Welcome to Antifragile Tarot!

A brief introduction to me, Susannah, and a ramble about what tarot cards are and are not. Don't forget to email me suggestions of what you'd like to hear in this podcast! Hit me up at with your questions and ideas.     Transcript: Hey there! This is the Antifragile Tarot Podcast and I am your resident cardslinger, Susannah. This going to be a pretty short episode because I want to introduce myself to you and explain why I decided to do a podcast on top of the other things I do with my little tarot card reading business, Antifragile Tarot. Mostly I make appearances at local markets, such as the JC Oddities market and the Pacific Flea and pretty much whatever I can manage around my day job, which is really a night job. This podcast is supposed to be a good resource for beginners, intermediate and advanced practitioners alike. I personally have been reading tarot cards since I was 13; my mom got me my first deck. Although something I will go into soon—is it is completely not necessary for someone else to get you your first deck. But my mother was a tarot card reader herself, semi-professionally, and she got me a vampire deck when I was 13. So, I've been reading on and off, I took a pause in my late teens because you know how some people find the occult when they become a teenager to rebel against their parents? For me, rebellion was not paying attention to it, so I dropped it. I had a bunch friends who were super, you know, atheists who looked down on anything remotely like tarot or horoscopes or whatever, and I kind of gave it up, but I never fully ignored it, and a few years ago I decided that I was much happier reading tarot than not, so I went back to it. And it’s just kinda grown from here. So I now read semi-professionally, it's not my full-time job but I work at markets, I have an Esty-- --and now I'm offering a podcast. Why a podcast? Well I can’t always be there in person to hang out with you, and Instagram only offers so much in the way of letting me write to you, so I figured this might be a fun way for me to interact with you and I don't have to set up my messy apartment for a video. I think it's a win-win all around. This episode is going to be more geared towards a beginner, for now, I’dlike to discuss what tarot is and what tarot is not. Tarot is not tarrot, it is not--well I think there are different pronunciations, but tarot cards are a 78-card system. There are two major systems, there is the Smith-Waite, normally referred to as Rider-Waite but I call it Smith-Waite for feminist reasons and the Thoth system. Everyone has a different way of pronouncing Thoth. There’s Th-oth, there’s Tut, I say Tah-th, it’s easier for me, that's what we’re going to go with. The Rider-Waite system is one that I primarily use and it’s the one that you're most likely to be familiar with. If you’ve watched TV shows like Carnivàle or I know it has popped up on Supernatural, although it was totally not realistic but still kind of cool and even on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Tarot cards like Death and Lovers and maybe you even seen Judgement or some of the cup cards or sword cards, those cards are from the Rider-Waite system. The Thoth system also has those cards but there are some key differences.   So in a 78-card tarot deck, you've got 22 cards called the major arcana. It starts off with the Fool and ends with the World, and all of those cards in between are major archetypes a la Jung, and different important milestones. The 22 major arcana is often called the Fool's journey because it starts off with this figure, the Fool, who either becomes or meets different people on the way depending on what interpretation you're going with and ends at the completion of the cycle which is the World. And then the rest of the cards after the 22 are divided into four suits. Now those suits are analogous to a regular playing card deck which some people also use for cartomancy, or the art of telling the future with cards. Those suits, which the names