I was preparing for another day as a social worker in the summer of 2018, struggling to find accommodation for one of my care leavers who was 18, when I opened an email from a tarot reading client I had seen the day before.
My reading, she said, was “hugely inspirational” and gave her the confidence to restart a business she had abandoned due to a traumatic sequence of events in her life.
‘You said you saw fruit trees and herbs all around me and little jars of jam – I ran an organic condiment shop. I had thought about restarting it, but I had lost confidence – now I think I will go back to it,” she wrote.
Immediately, I felt this burst of excitement, like when I had solved a problem for one of my teenagers in care. I had recently been reading for strangers, so it was reassuring to see that the intuitive messages I had been getting for my friends and family since my teenage years translated to everyone I read tarot for.
And it occurred to me that tarot reading is not that different from social work.
Aside from solving saving issues, a big part of social work is about empowering people to make beneficial changes in their lives and giving them the confidence to achieve goals that will improve their lives – which is also be what most people get out of a modern world. daily tarot reading.
Tarot readings have a reputation for being secret or mysterious ways to “predict the future” and many people are afraid of getting “bad cards” or being told something horrible. But any reputable tarot reader these days will focus on strengths, positives, and ways to inspire someone to make needed changes in their life, rather than predicting pessimism or abstract statements that leave you perplexed, like “you will have five children”.
Social work in a local authority was not what I thought it would be as a fresh recruit of 39, setting out to solve the world’s problems. I loved working with teenagers leaving care because they had so much energy and enthusiasm.
But there was so much time spent filling out paperwork and begging managers at “resource meetings” for help with appropriate support packages, as well as troubleshooting issues with benefits, that I barely got to spend quality time with the young people in my workload.
Most of them had been “in the system” for years, enduring multiple placements and school changes, grief and loss, and in some cases criminal or sexual exploitation.
Somehow it was my job as “their last social worker” to befriend them, support them and set them up for successful independence in a short time. . It was the hardest job I’ve ever had – relentless and exhausting.
After three years, I was exhausted and had to leave. The thank you cards from the young people I accompanied when I left made me cry.
As I recovered and looked for a new job, I turned to tarot. I had always had a game on hand since I was 15, when my mother gave me hers. I didn’t even know she read tarot and we never really discussed spiritual matters.
I studied the system in my haunted room (during the redecoration, my parents had found pages of the Bible and an exorcism certificate under the wallpaper) and had started collecting different tarot decks shortly. after.
I learned the basic meaning of the cards in about a year, but now that I’ve been reading for 30 years, I find there’s even more to learn, the symbology is so vast.
When I got used to using them it was like the cards were having a conversation with me, telling me about my crazy plans and ideas, and when I was reading for friends the things I predicted in their readings started to occur.
I told a friend that she would emigrate and then have a problem with “two bosses” which would make her leave – within three months she was on the phone from America, saying she was changing job due to terrible office politics between two senior men on his team.
But it wasn’t until after the Covid shutdowns that I decided to act on my passion for tarot and open an online tarot and oracle shop, The Wootique London.
It should have been scary to invest all my savings in an idea that came to me out of the blue, but the preparations for the opening of the store seemed to be falling into place without any problems. I felt excited, it was like the universe wanted me and told me there were other ways to help people.
I tapped into a global community of tarot readers on Instagram and my tarot readings also became more popular, as I was able to submit them via email.
People ask me “how can you read tarot for someone who isn’t there?”, but I believe the intention to connect is all you need to connect to the energy around another person, as long as they consent.
A man came to see me for his very first reading. I saw that he was going to be asked to reapply for his own job and that he should change companies instead – again he contacted me to let me know that his company had been restructured and at the instead of complaining, he had taken the advice of the tarot and applied for a new job, which turned out to be much better paid.
Of course, I’m not saying that the tarot should be followed to the letter. We all have agency and you must use your own discernment. However, I have found that riding the wave of positivity you feel after viewing the cards can be the first step to making constructive life changes.
I still work part-time in a charity social work role because it’s my calling to help others, but I truly believe I can help as many people change their lives with tarot as I can with social work – and my goal is to provide the tools for change to as many people as possible.
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