Tarot Reader Feature — waxwing tarot

Jan 8

What led you to BTS?

The things that brought me to BTS are the same things that drew me to tarot: the visuals! the layers of symbolic meaning! the high drama! the editorial! the duality! The energy of the Black Swan music video really sums up the draw, for me:

I had been interested (from outside looking in) in BTS for a while before I fully ✨invested✨ as ARMY during the early days of the pandemic. At home in 2020, watching BTS content™ & learning about the members was a way to feel something – in general, but also in specific; to feel something new and hopeful, to feel it was possible for life to go on. V has always been my bais, but from the beginning of my ARMY journey Hobi is also very close to my heart (🥺) for the things he has, & which I don’t necessarily have for myself, & which I needed in 2020: a capacity for joy. And an unrestrained laugh.

I’m very grateful to fellow members of the BTS Tarot Project for accepting me as a new / recent / baby ARMY! I love viewing tarot through the lens of media, & combining the themes of the cards with the themes of BTS’s work has deepened my practice in ways I hadn’t expected.

Who or what sparked your interest in tarot?

I picked up my first tarot deck because it felt like it was time for me to do it! I’m not entirely certain why, or on what prompting, aside from the fact that I felt drawn to the cards as a visual language. At the time I started exploring tarot, I was also in a place in my life where I had the capacity, resources, and support to go to therapy for the first time – love that journey for me!

The frame of mind I felt I had to bring to therapy and the one I felt came naturally when working with the tarot had a very similar feeling – both requiring vulnerability, patience, flexibility, & boundaries – and experiencing both for the first time, at the same time, very much helped me bond with my deck & develop my practice as a reader in a way that feels sustainable.

Right now, I view my work with the tarot as a practice that is continually evolving & (re)contextualizing. Each time I interpret a card – for myself, or in a reading for someone else, or for a blog post for this project – feels like the first time I’ve drawn it, and that’s how I like it! The (re)making of meaning & the specificity of the context, the shifting of my understanding of what a particular card can say – and allowing for not knowing everything it has to say – is where the practice is for me.

What advice would you give those who are interested in tarot but are hesitant to try it?

If you’re interested (even a very little bit) in tarot, ✨simply✨ let yourself do it. Try it on like a change of clothes! See if it fits! (It’s okay if it doesn’t!). Toss it aside & pick it back up! Like, why not? Why not. The very worst that could happen is that it’s not the vibe for you. And that’s okay, too. Best that happens? Tarot can be your own literal / metaphorical / dare-I-say metaphysical (if you’re into that last one) ✨magic shop✨ to carry with you.

For me, the most resonant thing about tarot is that it’s all about what resonates with you, the reader, in particular. See a deck you like? Spend time with it and find out why it interested you. Read an interpretation that you don’t agree with? Perfect! That’s how you get to know what you think about the cards.

I use practice to describe my work with the Allow yourself to not “get it right” – there is no “right” way to engage with tarot. There’s just your own way. And finding it.