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March 8th

I’m not sure what I expected to find when I stepped into that little bookshop. Honestly, I wasn’t even looking for it. It was raining, that kind of lazy drizzle that seems to seep into your bones, and I just needed to get out of the cold. My boots squeaked against the wooden floor as I walked in, the smell of old books and something faintly spicy—cinnamon? clove? —filling the air.

The place was tiny, crammed with shelves that leaned under the weight of too many stories. It felt like stepping into another world, like I’d tripped through the back of my wardrobe into Narnia. And maybe I had, in a way.

The shopkeeper was perched behind the counter, a woman whose age was impossible to guess. Her hair was streaked with grey, but her eyes were sharp, glinting with some private amusement as though she knew the punchline to a joke I hadn’t heard yet. “Looking for something?” she asked, her voice low and warm, like the crackle of a fire.

I wasn’t, but I nodded anyway.

That’s when I saw it. Nestled on a cluttered table between a battered copy of The Alchemist and a tangle of dried herbs, there it was: a deck of Tarot cards. The box was scuffed, the edges worn soft from years of use. I wasn’t sure why I picked it up, only that my fingers seemed to move on their own.

“That one’s special,” the shopkeeper said, watching me carefully. “It has a way of finding the people it’s meant for.”

I laughed, nervously. “A pack of cards?”

She didn’t laugh back, just tilted her head, the ghost of a smile tugging at her lips. “You’d be surprised!”

I don’t know what compelled me to buy them. Curiosity, maybe. Or desperation. I’d been drifting for so long, feeling like I was stuck in neutral while everyone else had figured out how to shift into gear. A college dropout with a string of dead-end jobs and more half-finished projects than I could count, I wasn’t exactly living my best life. And then there was Emerson. Or the lack of him. We hadn’t spoken in months, a rift that felt as wide as an ocean.

The shopkeeper slipped the cards into a brown paper bag, handing them to me like she was passing me something sacred. “Good luck,” she said, her eyes lingering on mine. “You’ll need it.”

I shoved the bag into my knapsack, muttering a quick thanks before stepping back into the rain. The drizzle had thickened into something heavier, and I tugged my hood over my head, wondering why my chest felt so tight; it wasn’t the cold.

Later, in the quiet of my rented room, I opened the box. The cards were beautiful, their edges gilded, the illustrations intricate and strange. I shuffled them clumsily, half-expecting them to feel different, heavier somehow. When I finally drew one, my breath caught in my throat.

The Fool… A figure stood at the edge of a cliff, a small dog dancing at their heels, a knapsack slung over one shoulder. Their face was turned toward the sky, utterly unbothered by the abyss beneath their feet.

The shopkeeper’s words echoed in my mind: “It has a way of finding the people it’s meant for.”

I don’t know what it means yet. But maybe that’s the point. 

Maybe it’s time I find out… 

I was a curious child.

There are nine years between my brother and I so, whilst my brother is my best friend, I still feel like an only child on the inside. Bit of a loner. Usually trying to figure out how to get my own way. Have been called a brat, or worse. But in some ways that also makes me the same as everyone, curiously normal, normally curious. I’d a boss at work once who also called me “curious”, I think in terms of both definitions of the word. I was and am deeply interested in Figuring Things Out, but also very keen to do so on my own terms. Living in a way which resonates, with harmony… which is exactly what we’ll be talking about here. 

We all feel that way sometimes: out on a limb, or out on our own, not sure what to do with ourselves. A head full of wonder but sometimes full of things we can’t really describe in words. There’s a delta between the world we experience in everyday life and the world of our imagination. Trying to vault it can at first seem like a stretch, an adventure that we’re not quite yet ready, willing, or able to take the first step into.

As a child I tried to bridge that gap by filling my head with what a lot of my current friends would call “The Mental Stuff”. I can still vividly remember being about eight years old, reading the story of the “Green Children of Woolpit” and realising that if this was true, and as I had no reason to believe otherwise, then there was far more out there in the world than I had heard about so far. So in some version of reality, maybe the one we inhabit, there are civilisations inside the earth. Sometimes those people visit us on the surface and tell us stories about their inner sun, their ecosystem, their way of life which isn’t too far removed from our own. A fire was lit! I hungrily devoured any similar content I could get my hands on but as I evolved from flights of childhood fantasy to a more mature understanding of the esoteric, my first true revelation was whilst reading Biocentrism by Robert Lanza and Bob Berman. This book posits a very basic sentiment: the world which exists “out there” only really exists “in here”! Put another way, consciousness is primary and creates the material world, and not the other way around as we’re more commonly taught to believe. For me, this was a game changer!

My exploration of the weird world out there continues to this day. My brother and I make an annual pilgrimage to our favourite UFO Conventions; my podcast app is full of shows like “The Higherside Chats”, “Tin Foil Hat” or “My Family Thinks I’m Crazy”. I love the mystery of the unexplained, the stuff that happens on the fringes, things you only see out of the corner of your eye, (mind’s or otherwise). Being a weird kid was what helped me become aware that the weird world out there was part of me, and vice versa, that I could influence the world and not just be a passenger within it. Then I discovered Tarot… and another door creaked slowly but enticingly open!

I started learning only the Major Arcana thinking, as a lot of us do, that 78 cards is a mountain to climb so I’d just start small. Then, slowly and over time, I read a lot of books, found a few teachers that seemed to be on the same wavelength as me, and worked out a way to learn the full pack with a balance of the logical and the intuitive. I’m still learning, mindfully and with daily application, that it’s not so much about rote learning as it is about integration: taking time to reflect each day, to consider my place in the world, my role within my family, my community, and the world. Seeking to harmonise what I have still to learn with what I am already able to teach to those of a similarly open mind and heart, to bring empathy and balance and growth.

Which brings us here: the very beginning. Stay curious, keep an open mind, and let’s start this journey together with some very simple questions:

● Who are you?

● Why are you here? 

● What do you hope to achieve, or do, or become?

● What are your strengths and weaknesses, your obstacles and opportunities to achieving those goals?

● How can you truly realise a Growth Mindset?

Those types of questions, amongst many others, are what we’ll explore in the study of Tarot. In my experience it is THE ultimate can of worms. The whole wide world of the weird and wonderful welcomes you with open arms, novice reader! In this short book, we’re going to walk through the basic knowledge and tools you’ll need to read Tarot for yourself, for your friends and family and, with enough practice, who knows where else!

One very important point to remember: Tarot is as much an art as it is a science. It’s as much about trusting your gut, letting your intuition guide you, as it is about rote memorisation of 78 cards. That does not mean you need to be an “artist” in the traditional sense to read Tarot, I for one cannot draw or paint nor do I have any aptitude in what you might call the aesthetic arts. But I do have an open mind, and that’s what we’ll aim to cultivate here.

As well as an open mind, (and those of you who have done Mindfulness or Meditation work may already have heard this term), we’ll also cultivate Shoshin (or “Beginner’s Mind”). This Japanese Zen term refers to a paradox: the more you know about a subject, the more likely you are to close your mind to further learning. As the Zen monk Shunryu Suzuki put it in his 1970 book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: ‘In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s, there are few.’ It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level. Just as a beginner would.

Ready?