TAI
At seventeen, trying to make sense of Chopin’s Nocturnes somehow led me to Tarot.
My teacher had sent me to the library to find out how people in the nineteenth century actually lived. Music led to history, history to philosophy, and somewhere among the shelves, Western metaphysics entered the picture.
A spiritual calling would make a tidier story. Mostly, though, none of it made sense—and that was difficult to leave alone.
The Shop with the Suit of Armor
Near my teacher’s studio stood a shop with a suit of armor outside. For ages, I assumed it sold swords or medieval collectibles. Inside were books on astrology, ceremonial magic, Hermeticism, crystals, and a remarkable number of things I knew nothing about. There were Tarot decks, too.
The person behind the counter suggested choosing one by intuition. Having no idea what that meant, I chose the Rider–Waite deck because it was the one I recognized from a book. Not a particularly mysterious beginning.
At home, the little instruction booklet raised more questions than it answered. The following week brought another visit and more books. Understanding took considerably longer.
Something beneath those vague explanations kept drawing me back. Why did one image contain an astrological symbol? How could following a planet lead through a sign and a decan, then return to an entirely different card? Each answer seemed to open another book.
Life was clearly more complicated than seventy-eight definitions.
Following the Connections
Astrology came into my studies through the cards themselves: Venus in The Empress, Aries in The Emperor. Golden Dawn material and Qabalah opened up further relationships; history made them more complicated, and more interesting. These subjects have remained connected in my work ever since.
Learning the correspondences was only a beginning. Who put them together? Which ideas were they working with? Did a relationship that looked convincing on paper still offer anything useful during a reading? Those questions mattered more than getting through another list of meanings.
Music offered a familiar way in. Naming every note correctly does not mean you understand a score. A phrase changes with its timing, tension, or the silence around it. Gradually, the cards began to make sense through their relationships in much the same way.
Room for Interpretation
Tarot, to me, is an art form. There is history to learn and technique to practice, along with inherited conventions worth questioning. Interpretation asks for care; calling it art is hardly permission to make everything up.
During a reading, an image takes on meaning beside another image, in response to a question, with a particular person sitting across from me. Memorized definitions can help, but at some point you have to look up from them and pay attention to what is happening.
In my twenties, Jung’s idea of synchronicity gave a name to something I had been noticing. It did not settle the matter. Having a word for an experience can make it easier to discuss without making it any less puzzling.
Across the Table
More than thirty years with Tarot now inform my reading and teaching. Based in Southern California, the work takes place online and in person, in English and Chinese.
A session might bring a half-formed decision into focus, or make a familiar pattern easier to recognize. Often, the useful part comes through conversation: a question asked differently, a connection noticed, something that finally becomes possible to say.
The next step belongs to the person living the life.
Teaching brings its own pleasure. A question from someone learning the cards can send me back to material I thought I knew. There is always something to look at again.
What Becomes Visible
People arrive at a reading with different kinds of uncertainty. Some genuinely cannot see a way forward. Others have a sense of what they want, but have not yet found a way to admit it—even to themselves.
The word shadow is useful here in an ordinary sense: the parts of ourselves we find difficult to accept. Cards can give us a way to approach those things, without requiring that everything be explained perfectly at the outset.
Recognizing something does not magically resolve it. Still, there can be relief in spending a little less energy looking away. What happens after that remains a personal choice.
No Special Powers Required
There are no claims of supernatural ability behind this work. Angels, past lives, and Akashic records are not sources of authority in my readings, and another person’s future is not mine to declare.
Whether Tarot predicts the future is a question I do not know how to prove. Its capacity to invite observation, interpretation, and a worthwhile conversation has been enough to keep my attention for decades.
A Place for the Questions
Eventually, the notebooks, readings, classes, and private study needed somewhere to meet. That is where TAI began.
The live sky, the Rose, the Tree, and the Orrery make relationships available to explore. Writing and teaching leave room to ask what those relationships mean, where they came from, and whether an explanation holds up when you look closely.
Being able to compare sources and examine traditions side by side has changed the way these subjects can be studied. TAI is part of that ongoing work. Nothing here needs to be the final word; there is plenty left to discover.
TAI
Tarot reader / instructor
Southern California
Online + in person
English / 中文
30+ years of experience
Enjoy the exploration.