It was around the beginning of the year in 2019 that I got my first tarot deck. This whole journey started with a crystal from She’s Unique that changed my whole world so my journey to tarot felt a little inevitable. Some believe your first deck should come to you, and mine did when I ordered it online and shipped it to my house. Sometimes you have to grab your own fate and future. I was moved to finally get my own deck after reading by a friend at a pop-up. It was a dope experience and I wanted to play with the cards more. I won’t even share how many decks I have now but let’s just say I recently decided it was time to pay some of them forward. When I started reading for myself, I started discovering how many friends and people around me love tarot too. I was surprised by how quickly many friends wanted me to read them. I have always had a strong intuition and have been really connected with my gut. In fact, I was super excited when I learned about the enteric nervous system (ENS), basically a “little brain” in your gut because it just made sense.
So I started giving it a go and I actually REALLY liked it. Equally important, the folks I was reading for really enjoyed the experience. Not only that but many had also never encountered tarot or had religious hesitations so for them to trust me to hold space for them was really an honor. It also made me want to dig deeper and learn more. I think of what we know as a giant pie with a few slices missing. The whole pie is all of the information that we are aware of. The slices in the pie that remain are the things that you know. The missing slices in the pie are the things that you know that you don’t know. Everything outside of the pie is the unknown. When you learn new things, the slices and empties probably don’t change that much. I imagine that the whole pie grows as you learn more and gain knowledge and also as you learn more that you don’t know but are now at least aware of.
Crystals and Tarot have opened up whole other worlds for me and I had no idea they would continue to stretch and grow me as it has. I’m going on a year at Smudge Wellness and it continues to amaze me how much getting connected with Smudge has changed my life. I almost always have at least one tarot deck on me, wherever I go and just about everything that I do in life is done with intention. As I write this, I realize that moving with that intention has often actually drawn things to me. For example, I always keep a swimsuit in my purse in the summertime, and inevitably, I spend a lot of time in the summer by the pool in the water. I am starting to look at it as an extension of my manifesting. By carrying that energy with me, I manifested opportunities for me to be in the water throughout each summer. I feel like it has been the same with my tarot cards. Carrying them with me has given me more opportunities to study them and read with friends. I had the opportunity to read for a friend at dinner the other day and it was such a nice bonding experience. It gives me an opportunity to share my light with the people I love most in the world.
I was recently feeling called to deepen my tarot study and practice. I was often doing a mix of channeling and utilizing the different decks and their books. While that works and no one has ever complained or questioned my process, I started to feel like I could be speaking more from my heart and spirit than through the book. I’ve always embraced my intuition and trusted it a ton so it felt natural to lean more into it for my readings. Also, there were often times when the book was close, or aspects of it were right but maybe there was more to the story. There were times when I first started reading, I would get messages that did not make immediate sense to me so I would hesitate to speak on it but then I started to realize that I was blocking the energy and that the messages were not for me. So I started letting them out, not all of them because my background in psychology gave me some good ethical foundation, but I started realizing that the messages weren’t for me in those moments and that as long as the person I was reading for understood it, that was what mattered. It also taught me a lot about minding my own business. Sometimes the messages are personal and definitely not for me.
Reading for my friends has also really kept reading for me fresh and interesting. It gives new life to the cards and fresh energy to my reading and practice. It’s like working out a muscle and with each reading that muscle gets stronger. I was called to study even more and wanted to find a class that would speak to me and my background. I was recently accepted into the Cecilia Weston Tarot Academy which is a digital learning experience led by a Black woman and when the first reading was bell hooks, I knew I was in the right place. Tarot is an amazing practice that is for everyone who is interested. Reading for yourself or others is such a great experience and I cannot wait to continue to share tarot insights with the Smudge Community. Go over to Smudge Wellness Instagram to share with us about your tarot journey.
