In a softly lit room in Centennial, Lilly Cadillac Unger shuffles her tarot cards with practiced hands. The space, filled with gentle natural light, is the heart of her business, Altered Arcana. On the table, a classic three-card spread -- past, present and future -- unfolds a story. Among the cards drawn: Death, the Six of Cups and the Nine of Wands.
"I see here that there was some kind of huge transition," Unger said, pointing to the Death card.
The card's reputation, she said, is the most feared and is more Hollywood than reality -- its real message is transformation and rebirth.
Unger's journey with tarot began at age 12, sparked by curiosity and the little guidebook included with her first Rider-Waite deck -- the most popular tarot deck, she notes, and one she's misplaced more times than she can count.
For Unger, tarot isn't about predicting the future.
"Tarot really should tell you about your present," she said.
The Rider-Waite tarot card deck, first published in 1909, was created by artist Pamela Colman Smith under the direction of occultist A.E. Waite. The deck consists of 78 cards -- 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana -- with each card featuring symbolic illustrations designed to evoke intuitive and emotional responses.
Distinctive for its fully illustrated Minor Arcana, the Rider-Waite deck's imagery draws from esoteric traditions that embrace practices that involve secret or hidden knowledge, Christian mysticism and the teachings of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret society that studied occultism and metaphysics, according to the University of St. Thomas.
Kate Kettelkamp, who reads tarot cards from her Denver office, also starts with the three card spread that displays the past, present and future. After she shuffles, she has the person receiving the reading pull three cards.
"I like people to choose their own cards," Kettlekamp said. "Different tarot readers have different rules. I like people to select the cards because I feel like you bring your own energy to it."
When the cards are pulled and laid out as reversals - meaning the card's art is upside down - Kettlekamp said that can signify an energy blockage.
Looking towards the card that represents the past, Kettlekamp observed the Nine of Cups, reversed.
"Cups are water, so it has this emotional, imaginative quality to it," she said. "With it reversed, it can (signify) wanting to move something forward but having some obstacle."
When Kettlekamp moved from California to Denver almost 10 years ago, she said everyone she met in the new city knew their astrology signs and owned a tarot deck, inspiring her to dive into the metaphysical world. She currently studies consciousness in a graduate program at the California Institute of Integral Studies.
In the program, Kettlekamp studies culture, the human journey, the soul and the environment, which she said sets her up for inquisitive knowledge for reading tarot.
"I like to approach (tarot) from a place of inquiry. Some people ask, "should I break up with my partner?" But I find that the tarot doesn't answer deterministically," she said. "Then they'll pull the Death card and I'll say, "well, possibly, what do you think? It's up to you." That could just be their current energy that is creating a trajectory towards breaking up."
Kettlekamp said the cards do not tell the future but can give insight into what struggles someone may be currently facing. She said it's important for readers to uphold ethics when doing a reading.
"I've had people come into my office who have been disturbed from prior readings because they've been told things that make them anxious. So I do think that there's some responsibility on the reader's part to not induce anxiety by giving a deterministic prediction about someone's life," she said.
When the cards convey a negative message, Rachel Florentino from Bridge the Gap Tarot in Westminster said she views the cards as morphable.
"It's not set in stone. (The cards) are something we can bring to the present and change if we want to," she said.
Florentino reflected on the readings she's done that the cards portray a potentially negative message, and how she communicated it to her client.
"There was a client that desperately wanted a baby ... When I looked at her present, the problem was, she worked 80 hours a week and she wasn't listening to her doctors telling her, "no, you cannot sustain that type of lifestyle while you're pregnant,"" she said. "It hurt me because she wasn't going to do that. I had to tell her she has to listen to people."
Something Florentino did not always do at the beginning of her reading journey - even when she met the woman who wanted a baby - was shielding. In an effort to protect herself from her clients' energies, sometimes Florentino will imagine herself wearing a cloak that acts like a shield.
During another reading, Florentino pulled the Tower card in a past, present and future spread - with the Tower card in the future pile, she said it's the harshest card of the deck.
"It's because there's things that you should be doing that you're not doing and so the universe is going to make it happen. It can be harsh because it can no longer be in your control," she said.
According to Florentino, the Tower card can show up when someone may be losing a job if they continue down their current trajectory.
"It's definitely a warning of: what do we know we need to be doing but we haven't done yet?" she said.
Regarding the seemingly worrisome card -- the Death card -- Florentino said the image of the card, which typically displays a grim reaper-esque skeleton with a sword, scares people, largely due to Western society's perspective of death.
"I think Hollywood has done a great job in scaring us with (death). In the United States, we're not open about death and don't view it as a rebirth but as the end of something. In a lot of other cultures, death is looked at as a death-rebirth process," she said.
Regarding the online popularity of tarot card readings - from mass-collective tarot readings on YouTube to online psychic chats - Kettlekamp and Unger suggest looking at reviews to avoid being scammed.
"I would recommend for people to find someone that has reviews because there are people who will take your money," Kettlekamp said. "Anybody that has a physical location, not that that's necessary, but it can indicate how much time they spend practicing."
For Unger, reviews and having a connection with a reader are two ways to prevent scams.
"You just have to be honest with yourself about if it resonates, and I think you should be careful who you go to," she said. "I think at the end of the day, getting reviews, and maybe just really asking yourself: "who am I being led to and why? Am I being led to this person because I saw something online that said: he's thinking about you? And is that what I'm seeking?""
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