A talk on Tarot reading and intuition : interview with Christina Leynes – Shine your Light Oracle

These past few months, the energies of the world in terms of chaotic changes, dramatic massive deaths and interpersonal relationships shifts have been occuring. At least, that is what I have been observing. The incertainty of the future we hold made me inherently interested in the many different ways humans tend to grasp to beliefs and practices to apprehend the daily. For some it’s religious faith, spirituality in various forms, for others it’s physical activity, astrology or, in our case here Tarot Reading. (All images used here are from Christina’s Dali Tarot Deck first published in 1984).

It is not only a tendency on Youtube. Tarot Reading has been a part of occidental societies for centuries, emerging firstly in Italy around the Middle Age to pursue its evolutions around the globe, seing the readings expand themselves, the traditions and the easthetics of them as well.

The main principle of Tarot that we need to understand before this interview is this : only you can receive the messages of the cards and the reader if you believe in your heart that the energies around you are here to guide your soul. The messages are not inherently from the cards, they are your soul talking to you through this medium. The so called-energies may be coming from the celestial bodies and are deeply influenced by the cycles of the Moon and the energy of the reader.

Here, in this interview, you have a chance to understand Tarot a little more through the eyes and voice of Christina Leynes, a canadian writer based in San Diego, California, from where she reads for a small but cheerful and powerful community online.  She kindly accepted to answer  my questions focusing of the art of Tarot, its relatioship with artists and the modern world. Check out her reading for the Peach Journal Collective HERE !

When did you first approach Tarot Card reading ? How come you started reading for others ?

To tell you that I had only been using tarot and oracle cards for a year-and-a-half may cause you and your audience to question my credibility as a “tarot card reader” and decide to stop reading here. I can’t say that I got my first tarot deck as a child, or that I am a 5^th generation tarot card reader, or even that I had been doing it a long time. However, I can tell you that my lifelong reliance on and faithful obedience to my intuition are what have made tarot card “reading” a natural extension of what I had already been doing. Therefore, I’m reluctant to call myself a “tarot card reader,” when really the cards serve as prompts and visual aids in conveying the messages I receive intuitively.

I was first introduced to tarot in 1998, on a trip to visit a friend who was living in Toronto at the time. In the living room of her high-rise apartment on Bay Street, she read for me from the Rider-Waite deck, laying out the cards according to a spread prescribed by a guidebook that came with it. “You’re thinking of sleeping with someone.” What a way to open a reading. But she was right, and up until then it had been a secret. She goes on to add, “However, I see your face doing this –” twisting her face as though she had been forced to suck on a lemon. It was then that I realized that, firstly, not only is tarot fun, and secondly, that messages expressed with the aid of tarot have as much to do with the with the messenger’s intuitive and psychic sensibilities as the cards themselves. There are, after all, no cards in the tarot for “thinking of sleeping with someone” or “lemon face.” That’s was the beginning of my romance in tarot, and we maintained only a light flirtation for the 20 years before I finally bought a deck of my own. I now have 20 to 30 tarot and oracle card decks.

I purchased my first tarot deck amid a string of tremendous life shifts: divorce, new jobs, new love, a cross-country relocation, and all the people and experiences a new city and new home naturally present. Although I don’t think I was successful in reading for myself back then, I was somehow compelled to offer tarot readings for a small handful of girl friends just for fun. After only a couple of months of reading for them, either in person or remotely, one in New York phoned me to say, “You know… you really can and should be reading for other people.” That was startling and thrilling news, particularly to know that the readings I had done for her had been meaningful to her in some way. However, it was also exciting to have learned a new thing about myself. Later that week I created my YouTube channel in the hope of helping even just one person through tarot. (I have since begun publishing free readings for the public on Instagram.)

It is said that Tarot Card reading is an art, how so ?

Artists seem to be natural oracles, having surrendered themselves to inspiration and then bravely endeavouring to transmute that inspiration in a way that may delight and perhaps even teach others. This process of transmutation is — as I had observed in my friend who made the lemon face — an act of co-creation with the Medium, whether it’s a card deck, a tray of watercolours, a flute, or a laptop, the Human Channel, and the Divine Source of inspiration.  That’s a holy trinity, if ever there was one.

 « I can’t profess to be a tarot scholar, but it’s believed that tarot – or tarocchi, as it’s called in its original Italian—had been first played as a card game in the courts of Italian royalty of the 14th and 15th century. I imagine that the Italian royals made playing with tarot fashionable, having appropriated it from the gypsies. I marvel at how the archetypes represented in the tarot transcend time, space, and cultures in much the same way a soul transcends time, space, and cultures. »

Artists have been interested in Tarot Card for a while, may it be writers (Henry Miller was a big afficionado of tarot readings) or painters, or even musicians. According to you, what led them/us to feel this closeness to this art ?

Artists are as much ‘seekers’ as they are ‘creators’. After all, they had been led by their intuition to become the artists that they are. They confront the mysteries of life in pursuit of truth, observing and questioning as they go. Perhaps tarot has helped artists like Henry Miller and Salvador Dalí increase their bandwith that they may download even more Divine inspiration. At the very least, may these artists had been led to tarot by mere curiosity:  a healthy and mind is insatiably curious.

Can you tell me about the Dali Deck and what specificities it has ?

From what I had read, Dalí was commissioned in 1973 to design a tarot deck for use in the James Bond film, Live and Let Die. Although the contract between Dalí and the film’s producer had fallen through and the deck was not used in the film, the Dalí Universal Tarot deck was published in limited run in 1984. It was reissued by Taschen in 2019. I purchased mine about two weeks ago and have since been working consistently with it. I love all my tarot and oracle decks and feel a unique affinity with each one. King Lear may have taught us that it’s inadvisable for a parent to announce a favourite child, but I hazard to admit that the Dalí Tarot is now my favourite among them. It had really taken me by surprise. I have not come across a deck as purely Divinely-inspired as this one. That’s a bold statement but I don’t think it’s an exaggeration. It must be due to its bravery:  it doesn’t strive to politely dissolve into the annals of tarot deck history. Within each card Dalí blends together – alchemizes, if you will — art of the 15^th and 16^th century Masters, Christian iconography, classical Greco-Roman architecture and sculpture, as well his own dreamy, surrealistic imaginings. The result is a deck that moves and enlightens me with every use, for it is as deep as it is high and wide, sometimes subtle, but most times unapologetically brash.

Speaking of ‘unapologetic’, Dalí dares to present himself as the Magician, and his wife Gala as the Empress, the two preeminent Creators and Manifesters of the tarot. I submit that Dalí is fair to do so:  the great Magic trick of the Universe is creativity for it is through creativity that miracles are made manifest.

In your opinion, how can Tarot reading can help receivers in gaigning clarity and what could be the limits of it ?

Tarot serves as a mirror reflecting back to us truths we already intuit, whether we acknowledge those truths in part or in totality. Therefore, that which we may see by peering into the mirror that is tarot is infinite, limited or occluded only to the extent to which we are willing to acknowledge it.

The other day I received an email from a client-friend (inevitably all my clients feel like friends or family to me thanks to the deep connection that tarot facilitates for us) in response to a recorded reading I had done for her. In the email she writes that when she first watched her reading, she did not feel that the reading pertained to her. However, upon watching the reading a second and third time, she realised that “it was resonating with [her] subconscious,” as she put it. It requires quite a degree of humility for one to come to that kind of realisation, and quite a degree of courage to have been so humble. It’s in that interstitial point where courage and humility collide that a healing miracle may begin. To have been a part of her experience in some way is one of my life’s greatest honours. My work connects me to so many grand, awe-inspiring souls, and with each one my own faith and humility deepen. For that, I am infinitely grateful.

Have you noticed a change in how the mainstream treats the spiritual world ? The one that recognizes the energy-made matrix we are living in ?

If I had noticed it in the mainstream with increased frequency it may be because the change had occurred within me. I have noticed a lot more open references to energy and related spiritual subjects as soulmates, and I recognize veiled Twin Flame stories in mainstream TV shows and movies too. Yet I wonder if it’s always been like that, or if it’s just that I’ve been awakened to it. Having a background in English Literary studies,  I can say that although the term ‘energy’ was not used in reference to the Universal soul or consciousness, the life of the soul, twin souls, past lives, and the like were common themes in the art and literature of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Era. Maybe it’s making a comeback, a Renaissance?

And finally, I’m interested in knowing what the guides (the energies leading the messages from the fabrics of time and space to Christina, channeling them for us) have to express in these times, what do you notice in the collective readings for the changes currently happening and what can it teach us about our collective movements forward ?

In the tarot, there is a the 10 of Cups card which classically denotes total emotional fulfillment. The Cup is the symbol for the water element, which is associated with our emotions and psyche, as well as our intuition and spirituality. What seems to be recurring message among the readings I given – whether public or private – is that

material abundance follows from total emotional fulfillment. ‘Total emotional fulfillment’ however is not possible without spiritual enlightenment or the pursuit of spiritual growth:  they are two sides of the same coin. This is contrary to the premise upon which the world has operated for generations – that total emotional fulfillment follows from material abundance and financial wealth.

However, the consistent call for us today, as far as what I have been channeling, is that the inverse is true.

Bravely do what you love, be where and with whom you love! Do as you are intuitively-moved to do, what is in your heart to do and settle for nothing less. It’s you’re most authentic self, and it is Divine. Therefore, you shall want for nothing.

Here  is a special reading Christina made for the Peach Collective.

Go Check her out on the Shine Your Light Oracle account. 

May it brings you what you need at the presenty moments and lead you closer to your personal path ! Love from me and Christina ! Thank you so so so so so much for readind Peach Journal, it is a blessing to be able to share and communicate like this everyday.