All in the Cards
For d.c. residents, Tarot cards hold space for spirituality — and the unknown.
By Elizabeth Ballou Illustrations by Devin Symons
Every day around noon, my smartphone buzzes with a notification: “Your card of the day is ready to be drawn.” When I tap on it, an app called Golden Thread Tarot shuffles a digital deck of 78 tarot cards, then pulls one: the Sun, the Six of Wands reversed, the Seven of Cups, the Tower reversed.
The card is supposed to signify how my day will go, and though it’s only a single card, I find myself paying attention to what it says. If my daily card tells me to be grateful for the positivity in my life, I will be. If the card says I am creatively stalled, I ask myself if that’s true.
And I’m not the only one who does this: Golden Thread Tarot has been downloaded more than 500,000 times on the Android app store alone and has more than 6,000 reviews on the Apple App Store. As the clock strikes noon in one time zone after another, tens of thousands of Android and iPhone users draw their card of the day.
The app’s widespread use is due to a recent renaissance in New Age spirituality, which includes tarot as well as astrology, witchcraft, and fortune-telling. Other tarot apps abound, including Luminous Spirit, Galaxy Tarot, and The Fool’s Dog suite of themed decks with hand-drawn illustrations.
Though phone apps have made tarot card readings accessible to the masses, looking to cards for insight into the past, present and future is a tradition that’s been around since playing cards were invented. Cartomancy, or divination using cards, was first popularized when playing cards were introduced to Europe in the 14th century. The standard deck of 78 cards, like the one that Golden Thread Tarot uses, emerged in Paris in the late 1700s. Since then, tarot card readers have looked to the deck to answer their most pressing questions.
As a game designer, I have always been fascinated by tarot cards. If mysticism and game design met at a bar and went home together, tarot cards would be their beautifully illustrated baby, born under the light of a full moon. That’s why, when I get the chance to receive a tarot reading from a local expert, I immediately say yes.
I text my friends to see who wants to come with me to meet Emily, the tarot reader who promises to unravel the secrets of our lives. That’s how I find myself heading toward Dupont Circle with Flora and Cary one evening in June. (I’m not using their real names, or Emily’s last name, because tarot still carries a whiff of taboo.)
As the three of us chug through early-evening traffic, I take the group’s pulse on tarot. I want to know whether I’m in the company of skeptics or believers.
“I’m excited!” says Flora as she weaves through the traffic, cheery as usual. Like me, Flora used to play around with tarot cards as a kid. In fact, magic first brought us together: We were both tapped to join a Harry Potter-themed secret society in college. We both received character names from the books, and Flora’s was Fawkes, after Dumbledore’s phoenix. The name fits. Flora is smart, incandescently positive, and thin-boned, like a bird.
Cary’s tarot experience is limited to a single episode of Long Island Medium, she says. Of the three of us, Cary is the most reserved, and also the most skeptical. She’s especially quiet now as we scramble for a spot in a crowded parking garage. Cary both looks and talks like April, Aubrey Plaza’s character from Parks and Recreation. Both are witty, dry and aloof to strangers. I was surprised she wanted to tag along in the first place.
None of us had a real reading from a professional before. We’re all excited yet trepidatious: What if the things Emily says are crap, so off-base that we can’t even pretend they make sense? Or, alternatively, what if Emily’s cards reflect unflinchingly honest versions of ourselves, like unflattering, candid photos that make people wince and say, “Is that really me?”
When we arrive at the bar, a Russian place decked out in Slavic kitsch from the past half-century, Emily is already waiting for us. She’s wearing a young professional’s snappy, polished attire. No scarves, no bangles, no heavy eyeshadow — none of the stereotypes people associate with tarot readers.
I introduce her to Flora and Cary, and we munch on blinis as we break the ice. Emily pulls her deck from her bag, and I notice that she uses the Goddess tarot, which is my favorite deck because it replaces the typical figures of the major arcana with goddesses from all over the world.
Any of a tarot deck’s 78 cards could turn up in a reading. Without anyone to interpret them, simply flipping over tarot cards wouldn’t signify much. That’s why the tarot reader’s task is to bestow meaning on each spread of cards. Tonight, that task will fall to Emily.
Flora and Cary shake the ice in their glasses. My gaze darts from person to person. None of us is entirely sure what to say to someone who handles tarot cards — and people’s most intimate questions — for a living.
But I’m also eager to get started because I have a question I need guidance on. “I’ll go first,” I say. “There’s something I really want to ask you.”
—
When I remember being ten years old, I picture myself hunched over a spread of tarot cards on my bedroom floor. I would flip the cards into ornate configurations, studying them with the intensity of a general double-checking her battle plans. The Four of Cups meant self-absorption. The prince of staves pointed to an instigator. And the Hanged Man meant sacrifice. I noted each of these in a journal adorned with Hello Kitty stickers.
Later, I’d consult the readings to answer pressing questions. Which video game would I play next? Why hadn’t Camille invited me to her birthday party? And how could I get As on my math quizzes?
But life moved on, and my tarot cards grew dusty. When I started playing Persona 5 in the winter of 2018, it marked the first time I’d thought critically about tarot cards in almost 15 years.
The latest in a franchise of Japanese role-playing video games, Persona 5 is infamous for taking nearly 100 hours to complete. The game tells the story of an outcast teenage boy with the ability to enter other people’s mental landscapes. In these psychological limbos, he battles demons of pride, jealousy and anger to make people more empathetic and respectful. Along the way, he collects a ragtag crew of helpers and friends. Each are represented by a Major Arcana card from the tarot deck.
As I racked up entire days inside Persona 5’s Tokyo, I shared my thoughts with Theo, a man I met while visiting Montreal. Theo was soft-spoken but had a sharp sense of humor. He liked to wear button-down shirts with funky patterns — guitars, cats, ferns — and he loved to talk about video games.
We kept talking after I flew home. When I told him I’d released a game on Steam, a gaming platform, he downloaded it right away. The next morning, he sent me a series of texts, asking thoughtful questions about what I was trying to convey with this plot arc or that game mechanic. Before long, our online chats turned into near-daily video calls, and we decided to start dating. He flew to D.C. to visit me. As we wandered by the memorials and monuments that dotted the northern shore of the Potomac, we held hands and pretended we were inside the post-apocalyptic landscape of Fallout 3.
By the time I email Emily about tarot, I am almost done with Persona 5, and I am starting to notice problems in my relationship with Theo. He lives in another country. He hasn’t had many relationships before, and he doesn’t always know how to communicate his needs. Instead of telling me he’s upset, Theo gets snarky or distant. “He’s a man-child,” remarks one of my roommates when I describe Theo’s behavior. “Don’t put up with it.” Maybe she’s right, I think.
In Persona 5, characters receive their tarot cards when they realize that a part of their lives has to change. The question I want to ask Emily: Should my relationship with Theo change?
—
Emily is the proprietor of Woven Psyche, a tarot practice. She’s also a lawyer. The two might seem incongruous, but to her, they are complementary: Being a lawyer takes emotional energy, and tarot restores it. Emily doesn’t believe that tarot is divination (a ritual that predicts the future); which might, depending on who in the tarot community you ask, seem unconventional or even antithetical to tarot reading.
Instead, Emily views tarot as a reflection of someone’s current, rather than future, state. Her clients can use the wisdom from their sessions to change their lives.
I met Emily for the first time a few days before the reading in the bar. Emily came straight from a full day at her law firm, but talking about tarot after a crammed workday seemed to energize her.
“I believe in free will,” she said, shrugging. “When someone asks me, ‘Am I going to get married?’ I say, ‘Do you want to get married?’ The cards are a tool for decision-making.”
This approach is especially clear at the bar, when Flora asks Emily what to do with her family. Flora and her fiancé aren’t as traditional as her parents would like, Flora explains. They live together despite her parents’ complaints, and Flora’s status as the breadwinner grates against her family’s conservative ideas about gender.
Flora leans toward Emily from her tottering stool. How much consideration, Flora wonders, should she give to her parents’ feelings?
Emily looks at the Hierophant (which the Goddess deck reimagines as the Roman deity Juno), then the six of pentacles reversed. “I think,” she says, “you’re going to do what you want anyway. And they’ll live.”
“They better,” says Flora, laughing and nodding. I realize that nothing Emily is telling her is news. Instead, Emily is floating an idea about how Flora could choose to shape her future — you are comfortable forging your own path, away from your parents’ expectations — and Flora is confirming that this is the direction she wants.
But unlike Flora, I have absolutely no idea what I want to do.
—
A few days earlier, during our first meeting, Emily told me she has always loved the occult and the mystic. In fifth grade, she watched The Craft in a friend’s basement and was entranced by the 1996 movie about four high schoolers who become witches, only to be seduced by the power that dark magic promises—like Heathers, by way of the Salem Witch Trials.
“It was grunge-punk and edgy and dark and almost this feminist coup,” Emily said. “I liked the idea of being powerful.”
In high school, Emily played with various tarot decks but never took tarot reading seriously. But when she relocated to D.C. in 2010, she moved in with a woman who came from a long line of tarot readers. This roommate taught Emily to use a tarot deck properly, and Emily soon started attending meetings at the D.C. Tarot Society. Before long, Emily read tarot as both a hobby and a way to make a little extra cash.
Emily sees mystic practices such as tarot as an essential part of young women’s lives, especially those who have high-powered careers or live in big cities such as D.C. Along with readings, she offers personalized sessions and retreats that offer tarot as a form of self-care. Recently, she launched the Online Tarot Classroom, a video-based experience that aims to increase accessibility by helping budding tarot readers hone their own ability to navigate the cards.
“There’s a feminism to witchcraft,” Emily told me. “Witchcraft has been a tool to empower women since the days of yore.” The rituals and trappings of witchcraft coupled with its otherworldliness create a sense of spiritualism that can be absent from the lives of many modern women.
Emily believes tarot can help busy, emotionally exhausted women work through the labyrinth of thoughts they’ve pushed aside. “Tarot is a very visual practice, and we have individual associations with each card,” she says. “It works kind of like an inkblot test in that it forces us to deal with whatever is below the surface of our minds. It helps us organize our thoughts and validate our emotions and dig into our inner wisdom.”
For Emily, the tarot deck — which traditionally features half male imagery, half female — strikes a powerful balance. It’s that sense of balances she hopes to bestow upon the women who seek out Woven Psyche.
—
Our waiter brings another round of drinks, and I tell Emily the story of Theo: What I like about him (all our common interests) and what I don’t like about him (his inability to communicate) and what I can’t decide (is he worth it?). I try to wrap up the tale with some kind of cohesive question, but I can’t figure out how, so I trail off lamely: “Uh, so...that’s about it.”
In response, Emily hands the cards to me. “Shuffle as long as you feel it’s necessary to do a good job.”
Flora and Cary watch as I cut the deck and shuffle. The cards make a light thump-thump-thump as they fall neatly on top of each other. “Since we’re doing mini-readings, we’ll start with three cards,” Emily says. As heavy Russian pop music blares in the background, Emily flips over the top three cards and lays them in a row.
“Okay,” she muses. “This first card, the Three of Pentacles, is about creating a foundation and a sense of security for yourself. You’re looking for something that feels rooted.” That’s part of why I might feel conflicted about my Canadian boyfriend, Emily explains. Geographic barriers make putting down roots hard.
Cary catches my eye and raises her brow. I don’t need to ask her what that means: We’ve discussed my love life enough times that I know she agrees with Emily and the cards. It’s common for gamers to deepen their relationships by playing multiplayer games while video-chatting, like Theo and I do. But Cary doesn’t think all that video-chatting can replace talking. Though I don’t want to admit it, she’s right. When Theo struggles to explain what he’s feeling, it’s even harder for me to figure out the emotions struggling to break through his polished, sarcastic shell if all I have is a grainy image that stutters along with my WiFi connection’s whims.
“Normally,” Emily continues, “you would be looking to your boyfriend to be sort of a rock, but he’s not going to do that for you.” She points to the next card, the Prince of Pentacles reversed. “Court cards usually represent real people, so I’m going to guess this is him. He’s ambitious, and he wants to do well, but he’s not quite there yet.”
“I think that’s true,” I say. “He’s only a few months into the job that brought him to Canada, after all.”
Emily flips a few more cards over: the Three of Cups, the Seven of Cups, the King of Cups. She targets my lingering doubts with incredible precision, the same way a good massage therapist digs her fingers into a knot of sore muscle.
After awhile, I sigh. “Theo is really nice, though.” It isn’t just that he is nice, and I know it. If I break up with Theo, I will not be able to use a boyfriend as a stand-in for having my life together. If my co-workers ask how my weekend was, I can’t say, “My boyfriend and I watched a movie over video chat,” for example, because I will not have a boyfriend. And if my mom says, “What happened to that lovely boy from Canada with the well-paying job?” I will have to think of something to tell her.
As I ruminate, Emily is only getting more animated. “He can be nice, and you can be nice, and that’s not enough,” she says. “I mean, girl. You want passion, and you want love and sparks and chemistry.” She grabs the King of Cups and holds it in front of me. “Now this is an emotionally mature, available man. This is a king. Not a prince. You deserve a king.”
I mull Emily’s words over. Do I deserve a king? I’ve certainly had my share of princes. Most of my relationships have been with charismatic, smart, attractive men who, despite all their exterior polish, don’t know what to do with their emotions. I can’t count the number of times I’ve tried to push this or that boyfriend to voice his feelings, only for him to look at me as if I asked him to do something daring and complex such drop into a split or sing an aria. Theo has given me plenty of those looks.
A realization hits: Because I keep having to cajole men into reflecting, I don’t always have enough time to reflect on my own life. It’s only here, now, with the cards in front of me, that I’m able to articulate this thought — even to myself. “I do deserve a king!” I say. “I do!” Cary rolls her eyes, as if to say, “I’ve been trying to tell you that.”
We all laugh. An accordion player has started waltzing up and down the aisles, and now he launches into a rendition of Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock’s “Get on the Dance Floor.”
With my fate settled, Emily turns to Cary, who’s been mostly quiet. Of the three of us, Cary is the most reserved and also the most skeptical. “Do you want a turn?” Emily says. “You don’t have to have a reading.”
Cary uncrosses her arms. “No,” she says, “I want one.”
Cary is moving to Denver in a week, and she tells Emily that she’s trying to figure out how to wrap up her life in D.C. Cary doesn’t get along with her roommates, so she wants to disengage peacefully from their lives.
Emily turns over the top card — the Six of Swords,* reversed — and chuckles. “Sometimes tarot tells you what you already know,” she says. “The girl on this card is in a boat, leaving. Like you. She’s looking back over her shoulder, sad to be going. The card is reversed, though, which says to me that you’re not even sad about it. You’re gone.”
—
Emily doesn’t tell anyone a single piece of new information, and she doesn’t promise to. Instead, she uses an object — a deck of cards adorned with ciphers — to get women talking honestly about their interior lives. It’s not a conventional way of looking inward, but it works.
According to 2015 research from the Pew Center, only half of people born between 1981 and 1996 have a steadfast belief in god. However, millennials are just as likely to feel “a sense of wonder about the universe.”
Tarot fills the void for some women who don’t adhere to a specific religion but wish they had some form of spiritual practice. In the right setting, Emily believes, tarot encourages self-reflection and mindfulness. And, she says, women need that more than men.
“Women are under tremendous pressure to play with the boys,” Emily told me the first time we met. “Women are considered strong and powerful so long as they meet a male standard, whereas what we should be focusing on is moving the standard toward the middle: a balance.”
As Emily finishes Cary’s reading, I wonder if the first tarot readers could have foreseen anything like this: four young and ambitious women hunched over a mess of cards, laughing and bitching and bolstering each other’s spirits. No matter the answer, we are using the cards the same way that tarot aficionados have used them for centuries. The cards give us a springboard to talk about what’s on our minds.
A week later, I call Theo and break up with him. He’s angry. When I ask him to tell me why, he says he’s not sure, exactly. I don’t press him to dig deeper. That’s not my job anymore.
The next day, I finish Persona 5. In one of the final scenes, Justine and Caroline, the mysterious twin girls who represent the major arcana card Strength, realize that their memories have been wiped. They merge into their true form, a single person named Lavenza. Before this moment, Strength has been split into two facets: punishing force, embodied by sadistic Caroline, and compassionate persuasion, embodied by mild Justine. Lavenza is Strength in all its forms.
It’s impossible not to think about Emily and what she told me about the pressure on women in the workforce. If she’s right, then society often asks that we fissure ourselves: strong like men in the workplace, strong like women in the home and in relationships.
But, like Lavenza and the tarot card on which she’s based, strength comes in a thousand guises. Reading a spread of tarot cards is not just a path to self-reflection but a way of breaking down binaries altogether.
*Correction: The card was the Six of Swords, not the Seven of Pentacles as originally stated.
