Diary of a Mad Tarot Reader
“Bah non… C’est une arnaque!” said my dinner partner.
I choked on my water for a bit before swallowing completely. Covering my mouth with a napkin, I tried to clear my throat discretely.
“Are-knack?" I asked her through a slight choking fit. "What’s an are-knack?”
She rolled her eyes and repeated slowly “Arnaque. It’s – what do you call it in English? It’s a trick you play on someone that they don’t like.”
I stared at her as if she was speaking a foreign language, even though she switched to English so that I could better understand. Finally getting my wits together, I asked, “Do you mean a scam?”
“Yes, exact. These people come to you because they lost their job with the Covid. They are scared and you take advantage.”
I sat back in my chair, stunned and unable to finish eating my spaghetti Bolognese or admire the beautiful décor around me. I was on an interview of-sorts, sitting at a small table in a romantic Italian restaurant at the heart of the ninth arrondissement.
My dinner partner – a freelance journalist that I'll call Madame B – requested to work with an English-speaking student to proof-read her blog on climate change. In exchange, she offered to teach me French.
Unfortunately, we were off to a bad start after I told her what I do for a living.
You see, I am a professional tarot reader.
The Tarot is a deck of 78-cards that originated as playing cards for the Italian royal court in the 15th century. The Tarot was later resurrected by A. E. Waites and Pamela Coleman Smith to be repurposed as divination tools. For a quick history of the Tarot, see my blog here.
As a tarot reader, I use the cards to provide predictions and advice from a spiritual point of view. I focus on self-development while making sure my clients are uplifted and have fun. If you're old enough to remember Miss Cleo, then that's exactly what I do, sense of humor included!
Yes, people in this profession are called scammers, but this usually occurs behind closed doors or on anonymous forums in the United States. However, coming to Paris was shaping up to be a totally different experience.
Back to Madame B.
In a flash, her self-assured smile turned to a sneer of contempt as she continued to chastise me for taking advantage of the feeble-minded. Finally, after a few badly translated quips to defend my honor, we decided to end our relationship that night and parted ways.
This occurred just one month into my stay in Paris, on a cold February night in 2023, but it would not be the last time that I noticed a strong reaction to my occult practice.
Months later, an American client requested a reading at The Beans On Fire, an unassuming coffee shop in Montmartre. Having learned my lesson months prior, I sat at a corner table at the back of the shop an in attempt to avoid any attention.
The client brought a friend along, so a 30 minute reading turned into one hour. For the entire time we were there, people peered over their coffee cups, not-so-discreetly trying to see what we were doing. This is normal, but one woman kept staring, seemingly trying to burn a hole into my cards to get me to go away.
The lesson that day? Don’t take out my cards in a café. Gotcha.
The next time, I decided to conduct a client reading in a park. It was a beautiful summer day. Perfectly green grass was littered with wildflowers and friends relaxing under the sun. Thankfully, most people were too preoccupied with their cheeseboards and wine to pay us any attention. Until a group of high school students ran by. A boy, no older than fifteen, stopped in his tracks to point at us and shout “Je pensais que les sorcières existaient seulement en l’Amérique!”
By this point, I had been living in Paris long enough to laugh it off and tell him yes, I am American and witches do exist there.
And, what about it?
But it begged the question, what’s the big deal? Why the over-the-top reactions from Parisians when they see tarot cards?
A quick Google search informed me that laïcité is probably the reason. According to Rachel Donadio, the term laïcité is derived from the Latin laity, meaning of the people, as opposed to being of the priestly class. In modern terms, laïcité refers to French secularism, where any religion, its symbols and dressings, should be absent from the public sphere.
In the United States, freedom of religion is constantly talked about when debating sexuality and freedom of expression. However, in France, laïcité is thought to be freedom from religion and is invoked when discussing whether one can publicly display their religious beliefs.
This explains the lack of religious Doomsday preachers shouting from their sidewalk soapboxes that I regularly saw back in New York. It also explains why I had only seen someone wearing a cross twice on the metro, whereas back in South Carolina, people wore their gleaming Jesus pieces like a badge of honor.
But... this doesn’t explain the reactions to my tarot cards. In New York, I regularly gave readings in Union Square with no one blinking an eye. In coffee shops, people requested to be read after just seeing the box that contain my cards. However, in Paris, I have been kicked out of cemeteries by authoritarian security guards who, because they didn't know what tarot cards were, lorded over me as I put them away and followed me to make sure I left the premises. And even at my favorite WeWork office, I would go down to the basement to make sure no one can make a comment on my work.
So what gives? Are tarot cards considered a religious tool in France, worthy of being scrutinized and banished from public display? Is the difference in treatment really just about laïcité or is there something deeper? If so, will I ever find a spiritual community in Paris or do witches truly only exist in America?
To answer this, I decided to go on the hunt for my kind of people. If witches and tarot readers exist here, then I'm determined to find them. And if I can't find any, then perhaps I can discover what it means to be spiritual in Paris.
