MACON, Ga. — Intuition can be a powerful thing. Some people like to take a more direct approach to understanding what the world has in store for them. For this reason and many others, people across the world seek out tarot card readings.
A traditional tarot card deck has 78 cards split into two sections called the Major and Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana begins with a card called The Fool and ends with a card called The World in a common deck.
The Minor Arcana is separated into four suits. These are usually swords, wands, pentacles and cups.
"It's kind of just more about using your creative brain, using your third eye as sight, and also just kind of opening your heart as well. Everything is like through love...just kind of go with what comes to you," Spiritualist and Medium Timothy Hamrah said.
Hamrah is a baker by day and a psychic by night. He's been reading tarot for about 18 years. Hamrah says divination is just a different method of understanding yourself.
"Sometimes you have questions that no one can really answer and connecting with divination through tarot, connecting with spirit, you can kind of get the answers you're looking for but in a different kind of message format," he said.
People read tarot in many different ways. Commonly, practitioners will shuffle the deck in their hands and draw cards as they feel their spirit, or the spirit of the person they are reading for, calls them to.
There are also many different kinds of card-centric divination practices people can do. Hamrah uses an Akahiec deck which unlike tarot has more of a storytelling feature and can be used for more specific readings.
Hamrah says if you're interested in tarot you can start with a generic deck and then move on to more complex decks with their own stories to tell.
Another tarot reader, Nina Bruce, calls herself an intuitive channeler. She grew up in a very spiritual family. She is a mom and has her own business doing tarot reading for others.
"I get tons of different waves. I get waves of different feelings like I'm seeing different things or hearing just specific words...so I really use my tarot cards for confirmation for what I'm already feeling," Bruce said.
She says there can be a lot of stigma around tarot card reading. But for her, she says she's tapping into the part of her spirit that is already divinely aware.
"When I was channeling I heard that there is not a name for what this is, there's not anything that we could put words into, so I don't think that it's fair to give a label to that but it's whatever we're comfortable with. I absolutely believe in that and I believe that God provides us with so many different resources and so many different practices of spirituality and whatever feeds your soul is what works for you," Bruce said.
Both Bruce and Hamrah said reading tarot cards has aided in their personal healing. Bruce says tarot reading is her passion.
She says when people leave her after a reading she hopes they feel like they've received a motherly love and can now go out into the world and be great. She feels it is her calling to help others.
"It just makes me feel good to help people because I've been in those places. Like, I guess I try to be the help I needed or I've needed as far as emotionally or spiritually so that's what I try to offer," she said.
Hamrah says the spirit is within all of us.
"We're all spirit so there's really no way to get away from it because at the end we're all spirit. So it all depends on what you really think it is. Everyone has different definitions but I think it's all about love because that's all that we go back to. That's all where we come from," he said.
If you want to connect with Bruce who does tarot full-time, you can reach out to her on Facebook or Instagram.