Is Everyone Secretly Reading Tarot Cards?

Many women in midlife are finding comfort in this addictively soothing spiritual practice.

If you had told me years ago that I would become a person who actually starts sentences with “Do you want me to pull a tarot card for you?” I would have laughed out loud.

But here I am, and I can’t think of a recent late night bacchanal, a girls’ weekend, or a quickie midweek 5 p.m. cocktails and roasted chicken dinner with friends that hasn’t ended in me doing a tarot reading for some or all of my people. It’s too intoxicating an offer; no one can resist. I know I can’t. I can’t keep my hands off of my own cards. 

Tarot cards are thought to have originated in the 15th century in Italy, and over time, became symbolic divinatory tools, something that people reach for over and over for spiritual guidance and self-reflection. 

During the pandemic and now in the chaos of the post-Covid era, so many people, including myself, have been seeking something outside of themselves, and outside of religion, as a way of staying centered and sane.

“In our post-internet, post-Covid, post-everything era, it’s no surprise that people are looking for ways to find meaning,” Izzy Yon writes in Avante Art. “Tarot cards do exactly that.”

I had never been a particularly “woo woo” person beyond a passing interest in my horoscope, but during the pandemic I found myself dabbling in things like meditation and forest bathing. Tarot seemed like it could be an intriguing adjunct to my new hippie dippy practices. So I found deck, read the tiny “quick study” pamphlet that came with it, and began to dick around with the cards while we were all shut in. 

Once we were released back into the wild, somewhat surprisingly, my curiosity only grew. While shopping for a present for my stepson the pulp tarot deck by artist Todd Alcott caught my eye. I started to think about how tarot captivates so many artists, many who have put their own spin on decks, including Salvador Dalí, and I really began to see the allure. 

I started to consult teachers and search out more detailed meanings and symbolism. Soon enough, doing readings for myself was turning into a regular morning habit, just like coffee and journaling before hitting the New York Times games app and social media. 

All tarot readings are basically set up to hone or reinforce intuition which is probably why they are slightly addicting, or perhaps, so soothing. The cards basically either underscore that you’re not crazy, or they kind of Cher-in-Moonstruck slap you if you need to snap the fuck outta something. 

For such a headstrong devotee to my own inclinations and desires since I was a kid (for better or worse, I trust myself above all else), I found that once I began to “pull” cards, what I gleaned was not new. Rather, it was simply an enhanced “reason” to continue on whatever path I was walking. Or, sometimes, it was a reminder that dipping a toe back into a pool where I once splashed around, proverbially, would end up with me drowning. 

If I was wondering about a decision I had made, as to whether or not something would bring me contentment, for example, checking in with the tarot cards often encouraged me to persevere or stay the course. Likewise, I would be lying if I told you that I’ve haven’t sometimes asked the cards for, let’s face it, “permission” to start daydreaming about a particularly delicious ex-boyfriend, and they’ve delivered a resounding, “FUCK NO.”

A reading can be just a few minutes long or I can suddenly realize I’ve been sitting with the cards for nearly an hour. On the go-go-go mornings when I’m rushed and I skip it, I feel myself itching to get back to the cards later in the day.

They inspire, soothe, and maybe tweak me a bit when it comes to control—gaining it or giving it up. In other words, as a pretty laid-back 50-something-year-old woman with a strong Boss Lady (cough, control) streak, reading the tarot is both freeing and self-affirming. Like a gentle but smartass guardian angel whispering in my ear, “Oh you knew that!” Or “Da fuck are you thinking?”

And since we’re all such little islands unto ourselves (Buddha said that, not me), I assumed, once I started mentioning my morning tarot habit to my friends, that I wasn’t the only one who might be sneaking a peek at the cards. I was correct. 

After asking around my circle of pals, I learned that more than a few of them had decks and were in the habit (when they were grappling with an idea, a heartbreak, or a hope) of pulling a lone card as an indicator for either how the day would go or, in some cases, what to do about something (answer: you texted him once already, now you need to wait). 

Some of these friends had decks that they’d handled since they were teenagers. Like one, who comes from what I’ll call a tarot-friendly family. She doesn’t have a defined daily practice, but knows that if she picks up the deck, she’ll learn something. But many, like me, had come into tarot in the last few years. While tarot has become a bit of a social media craze among younger millennials and Gen Z (there is even a pretty impressive primer on all things tarot in Glamour) those of us in midlife have been finding it in our own way. 

I have a friend in her 40s who lives in Los Angeles, who has always dabbled in the more spiritual world (“I am a seeker,” she says) but who just started pulling her own cards in the last year. 

“I have more emotional and physical space now to study and learn,” she says. “I have more agency with my schedule so I can really nurture my interests in a way I wasn’t able to when I was in my 30s.”

Though it wasn’t Covid that brought tarot into her life, she took up the practice at a time of uncertainty. “Right after I turned 42 I got reconnected with one of my teachers who I had been getting tarot readings from over the last decade,” she says. “I had recently gone through a big change with my relationship to my recovery around drugs and alcohol, my heart was a little bruised from a failed situation-ship, and I was struggling with being unmarried and childless. My teacher had recently opened a brick-and-mortar Western Mysteries Magic School, and she simply suggested that maybe I was ready to start learning rather than just paying for healings.”

My friend quickly signed up for an intro to magic class and her tarot journey began. “I found that the more I explored and opened up to magic classes, the less afraid I was of the future and the more excited I became about my uncertain life.”

Here on the East Coast, another friend recently decided to (quite literally) take things into her own hands.  She consulted a professional tarot reader in the aftermath of her divorce a few years back, then moved onto doing her own readings as well. 

I also found that a few friends, oddly, since we discuss absolutely everything else, weren’t in the habit of discussing their tarot practice. Not in a Fight Club kind of way but perhaps because it’s so deeply personal. 

But once the door was unlocked, so to speak, I found myself having conversations with other readers. We sometimes share our cards, announcing, “Whoa, you will not believe what I pulled today” when a reading contains all Major Arcana cards (that means, pay attention!). Or maybe when a reading turned up The Devil and The Tower (it’s a burning tower with lightning striking it—one guess as to what that means) and the Nine of Swords (otherwise known as the anxiety card or the 3 a.m. card). You don’t have to know the precise meaning of those cards to know it’s time to fasten your seatbelts.

My preferred place to pull cards? At my kitchen island, where my various books on readings and my tarot notebook (where I jot things down to look back at and see if what I pulled and what occurred in my life has in fact jibed) sit stacked in what has become a perma-place of honor.

Since I started this little tabletop tarot shrine, I’ve been going deeper into my unconscious mind on a regular basis, and I feel very grounded. More often than not, my already good intuition seems even sharper, and I’ve heard the same from my fellow tarot readers.

Is Tarot the new hot yoga? I doubt it. But if I knew that serenity came in a neat little package of 78 cards (serenity for what I hope I will manifest and serenity for what I know is not meant for me), I would’ve gotten all Stevie Nicks a whole lot sooner.

INTRIGUED? Below, I’ve listed a few things (and people!) to help you get started.

The Ultimate Guide to Tarot: A Beginner’s Guide to the Cards, Spreads, and Revealing the Mystery of the Tarot
This book by Liz Dea is easy to read or pick up and put down as a reference guide, has the fundamental readings that anyone can do, and also dips into the tarot’s links with Kabbala, the Hebraic Tree of Life, Jungian thought, Freemasons, the Egyptian book of wisdom, the list goes on and on.

Rider-Waite tarot deck
Created in the early 1900s, with over 100 million copies sold, this deck has ties to academia, metaphysics, magic, 19^th and 20^th century occultism, theurgy, and academia.

Tarot Art at The Met Museum
You can view it in person in NYC or online.

Cult Mother
She’s Irish, she’s bossy as fuck, and her interpretations/readings of single cards are spot on. 

Chris Corsini
He signs (ASL) while he reads multiple card spreads and does monthly astrology readings, which in and of itself is incredible to witness, and his accuracy is nothing short of breathtaking.

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