Let us clean this up because people love to romanticize tarot while completely missing the point.
Tarot is not a crystal ball. It is not a fortune-telling device. It is not going to tell you his name, his birthday, or whether he is thinking about you right now. If that is what you are looking for, you do not need a reading. You need to put your phone down and go outside.
Tarot is a mirror. It reflects what is already happening inside you. The patterns you are running. The fears you are avoiding. The decisions you already know you need to make but keep postponing because making them would require you to change. And change is the one thing most people say they want while actively resisting it with every fiber of their being.
I have been reading cards for years. Not as a hobby. Not as a side hustle. As a practice rooted in study, intuition, and a willingness to tell people what they need to hear instead of what they want to hear. And the single most common thing I encounter is someone sitting across from me, asking the cards a question they already know the answer to.
They do not want clarity. They want permission.
I do not give permission. I give information. What you do with it is your business.
Let me break down what you should actually understand about tarot if you are going to take it seriously.
Major Arcana vs Minor Arcana
The Major Arcana is the big stuff. Life-altering shifts. Identity changes. Spiritual lessons you cannot outrun no matter how hard you try. These are the cards that stop you mid-shuffle and make your stomach drop.
Think of Death. Not literal death. Transformation. The end of one version of you and the forced beginning of another. Think of The Tower. The collapse of everything you built on a foundation that was never solid. Think of The Fool. The terrifying, exhilarating moment of stepping into something new with no guarantee it will work.
These are not "maybe" energies. These are "this is happening whether you like it or not" moments. When a Major Arcana card shows up in a reading, it is not a suggestion. It is a notification. The universe is not asking for your input. It is informing you of what is already in motion.
The Minor Arcana is your day-to-day. Your habits. Your reactions. Your patterns. The small choices that compound into the life you are currently living.
Cups deal with emotions. Your relationships. Your capacity for love, grief, joy, and everything in between. When cups show up heavy in a reading, the work is internal. It is about what you are feeling and whether you are being honest about it.
Wands deal with action. Your drive. Your ambition. Your creative energy. When wands dominate, the question is not what you feel but what you are doing about it. Or not doing about it.
Swords deal with thoughts. Your mental patterns. Your beliefs. The stories you tell yourself about who you are and what you deserve. Swords are sharp for a reason. They cut through illusion, but they can also cut you if you are not careful with the narratives you carry.
Pentacles deal with the material world. Your money. Your health. Your physical environment. The tangible, measurable aspects of your life that either support you or drain you.
Major Arcana is your storyline. Minor Arcana is how you behave inside it. Both matter. But most people fixate on the Major cards because they are dramatic, and ignore the Minor cards where the actual work lives.
Why Cleansing Matters (And No, It Is Not Just Aesthetic)
Tarot works through energy and interpretation. Whether you frame that spiritually or psychologically, one thing is undeniable: your environment influences your clarity.
If your energy is chaotic, your readings will be too. Not because the cards are broken. Because you are projecting. You are bringing your anxiety, your attachment, your desperation into the reading, and the cards are reflecting that noise back at you. And then you blame the cards for being "unclear" when the issue was never the cards.
Cleansing is not about being mystical for the sake of it. I am not interested in performance spirituality. Cleansing is about creating a controlled, intentional space so you are not dumping your current emotional state onto the spread and calling it a reading.
Before I pull cards, I cleanse the space. Every time. Not because I have to. Because I respect the practice enough to show up to it properly. The same way you would not walk into a courtroom unprepared, you do not sit down with a deck carrying the energy of whatever argument you just had or whatever text you just read.
Palo Santo vs Everything Else
Let me address the elephant in the spiritual room.
People burn things because it feels powerful. And I understand the appeal. Fire is primal. Smoke is visual. It feels like you are doing something. But not everything is created equal, and not every situation calls for the same tool.
Palo Santo is traditionally used for grounding. Clearing stagnant energy. Inviting calm and focus. It is not aggressive. It does not "fight" energy. It resets the room. Think of it as opening a window after a long winter. You are not battling anything. You are letting fresh air in.
Compare that to more intense cleansing practices that are about banishing or protection. Those have their place. If you are dealing with heavy energy, attachments, or spiritual interference, you need something with more weight. But those practices require knowledge, intention, and respect. They are not casual. They are not trendy. And they are not for people who just watched a YouTube video and bought supplies off Amazon.
If you are just pulling cards after crying over someone who cannot text back, you do not need a full spiritual exorcism. You need clarity. And probably better standards. But that is the work, not the smoke.
Here is what I want you to take from this:
Tarot is a tool. Like any tool, it is only as good as the person using it and the intention behind the use. If you approach it looking for answers you have already decided on, you will find them. Confirmation bias does not stop at the edge of a tarot spread.
But if you approach it with genuine openness, with the willingness to hear something you did not plan for, with the courage to sit with discomfort instead of running from it, tarot will show you exactly what you need to see.
The question is whether you are ready to look.
Most people are not. And that is fine. But do not blame the mirror for what it reflects.
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