Tarot Reader Feature — Kirstin Wu
What led you to BTS?
I was casually aware of BTS from around 2019 – I’d watched a couple of videos, but never fallen down that rabbit hole we know so well. I think part of me held off, knowing it wasn’t something I’d be able to just put down once I took the leap. For a while I just absorbed snippets of information from ARMY friends, including fellow astrologers like @charmastrology and @alicesparklykat. I still remember Charm’s use of Jungkook’s chart as an example in an Astrocartography lecture!
And then, of course, the pandemic hit in 2020. My friend sent me a Youtube compilation, I laughed the whole way through, and that was pretty much it. I’ve always been a little obsessive and very prone to fantasy, so for it to happen during a global pandemic makes total sense.
At first, if I’m being honest, I couldn’t get into their music that easily. Even though I was fascinated – and in awe of – all their skills, I wasn’t used to brighter pop so rapline’s songs and their pieces with heavier beats were my way in. It didn’t take me long to grow to love the whole spectrum of their artistry though!
While I was diving into their music, what really pulled me in was their other content. I’m lucky that friends guided me through what to watch, and it was through shows like Run, Bon Voyage and In The Soop that I really became ARMY. As I’m sure was the case for lots of us, the silliness, chaos and wholesomeness of those shows was exactly what I needed.
Who or what sparked your interest in tarot?
I started reading tarot for myself when I was 16. To be honest, I can’t remember exactly how I came across it – probably online on tumblr, or somewhere like rookie mag. I was drawn to the symbolism of the cards, and the way they could somehow reflect or illuminate some part of my experience that I wasn’t even consciously aware of. For a while, I just pulled daily cards and sometimes a spread, and journalled about them using meanings I found in guidebooks or online.
I’ve dealt with chronic mental illness from a young age, and tarot came into my life at a point where things felt pretty turbulent (aside from the usual turmoil of teenagehood). Learning – outside of conventional education – has always been a space of solace for me, so it felt great having something I could dive into that was also a form of support. It wasn’t a ‘solution’ to what I was going through, but it opened the door to developing a personal spiritual practice that’s very much a part of me today.
Over time, I developed a deeper familiarity and understanding of tarot, and a few years later I started learning from teachers like Lindsay Mack, T. Susan Chang and Sarah Faith Gottesdiener amongst others. That’s when I started understanding and integrating a more structured trauma-centered approach to working with tarot, which is foundational to the way I read now. As someone dealing with complex trauma, it’s been part of my rooting system through some intense moments and times I’ve felt untethered from my own reality.
To me, tarot is an oracle, and oracles offer us conversations that are meant to bring us home to our personal agency in relation to something greater than ourselves. They give us information about choices, they flaunt linear time, and they ask us to surrender certain forms of knowing without surrendering self-trust.
My relationship with tarot, amongst other things, has taught me a lot about connecting intentionally to the seen and unseen world around me. Racial capitalism shrinks the space we have for good connection and stillness; forces us to give up our agency to wage labour, state control and structures, heteropatriarchal ideas of relationship, etc. As some kind of translator, whether in reading for myself or others, I want to try and bring it back to that place of slowness and curiosity.
Tarot is just one kind of divination, and we’ll all relate to it in our own ways, but I think it has quite a casual tone. If you’re curious, I’d encourage you to give it a go however you want! Those conversations can be really supportive.
What has been your favorite thing about this project?
There have been so many incredible aspects of working on this project, and I’ll forever be grateful to Nat and the others for that. Firstly, I’ve been able to meet and connect with a group of fellow ARMYs across the world who are all brilliant, generous, hilarious and so so lovely. As a pandemic ARMY, especially, it’s been so supportive to have a group of fellow stans and to be working towards something together. Even outside of just the tarot project, being in touch with everyone has been incredibly nourishing in terms of creativity, ideas, learning and bouncing thoughts off one another.
As a tarot reader, working on a deck is one of the most beautiful opportunities I think I could have, especially with artists I admire so much. I’ve been in awe pretty much every step of the way seeing each card come together from a description. Something I’ve really loved is just the exchange of ideas we have, the way we can go back and forth to find what feels right, and the energy of literally creating something from scratch – with all the circling and mistakes that entails. There’s a real compassion, excitement and deep support for everyone’s work so it really feels like something we’re building as a team, and I think that synergy will come through in the deck!
I’m providing an understanding of the oracle and the divination aspect of things, but it really does feel like the true magic is in watching how the artists make it their own vision. Personally, that’s been one of my favourite things too – having my ideas of a card changed by someone’s interpretation or vision of it. I’ve been reading tarot for a while, so certain associations, interpretations and experiences automatically come to mind when I think of a card. It’s also easy for me to think of traditional visual symbols or markers that I connect to each card, but working with artists who aren’t necessarily tarot readers has been so enriching for me precisely because they don’t have to be bound by what tarot ‘is’ or has been.
When different people think of a descriptive word, how they picture and translate into the world could look so many different ways. That’s why each indie tarot deck I own has its own feel, style, skills and way of speaking. Working on this project has already helped me tap back into a real excitement around tarot, because I’m approaching it in a completely new way, and being connected to fresh kinds of imagery and visions.
Having my preconceptions and understandings stretched and expanded upon through seeing how the artists feel and express certain cards has definitely been one of my favourite parts of working on this project. I’m always adding to my internal repertoire when it comes to divination, almost like I have a folder for each card that I can add snippets, impressions and experiences to. Watching someone take some of that, and add their own interpretation and feelings to create something completely original, is indescribably special. Especially when it happens in a common universe that means so much to us.
