Tarot Reader Feature — Anna Grindrod-Feeny

In my witchy element, wandering through a cemetery.

What led you to BTS?

It should really be no surprise to anyone that I eventually got into BTS. I’m a sucker for deep lyrics and catchy melodies, I think pop is a highly underrated genre, and I grew up listening to a number of bands from around the world who sang in languages other than English. 

But there’s this thing I do where it takes me a few rounds of clear signs that something is meant to be in my life before I finally take the hint. I’m the worst intuitive person in that regard, I can see others’ messages clearly but I’ll ignore my own til they’re smacking me in the face. I’d been aware of BTS for years as part of the general zeitgeist and had several friends who were ARMY. I’d watched Mic Drop back in early 2019, Boy With Luv was on several of my Spotify playlists, and I’d even seen Carpool Karaoke at least twice. But for whatever reason, I didn’t commit. I wrote them off as talented but not really for me.

Then the pandemic hit and like so many of us I lost direct contact with pretty much everything and everyone that I had filled my time within my daily life. I’d defined myself as someone who sought out adventure and a good story, and here I was stuck at home with no outlet and none of my close friends within walking distance for masked outdoor meetups. I was furloughed from my job, depressed, and spent most days zoning out and losing track of time. I distinctly remember describing myself as feeling “grey” to my mom - not the most depressed I’d ever been but just neutral and unhappy, a sentiment later reflected so poignantly in Taehyung’s masterpiece “Blue & Grey”. 

Credit: HYBE Labels

Enter “Dynamite”. It was mere minutes after midnight on August 21st, a close friend had posted on Facebook asking for Kpop recommendations, and someone commented that BTS had just put out a new song that very night. Once again my curiosity was piqued - and this time I was hooked. I’m not sure if it was just that I was in desperate need of some shred of joy or if it’s the fact that “Dynamite” focused more on showcasing the members’ delightful personalities rather than their impressive artistry (I am a sucker for chaotic goofballs), but it was just what I needed to fall head over heels for the band and go down the rabbit hole of endless YouTube marathons and “I just want to know their names”. I now have a self-designed tarot deck made from music video stills and Jin’s silly dog Bangtannie tattooed on my ankle, so it’s safe to say I’m in this for life.

Who or what sparked your interest in tarot?

Cartomancy is a long-standing tradition in my family, although I didn’t know that until nearly a decade into my tarot journey. As my paternal grandmother tells it, both of her grandmothers were psychic - one read cards and one was so intuitive that her husband was afraid to let her even play solitaire for fear she would be accused of witchcraft. Intuition ran in our family, and my grandma’s cousin Jeanette was a tarot reader. In her younger years she had a knack for disappearing on adventures and calling home at the exact moment my grandma was mentally wishing for her to check in and let them all know she was okay. In her later years she would call my dad and report to him on how I was doing since my move to New York despite the fact that she hadn’t seen me since I was seven and had no way of knowing these things.

My grandma’s cousin Jeanette & my first tarot deck, The Book of Thoth

Even without the family connection, though, I think it was inevitable that I’d get into the occult. Throughout my childhood I was always drawn to magic and mystery. I was that weird kid who loved fantasy novels and made potions in the backyard and was a frequent visitor to our local metaphysical shop, which always smelled of incense and had a sweet black store cat that I could pet.

When my best friend and I decided we were going to be witches at thirteen, I went to that store and picked out the coolest looking deck I could find - The Book of Thoth by Aleister Crowley and Lady Freida Harris, an extremely abstract and archaic deck that is frustratingly difficult for a beginner to comprehend, especially an awkward, sheltered teenager. I dabbled in the occasional reading about my crushes but never fully understood the messages the cards gave me or acted on them. 

And so it went for many years - I would get the itch to try tarot again, pull out my deck, play with it for a few weeks or months, try to seriously study the meanings, get frustrated by trying to interpret the cards too literally and put it back on the shelf. I acquired a few more decks as gifts or because I liked the artwork but nothing that truly spoke to me. (See the TikTok series I did on the truly atrocious Lord of the Rings-themed deck that my well-intentioned grandmother gave me). 

Credit: Veronica Varlow and Enchanted Living Magazine

Eventually I discovered the writing of Veronica Varlow, a local burlesque dancer, artist, writer, and witch who often blogged about the magic that had been passed down from her Grandma Helen (check out ner new book Bohemian Magick). Armed with a new favorite deck - the first edition of The Light Visions Tarot by James R. Eads which I had begged my then-boyfriend to get me for Christmas and was the only deck that had ever spoken to me on a spiritual level - I signed up for her online tarot course, which focused heavily on reading intuitively rather than rote memorization, and that was it for me. My tarot practice was firmly cemented into my bones.

From then on, I read tarot every chance I got. For myself, for others, it didn’t matter. I did daily card pulls and journaling before work in the mornings and commandeered corners of floor at house parties where I would set up with a drink and my cards and dole out advice to friends and strangers. I worked corporate holiday parties, conventions for the-wizard-series-that-shall-not-be-named, rave dance parties, Mardi Gras celebrations, charity fundraisers, and I even got to take my BTS deck for a spin at an 8th Anniversary Festa event this year (truly the highlight of my tarot reading career, at least until HYBE hires me as official in-house tarot reader for their artists. A witch can dream, right?)

With my friend Christine at BTS Fest in June 2021

What is your favorite tarot card and why?

It’s unbearably difficult to choose just one, as I’m sure many readers will agree. Each card may speak to us at different points in our lives or in different decks. However, there are two that have been rather constant in my life from the beginning.

The first is Strength. I have a deep affinity with they symbolism attached to lions, in part due to my adolescent love for author Tamora Pierce’s lady knight Alanna the Lioness (see: all of my social media handles). I’m also a Leo Rising and became thoroughly obsessed with the winged lions of St. Mark’s Square in Venice, Italy after reading Cornelia Funke’s “The Thief Lord” in middle school. What can I say? I come from a family of book lovers. 

My favorite depictions of Strength from the Rider Waite Smith Tarot, the Prisma Visions Tarot, the Dark Days Tarot, the Ellis DecK, and my personal Bangtan Tarot deck.

Strength is often depicted as a lion or a woman taming a lion, so it was only natural that I gravitated toward this card. I also love the message of quiet resilience and growing stronger through adversity; although I believe the adage “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is total crock, I do think there’s value in choosing to take the lessons you need to take out of all of life’s experiences, even the difficult ones. The design of the Strength card can be a big determining factor for me when choosing a new deck - it’s not a dealbreaker, but a beautiful depiction of Strength will drastically increase my willingness to commit. 

My other favorite is the Death card. It’s one of the most unjustly feared cards in the deck thanks to the Hollywood trope of mysterious witches predicting sinister future events and gruesome physical death each time it appears. However, its true meaning is much more mundane - it typically refers to the endings of various cycles throughout our lives and the rebirth that comes along with them. It’s one of my birth cards (found by tallying up the numbers in your birthday), so I’ve always felt an affection for it, but it also speaks to the comfort I find in morbidity, in change, and in endings. 

My favorite depictions of Death from the Rider Waite Smith Tarot, the Ellis DecK, the Dark Days Tarot, the Book of Thoth, the Prisma Visions Tarot and my own personal Bangtan Tarot.

Even if it did refer to physical death, that’s something that’s been something of a constant in my life from a young age as well, so I’m strangely comfortable in that liminal space between life and death, walking with grief at my side. I find a lot of beauty in the messages this card brings and whenever it appears in a reading I see it as a familiar reminder that all things must come to an end, that it’s time to shed the ill-fitting skin of a former version of myself and move on to bigger and better things.