I can’t exactly pinpoint when my spiritual journey started. Ever since I was young I’ve always been drawn to the occult. Things that went bump in the night were always on my mind. Like every 6 year old kid, I would run up the stairs of the basement due to the fear of the boogeyman lurking downstairs in the dark waiting to drag petulant kids like me to hell or wherever kids go. Even though I liked those things, scary movies still creeped me out (it’s one of my favorite genres now). Visually they creeped me out; but the thought of these things actually existing didn’t seem so strange to me. Ghosts, demons, magic, tarot cards, and voodoo/hoodoo sounded so fucking cool. I know that they could potentially be dangerous but I thought it would be cool to encounter them. I used to think every doll was haunted, every closet had a boogeyman, that if I stared in the dark hard enough, I would see a pair of eyes looking back at me. My siblings and I used to think our laundry room was haunted; so we would put one of those American Girl dolls(I think it was Marisol) in there and would try to see if the position of the doll had changed. I don’t think it actually did lmao.

As I got older, I ended having a couple of experiences I couldn’t explain. When my family and I stayed at the Salvation Army for a while, I always got the ick there. The unshakable feeling that something or someone watching you, hearing footsteps in the long empty hallways at nice, and things moving on their own. My grandpa had one of those white robots that everyone had in the early 2000s that we could’ve sworn moved on its own. My sister also claimed to see a red faced demon with sharp teeth in the bathroom stalls one night. Outside of those things, I didn’t really explore much of demons and ghosts until college. I had a roommate freshman year who gave me my first ever reading *big shout out captain foreskin* about whatever relationship I was in at the time. I had never seen a reading up close but it was honestly love at first sight. I treated it like I treated all my relationships at the time, a tiny blip on my radar. It didn’t really pop up on my radar fully until Covid-19 hit in 2019.

I enjoy tarot much more than I do astrology, I still do honestly. It really opened my eyes to seeing things beyond. It was more than ghosts and demons and contacting the dead. It was more than what the media had taught me. I learned very quickly that it was about belief and faith. About connecting to the world and the community around you. About connecting with yourself and your potential. Seeing everything that you are and were, the good, the bad, everything.

I guess this shit is kinda like a religion to me. I’ve never really been religious. Most of my family is but that always felt like out of obligation, because they had to. I knew I didn’t want that. It spoke to me, has spoken to me since I was young. It’s not a calling, it’s not a passion, I don’t really know what to call it. I am protective of it. Of this thing that I believe in. It allows me to be independent, learn my own lessons, and not be tied down. I am not bound by what the cards say, I am not bound by what the stars say, I am bound to myself and my own actions and my own path in life and that is all I ever wanted. While the cards and the stars mean something, they mean nothing without my actions or decisions. They are only a clue on how to read the read the ripples in the waves of my life that I have created. When I connect with the my cards or with anything, I can’t deny that skepticism that I still feel. The unexplainable knowledge that I feel that I have. The emotions that I can tap into, the messages that I get, I wish I could explain more but I feel crazy. Even though I have been doing this for 6 years, I still feel crazy. To say that I get to talk to the universe or whatever you may have it, is fucking nuts

I hope to one day get over over this feelings of being crazy. To truly embrace this thing that I do. It’s a science and a magic all in one. There are no formulas for this shit, no equations to memorize, but you do need to have information. You need knowledge of the stars and of life. You need knowledge of yourself. And you need whimsy. You need joy, you need patience and understanding, you need anger, you need allowance. Allowance to yourself so that you may believe in the things you see as sometimes those things are unexplainable. To go beyond science, beyond reason, beyond anything that you know. Allowance to challenge. To defy those parts of yourself that you try to hide and the shame that goes with it. You need trust, discernment and empathy. Empathy for the journey that you are on and the ones that others are on.

Lastly, Tarot/Astrology is about movement/motion. The stars are moving all the time, the energy of the cards are moving all the time and while the dead move they can no longer make the ripples that you make while you are alive. I see myself in the stars. I see the vastness of my future and my potential. It’s oddly comforting and that part doesn’t make me feel crazy at all. But I am still learning, maybe I am crazy.