In Search of Tarot

Dajé Alōh is a storyteller, emergent strategy facilitator, and earth-based, spirit led visionary leadership coach helping creators pursue the deepest dreams of their heart.

As a Memphis-born, Appalachian-cured storyteller, song-keeper, and essence liberation coach, Dajé is here to support seekers, lovers, crafters, and kin in finding and singing the deep song of their lives. There are new stories, new ways, and new templates for meeting life that long to be born into our collective awareness. To nurture new stories, we must get low and listen. We must turn on the ears of the psyche, and call them forth from the deep. This is her work as a story doula – calling forth true and deep liberation from the collective subconscious and bringing it into the light.

Charlie Claire Burgess is a queer and trans-nonbinary tarot practitioner, writer, deck creator, and witch. They are the author of Radical Tarot, a guide to reading tarot radically for personal and collective liberation; the creator of Fifth Spirit Tarot, a queer and inclusive deck for a world beyond binaries; and the creator of The Gay Marseille, a cheeky, queer update on the classic Tarot de Marseille. They are currently at work on their next book, Queer Devotion (Hay House 2025), an exploration of the queer divine in deities and figures of myth and legend. Originally from the Deep South, Charlie has made their home in Portland, OR, with their spouse and their one-eyed pug Apollo.

It's the final episode of Season Six, and the final installment of this Season's Guest Host episodes! Today we're bringing you another conversation full of warmth and love between Guest Host Maria Minnis and Sarah Arantza Amador of Hawthorn Mountain Tarot.

Today we're sharing a conversation that originally took place on The Tarot Diagnosis podcast. In it, Nick and Shannon discuss The Magician, and use this iconic card to investigate and trouble the notion of "Self" as it appears in Western ontology.

Shannon Knight (she/her) is a queer therapist licensed in both Arizona and Florida where she specializes in working with individuals and couples. Shannon received her B.A. in Applied Clinical Psychology from the Florida Institute of Technology and her M.S. in Mental Health Counseling from Johns Hopkins University. Shannon currently resides in Arizona and when she needs to escape the heat, she’s traveling to find mountains and cooler weather with her partner and her dog Barley. She feels highly aligned with the Queen of Swords and is constantly trying to deconstruct her perceptions of Temperance and The Sun.

Today's episode is first for us. It's a crossover/part two that builds on a conversation Nick took part in over on Britten LaRue's Moon to Moon podcast. In that episode, Nick shared his thoughts on The Margin, and mused on queerness as an unknowable, unspeakable power. Then Britten asked a question that sent both of their heads spinning in opposite directions.

The work of Stephanie Adams-Santos spans poetry, prose, screenwriting, and visual art. She/They are the author of the full-length poetry collections Dream of Xibalba and Swarm Queen's Crown (a Lambda Literary Award finalist). Their chapbooks include Total Memory and The Sundering (New York Chapbook Fellowship, Poetry Society of America). Stephanie’s short story "Night Flowers" appeared in the Latinx anthology Speculative Fiction for Dreamers. Stephanie was a Staff Writer and Story Editor on the television anthology horror series Two Sentence Horror Stories (CW/Netflix); their episode "Elliot" won a 2022 Gold Telly Award in Writing. As an inaugural fellow of The 2022 Ojalá Ignition Fellowship, they developed an original fantasy pilot based on the world and characters of the Tarot. In addition to her literary work, Adams-Santos is a professional Tarot reader and is making headway on an original Major Arcana tarot deck inspired by occult animism. In all her work, she is drawn to queerness, the uncanny, and whatever draws us closer to the primal source.

Charlie Claire Burgess is a queer and trans-nonbinary tarot reader, deck creator, writer, and artist. They are the creator of Fifth Spirit Tarot, a queer and inclusive deck for a world beyond binaries, and the author of Radical Tarot, a guide to reading tarot radically for personal and collective liberation. Charlie is currently at work on a second tarot deck, The Gay Marseille Tarot, and a book on queer devotion. They teach classes on tarot and queer magical topics online and in Portland, Oregon, and sometimes they record episodes for their podcast, The Word Witch.

Nick's going solo today to explore the themes and concepts that will inspire Meet Me at The Margin - a month-long virtual conference for queer people who want to reclaim and re-story their innate capacity for ambiguity, paradox, and liminality, which will take place June 4-28, 2023.

Through a series of eight workshops facilitated by some of today’s most Marginal thinkers, participants explore queerness through the lenses of tarot, astrology, narrative therapy, eco-mythology, archetype, art, and more. Facilitators include Charlie Claire Burgess, Amy DiGennaro, Edgar Fabian Frías, Nick Kepley, Jonathan Koe, Elias Lawliet, Sophie Strand, Jaison Perez, Chanti Tacoronte-Perez.

Workshops will be held every Sunday (from 6-8pm ET) and Wednesday (from 7-9pm ET) in June, for a total of 16 hours of instruction. Captions will be enabled for all sessions, and recordings will be available through 7/31.

Eli Lawliet, PhD, is The Gender Doula - offering full-spectrum support to folks who are transitioning, questioning, or exploring their gender. Due to the unique nature of every gender journey, Eli pulls from his many experiences--a working-class background in retail, ten years of academic research on trans healthcare in the U.S., five years of tarot reading for others, and much more--to support clients holistically. He also uses his broad training to create workshops, classes, and resources to help gender expansive folks thrive. He lives in Los Angeles with his partner, three cats, a dog, and four snakes.

We're back for another shuffle of the history books — today exploring the traditions and legends of Runes and Ogham. At first glance, these two symbolic systems (which are actually alphabets) appear quite similar. But it turns out that their stories branch apart in many directions. Join us as we discover more about these popular methods of divination, and question just how old they actually are.

For links to all of our sources for today's episode, visit the transcript page for this episode and scroll to the bottom.

Jordan Rayne of @sincerely_the_tarot is a queer trans-masc tarot lover. He believes that tarot is a juicy tool for self-empowerment and meaning-making. He has a deep relationship with magic, ritual, beetles and worms. Jordan creates tarot-inspired prose, collage, affirmations, and oracle cards. Subscribers of his monthly snail mail offering receive these treasures and a tarot card from a different, featured deck.

Sam Valentine of @valentine.tarot doesn’t like to self-identify, but when she does, it’s as an aesthete, tarot reader, & curator of vibes. Reading tarot primarily for fun and enjoyment, their work leaves space for not-knowing, and they hold no set expectations about what the cards might “mean.” A tarot hobbyist, creative, and magical practitioner on the side, Sam spends most of her time on her work in her professional capacity as a community Archivist.

Michael J. Morris is a consulting astrologer and tarot reader, artist, writer, teacher, facilitator, and witch committed to personal and collective healing and liberation. They began their consulting practice, Co Witchcraft Offerings, in 2019 through which they share astrology, tarot, and movement ritual practices. Michael holds a PhD in Dance Studies and brings decades of experience in dance, yoga, reiki, and other somatic practices to their work. They are a queer feminist, and their practices are inspired and informed by years of study and teaching in feminism, queer studies, gender and sexuality studies, environmental studies, and other branches of critical theory. Michael has presented at the Queer Astrology Conference 2020, the 2020 Fresh Voices in Astrology Summit, the Astrology and Climate Change Conference, NORWAC 2022, and the 54th Annual Conference of the Astrological Association. They are a teaching assistant with Kelly Surtees of Kelly’s Astrology, a contributing writer to the CHANI App, and a guest teacher in the Foundations in Embodied Ancestral Inquiry course presented by wildbody somatics. They reside in Columbus, Ohio—the ancestral and contemporary territory of the Shawnee, Potawatomi, Delaware, Miami, Peoria, Seneca, Wyandotte, Ojibwe, and Cherokee peoples.

Meg Jones Wall (she/they) is a queer, chronically-ill tarot reader, writer, photographer, and the creator of 3am.tarot. A columnist and editor for Autostraddle and a regular contributor to Astrology Answers, Meg's work has also appeared in WIRED, Catapult Magazine, Witchology, and more. Finding the Fool is her first book. 

Cameron Steele is a writer, editor, and tarot reader based in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She teaches online creative writing, composition, and literature courses at the University of Nebraska, where she graduated with her PhD in August 2021. Her recent essays are forthcoming or have been published in Gulf Coast, Barrelhouse, Split Lip Magazine, Brevity, and SFWP Quarterly.  She also writes "interruptions," which was featured as a Top 100 in Literature newsletter on Substack in 2022. Interruptions explores themes of tarot, astrology, literature, and illness in twice-weekly essays.

CW: This episodes contains references to alcoholism and eating disorders.

Today we are thrilled to welcome our first guest host, Jonathan Koe, who shares a highly charged and vulnerable conversation with their teacher and friend Madison Nees.

Jonathan, who first appeared on In Search of Tarot back in April of 2022, is a queer mystic who currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, land of the Lenape people. Fluent in the language of music, astrology, tarot, energy work, statistics, and the Akashic perspective, Jonathan aims to empower the collective through compassionate discernment, to nurture communities of passionate seekers, and to expand our sense of interconnectedness beyond the myths of binary-thinking and not-enoughness. You can follow Jonathan's contemplations and conversations with friends (including Nick and Madison) on their podcast, Healing The Spirit. 

Originally from Tulsa, Oklahoma, Madison Nees currently lives and practices on Kumeyaay land (also known as San Diego). Madison is a queer artist, human, guide, and facilitator who believes in a non-expert model that empowers the individual and collective to tap into their own wisdom rather than as a facilitator having the answers. This is Radical Aliveness. 

When Madison began their own journey, they did not understand that the pull to Somatics was a call of their ancestors. They were being pulled to embody all the gifts their mother could not and ultimately lost her life suppressing. Madison was being pulled to feel the things their Grandmother had no language for.

Madison’s body knew the language however, and it spoke in illness, pains, aches and rage. During this process, Madison discovered gifts hidden beneath these repressed emotions. These gifts were the sensations, intuition and creativity of their lineage. When Madison stopped trying to push these parts away, they wondered what would happen if they let them grow. They grew into Madison’s practice today.

Sanyu Estelle is the author of "The History (Mystery) of the Tarot," the opening chapter of Tarot for Pregnancy by Brittany Carmona-Holt. Sanyu is a Claircognizant ("clear knowing") Soothsayer ("truth teller") that is also known as "The Word Witch" because of her deep love for word origins (etymology) and word culture (philology). These natural inclinations are bolstered by an 11+ year practice of Taoism, as well as a 10+ year relationship with Ifa, the indigenous tradition of the Yoruba people of now-Nigeria. Sanyu is known for her straightforward card reading style and her way with words via writing, speaking and singing. A "1st generationish" US-American of Ugandan and Belizean descent, Sanyu was born, bred and buttered in Los Angeles on land traditionally stewarded by the Tongva. Many dream up the future, but it belongs to their descendants. Thus, Sanyu is the best thing that came out of her Colonizer’s lineage. She uses their/her own ancestry to denounce their indoctrination into the invention of Whiteness through colonization. They are lucky to have her and they ensured not only that she is, but what she is.

Ari Felix is a multidisciplinary philosopher and mystic dedicated to living in veneration of the Planetary Ancestors (including the Earth). Their work is about emotional transmutation, dreaming new worlds, and building those worlds through visionary power and spiritual freedom. They have worked with spiritual practitioners, movement leaders, healers, creators, and artists of all kinds for over a decade.

Our guests today are Jannie Bui Brown and James W. Brown IV, a mother and son team who authored and illustrated the fantastic new Tarot deck: The Sacred Web Tarot. Jannie is an artist, yoga teacher, devoted mother of three and partner in life with her beloved. She considers herself to be a life-long student of all things spiritual and liberating and finds herself most at home on a trail by a stream, under a tree or on a couch reading a good book. She designs healing jewelry that she sells so that she can donate her profits to beautiful non-profit organizations. When not dwelling on the mystical nature of life, Jannie loves to ride her bike, hike, write, dance, practice yoga, listen to music and cook delicious food for her family and friends. James is an artist whose mediums range from film making to digital drawing. He is the founder of the small production company Spontaneous Productions and has spent the last few years drawing this deck, reading tarot, writing scripts, and creating original comic content. 

Many worlds exist in this one world. In one world, Leah Garza is a veteran teacher and education organizer. She has spent nearly two decades in social justice movement spaces, working toward equitable change in public education. She earned her masters degrees in education and depth psychology and is currently working on a Phd in community, liberation, indigenous, and eco psychologies. In another world, Leah is a shapeshifter. The trials incurred personally and collectively, through the Trump administration and later the pandemic and uprisings, made her a seeker. Leah learned to engage her ability to shapeshift as she began to ask questions of her purpose in this lifetime. Leah is a practitioner of the Akashic records, and offers radical healing work through the lenses of decoloniality and relational ways of being to subvert the colonial agenda.

Drawing upon a deep connection to the body, memory, spirit, and the land, zaneta's (they/them) art is a process of remembering our interconnectedness or the Filipinx term, kapwa. zaneta currently lives and creates on Lenni Lenape territory (Brooklyn), offering community listening rituals, as well as listening and sound workshops in spaces such as the Brooklyn Museum and online. In 2020, their project, Sacred Seasons, won the Brooklyn Arts Fund grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council and was co-presented with the New Women Space. Their field recording work has taken them throughout the contiguous United States and most weeks they can be found hiking and solo camping throughout the Catskills and Adirondack regions. as a community spiritual worker and host of the Art Witch podcast, zaneta is connected to a vibrant community of queer, multiracial creatixes and healers, and their podcast empowers listeners around the world to make their art and find liberatory expression.

Original Air Date: March 29, 2021

The places where our Tarot systems fail are the places where we get to enter the chat!

This is a recorded reading of Nick's Mystic Missive newsletter offering. There is a free monthly version and a paid weekly version which is available on Patreon. In addition to these weekly Missives, Patrons receive early access to podcast episodes, discounts on classes and workshops, and invitations to attend monthly Tarot Hangs on Zoom.

[Re]Structuring Tarot begins Sunday, February 5. BIPOC and members of the LGBTQIA+ community can use code TRANSCEND for 10% and all Patreon members receive 15% off. 

We're still on a break between seasons but we wanted to share some thoughts on The Chariot, 2023's card of the year, and announce some big plans for the future of the show!

Are you a regular listener of In Search of Tarot? Help us reach our goal of $200/month on Patreon so that we can begin welcoming guest contributors to the show!

Today we're concluding Season Five and our deep dive into Mexican Mysticism and Cartomancy with our very special guest, Edgar Fabián Frías! 

Edgar works in installation, photography, video art, sound, sculpture, printed textiles, GIFs, performance, social practice, and community organizing, among other forms. Their art addresses historical legacies and acts of resistance, resiliency, and radical imagination within the context of Indigenous Futurism, spirituality, play, pedagogy, animism, and queer aesthetics. Born in East Los Angeles in 1983, Frías received dual BA degrees in Psychology and Studio Art from UC, Riverside. In 2013, they received an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, with an emphasis on Interpersonal Neurobiology and Somatic Psychotherapy. Frías received their MFA in Art Practice from UC Berkeley in 2022.

Their work has been exhibited internationally, including the Vincent Price Art Museum, Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Oregon Contemporary, MOCA Jacksonville, Project Space Festival Juárez, and ArtBo, among others. Their work has also appeared in Cosmopolitan, Taschen, Bustle, Los Angeles Times, Slate, CVLT Nation, Terremoto, Hyperallergic, and other publications.

Today we're diving deep into the origins, history, and lore surrounding la Santa Muerte, a Mexican folk saint who has become a beacon for those on the margin. Although not officially recognized by the Catholic Church, this "Lady Death" as some call her has drummed up enough of a following to warrant the attention of both the FBI and the Vatican! 

We're bookending Season Five with the first in a three-part deep-dive into Mexican Mysticism and Cartomancy. Step back in time with us to trace the pre-Spanish contact origins of mystical beliefs in Mexico, before exploring the history and popularity of the card game Lotería. 

Jeff Hinshaw (he/they) is an intuitive practitioner fusing together over a decade of experience working with tarot, astrology, and somatic healing. Jeff is the host of the podcast Cosmic Cousins and the founder of the Brooklyn Fools: Tarot Journey – a 22-week ritual gathering through the Major Arcana of the tarot.  Dubbed as a “radical tarot school” by National Geographic, the Brooklyn Fools Tarot Journey has been an active Tarot Community since 2014.  Jeff’s teachings of the tarot go hand-in-hand with their astrological practice.

Finn Schubert (he/him) is the author of Even the Cemeteries Have Space Here, an essay collection exploring his move from NYC to a small town to grieve his infertility. (In a weird twist, he got pregnant as soon as the book came out.)  He is a Moth StorySlam-winning storyteller, and his writing has appeared in TheBody, Lit Star Review, and the anthologies Transcending: Trans Buddhist Voices and Places Like Home. He writes a weekly essays newsletter, titled "The Menstruant," exploring the question: What does it mean to be a gay man who loves having a uterus? (Right now: Pregnancy edition.)

Finn’s background is in public health and he most recently worked as the director of HIV services for a large community health center network in Brooklyn prior to transitioning to freelance consulting last year. He offers speaking and workshops regarding LGBTQ+ health, trans and nonbinary inclusion in workplaces and spiritual communities, and public health program design and evaluation. Finn currently lives in NYC and is at work on an essay collection.

Chanti Tacoronte-Perez is a Cuban-American artist-author, ritualist, and non-clinical depth psychologist. She believes that images speak a profound language; she spends her time translating the unseen and advocating for the imaginal. She is currently working on her doctoral dissertation on navigating the liminal via a creative-divinatory journey as an “Other way” to recover the marginalized, forgotten, and silenced. Her work and teaching centers imagination, creativity, dreaming, and deep rest. She teaches workshops and collaborative trainings focused on creativity, dreaming, intuitive movement, deep rest, and yoga nidra. Her passion is to inspire all to rediscover their creative self by resting, weaving the blessings with the wounds while honoring the land and ancestors.

It's become a bit of tradition to do a Q&A episode once a season. We've got some fantastic interviews still to come, but the scheduling worked out such that I had time to sit down and record a little solo chat with all of you answering the amazing questions you submitted via social media. I'm also announcing a very exciting new offering called Winter Solstice Tarot Study which is a five week container for clarifying and cultivating the specific lens through which you work with the cards.

Rachael Gonzalez (she/her/they) is an artist, licensed massage therapist, energy worker, broom maker & wortcunner residing in so-called Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She works to share knowledge, skills and resources to empower her clients to better care for themselves and feel supported—through informed touch, plant experience, cræfting & simple spells under the moniker FAMILIAR.

Brittany Carmona-Holt (she/her), “The Birth Witch,” is a full spectrum doula, birth photographer, and writer who has worked as a birth assistant to a local community midwife, and as a class facilitator for a community based doula training program - Day One Doula Collective. She is a queer, bisexual witch with ADHD who approaches her work within reproductive justice from a spiritual lens. Her book, Tarot for Pregnancy: A Companion for Radical Magical Birthing Folks was just published by new, revolutionary publisher Row House Publishing, just this past June. She is an amateur herbalist, a poet, a partner, and a parent to a beautiful gender-defiant unicorn child, Kahlo Sol, and is expecting her second babe this winter.

David Davis is a mystic, Diviner, and artist currently based in Ypsilanti, MI. As an eclectic occultist and student of the Hoodoo tradition, his work is founded on the principles of Animism and Ancestral veneration. At its core, Porous Palms is a celebratory exploration of identity and place, and the ways they inform our most essential experiences as human beings. This mixture of influences manifests as a diverse and ever-evolving expression of divinity, language, and ritual, resting at the borders of personal and communal realities.

Through his spiritual and educational endeavors, he seeks to contribute to the mending of intergenerational wounds (specifically those present within Afro-Diasporic communities) by honoring the resilience of the human spirit and preserving the Earth-based traditions of our Ancestors. Along with offering services and classes, David also sells a curated selection of spiritual products at Porous Palms Apothecary.

Jasper Joy is a white, genderqueer witch, tarot scholar, community chemist, venusian writer, and elder-babe residing among the rightful homelands of the Eastern Band of Cherokee people, both past and present (also known as Asheville, NC). Their work is defined by open-hearted ethics, neurodivergent experiences, and a blatant disrespect for the state. Jasper loves supporting queer and trans beings in areas of meditation, spiritual daily practice, spell-crafting, love, joy, and the sacred trans experience.

Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. Her first book of essays The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine will be published by Inner Traditions in November of this year and is currently available for pre-order. Her eco-feminist historical fiction reimagining of the gospels The Madonna Secret will also be published by Inner Traditions in Spring 2023.  

Cassandra Snow is a now a three-time Weiser author, having previously penned Queering the Tarot and Queering Your Craft: Witchcraft From the Margins. Professionally, Cassandra is a tarot reader and teacher who has taught students how to read cards in their own unique, personalized way everywhere from college campuses to burlesque studios. In their other life, Cassandra makes theatre happen, dabbles in storytelling, obsesses over tabletop roleplaying games, goes hiking, and devours books and movies. Their new book, Lessons from the Empress: A Tarot Workbook for Self-Care and Creative Growth, co-written with Siri Vincent Plouff, will be published October 1 by Weiser Books. 

Rebecca Scolnick is an emotional witch, forever seeker, and queer human lady (she/her), who uses magic and storytelling to support unlearning work and inspire new meaning-making. She hopes to provide spiritual and practical support for those looking to reclaim freedom from all of the ways in which our modern culture has taught us to hate ourselves, not know ourselves, and keep ourselves small. Rebecca lives in Manhattan with her wife and their pup. She’s deeply obsessed with them both. The Witch’s Book of Numbers is her first book.

Brittany Muller (@blessed.vigil) is an Austin-based writer and an enthusiastic believer in the beautiful strangeness of Christianity. A devout Catholic with an equally devout sense of curiosity, her favorite pastime is finding new ways to think about God. She is the author of The Contemplative Tarot: A Christian Guide to the Cards, which was published this past Tuesday, September 13 by St. Martin’s Essentials.

Share your thoughts on this conversation by leaving a review wherever you podcast, or by emailing us at isotpod@gmail.com

In our final installment of this special summer series, we're venturing into new territory with Oracle & Lenormand cards, examining the ways in which the work of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell led Tarot readers to apply more psychological and therapeutic interpretations to the cards, and discussing how we imagine Tarot might continue to expand and evolve into the future. One thing's for sure, Tarot readers have continued to find new ways to keep the cards relevant and the time is ripe for a new evolution of our practices and philosophies. 

Share your predictions and tell us what you've thought of this series by leaving a rating and review wherever you listen, and/or emailing us at isotpod@gmail.com.

Today we're casting light on "the wickedest man in the world," Aleister Crowley. If we had to choose a word to describe this guy it would be "extreme." From hearing the disembodied voices of Egyptian gods, to getting deported from Italy by the Italian government, Crowley's story is full of mania, bigotry, and obsession. Join us as we open this dark chapter of Tarot history. 

Tell us what you think of this episode! Email us at isotpod@gmail.com.

Welcome to one of the most highly documented periods in Tarot history: the codification of western occultism, the rise and prominence of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the creation of the Smith-Waite Tarot deck. It's a time marked by problematic syncretism, in which initiatory fraternities invented stories and misappropriated spiritual knowledge in an attempt to make their version of the Tarot more "legitimate." Although many of these practices have been cloaked in secrecy for centuries, we're bringing them to light in today's chapter of Tarot history!

Tell us what you think! Email us at isotpod@gmail.com and leave a rating and review wherever you podcast.

We're devoting the entirety of today's episode to the misunderstood and often completely erased story of the Romani people. Many of us in the Tarot community complain about the way cartomancy gets vilified and misrepresented by religion and pop culture. But the history of that stereotyping rests solely in the horrific persecution Roma have faced for centuries. Romani fortune-tellers have influenced and inspired countless Tarot practitioners over the years, and we owe it to them to lift up their voices and their stories.

Tell us what you think! Write in to isotpod@gmail.com and share this episode with a friend you think would enjoy learning about the history of the Tarot.

We're walking you thru a multi-episode exploration of the complete history of the Tarot (or at least what we know of it)! Playing card origins, erased Romani culture, occult misunderstandings, modern day innovations - we're weaving it all together to create the most comprehensive story that two self-described Tarot-nerds-turned-amateur-historians could ever hope to tell. 

CHAPTER ONE: Origins & Tarot de Marseille - Where and how did the Tarot come to be? What exactly do people mean when they talk about "traditional Tarot decks?" Who invented the Tarot de Marseille and why? We'll cover these foundational topics and more, including a discussion on the first artist to illustrate the pip cards (spoiler: it wasn't Pamela Colman Smith). 

If you're enjoying this series, please leave us a rating and review! You can also email us at isotpod@gmail.com 

Angeliska Polacheck (they/she) of Sister Temperance Tarot, is an Austin, Texas based writer, healer, and professional tarot reader. Devoted to helping seekers find their path, they utilize the tarot in a compassionate and trauma-informed combination of visionary mystic counseling and energy work. Angeliska has been working with the tarot for over 30 years now, and has been reading for clients professionally since 1999. Their dedication and genuine passion for creating joyful and intriguing connections has led to acclaim and recognition from the Chronicle's Best of Austin Awards as Austin's Best Tarot Reader/Psychic for the past eight years running.

IN THIS CONVERSATION Angeliska shares a bit about their incredibly eclectic spiritual upbringing which combined Celtic, Slavic, Jewish, and Romani influences, among others. We also discuss the important distinction between the practice of divination and the act of prediction, the all too often overlooked history of the Romani people within the overall story of the tarot, and the complicated way Jewish mysticism has been mis-applied within western esotericism.

Who told you not to tell the future? How might the act of divination be a form of resistance to the capitalistic/colonialist construction of time? IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION Angie and I are falling deep down the time rabbit hole that was opened during our recent interview with Jonathan Koe. Is it really possible to offer a "collective reading?" How can we use Tarot to subvert the linear idea of time? What changes when gender changes from a noun to verb?

Clint Marsh uses elements of myth, magic, folklore, and humor to help readers navigate everyday life. Growing up in rural Iowa, the son of entrepreneurs who encouraged him in his creative pursuits, Clint went on to pursue a journalism degree from the University of Iowa and has built a career as a writer, publisher, and book designer.