Rider Waite Smith deck for the win, Yo. x

Sooo, this post is coming to you as part of a Tarot Jam Blog Hop that the gorgeous Shonna from Ace of Stars Tarot has organised for all us Tarot bloggers out there! YAY Shonna! It's my first blog hop so I don't really know what I'm doing. I think I'm supposed to do something like this:

Previous Post - your link to the fab Deirdre Doran of Willow Path Tarot

Next Post - your link to my grrl crush Carrie from Happy Fish Tarot, you can find out what she eats on her Pizza here.

The Master List - is your link to all the peeps so you can blog hop to your heart's content!

And so what's this blog hop all about? It's a chance for us Tarot bloggers and vloggers to tell our Tarot Stories, and so this is mine...

My Tarot story is actually pretty long and really complicated. I could probably write a novel, or more like a trilogy about the whole thing, but in the interest of keeping this short and sweet I thought I'd tell my story via Timelines and Tarot Cards!

Six of Cups

When I was little my granddad told me some really cool stories about ghosts. He told me about people in our family who could see ghosts, and I remember being really excited about the idea that that I could see something like that. It was my first conversation (in this life, that I can remember!) about ghosts and woo woo stuff.

Nine of Swords

As a kid I was always talking to "God" and wanting to know answers. I had an imaginary friend for a while who seemed pretty real to me. I was pretty creative and imaginative and open to the idea of ghosts, but when I heard a ghost in the house talking to my cat when I was about 10, it totally freaked me out! I think this is when I decided that being open to “this stuff” was a bit too freaky and began to zip up my third eye, like so many of us do.

Page of Cups

I was always divining for answers long before I had a Tarot deck. When I was a kid I used to write answers on bits of paper, put them in a bag and pull them out. I flipped coins. I wrote yes and no on opposite sides of my eraser and threw it in the air to make decisions. I made fortune teller things out of paper. I did numerology love percentages. I played those games in my head "if I get this in the bin it means the teacher won't check my homework tomorrow". I invented all sorts of bizarre divination games. Tarot for me was never about Tarot, it was more like finding a way to do all this stuff I'd always done a lot more easily and accurately.

Three of Cups

It was the 90's when I was in high school so I joined a coven. I got really into Wicca and crystals, and runes and all that good stuff. I was a dabbling kind of Pagan, Wiccan, New-Ager type for many years, frequenting crystal shops, reading all the books, and I think I may have even had some kinds of card decks, but I can't remember if I had a Tarot deck, which sounds pretty weird, but it's because of what happened next...

The Heirophant

Towards the end of high school I became a born again Christian and I burned all my Wicca and New Age books in a fire on a hill and renounced the false idols! I remember burning books about witchcraft, spell books, and I put my runes on the fire, but I don't remember if there were Tarot or Oracle cards involved. It was a strange but very interesting time in my life.

Four of Wands

Fast forward another couple of years and going out clubbing began to be way more interesting than going to church, and it felt hypocritical to do both, so I chose clubbing. Oh yeah, and also that bit about how everyone who wasn't a Christian was going to hell, that always kind of didn't totally resonate y'know? So I left the church, keeping Jesus with me as a teacher and guide but letting the rest go.

The Fool

It wasn't too long before I began to be drawn back into the New-Age spiritual world, heading back to the crystal shops and even buying my very first (maybe!?) Tarot deck – the Hanson Roberts Tarot. I bought the Idiots Guide to Tarot and my deep love for Tarot was born. For the next ten years I read for myself and friends with some pretty awesome results.

Two of Swords

I was in a total funk with work stuff, so I bought a Tarot reading off Etsy. The reading was pretty terrible. It was full of typos and spelling mistakes, except the parts that were very obviously cut and pasted from the internet. Oh yeah, and it didn't even answer my question! When I told one of my friends about it she was like "you are so good at reading cards, you should trust your own readings". *Light bulb moment!*

High Priestess

One day shortly after that reading, I just like, “got” Tarot. I stopped “reading the cards” and started to read intuitively. When I felt like actually I wasn't bad at this, I did 100 free readings before I charged any money for my services, and then, I started up my little Etsy Shop, and my Tarot and Woo Woo Blog became my business!

Eight of Pentacles

And so now here I am, working my butt off on making New Age Hipster a thing, doing readings for gorgeous souls, teaching e-courses on how to be woo woo, and generally just vibing high and loving life as a Tarot pro!

The Sun

And this is where we're headed, and actually we are already well on our way! Bringing Tarot back into the light, making it mainstream, shining bright as we remind others that Tarot is not a creepy scary dark thing, it's just art. It's just signs. It's just like spotting a billboard with the message you needed, but it's in your back pocket.

Tarot is a tool that has helped me to develop my intuition, that allows me to help others, to see what's going on for people and to help folks make decisions for their highest and best good. Tarot cards are bloody marvellous! They are beautiful, accurate divination tools and one of my favourite things on the planet. But if all the Tarot cards disappeared, we'd be OK. We'd make our own decks out of bits of paper, or flip coins, or just use our imaginations to come up with crazy systems that help us tap into those parts of our brain, our divine connection, and deep within ourselves to help us find the answers that we're looking for. After all, where do you think Tarot cards came from?

What Tarot card or cards represents your Tarot journey? Where are you right now and where are you headed? We don't just use Tarot to show us the potential future, we can also use it to help us create it. ;-)

Love, light and Tarot Hop Timelines!

Vix