Welcome to The Tarot Bear...

I’ve been interested in the occult and the esoteric for as long as I can remember. For years I would use online platforms to pull cards for myself, circling around the tarot without ever fully stepping in. Eventually, I bought my first deck from a local shop and that changed everything.

Since then, I’ve studied with mentors, read widely on traditional meanings, and focused particularly on the Rider–Waite–Smith deck. Over the last few years I’ve gone much deeper, exploring Western Hermetic philosophy, the Qabbalistic Tree of Life, and the wider traditions of esoteric magic. I wanted to understand why the cards mean what they mean — to move beyond rote keywords into the philosophy and worldview that shaped the tarot in the first place.

Me on a Live reading delivering some good news!

At first, I came to tarot with a certain self-consciousness. I’m known among friends and family as a fairly sceptical person, and I didn’t want to be seen as diving headlong into something “magical.” So I began with a secular, psychological approach: Jungian archetypes, self-reflection, mindfulness. These are valid ways of working with the cards, and I still value them, but the more I read for others — especially at scale on TikTok — the harder it became to dismiss the uncanny accuracy of the cards. Beyond coincidence, beyond the Barnum effect, there is something more at work here.

Qabbalah, the Zodiac and Tarot...

The Qabbalistic Tree of Life describes four overlapping levels of reality:

• Atziluth (pure energy or divine will),

• Briah (archetypes and concepts),

• \Yetzirah (symbols and formation), and

• Assiah (the physical world).

A helpful way to think about them is not as a ladder where everything simply descends from above into a “corrupted” material world, but as layers that exist simultaneously. The principle from Western Hermeticism; "as above, so below; as below, so above," is saying that these layers mirror one another and are happening at the same time.

So, your body and daily life are experienced in Assiah, but your emotions and thinking exist simultaneously in an adjacent layer (Yetzirah); your soul and the archetypal patterns that shape you occupy a still higher layer (Briah); and all of these are refractions of the light of the divine creative force in Atziluth.

In other words, there is a version of you playing out on multiple levels at once - you're truly a multi-dimensional being! We are simultaneously ourselves as individuals but also part of something much larger.

Tarot is a divinatory art that uses physical cards (in Assiah), depicting symbols (from Yetzirah) which demonstrate archetypal influences (from Briah) to give us a snapshot of the energies affecting our mundane lives.

But what are these archetypal forces and why do they affect us? How do things happening in another dimension mean I'll get a new job or meet the love of my life?

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Well, I like to think of the idea of comets and space as a great metaphor for this.

Take a minute to imagine your soul as a brightly burning comet, travelling through the vast expanse of space at millions of miles per hour. In this galaxy there are also planets, stars and the occassional black hole. These cosmic bodies have their own gravitational power that pull our comet-souls towards them or push us away from them, sometimes subtly influencing our path and other times slingshotting us in a completely different direction.

This is essentially an astrological view of the universe - the planets each represent an archetypal force such as benevolence and growth (Jupiter), love and beauty (Venus), force and aggression (Mars) etc. As our little comet flies past our path is changed and altered by their gravity, therefore we are influenced by these archetypal forces as we move through life.

Your natal chart is a snapshot of that sky at the moment of your birth; and depicts the archetypal influences that were most present when you entered this life.

Tarot, in the same language, reads the energies affecting your journey right now and translates them into symbols and shows them to you as cards. A card is a physical object in Assiah that carries a symbol from Yetzirah, which points back to an archetype in Briah.

Mysticism, magic and meanings...

This way of seeing the Four Worlds lets the practice sit comfortably in two camps at once.

Taken secularly, it’s a model for how humans create and share meaning: we attach significance to physical phenomena and then live into those meanings.

Taken mystically, it is literal — the archetypal and energetic layers are real and active, and tarot helps us perceive and work with them.

Tarot, then, is not merely a set of keywords on a card.

It is a method for reading the arrow of influence in your life, what is pulling, shaping, and informing the direction of your life across these interwoven layers — and for bringing that information back into useful language and guidance for everyday decisions.

My Approach

I read tarot through this lens: not as fortune-telling, but as symbolic storytelling grounded in life experience. I’ve had my share of ups and downs, and those experiences inform my readings as much as my study of Hermeticism and Qabbalah. I don’t claim to be the ultimate authority — there will always be people with more experience and knowledge. I see myself as a student as much as a guide, open to learning from every reading and every conversation.

That openness shapes my style: honest, empathetic, and exploratory. Tarot isn’t about handing down absolute answers, but about helping you see your situation in a new light, connecting the patterns, and drawing meaning from the higher levels of reality.

Have you ever had your cards read?

If you’d like to experience a reading for yourself, you can book a session through my Tarot Reading Services page. I offer accessible online readings, recorded video readings, and live sessions, all designed to bring the wisdom of the cards into your own life.

Tarot has become an extraordinary part of my spiritual journey. I’m glad you’ve found your way here, and I hope the resources on this site from the blog to my upcoming podcast Tarot for Fools, give you something to reflect on and explore.