Xand

“I felt a strong connection and energy towards you and thought you wanted a reading. What’s your zodiac sign?”

“Not another one!”, I think to myself as I delete the message. I’ve received hundreds of these messages from fake psychics and mediums over the past 10 months. Of course, I get it. I can hardly blame them for trying when a professional tarot reader can charge anything from £100 per hour upwards. There is a lot of money to be made in telling people’s fortunes these days. But what they don’t know is that I also possess, not one deck of tarot cards, but eight along with Runes, Lenormand cards, and multiple books on this particular subject.

I am by no means an expert, but it has become a passion of mine over the past 10 months. Whether by accident or not, I’m still unsure, my first deck of Tarot cards was the classic Hermetic Tarot. Most people opt for the more straightforward Rider Waite Smith deck with its clear and colourful images but I found myself, all those months ago, in possession of a strange and unusual set of 78 cards upon which there were not just zodiacal and astrological symbols but also Hebrew letters that are hidden amongst the rather macabre black and white images. These strange and unusual symbols captivated me and I began to study the Kabbalah and all things esoteric and occult (a very misunderstood word which simply means ‘hidden’).

Like most beginners, I went straight to YouTube to hunt for tutorials so that I could learn how to use them. It took me about three months to finally begin to understand the upright meanings of the cards, and the more I learnt about Tarot, the more I was hooked. Of course, it’s all very well knowing the theory, but you get to the stage where you realise that the only way to improve is by practising and so I went to TikTok and began to do many hours of live streaming during which I would offer to read for people.

To make it more fun for myself and the people watching me, I would often get shitfaced and take out my guitar to sing funny songs. The live streams became rather popular, and people seemed to enjoy the combination of cartomancy (fortune-telling or divination using a deck of cards), dick jokes, and a slightly shit-faced middle-aged homosexual.

The more readings I did the better I got. I soon began to trust my intuition and not only was I able to accurately describe the person’s present situation, but I would also get the names of their partners popping into my head. I knew if they had been ill, had visited the hospital, important dates and details of their lives. Sometimes, it was as if I could hear the very arguments they had had in the pub the night before.

I kept thinking to myself it must just all be a coincidence, but then on one occasion, I got both the first name and the surname of the person’s boyfriend. I was shocked and I realised that this was more than just fun and games online. It was at that point that I began to think of reading tarot cards, as being more of a science, and I had to prove to myself that I was, in fact developing my psychic abilities. And so I pushed myself night after night, sitting in front of my ring light and my iPhone to get more and more accurate information. I drank a lot of vodka to loosen myself up and try to lose my inhibitions, and sure enough, I found I was able to describe the person’s home, the colour of their sofa, the objects in the room, the street they lived on, and even tell them where they had been on holiday.

One TikTok live stream received almost 100,000 likes. It was phenomenal. Sadly, social media these days is full of haters and so, of course, I quickly became a target for homophobes, sceptics, and deeply superstitious Christians who told me this was the work of the devil. At first, I tried to ignore the negativity, but then, as the insults became more and more personal, I decided to withdraw and focus on studying instead.

Several months later, and thanks to many amazing authors, such as Barbara Moore, Vincent Pitisci, Aleister Crowley, and Mary K. Greer I am now in the process of deepening my understanding of the upright meaning of the cards and am also learning the various interpretations of reverse cards and even Shamanic interpretations. In addition to this, I am also learning Lenormand and the ancient Elder Futhark Runes. It’s a bit like learning three languages at once but in my opinion, they complement one another and help in decoding the meanings and interpretations of each. And yes I am your typical gay geek who loves to study!

I’m sure whomever it was who sent me that message this morning will find a gullible victim online to pay them to tell them some general information about their love life before moving on to the next person to extract another £100 but I hope that I can do my bit to educate others about such scams as it is incredibly frustrating for those of us who have a passion for cartomancy and who spend thousands of hours studying to deepen our understanding of this ancient and fascinating science.

To contact Xand: xandwest2002@gmail.com