I started quarantine in March with the idea of learning to read tarot by making myself flash cards. Paired with the numerous other ambitious goals I had for what I thought would be a short-lived stay at home, I failed.

But I recently bought a Jane Austen deck I’ve been coveting for months and doing simple, one-card readings for myself has been such a lovely way to learn - as well as to help center my thinking.

I mostly ask about my writing projects and my mental health: how to find ways to create when everything is terrible and I’m emotionally exhausted, how to give myself grace, how to reflect and remain present. I often draw the same cards despite what I feel is a hearty shuffle, and though I know my brain is wired to find and attach meaning to patterns, I like the idea that there’s some force out there offering sound advice, repeatedly, in the hopes I’ll take it. Even if it’s something kinetic in my own body and brain, because that would be pretty boss, too.

I have a few reference books to help bring greater clarity to the card and the short descriptions in the manual that accompanied the deck. My favorite is Melissa Cynova’s Kitchen Table Tarot. Cynova just feels comfortable. When I’m reading her explorations of each card, I can smell something baking, can feel the sort of stuffed cushion one expects to top a wooden dining chair in an eat-in kitchen - what I thought all kitchens were, growing up.

For my birthday my husband bought me the collector’s edition of Dragon Age: Inquisition, which comes with a full deck of the tarot that’s featured throughout the game in codex entries and the companion selection screen. I’m on the hunt for a beautiful box to keep these in so that I can start using them to read, as well.

And naturally, the historical novel I’ve been researching off and on for months is taking on a supernatural air: the main character is a witch coming into her powers of premonition, and I couldn’t resist gifting her the tarot deck that belonged to her deceased father. Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries meets Sabrina the Teenage Witch, because, how can you not.