Thank you, Win. I’m delighted to be asked. I’m 55, I’m in a wheelchair with rheumatoid arthritis and I work from home as a professional reader of Tarot cards and runes.
I use intuition and my knowledge of Tarot to investigate questions for clients, accessing insights to support them with guidance or to help with problem solving and decision making. Readings may include forecasting but I don’t issue predictions. Comments about future developments are expressed in terms of probability. The future is not a lump of concrete waiting to fall on your head and Tarot is about finding what is true, supportive and potentially useful to say, and not about fortune telling for the sake of it.
How does one become a tarot reader? The routes are as individual as the reader. How did I, after previously working in colleges, teaching Business Studies, English and Design Theory, and before that in Marketing, Recruitment and Museums.
I was still a student when I was quite badly stung by wasps and about eighteen months later began having joint problems later diagnosed as an auto immune form of arthritis. By my early thirties, I was very unwell and losing mobility. Eventually I could no longer go out to work teaching. This was a great shock, the progression of this thing seemed utterly unrelenting and the doctors could do little. They had a series of medications to offer, and I tried a few but nothing worked, except by providing brief spells of pain relief for which I was very thankful but then the medication would lose its oomph.
It was difficult for my husband too, and I also had two children to care for during this time, one aged eleven, the other still a toddler. Pain and enforced immobility forced me to dig very deep in coping as the years passed. I’d always been aware of a certain ‘psychic’ sensitivity, and pretty much ignored it. I had always been nervous of it but now my intuition began to manifest itself in new , more extreme, and sometimes unsettling ways, and then one night I had a medically diagnostic dream which later checked out by a doctor’s lab test. Did it mean I got better? Did a miracle happen? No, unfortunately. But I had gained an insight into the nature of the problem which greatly assisted and empowered me in discussions with doctors and making decisions about my own treatments.
I decided to see if I could train this capability for practical use by learning to read the Tarot, starting out, as many readers do, by reading for myself, and then for family and friends and finally, reading at a service level for people I didn’t know.
I also teach English Language/Literature, working freelance and I write tarot content, with short fiction, verse and other bits and pieces published here and there. I’ve finished writing a novel about a grieving young policeman who is a psychic medium, and he doesn’t know it yet but he’s about to find out. I plan to publish it but finding a publisher...that’s easier said than done. Debut publishing is a fiercely crowded market and Tarot reading isn’t a magic answer for anything.
2: What is your biggest life lesson?
The world is wide. As one door closes, another opens. Stay curious and keep opening doors, life keeps on getting bigger. I hear so many stories but people rarely fail to impress me with their courage, their responsiveness, and their warmth and grace under pressure even when they are distressed and looking for a bit of help for themselves. So long as someone can keep some kind of perspective, and laugh at themselves even just a little, they may get bent in the storm, but you see they’re not going to break, never going to be absolutely overwhelmed by despair.
Little things can help you when things are dark. They have helped me; a robin outside your window asking to be fed, an early flower, a smile from a stranger. You can feel completely worn out one day, but better the next.
3: What is your biggest achievement?
I’ve done a few things I’m thankful for, and glad I did, and proud of, but I don’t tend to think in terms of achievements. It’s funny how things work out sometimes. I have learned so much from working with the Tarot, things I might never have learned if it had not been for becoming so ill and having to change direction. I would never have volunteered for this experience but I couldn’t wish it undone either, for all the things it has taught me. I can’t just go a walk when I want to, but I’ve seen things that have changed the way I see the world, and the world comes into my home through my work.
I was once featured for my work in a national circulation magazine called ‘Fate and Fortune’ but actually, this was a bit frustrating. I had to do two readings for volunteers invited in straight off the street and it went very well, but I could not say everything I really wanted to say to them. It would not have been fair to them, not with a journalist listening in and taking notes. There was sensitive stuff going on with both of them and it would have been completely unfair for me to have said everything I saw for it to have ended up in public view in a magazine article.
4. How can people get in contact with you?
I’m easy to find on twitter @truetarottales. Or I can be contacted via my website at www.tacticaltarot.co.uk or via my blog at www.TrueTarot Tales.com