"I Don’t Pull Cards to Predict the Future. I Pull Them to Hear Myself." by Angel Haven (ISSUE 1- MAY 26')

I don’t pull cards because I think the future is hiding inside paper. I mean, okay, maybe

sometimes I do. I’m dramatic. I want answers. I want the universe to send me a tiny little

permission slip that says, “yes, darling, you’re safe, you’re loved, you’re not making everything

up in your head.”

But that’s not really why I keep coming back to tarot.

I pull cards because sometimes my feelings are too loud to understand without a symbol in front

of me. Sometimes I know something before I know it. My body gets there first. My chest feels

weird. My stomach drops. My brain starts trying to explain everything logically, but underneath

all of that, there’s this little frequency humming like, babe... something is off.

And I can ignore that feeling for a while. I can dress it up as anxiety. I can call it overthinking. I

can tell myself I’m being too sensitive, too emotional, too much, too whatever. But eventually it

gets loud enough that I need to put it somewhere.

So I pull a card. Not because the card is going to save me, but because I need the feeling to

have a shape.

+ ̊⊹♡⊹ ̊+

That’s the thing people get wrong about tarot. They think it’s only about prediction. Will they text

me? Will I get the thing? Will I move? Will this work? Will I be loved properly one day, or am I

doomed to be a poetic little freak forever?

And yes, I ask those questions too. I am not above it. I have absolutely sat there like a Victorian

ghost in a hoodie, asking a deck of cards if someone cared about me. But the older I get, the

more I realize tarot is usually not telling me the future.

It’s telling me what I’m avoiding in the present.

The cards are rarely like, “here is the exact plot of your life.” They’re more like, “darling, you

already know what’s happening, you’re just scared of what knowing means.”

Rude. Helpful. Annoying. True.

When I’m overwhelmed, my brain becomes a very unserious place. I can convince myself I’m

overreacting. Then five minutes later, I can convince myself I need to burn my entire life down

and be reborn by sunrise. I can be like, “It’s fine, I’m fine, I’m mature, I’m healed,” and then

immediately spiral because someone used a period instead of an exclamation mark.

I can turn one sentence into a court case. I can turn one feeling into a prophecy. I can turn one

tiny intuitive hit into a whole cinematic universe.

So tarot helps because it interrupts me. It gives me something outside of my own head to

respond to. It doesn’t always calm me down. Sometimes it makes me more annoyed because

the card will be so painfully accurate that I have to sit there like... okay, first of all, who asked

you to clock me like that?

But it gives language to the static. It makes the fog visible. It turns the thing I’m feeling into

something I can look at instead of just drowning in it.

+ ̊⊹♡⊹ ̊+

The Eight of Cups doesn’t always mean leave. Sometimes it means stop abandoning yourself.

Sometimes it means walk away from the pattern, not the person. Sometimes it means your body

is tired of calling emotional hunger devotion.

The Four of Swords doesn’t just mean rest. Sometimes it means stop trying to solve your entire

life from an exhausted nervous system. Sometimes the spiritual answer is literally water, food,

silence, clean sheets, and putting your phone across the room.

The Tower doesn’t always mean disaster. Sometimes it means the lie finally collapsed.

Sometimes it means the thing you were trying to hold together was already falling apart, and the

truth simply stopped being polite.

The Devil doesn’t always mean evil. Sometimes it means attachment. Sometimes it means

obsession. Sometimes it means the thing that feels magnetic is also the thing keeping you

small. Sometimes it means you keep calling something chemistry because you’re not ready to

call it a loop.

That’s why I can’t see tarot as just fortune-telling. To me, tarot is a symbolic language.

Emotional translation. Pattern recognition in a prettier outfit. Therapy’s witchy cousin sitting

across from you, like, “Okay, babe, be honest.”

+ ̊⊹♡⊹ ̊+

But tarot has a shadow side too, and I know this because I am unfortunately very good at

finding it.

Sometimes I’m not pulling cards because I want clarity. Sometimes I’m pulling because I want

reassurance. Sometimes I’m asking the same question in different fonts, hoping the deck finally

gives me the answer I want.

Should I stay? But the real question is: why am I scared to leave?

Do they care? But the real question is: do I feel cared for?

Will this work? But the real question is: what would have to change for this to stop hurting?

Are they, my soulmate? But the real question is why am I romanticizing pain because it feels

meaningful?

That’s when tarot stops being a mirror and starts becoming a maze. And I have to catch myself

there. Because the point is not to pull until I feel safe. The point is to notice why I don’t feel safe.

I don’t think tarot makes me less responsible for my choices. I think it makes me more

responsible. Because once I see the pattern, I can’t fully pretend I don’t. Once the card names

the thing, once the symbolism hits the exact nerve, once my body reacts before my brain can

argue with it, I know.

I can still resist. Obviously. I can bargain. I can ask again because I’m human and dramatic, and

sometimes I need the universe to repeat itself like a tired mother. But deep down, I know.

The cards don’t create the truth. They reveal where I’ve hidden it.

Sometimes that feels comforting. Sometimes it feels brutal. Sometimes it makes me laugh

because there is something deeply unserious about being emotionally destroyed by laminated

paper. And sometimes it makes me cry because I realize I was never actually confused. I was

+ ̊⊹♡⊹ ̊+

So no, I don’t pull cards to predict the future. Not really. I pull them to hear myself under the

noise.

I pull them when my nervous system is loud, and my intuition is whispering. I pull them when I

need a symbol strong enough to hold a feeling I haven’t found words for yet. I pull them when

I’m trying to separate fear from intuition, attachment from love, urgency from truth.

I pull them when I’m tired of explaining myself to everyone else and need to ask myself what I

actually know.

Maybe that’s what tarot is for me. Not fate. Not fantasy. Not delusion. A language. A mirror. A

tiny ritual for telling the truth. A way of asking:

Darling, what are you pretending not to know?

And finally, being quiet enough to hear the answer.

+ ̊⊹♡⊹ ̊+

Thank you for reading, darling. -- Angel Haven

ARTIST BIO:

Angel Haven, age: 20, located: Montreal

I’m Angel Haven. I’m a writer, tarot reader, internet diarist, and chronically online nerd trying to

cope with the real world by turning everything into art, symbolism, and emotional lore.

My work blends diary entries, personal essays, tarot, shadow work, grief, love, ambition, internet

culture, and self-mythology for emotionally intense souls, spiritual overthinkers, wounded artists,

soft-hearted weirdos, and chronically online romantics.

Come find me here too: @angelsburningdesires