Philosophy
In 2017, I began experimenting with tarot cards out of curiosity. I was drawn to the mysticism in their images and the beautiful patterns that emerged as I learned their meanings. Reading the cards became a hobby. Over time, the messages I received from my tarot deck sharpened, and the cards increasingly told powerful, nuanced, and well-timed stories—stories that freed me.
In 2021, I learned about Avery Gordon’s concept of complex personhood—“that the stories people tell about themselves, about their troubles, about their social worlds, and about their society’s problems are entangled and weave between what is immediately available as a story and what their imaginations are reaching toward”—and C.B. Dillard’s notion of remembering as an act of decolonization. These ideas spoke directly to how I had come to understand the potential of tarot as a tool of liberation.
With tarot cards, we can see both the reflections of the stories available to us, as well as imagine new ones. We are offered the opportunity to rewrite our own stories, or to “touch our own spirits” as the character Nana says in Julia Dash’s film, Daughters of the Dust, as she encourages her grandson to reconcile his double consciousness as a black man. Writing about this film, Dillard says, “(re)membering becomes a radical response to our individual and collective fragmentation at the cultural, spiritual, and material levels, a response to the false divisions created between mind, body, and spirit.”
I began reading tarot cards for others and drawing connections between the tarot and my work as a writer by rooting myself in the healing and liberatory qualities of remembering and storytelling. I’ve learned from other tarot readers, taken courses, read books, and intuited my way into my current practice, where I delight and continue to draw a deep sense of purpose from helping to ignite clarity, confidence, and purpose in others.