Liz Worth ~ Tarot + Astrology

 Whew! If you are following the astrology of the moment, there is a lot going on.

First, we are in eclipse season: The Aries new moon and solar eclipse occurred on April 20th (or April 19th, depending on your location).

And Mercury is retrograde from Friday, April 21 until Sunday, May 14.

If you’ve followed my work for a while, you might have noticed that I try to bring some balance into the usual planet panic that takes place during notable astrological events.

Horoscopes used to play quite a big role in my life at one time. But the increasing popularity of astrology, coupled with the pressure for content creators to compete with a culture driven by clickbait and merciless algorithms, has led me to a different relationship with astrology.

It seems like every month there is a new astrology column telling people to “buckle up” or “watch out.”

And I know that that the kind of language gets people’s...

If you’re active on social media, chances are good that you’ve noticed there are a lot of fake accounts popping up that imitate tarot readers, astrologers, and others in the esoteric community.

In recent months, I’ve been alerted to new imposter accounts at least once a week that are using my images and content to pose as me.

At first glance, these accounts can be quite convincing. They choose handles that are similar to mine, except they might add a dash or dot between my first and last name. They will have my photos and captions, so they look and sound like me.

And they will start to follow and contact accounts who follow me. As they do so, they send private messages offering readings for a fee that can be sent online.

Unfortunately, I’ve heard from people who have paid the fee. One of them contacted me a few months ago saying, “I’ve been buying readings from you for the last few months, but I realized recently that I’m probably not...

Have you ever had a really good tarot reading?

I’m assuming that since you’re reading my tarot blog, you’ve probably had some kind of tarot reading before – either from another reader, or one you did for yourself.

If you’ve received a reading from someone else before and you loved it, what was it that made it so good?

I’ve had many readings over the years, some better than others.

Some of those readings have been predictive. Some of them were oriented to the present.

Some were introspective and decision based. Others channeled messages from Spirit.

It’s not the approach alone that makes for a good reading, though. Interesting predictions can be exciting to hear. Accuracy and resonance counts for something, too.

But in my experience, what good readings have in common with each other is specificity.

A good reading should feel personal to the querent. It should hit on some kind of specific truth, or a personal dream or desire that is aching to...

When I meet someone new and they learn I’m a tarot reader, they usually get curious – but also sometimes nervous.

“When you read for someone, do you connect to their energy somehow?” They ask.

I immediately get a vision of myself as a multi-tentacled being reaching into my clients’ auric fields to tap into their current states.

Which I imagine is what some people assume happens in a tarot reading.

While that might be kind of cool, in reality I’m not a supernatural being (much to my chagrin), and I’m not tapping into anyone else’s personal, psychic spaces during a reading.

But things do get personal. It can be an uncanny experience to receive a tarot reading that seems to cut through to the heart of your very soul.

And questions about energy between reader and querent go both ways. I’ve often had students in my classes ask, “How do I make sure I’m not absorbing someone else’s energy when I read tarot for...

In my previous post, I talked about working with questions in tarot, and the importance of understanding your intention and focus when posing questions.

But what do you when you are reading tarot for someone who doesn’t have a question?

Or, what if you just want to perform a reading for yourself, but you’re not sure what you want to know? I think every tarot reader can relate to feeling called to sit with your cards without knowing why.

The idea of pulling a few cards “just to see what comes up” is a beautiful one – until it comes time to interpret those cards. That’s when things can start to feel murky.

You might have already heard me say that tarot cards can mean anything, everything, and nothing at all.

Questions help to give shape and context to what we see in those cards. A certain symbol might have a lot of weight in a love reading but might not even be considered in a career context.

Questions essentially give your cards a job to do once...

This isn’t the first time I’ve shared thoughts on questions in tarot readings, but it’s been a while since I wrote about the subject.

And recently, I’ve had some good conversations with tarot clients and peers about the types of questions we can explore together. It’s been inspiring me to ruminate further, and to expand upon the topic.

Asking the right questions is something that, in my opinion, takes time to refine. And that doesn’t just extend to tarot readings.

The questions you ask yourself when you’re making a decision can help or hinder your path to clarity.

The questions you ask when you’re talking with other people can influence the quality of your connections to those around you.

The questions that pop into your head throughout the day can sway your future actions: “What if I did this? What if I try that?”

And of course, all of these questions can lead us in one way or another depending on how we approach them....

On Tuesday, March 7, Saturn entered the sign of Pisces for the first time since the mid-`90s: The planet of structure and limitation last swam through Pisces’ oceans from 1993 – 1996.

In pop astrology, it’s common to hear negative takes on Saturn’s influence. People dread their Saturn returns and worry that whatever area of life Saturn is touching upon will become a desiccated husk.

On one hand, it’s understandable as to why some might assume Saturn leads to worst-case scenarios. It is symbolized by the scythe, an instrument that cuts.

Saturn reminds that we reap what we’ve sown. It can be a time of great reward, but it can also be a time when we must address any sickly crops in our lives.

Are you tending to something that needs a different kind of nourishment? Are there weeds in your garden that are running wild?

Saturn helps you take control. It shows you where you can make choices to make deeper commitments, tie up loose ends, and build a...

All of a sudden it seems like everyone is talking about artificial intelligence, or A.I. Even in the tarot community.

Open A.I. apps like ChatGPT and PFP.AI are becoming increasingly popular with people who want to update their profile pictures with artistic renderings, or who want to outline quick blog posts or other marketing content.

A.I. didn’t just come out of nowhere, though. The term “artificial intelligence” was coined in 1955, three years after computer scientist Arthur Samuel developed the world’s first self-learning computer program, the Samuel Checkers-playing program.

In our modern day, social media companies like Facebook and Google use machine-learning to deliver ads to users. Facebook also uses it to monitor content and comments, although human reviewers still often make final judgment calls on flagged content.

Voice-activated tools like Apple’s Siri, Echo and Amazon’s Alexa and Echo also use artificial intelligence. Siri was...

You might have noticed that I’ve started a new online tarot community, Tarot Study Hall, to build connection and conversation around the art of tarot reading.

One of the things I’m encouraging Study Hall members to do is set goals for their tarot practices.

But why? What’s the point?

It feels so linear to set a goal: You see where you want to be in the future, and you start working towards it.

Goal setting makes sense in so many areas of our lives. People set goals for their careers, their finances, their health, and more.

But when it comes to goal setting and tarot, it can feel counter to what tarot is all about: Why not just let your intuition guide you on your journey? Why not just feel it out intuitively and organically?

Letting inspiration guide you can certainly be part of the tarot journey. But structure can help a lot, too. Especially if you’re feeling overwhelmed by how much there is to learn about tarot, or you’ve been studying for a while...

A common learning curve that tarot readers share is figuring out how to synthesize the information in their readings.

So many of us learn how to read tarot card by card. A popular piece of advice is to pull a card a day as a way to study each card organically. This can be a useful practice, and one that breaks down what can be an overwhelming 78-card deck into bite-sized actions.

But where card-a-day practitioners end up getting stuck is when they want to transition into bigger readings. That’s where they start to feel unsure about how to combine cards, or find the patterns between them.

Similarly, when we’re relying on guidebooks to build our interpretations, multi-card spreads can end up feeling clunky as we work through them one card at a time.

This can also happen when we’re not sure how many details to work into a reading. Confusing complexity for potency in tarot reading can become a huge block for readers.

You don’t need to layer your readings with a...