It’s hard to recall a time when tarot, astrology, and other divination arts didn’t dominate the internet (well, you know, the internet I’m familiar with). These days, one in every five tiktoks I scroll through are from astrologers and readers telling me to stop and pay attention: this message is coming through so strongly! It demands to be listened to! Sometimes when I am bored or intrigued I do as the person says. I play a little mental game of “take a shot when…”
“This person did you wrong, and they are starting to feel sorry for it”-type messages? Take a shot.
“I’m sensing a grandparent coming through, they are very proud of you”? Take a shot.
“There’s a love match coming in that will completely change your life!”? Take a shot.
“You need to drop what is no longer serving you! You are holding on to old ideas and patterns that are not conducive to your path!”? Take two shots.
The thing is, I am not a skeptic at all. I actually study and practice astrology, tarot, and candle magic. I am no expert by any means, and most of my practices are solo/private. But I still follow and like many astrologers that are online these days. A lot of people use astrology and tarot as a means for encouraging people, building community, and connecting across time and space. This, to me, is the core tenet of divination practices: connection with the elements and sources of love that one needs in order to live a good life.
Still, I share in many people’s position that, well, it’s gotten a little bit ridiculous. Critics will point out many objections to the proliferation of tarot and astrology in popular culture: Not everyone can be an expert! They’re pandering with these kinds of messages about love, personal growth, and wealth which will attract the most followers! It’s all a popularity contest! It’s all a bunch of bullshit! And honestly, if you don’t believe in these practices, then it’s fine. I don’t have a problem with people who don’t believe. However, I want to bring attention to the fact that these qualms with tarot, astrology, mysticism, etc. all have an incredibly long story attached to them. In fact, skepticism has always been an integral dimension to the existence of these rituals. It is a spectrum which on displays non-compliance and prejudice on one end, and political/legal/economic persecution on the other.
Game of History
The first thing we should remember is that tarot is, unsurprisingly, a very old practice with a tremendous amount of offshoots, origins, and cross-cultural impressions. I would love to explore all of these branches, but for the sake of brevity, I am going to focus on what Western tarot has predominantly inherited. The mainstream Tarot deck we see online is derived from the 15th century in Italy, where the original suits for playing cards were Chalices, Coins, Swords, and Batons. Because their original iteration was for playing card games, and not fortune-telling, there were no Major Arcana (think Hierophant, High Priestess, and Wheel of Fortune). The Arcana would be added over time by artists.
In fact, “trump” cards as they were known then, were not just made and sold in shops all around cities. Like books, they were often commissioned specially for wealthy patrons to be kept in their household. These patrons could customize not only the aesthetic of the cards, but what kinds of cards could be added to the overall deck. One of the oldest surviving decks, known as the The Visconti Tarot, features cards for virtues such as charity and hope.
There are centuries between the first tarot card decks of the 1450s and what we know as the definitive tarot deck, otherwise known as the Rider Waite, which was illustrated by artist Pamela Colman in 1909. In between these two watershed developments are a few vital moments which marked a shift in the way tarot decks were used:
1781: Antoine Court de Gebelin, a French freemason, publishes a book on the ancient origins of tarot interpretation. In true European-man-fashion, he makes enormous claims about the historical journey of tarot cards, relating them all the way back to ancient Egyptian faith practices — claims which had absolutely no robust evidence to back them up. Nevertheless, Gebelin’s narrative takes hold and adds this “ancient” and esoteric dimension to tarot which is still with us today. Somewhere, the spirit Edward Said is pressing a Staples button that says “That’s Orientalism.”
1791: The first tarot deck for explicit divination purposes is published by Jean-Baptiste Alliette, also a Frenchman (noticing a pattern here…)
1840s: Spiritualism and occultism surges in the west, particularly in Britain, France, and the United States. Western spiritualists advocate for cross-cultural exchanges of faith practices and an embrace of “mysticisms.” This is an incredibly simplified way of saying that white people became increasingly fascinated by, and invested in, non-western faith practices previously shunned by Christian and Catholic hegemony.
The point is tarot did not have a linear and organic journey to where it is today. Moreover, tarot has always been entangled with gambling, money, and social capital. It started as a card game, after all! And in many ways, the way we go about tarot divination is still very much a game. Instead of playing poker, spades, or “go-fish!”, we are wagering at what the universe wants us to know and what life is hiding from us just around the bend.
Spirituality and White Settler Capitalism
Because of the nature of the Spiritualist movement in which practices like Tarot gained so much steam, there’s a few broader historical points I wish to address:
Tarot and astrological consultation tie us to a broader conversation about gender, sexuality, and race. Figures at the center of the 19th century spiritualist movement were often working-class and impoverished women who depended on their popularity as clairvoyants to pay their bills, and the beliefs surrounding women and girls’ “feminine” sensitivities to the spirit world.
Even though the Spiritualist movement called for more egalitarianism and inclusion of non-Christian faiths, there were strings attached. Efforts to pluralize depended on white people and whether they could access, adopt, or extract those faiths and practices. Additionally, this movement transpired against the backdrop of 19th and 20th century illegalization and persecution of Black and Indigenous religious and spiritual practices.
For instance, while white American spiritualists were summoning the ghosts of enslaved Black people and murdered Indigenous peoples to their tables, there were federal policies which banned Indigenous persons from participating in their own ceremonies, such as dances. During the Civil War, occupying Union forces worked to suppress Voodoo practices in New Orleans; in the years that followed, whites wrote and voiced public concern over the way Voodoo community encouraged socialization among white women and Black men. While Voodoo was never explicitly outlawed, numerous legal restrictions were enacted which instead targeted Black peoples’ abilities to gather together.
Criminalization was and isn’t all there is to the story. In spite of moral panics around religion, white settlers were still enthralled by the exoticized and racialized world of the “Other.” Co-optation and extraction from Indigenous cultures, Black diasporic wisdom, the “Orient” — these all helped to produce the environment in which we live now. Now, “New Age” movements over-consume resources like sage and palo santo. Elsewhere, the increased demand for psychedelics has led to the proliferation of Ayahuasca rituals in Europe and the United States.
The failure of capitalism and western medicine to adequately support peoples’ lives has caused people to pursue other avenues of care and connection. That in and of itself isn’t malevolent. However, it would be irresponsible to divorce that fact from the landscape in which it operates: a country and geopolitical region where the rules by which dominant groups and marginalized groups conduct their spiritual and cultural rituals are deeply inequitable. In fact, the successful circulation of practices like burning sage, yoga, and yes, clairvoyance, depend on a severance in awareness of where these practices originate, why they were developed, and for whom. More on that later in this article, because I promise, it all comes together in the end.
The Popular Taboo
It is in this tumultuous place where moments of subversion arise, and yes, tarot is a part of that story. One book I recommend to anyone wanting to know more about the history of psychic and clairvoyant work in the United States is LaShawn Harris’s Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy. As Harris writes, Psychic work and leadership provided ways for Black women to gain socioeconomic stability on their own (fraught) terms. Nevertheless, their ways of working were under constant threat of persecution and criminalization due to their cohesion with illegal gambling and numbers-running systems. City authorities rendered these women as charming con artists who were anything but psychically-gifted.
In spite of that, psychics and clairvoyants exist on a fascinating and deeply-concerning crossroads historically. Their work as hybridized doctors/therapists/companions/life coaches offered what the State didn’t for people who were disabled, mad, impoverished, isolated. Most often, people were a combination of all these conditions. Yes, these circumstances created opportunities for people to exploit their “patrons” monetarily and emotionally. However, they also illustrate a truth about the failures of American healthcare, the legal system, and white supremacy as a socioeconomic structuring of life, to deliver on the promises of “the greatest country on Earth.” That nerve is still very much with us, loose and exposed to the elements.
And similar to the time period explored in Harris’s book, the current rise in tarot and astrology as outlets is tethered to global crisis. Just as the Black women psychics made their ways in the wake of the Great Depression, Americans — and everyone around the world — are grappling with what imperialism, globalization, and their reaction to Covid-19 hath wrought. I remember in 2020 feeling equal parts desperate for hope and drowning in dismay as I looked to group chats, zoom happy hours, and off-grid messaging apps for solace in the face of catastrophe. I remember how frantic we all were — and still are, today — to feel like there is something bigger than ourselves that isn’t just a deadly, negligent State. This brings me (in a rather long-winded way, I know) to my centrifugal point about Tarot.
It’s a Game of Life
Sometimes I find it helpful to think about tarot and astrology work as related to sex work. This is not to say they are collapsable or synonymous, and not something I would assume all public practicers identify with. Nevertheless, tarot work in the same interconnected web defined by the needs of those who engage it. For some, it’s all about companionship: the sensation that there’s someone or something walking through life with us, and rooting for us all the way. It can also be about fending off loneliness. For others, it’s about being recognized in the ways you hunger for: to have a reader, and by extension, the universe, see who as exactly how you wish to be seen. In any case, there is a kind of economy of intimacy which is at the heart of why tarot and astrology are so popular.
This framing also helps to visibilize how readers, advisors, and yes, mediums, exist in relation to their work. If you scroll through #TarotTok or #AstrologyTok, you’ll start to see commonalities. Usually the most popular people are those who come from marginalized groups — people of color, queer and trans people, and disabled people — and they often depend on this work for something material, like social capitol or money. In return, they are not just convening with the powers that be; they are performing a particular kind of emotional labor. For some, it’s even a kind of care work.
I say this as a Tarot practicer, yes, but also as a scholar: the actual task at hand is to understand the ethical implications involved in developing a relationship to that practice. Is it an “open” or “closed” practice? Are the materials which you are using for it ethically and sensitively-sourced? Are you learning just as much as you are “doing” it? Does your participation weaponize itself against the communities from which the practices come from? Are you doing the work to unlearn the idea that to be a part of something means to have ownership over it like property? These are all vital questions that I don’t think we necessarily engage as often as we should. I just want to acknowledge that there is no “perfect” way forward with any of these inquiries. The goal is not ideological purity, nor is it a real thing that can be obtained. The important thing is, for me, accountability. What and who you are devoted to in all aspects of your life also carries accountability.
I also want to say that while we may not have to worry about whether Tarot is a “closed practice” because it inherently is not, the way we go about Tarot and Astrology can nevertheless involve practices which are closed. Also, you can being doing shit that is just flat-out fucked up.
Do you know where that sage you are burning while you read actually comes from? Are you aware of its cultural and spiritual context?
Or, think of it this way: are you reifying toxically-positive ideas around what your “best life” looks like, in ways that are racist, classist, ableist, etc.?
If you are, you are not alone. But it is our responsibility to take stock of that.
Finally to the question of “is all this really legit?” regarding Tarot and Astrology on the internet: well, shit, maybe not! Maybe people have adopted all the “tools of the trade” in order to run a successful astrology business. But if we are all on the same page that, sure, not every single tiktok shouting “if you’re seeing this now, it’s specially for you!” is really all that true, then…what’s the problem?
Perhaps it is a matter of irony: that most Tarot practicers on the internet are not endowed with supernatural capabilities, and yet, it is not just some big con job. After all, what are you looking for when you consult your Tarot reader or Astrologer? Are you trying to prove that the Universe “exists”? Are you trying to myth-bust someone like some investigative journalist sneaking into a Spiritualist seance in 1849? Nah. I imagine you’re doing it for similar reasons why I do it: because it’s entertaining and tremendously gratifying. Moreover, it’s a practice which connects me not only to my friends who participate, but with previous generations of people who looked to tarot for the exact same fulfillments as I do now.
So, maybe you’ll read this and decide to give people online shouting at you to listen to a channeled message coming in a bit more patience. Or, maybe you’ll pick up a deck at your local bookstore next time and see what all the fuss is about for yourself. Maybe you won’t do anything at all. That’s the magic of it, right? You take what resonates, and leave the rest. Everything else is a game yet to be played to the very end.