Confessions of a Tarot Reader

You know him, you love him, John Holden, of Tarot by John, is back in the Confessions booth this week.  The tea is scalding hot! 
Connect with John
https://www.tarotbyjohn.com/
https://www.instagram.com/tarotbyjohn

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Connect with Patti
https://www.pattiwoods.com/
https://www.instagram.com/boozy_tarot
Show Notes
Fair warning: this episode may make you feel simultaneously vindicated and deeply unsettled.
Patti Woods is back in the confession booth, and this time, she and Bex have come armed with browsers, physical decks, and a burning need to know: what actually happens when you ask AI to read your tarot cards?
This is not a theoretical debate. This is a live experiment. Bex and Patti use identical prompts on Claude and ChatGPT simultaneously, pull their own physical cards alongside, and then compare everything. They chortle through the results, the explanations, the card choices, and the moments where the AI gets a little too comfortable calling itself a “fellow reader.”
Listener, it gets messy. Listener, it gets funny. 
In this episode, we cover:
Patti’s real-life AI reading experience  she ordered one for an art residency application, and was surprised to find it “kind of helpful.” She still hates it, though. Two things can be true.
The live experiment  Bex and Patti use the exact same prompt on Claude and ChatGPT simultaneously: a three-card collective energy reading for the end of the calendar year. Then they pull real cards. Then they compare.
Why Claude and ChatGPT gave different results from the same prompt  and what happens when you ask the bots to explain themselves. (Spoiler: they both admit they didn’t shuffle a deck. One of them offers to write code instead.)
“I picked cards that form a coherent narrative, not because they were meant to come up” ChatGPT’s candid admission, and what that tells us about what AI tarot actually is
Claude goes passive aggressive “If you want genuine randomness, use a real deck.” Bex’s response: “Okay, Claude.”
Claude calls itself “reader to reader” and why this is actually the reason people end up with AI boyfriends
Reading on King Charles’ health Patti pulls Eight of Cups, Bex pulls Ace of Swords. Then the bots weigh in. One of them gets told off by Claude’s legal team.
Reading on the Sussexes returning to the UK this time, they ditch the AI. Bex pulls Strength, The Moon, Wheel of Fortune, and a jumper: The Sun. It gets speculative and delightful.
The great spiritual community brawl  tarot readers defecting to Christianity, psychic mediums calling each other fake, witchtok drama. They read on it. The cards are not impressed.
Who’s standing at the end of the brawl? Three kings and an Ace of Wands, apparently. The house will be cleaned out.
The bigger picture why infighting in the spiritual community only benefits the people who want it divided, and what ethics-led practice actually looks like

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Connect with Jenna
https://www.jennamatlin.com
https://www.instagram.com/jennamatlin
Show Notes
This week, Bex is joined by Jenna Matlin, author of The Tarot Book of the Dead. A Chthonic Journey of Death, Mediumship, and the Art of Guiding Souls (Weiser Books), and previously Have Tarot, Will Travel, Have Tarot, Will Party, and Will You Give Me a Reading? (Llewellyn, 2022). Tarot Book of the Dead is a book about using tarot as a mediumship tool, a grief companion, and a guide through the underworld journey. It has been described as coming through her rather than of her. Synchronicities pursued her as she wrote it. Death stalked her until she began. She started the Sun chapter on Lughnasadh. She was editing the Hierophant chapter when Pope Francis died.  The list goes on and on!
In this episode, we cover:
How perimenopause, ADHD, burnout, and a dark night of the soul led Jenna into the underworld of this project
Why Jenna saw AI coming for tarot readers before most people were talking about it
The crucial distinction: AI can infer, but it cannot intuit, and why that matters most at 3am when someone’s anxiety is crawling up their throat
What it means for tarot to be a co-medium, not a tool to fetch information, but a co-participant in mediumship alongside the reader
Psychopomp work, using tarot with people who are actively dying, in comas, or in liminal states (including Alzheimer’s and dementia)
The simultaneous spread that reads both the spirit and the grieving person at the same time
Jenna’s anthropology background and what global shamanic mediumship traditions taught her about right relationship, right intention, and right space
Why she reordered the entire Major Arcana around the four stages of the underworld journey: katabasis (the plunge), bathos (the depths), anados (the rising), and apanados (return to the world)
Tarot as a child of the Black Plague and its connection to the medieval Dance of Death tradition
Hecate with the golden hair, the earliest writings and how very different she is from how we conceptualise her today
Oya, the Yoruban crossroads goddess, and why Jenna needed an underworld-based mother she couldn’t find in European mythology
The Cumaean Sibyl, the ancient prophetess who refused to sleep with Apollo, asked for immortality but forgot to ask for eternal youth, and became patron saint of the tarot reader who also does mediumship
Why there’s an old man (the Hermit) in tarot but no old woman, and which figure Jenna believes should fill that role
The cutout exercise: Jenna’s brilliant technique for bypassing the left brain’s keyword shortcuts and forcing readers to really look at the imagery
Stacking readings: tarot + Lenormand + runes + charm castings, and why Jenna is always asking “is this rule breakable?”
Whether Jenna might ever create a tarot deck

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Connect with Hannah
https://mystics-cavern.myshopify.com/
https://www.instagram.com/_midwesterncryptid_
https://www.tiktok.com/@_midwesterncryptid_
About this episode:
Hannah from Mystic Cryptid is a tarot reader, spell candle maker, pop-up market organiser, and self-described favourite Midwestern cryptid. She joins Bex for one of the most varied, funniest, and most warmly human conversations in the show's history.
What we cover:
The second time Hannah had to publicly announce she does not offer topless tarot reading (and what a fake impersonator account sent her cousin).
Feeding a fake account's username to her Morrigan candle and taking it to the river
How she started organising pop-up mystic markets in the Twin Cities 
Reading at a vampire ball in Superior, Wisconsin (at a witchy restaurant/oddity shop/bookshop collective)
Event reading approaches: the menu method, "what messages have you been missing?", and what to do with first-timers who don't know what they want
Bex's ramen shop reading and the man who wanted a philosophical discussion about death instead of cards
Getting chased out of the psych ward at Indiana State Sanatorium in broad daylight 
Where tarot messages come from: higher self, source, and claircognizance that sounds too much like your own voice
Developing mediumship: the spirit guide reading she'd never done before, and how it worked anyway
The cryptid candle range: Mothman (protection), Bigfoot (strength), Loch Ness (vitality), Siren (glamour), Jackalope (magic and whimsy)
The abundance spell that manifested fifty coffee cups
Small hands, large oracle cards, and why there is no wrong way to shuffle
Grace, internet policing, and why we all need to touch grass
Community over competition: how local Minneapolis women business owners are supporting each other through everything
Find Hannah:
Pop-up markets: Twin Cities area, watch her socials for dates
Mystic Market: happening approximately one week before Samhain
Mentioned in this episode:
Indiana State Sanatorium (paranormal investigation)
Ritual Salad and Ritual Marketplace, Superior, Wisconsin
Babe of Lilith (Rob) — reader recommended by Hannah
Hermit's Lantern MN (Kate) — reader recommended by Hannah
House of Zophiel (tarot retreat co-organisers, mentioned by Adrien in a previous episode)
The Morrigan
Operation Metro Surge (Minneapolis)
The Alchemist Oracle deck

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Connect with Adrien
https://jupiter-rising.co.uk/venus-retrograde-workshop
https://www.adrienmastrosimone.com/dancingthetarot
https://www.instagram.com/adrien_mastrosimone
About this episode:
Adrien Mastrosimone has been reading tarot for over 30 years, buying his first Marseille deck from Grimaud as a young teen. 
Dancing the Tarot is Adrien's proprietary workshop method, a powerful fusion of tarot reading, systemic family constellation, somatic healing, and physical embodiment. In this episode, he walks us through exactly how it works, what surprised him about it, and why he describes the space he creates not as a safe space, but as a brave space.
What we cover:
What Dancing the Tarot actually is, and what happens in a session
Why some cards are easy to embody (The Empress, The Emperor) and some take the room somewhere else entirely (The Moon, The Hanged Man)
The Temperance card exercise: fill a glass with water, pour it into another glass for five minutes, and discover what the card actually means in your body
Which card Adrien is working on embodying himself this year, and why
His partner: a doctor of experimental physics, published in Nature, who attends tarot café with his own little deck
The tarot café Adrien runs in Vienna, and why mathematicians and biologists keep showing up
His upcoming retreats: a three-day Alice in Wonderland tarot retreat in Unstone, England, and a planned tarot retreat in Greece in 2027
His talk at Pandemonium: the esoteric coding of gender in the Marseille tarot
A new webinar series on retrograde planets with an astrologer collaborator (starting with Venus retrograde)
The divide in the esoteric community, and a clear-eyed, hopeful take on where it comes from
AI and tarot: where it helps, where it doesn't, and the one thing he tells everyone never to do
Growing up as the weird kid in a Sicilian Catholic family in France — and buying his first tarot deck with saved-up change
Find Adrien:
Website: search Adrien Mastrosimone
Instagram: @adrien.mastrosimone
Mentioned in this episode:
Dancing the Tarot workshops
Systemic family constellation
The Marseille Tarot (Grimaud edition)
Smith-Waite / Rider-Waite-Smith tarot
House of Zophiel (retreat co-organizers)
Pandemonium conference, UK (September)
Venus retrograde webinar (October, with astrologer collaborator)
Tarot Culture Conference
The lyre — instrument of Apollo, created by Hermes
Triboelectric charging (Nature publication)
Kabbalah / Tree of Life
Keywords: Dancing the Tarot, Adrien Mastrosimone, embodiment tarot, somatic healing tarot, systemic family constellation, tarot workshop, transpersonal coaching, Marseille tarot, tarot embodiment, tarot retreat Greece, tarot retreat UK, Alice in Wonderland tarot, Pandemonium tarot conference, Venus retrograde webinar, Confessions of a Tarot Reader, tarot and the body

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