good. Tarot is a little bit more like I am going to really give you the real. It's not always going to be comfortable. We're not sugar coating.

We're not fluffing. You are getting what you're getting. Exactly. So with that being said, there are cards that are like not going to be comfortable. The tower card is another one that often gets a bad rep when people know Tarot a little bit better because the tower card is a tower on fire or crumbling and people jumping out of it.

Like it's chaos. And it does kind of mean disruption. Like it's kind of that moment of life where there's an ego death. Oftentimes, you know, everything you thought you knew is going to be challenged and it's really going to be hard. But it's absolutely necessary because you can't level up and ascend from that position of stuckness where you are without some destruction happening.

There has to be a destruction of what you thought. So even in the death card, it often associates with a death or a grief in a more personal way. Like you are going through something that this has to die. This has to decompose. This has to nourish the new that's coming.

But yeah, cycle has ended. It's dead. The devil card often representing vices, addictions, patterns you keep getting stuck in. So it's not so light and airy, but it is important. I mean, those are the part of the messages that people need.

So it's misunderstood for sure. And the hanged man is also that kind of vibe, too. It's a man hanging by his foot. Usually. I mean, it's not usually like what we think of as a hanging man, but it's associated with Odin and the mythology of him hanging from the Yggdrasil tree.

And he had to sacrifice his eye to get the wisdom of the Norns, which are the runes that they use in Nordic divination. But that story is basically the idea that you have to let go of something. You have to sacrifice something to get this next thing. So whatever is happening in their lives at that time, it's kind of like you're going to have to let go of one rung of the ladder in order to reach for the next rung of the ladder. So you said that you've been doing this for years.

How long would you say that it took before you felt really confident doing readings for your clients? I would say I was probably doing it for two or three years first before I even had that reading with the person that I was like, oh, I could do this. I feel confident now that I can do this professionally. Yeah. Okay.

So we have one final question and then we want to dive into some common myths, misconceptions, all the things. If someone is super interested in all that we've talked about today, how do they learn more and how would they get started? Like where is the starting point if they want to know more? I feel like there's so much crap on the internet. Yeah.

Where do you even begin? I think that Oracle cards are a great gateway. So if you're just like, this is the first time I've ever even thought about this. I'm going to just go buy an Oracle deck that looks good to me. Like go look at them, go pick out the art, you know, look at the artwork and say that feels like me or I'm really into mermaids.

So I'm going to get a mermaid Oracle deck or something that feels personal. Cause when you connect with the deck, it's infinitely better than if you just kind of picked up any deck and was just trying to read it. You might not feel as connected. You might not be like, I don't know what this card means, but if you have some connection and association with it, even better. And then you start pulling a card for yourself, just as a morning ritual, wake up in the morning and pull card and say, this is my day or this is what I'm working on today.

And you just kind of start building that slowly. And I do think when you get to a point where you're like, now I'm just so interested, I need more. You look for classes, you look for people offering classes online, or there's a podcast to people that I love to listen to. It's, I'll censor the title, but it's Tarot is f**king cool. And it's a podcast of two people in England and they teach classes online too, on like Patreon and things like that.

And I think they're great. So there's a lot of resources out there, but I would maybe just tell people to be careful about the very basic, like asking AI or asking something, you know, what a card means, and then just going with that. I feel like there's apps out there that will do a reading and then it'll tell you what the card means, but you're getting like a really cookie cutter, like basic symbolism and representation of this card. And that's not bad. That's a good way to start and learn the cards, but it completely almost takes away your intuition from it as well.

You know, there's just the base knowledge that you need to have. And then there's everything on top of that, that you've got to practice as well. It reminds me, as we were talking earlier, kind of introducing that bias without even realizing you're doing it. You're taking a cookie cutter piece of information. And if you take that as gospel, then you're limiting your opportunities for growth and understanding and expansion there.

Yeah. And that's the beauty of going to a reader for a card reading is you can just know what the cards mean and you can get the basic, like, you know, six of cups is always going to mean this one thing and there's six cups and this and that and whatever, but you're going to miss a whole element to it that only like an intuitive reader would be able to then relay that message to you. So like Alyssa said, and especially with this topic, it was so fun to scour the internet and think of our own misconceptions or hot takes about this whole topic that we've been talking about with you today. I even asked AI for some unhinged myths or some unhinged facts about tarot. So I was going to say, we gave you a little bit of a warning that we were going to ask this section.

And for the sake of time, we'll keep it pretty brief. I mean, if you need to give us a little bit more of an explanation or answer, that's fine. But for the most part, let's try to give true or false to most of these if we can. You want to start it off, Alyssa? I can.

Okay. All right. Here's the big question, which popped up as soon as Tim was like, where do I buy this deck? I'm like, you can't. Is it true or false that you are not supposed to buy your own tarot deck?

You can buy your own oracle cards, but not your own tarot deck. Um, true and false. Okay. Explain. I'm sorry.

No, I love it. You're like, keep it brief. I'm like, I will do my best. Well, I have met some old world tarot readers that literally learned it from their grandmother in the old country, you know, from Romania. And there are rules that they follow that are much more rigid and much more like you cannot touch another person's deck.

You have to bury it in the earth and leave it for the full moon. I don't think those are not true. I think it's just more nuanced than that. Some people have bought their own tarot deck and just said, I gifted this to myself and I absolutely think that counts. So my first deck was gifted to me.

So I felt like it applied to that, but I think everything matters only if you make it matter. Everything is about intention, right? So if you're a person who thinks I can't go buy my own deck, I'm going to wait for it to be gifted to me because that's important to me. That matters. That is meaningful to me.

Then it matters. But I don't necessarily think it does make sense. Yeah, I like that. Here's a fun one. You must cleanse your deck under a full moon.

You can cleanse your deck under a full moon, but that's not the only way you can clean your deck. It's not completely necessary. Okay. So true and false. Gotcha.

Tarot only works if you're psychic. Everybody is psychic. Okay. I like it. If a card falls out while you're shuffling, it's supernaturally important or holds some significance.

True. Cool. And again, it depends on the reader and how they decide to do it. Some readers read reversals and some don't. So it really depends on the reader when they're shuffling.

If that is meaningful to them that it came out. Yes, but I definitely subscribe to that. So like if I'm shuffling and getting ready and a card flies out, I'm like, that card was me. What card is it? If you pull the same card repeatedly, the universe is yelling at you.

True. Okay. I'm being yelled at currently by my deck. You should never read tarot for yourself. False.

I've never heard that. Really? Yeah. I don't know anybody that doesn't read for themselves. Okay.

Like it. Bad readings can curse your future. I have a very complicated relationship with cursing and I have an episode of Practically Magick about just cursing. If anybody is interested to go into depth with that, but curse holds a lot of powerful meaning. Yes.

And I do think it's possible for anybody at any time to curse themselves, even subconsciously, but in general, that's false. I don't think anyone should be scared. Should I say that? Yeah. Is tarot forbidden in some religions because it's inherently evil.

Have you heard that or come across that belief? Oh yeah. I definitely think there are religions that think it's evil. I mean, growing up that was, yeah, you don't make a joke about tarot cards. You don't like.

The South is so superstitious. The South is very superstitious, maybe for good reason. Who knows? Yeah. And I have come across that in this area as well with, you know, Christian denominations of certain kinds that are around.

It's kind of like playing cards too. You know, playing cards were something that when I was in school, like they wouldn't even let you bring playing cards to school because they associated it with gambling and they associated that with evil. And so even just face cards were evil. And in my time it was Pokemon cards. Oh my gosh.

Everyone was bringing them to school. Everyone was getting them taken. I didn't do it. Oh my. Tarot cards can open portals to spirits or demons.

I think there are certain people who believe that. And I think that there is more to that than just a simple yes or no. I don't know if I personally believe in like demon entities, but I do believe in shadow parts and we can go into the psychology of that and things like that. But opening a portal, I feel is possible. And like I said, with Ouija boards, Tarot, I feel like it's important that people know how to protect themselves energetically.

And so it can be true. So can the cards become haunted? I know they can get bad energy, but what about, yeah, haunted? What's the difference between a bad energy connected to something and haunted is maybe a question too, because I associate that as the same thing. I think, yeah, absolutely.

But not just because it's Tarot. I think that that is true of anything and everywhere. Of any energy that you're moving around. I do energy cleansings on people who do like hair extensions when they're using real hair. So they're using someone else's hair to do a hair extension.

I would recommend getting a cleansing because you don't know what kind of energy that person had. You don't know what your, not that they're bad or evil or anything, but it's someone else's energy and you're putting it on your head near your crown chakra and all of that. You're inviting something. So it's not just a Tarot. It's kind of like places, objects, the land that you live on.

Anything can have residue, I guess. How about this one? Using someone else's deck can spiritually bind you to them. I have not heard that. I wouldn't say spiritually bind, but definitely affect you.

Okay. It's a good idea to cleanse your deck if you're using someone else's deck to cleanse between use. Do you think AI Tarot readings are spiritually dangerous or could they be? They could be. I'll say that.

They could be. I'm not against, like, I'm not one of those. It's like AI don't use it for anything ever, ever, ever. I'm not one of those, but I have AI on my website. I use it.

But just like the way that there have been dangerous connections with AI, using it for psychological reasons, asking questions and getting answers and it being harmful to people. I think it can be the exact same thing. And do you think there's certain decks out there that can attract certain entities more than others? I think it's totally up to who uses it and what purpose they're using it for. I don't think the deck itself would have.

The power is in the person, not in the deck. Okay. Yeah. Do you think TikTok Tarot culture is destroying real Tarot practice? I think it's possible, just like any Tarot reader doing it on the street can be good and ethical at what they do or not.

I know when I started doing TikTok Tarot readings once in a while, I was kind of like, whoa, what is happening on TikTok? I don't know what the questions I was getting. I'm like, what's happening? I'm not really that connected to TikTok or familiar with it, but I have, like, kind of scrolled around and watching other people do readings and I'm like, Oh no, some of these are really giving us a bad name. This isn't going well.

I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, you know? So. Can you accidentally manifest disasters by asking the wrong questions? No. I didn't think so.

All right. You might have to define this again. We got our list of questions between all kinds of things. And our own unhinged brains. Unhinged brains.

Yeah. Can some readers intentionally use cold reading techniques without admitting it? What is a cold reading technique? So that's kind of like an illusionist or a mentalist does when they are acting like they're reading your mind, but really they've just gotten so good at reading your physical cues and stuff. So using that in a reading.

I can't say that we don't subconsciously do that just as human beings. I think we all have the ability to kind of read people like that. When we're really intuitive, you can kind of tell when you walk into a room where two people have just been in a fight with each other and they stop fighting before you get there, but you feel it, their body language, the feeling in the room, the energy, you can feel the tension. So I can't say that that isn't part of it in a subconscious way, but I personally don't use anything like I haven't studied that part of it, like studying people in their cues and things like that, and then using that in the reading. I think that would be unethical.

I think it's supposed to be an intuitive divination. Divination meaning it comes from divine, right? So it's being channels from a divine source. So that's my take on that. I like it.

Can you believe in conventional religion, but also believe in the power of tarot? That's a good question. I mean, I think that there would be religious leaders that would tell their congregation, no, absolutely not. You cannot go anywhere but here because this is the only source connected to God that you can have. That I would question, right?

Not because I'm not associated with a religion anymore, but also because I'm like, doesn't that seem a little bit like something you'd want to question? I think organized religion absolutely would. They like, you can't, you can't believe in tarot, but also be part of a religion. Right. But it's absolutely possible.

I often tell people paganism is not a dogma or a religion. So for me, I can be a Christian and a pagan. I can have these beliefs in one thing and another, and because I'm spiritual and these are my beliefs, I can do both. And that's not a problem for me, but I'm also not going to a church with a authority that's telling me what I can and can't do and how to connect with God in my terms. So to that I say, absolutely you can do both, but that's up to each person's journey.

I think that totally makes sense. I love that. Yeah. This has been so good. I feel like we have gone so deep into so many different topics and I have loved it.

I feel like there's so much more to learn and we could talk for another three hours. I know I could. That's why I have a podcast. Right. We end every episode with two questions and I feel like the answers typically come out pretty similar, but I think they're a good way to kind of tie everything together.

So in a sentence or two, or as Tim says, if you're talking to me, then it's usually three or four. Can you summarize what you believe? I believe that we are all energy. I believe that everything is energy. We are particles vibrating next to each other in different frequencies.

And so each tarot card, each crystal, every sound we hear, every plant, animal, and object also has a frequency. And so the world is really a magical place if you really think of it in those terms. It may not look like Harry Potter, but it is actually magical. And that's what I believe. I love that.

I told you Harry Potter was real. I didn't argue that it was real. All right. So our last and final question, we heard your belief. Is there anything out there that could convince you to believe the opposite way or view it, I guess, very differently from what you currently do?

Oh, my first thought was that if someone took me to the backstage of life, of what's going on, like the matrix, like I took the pill and they're like, actually everything you thought is all being controlled and managed by this back end that you didn't know was there. And even then I would be like, see, I was right. You're like, I knew it. It still works. Like it still applies.

It was magical. It was just being programmed in this back end. Right. I love that. Well, Courtney, thank you so much for a good episode and all of the insights that you've brought to our show.

We'll definitely link Practically Magick with Courtney Pearl on our podcast and link there. Is there any other context info that you'd like to have us leave in the footnotes for everyone? Yeah. My business is Prism Healing. So prism-healing.com is my website you can go to and you can book sessions there or Prism Healing on Instagram.

It's prism underscore healing on Instagram and then TikTok. It's just at Prism Healing, but that's where I post content that, you know, maybe share a little peek inside what it's like in a regular witch's life. What I do. So if you're interested in more of that, you can follow me there. All right.

Well, we will let you go, but thank you so much again. This has been awesome. Yep. It's been a blast. I'm so glad we could do this.

Well, everyone, that's today's episode. Now, if you're mad, intrigued, or rethinking your entire personality, then our work here is done. We'll be back next time with another guest, another opinion, and the same chaos. If you have a hot take, a controversial opinion, or just some weird belief and a hill that you're ready to defend, send it our way. Same depth.

Same audacity on Make Me a Believer. Wasn't that so fun? What a great time I had. Thank you so much, ListenTim, for having me on your show. Thank you for letting me release it on both of our platforms.

So it's a real pod collab between the two of us. Love that. Love the podcast community for that. And I highly recommend that you go follow them. They have some amazing episodes about a lot of different topics.

I noticed one of the more recent ones that came out was on natural childbirth, things that people might find controversial and they talk about it. And I would love to know, did I make you a believer after listening to that episode? Tell me in the comments what you thought. If you were a believer before, then it wasn't too hard to convince you. But if you were like, I've never been too sure about tarot, I always thought it was maybe a little against my religion or against my beliefs or whatever that might have biases that might have come up for you.

I would like to know what you thought. And again, thank you so much for letting me be a part of all of that. Don't forget to like and subscribe here on Practically Magick Podcast to get more information on how you can make your life magical and follow me at Prism Healing. I have both Instagram for Practically Magick Podcast and for Prism Healing, Prism underscore healing or on TikTok at Prism Healing. So follow me in those spaces and I will keep providing you with more ways to make your life whimsical and magical.

Go make magic, witches and wizards.