Tarot was my first real doorway into spirituality.

Long before I fully understood mediumship, intuition or what it meant to live a spiritually connected life, I was fascinated by the cards.

That fascination began with my grandad. He was a respected medium, but he also read the tarot, and I remember being drawn to the mystery of it all: the imagery, the symbolism and the feeling that every card held a story.

There was something almost magical about seeing those cards laid out.

At first, I think it was the visual side of tarot that captured my imagination. Each card seemed to contain its own world. There were journeys, challenges, endings, beginnings, moments of stillness and enormous turning points.

As I grew older, however, I began to understand that tarot was not interesting because it told us what would happen next.

It was interesting because it helped us see what was happening within us now.

Tarot as a mirror rather than a prediction

People often come to tarot wanting a definite answer.

Will I get the job?

Will this relationship work?

Am I making the right decision?

What is going to happen next?

I completely understand that. Uncertainty can be uncomfortable, particularly when we are standing at an important crossroads in life. We want reassurance. We want to know that everything is going to be okay. Sometimes we simply want somebody—or something—to tell us which road to take.

Tarot can offer clarity, but I do not believe its greatest value lies in predicting a fixed future.

For me, tarot is a mirror.

It reflects our emotions, patterns, fears, possibilities and the things we may already know somewhere within ourselves but have not yet been willing or able to acknowledge.

A good tarot reading does not take your power away by telling you that your future has already been decided. It brings you more deeply into contact with yourself so that you can move forward with greater awareness.

The cards may show us where we are hesitating.

They may reveal a pattern we keep repeating.

They may highlight an opportunity we have been afraid to pursue or a truth we have been trying not to face.

The answer does not necessarily live inside a piece of card. The card gives us a language through which our intuition, subconscious mind and spiritual awareness can communicate.

That is why the same card can speak differently to different people—and even differently to the same person at different points in their life.

How tarot has supported me through change

I have been using tarot a great deal recently because I am moving through a significant period of change in my own life.

Change can be exciting, but it can also unsettle our sense of identity.

Even when we know that something is coming to an end, there can be a strange space between the life we have known and the life that is beginning to emerge. The old version of us no longer completely fits, but the new version has not yet fully formed.

That space asks us to live without having every answer.

For somebody with a mind that likes to examine every possibility, that is not always easy.

Tarot has helped me slow down during this period. It has allowed me to step away from the noise, sit with myself and ask better questions.

Not simply, “What is going to happen?”

But:

What is this experience trying to show me?

What am I being asked to release?

Where am I allowing fear to speak more loudly than my intuition?

What would I choose if I trusted myself?

What part of me is ready to emerge?

Sometimes a card has reassured me. At other times, it has challenged me. Quite often it has simply reflected something I already knew but needed to see outside of myself before I could fully accept it.

Tarot has given me confidence at important moments in my life—not because it made every decision for me, but because it helped me reconnect with my own inner knowing.

There is an important difference.

You do not need to memorise every tarot card

One of the biggest barriers people face when learning tarot is the belief that they must memorise the official meaning of all 78 cards before they can begin.

Naturally, learning the traditional meanings, suits, numbers and symbolism gives you a valuable foundation. I would never suggest that knowledge is unimportant.

But tarot can become mechanical when we are so focused on recalling the “correct” meaning that we stop noticing our own response to the card.

When you look at a card, what catches your attention first?

Which character or symbol are you drawn towards?

What emotion does the image create within you?

Does the scene feel as though it is opening up or closing down?

Where does your eye go?

What does the card remind you of in your own life?

The meaning written in a guidebook may be useful, but your relationship with the card is where tarot begins to come alive.

You could place the same card in front of ten people and each person might notice something different. One may be drawn to the sky, another to the expression on a figure’s face and another to a small symbol in the corner.

That does not necessarily mean that nine people have interpreted it incorrectly. It demonstrates how symbolism can communicate with us personally.

Tarot is not only something we learn intellectually.

It is something we learn to feel.

Tarot, intuition and psychic awareness

In my work as a psychic medium and tarot reader in Bristol, I do not experience tarot as separate from intuition.

The cards create a focus for the reading, but my awareness is also drawn towards the person, their energy and the thoughts, feelings or impressions that begin to arise.

A card may begin the conversation, but intuition often takes it somewhere deeper.

This is also why a reading should feel personal rather than like somebody is simply reciting a list of meanings from a book.

The tarot gives structure to the reading while leaving room for what needs to emerge in that moment.

For some people, that may involve relationships. For others, it may be career, confidence, purpose or a major life transition. Sometimes the external question brings somebody to a reading, but beneath it sits a deeper question about self-worth, trust or whether they are permitted to choose the life they truly want.

The cards often reveal the conversation beneath the conversation.

Tarot should empower you, not frighten you

There are cards in tarot that people understandably find intimidating.

The Death card is probably the most famous example, along with The Tower or the Ten of Swords. Yet these cards rarely need to be interpreted literally or fearfully.

Death can represent transformation, release and the ending of a chapter.

The Tower can show us where something unstable is changing or where an illusion can no longer be maintained.

The Ten of Swords may suggest that a difficult cycle has reached its conclusion and cannot continue as it has before.

None of this means that challenging cards should be dressed up as entirely positive. Life contains discomfort, disappointment and change, and tarot should be honest enough to reflect that.

But a reading should never leave somebody feeling powerless or frightened by an unavoidable fate.

Tarot is a tool for awareness.

And with awareness comes choice.

Even when we cannot control everything happening around us, we can explore how we meet it, what we learn from it and which direction we take next.

The questions we ask matter

The quality of a tarot reading can change enormously when we change the question.

“Will I ever find love?” places all the power somewhere in the future.

“What may be preventing me from welcoming a healthy relationship?” invites reflection and choice.

“Will I be successful?” can become, “What qualities do I need to develop to move towards the life I want?”

“Should I leave my job?” might become, “What do I need to understand about my current career, and what possibilities am I being invited to explore?”

This does not mean we can never ask direct questions. It means tarot often gives us more when we enter into a conversation with it rather than demanding a yes-or-no verdict.

The most valuable reading may not tell us what we want to hear.

It may help us ask what we genuinely need to know.

Coming back to yourself

The older I become, the less I see spirituality as something that takes us away from ordinary life.

At its best, it brings us more fully into it.

Tarot has helped me make decisions, navigate change and recognise where fear has been distorting my view. It has also reminded me that uncertainty is not always a sign that we are lost.

Sometimes uncertainty is simply what it feels like when an old chapter has closed and the next one has not yet been written.

During those moments, the tarot does not hand us a finished map.

It holds up a mirror.

It asks us to look honestly at where we are, what we are carrying and what we already know beneath the noise.

Perhaps that is why I remain as fascinated by the cards today as I was when I first encountered them through my grandad.

The imagery drew me in, but the mirror made me stay.

And each time I return to the tarot, I am reminded that the answers we seek are not always waiting somewhere outside of us.

Sometimes we simply need a way to hear ourselves more clearly.

Psychic tarot readings in Bristol and online

I offer compassionate psychic and tarot readings for people seeking clarity around relationships, career, purpose and periods of personal change.

My approach blends the symbolism of tarot with psychic and intuitive guidance. The purpose is not to dictate your future or make decisions on your behalf. It is to help you understand your present more deeply and move forward feeling clearer, more confident and more connected to yourself.

Readings are available online, as well as for clients looking for a psychic tarot reader in Bristol.