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your awakening. Now let's begin today's episode. Disclaimer. The views
and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the
guests and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions
of this show, its host, or any of the companies
they represent. Now today on the show, we have psychic
and Tarot card master Julia Gordon Braemer and Julie and
I have a deep, deep conversation about the origins of
tarot cards, how to use them, how to watch for scams,
and we also talk about the future of the economy
of the world, her predictions for the rest of twenty
twenty four, and much much more. Let's dive in. I
like to welcome to the show, Julia, Gordon Bramerhi you
and Julia.
Speaker 2: Hi, nice to be here. Alex, thank you.
Speaker 1: So much for coming on the show. I'm really looking
forward to talking to you because i know just enough
to be dangerous with tarot cards, and I've never had
anyone on the show who's an expert in and who's
been doing it for a long time, and I'm looking
forward to diving into that world because it's something that
many many people around the world know. So my first
question is what gets you interested in tarot cards and
doing all of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, in my book Tarot Life Lessons, it's the
first chapter as sort of the story of how I
came into tarot and found my psychic abilities, both of
which happened around the age of sixteen. And the story goes,
you know, just to paraphrase it, I was walking around
the mall on a hot Soday and in the nineteen
seventies and came upon a magic shop. And back then,
magic shops weren't what they are today, like you know,
today we have our metaphysical stores and our crystals and
our pendulusm pendulums and all of that. Back then, it
was tricks. You know. It was gag gifts and rabbits
out of hats and you know, trails of silk scarves
and all of that. And so I wandered into this
shop just looking at the goofy stuff, and a girl
behind the counter emotions to me and says, you want
to see some real magic. And I come over and
she shows me these parrot cards and that was it.
And so I talk about how I flunk down my
babysitting money, and they were a part of my life
for the next forty five plus years. I'm sixty now.
Speaker 1: Really that literally sounds like the beginning of an eight.
You go into a magic shop, you want to see
some real magic, and then you buy a gremlin and
you take them home. It's a whole thing, right, So
let's go into tarot exactly. So what are the origins,
What are the historical origins of tarot cards? When did
they first come on the scene, all of that.
Speaker 2: So what we know definitely, Yeah, what we know definitely
is the oldest deck that has been found is in
a museum in Milan in Italy from the fourteen hundreds,
so we know they're at least as old as you know,
the Renaissance and in the Crusades, and I think that's
an important part. So there's lore around the tarot. And
then here's where the Crusades come in, because of course
the Crusades were when the Catholic Church was the government,
and they were kind of terrible to a lot of
people who were not Casholic. It's including the Romani travelers
known as the Gypsies. It's not not a not a
nice word anymore. But but a lot of people have
used that term over the many years, and and also
the Jews. So Taro is uh, you know, Taro embodies
a lot of of belief systems. It's got numerology and
it's got mythology, and the the lore is that the
Gypsies traveled with this card game. Should the authority say anything,
but it actually contained a lot of mystical secrets and
was also of course used for fortune telling and divination.
Taro is structured on the Kabbala tree of life, Kabbala
being ancient Jewish mysticism. So we have two sort of
repressed cultures there, you know, which are unite did in
the Taro and and so there's just all of this, uh,
you know, deep spiritual information encoded in the cards with
their pictures and their meanings and the numbers on the cards. Uh,
the astrology associated with the cards. There's you know, all
these different influences. And so the lore is just that
these were secrets, you know, embedded and carried along. That
part cannot be proven, and a diehard Tarot scholar is
going to say just just rumors, just lore, but it's
kind of fun.
Speaker 1: No, absolutely so, so they basically, so they have Italian origins,
essentially Renaissance origins.
Speaker 2: We we know the first deck was Italian. Yeah, Renaissance Italian.
But you know there's also the Taro Demassi, which is
a very old which of course demicize French. Some people
hold that there are Egyptian secrets and that there are
Egyptian versions of taro. Certainly Egyptian versions of taro have
been made in you know, the last hundred years, but
we don't have any ancient Egyptian evidence, you know that
they used it. But you know, I kind of think
as a as a spiritual gourmet. You know, I have
a little of this and a little of that. I
see that that truth is truth is truth across all
these religions and mystic practices and so much as is shared.
You know what what Carl Jung would call the collective
consciousness and and it's or I believe he may have
called it unconsciousness because we weren't aware of it. But
the shared body of knowledge what people today would call
the acacic records. And we all have these unifying ideas
and and even across cultures, we all have symbols that
are represented in the tarot. Uh. You know, every culture
has a mother figure, a father figure, the lovers, the warrior,
the wise man, the wheel of fortune with blessings, or
the tower with tragedies. We all share this, no matter
where we come from and what kind of person we are.
And so the tarot tells the story of the human
experience and reflects, you know, where we're going and and
our ideas and our hopes and our dreams.
Speaker 1: So how did the tarot evolve to what it is
today from those old decks that the oldest decks that
we have access to at this moment, How did they
how did they evolve and how did they kind of
melt into the zeitgeist into something that was in the
back corner of a magic shop to kind of a
little bit more mainstream, not completely mainstream, but a lot
of people understand and have heard of tarot cards and
understand what they kind of understand what they do. How
did that evolve in the revolution happen over the last
six hundred plus years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's kind of a hard question. So
when it was hidden and in medieval or or i
could say Renaissance Italy, it was used as a card
game and there are people who still play tarot as
a card game today called taroki or tarok versions of that.
But so I could play a game of cards with
my tarot peck in the same way that I could
take a regular deck of playing cards, and I could
read fortunes from that because I know enough about the
taro to know how the symbols relate, and what would
be the spades and the deck of playing cards becomes
the soul words in the tarot, and what would be
the hearts, what becomes the cups, and you know, they
have these interchangeable meanings. So so some people do still
play card games. And certainly it was you know, card
games in Renaissance Italy were for royalty. Most Italians were
working and out in the fields or the bakeries or
or you know, doing whatever their their skill was.
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and now back to the show.
Speaker 2: And so the people of leisure played games. So so
Taro was a game initially. Now I think taro really
got radically transformed around the turn of the century, you know,
just in Victorian times when we're looking at the Golden Dawn.
The Golden Dawn was a group of mystics. W. B. Yates,
the famous writer, was a part of it. You know
a lot of famous authors and writers have been connected
and directly and indirectly with the Golden Dawn, and most
famously probably Alister Crowley, the you know, I don't know
if you want to call him the great mystic or
the controversial mystic, we'll say, but so so. Crowley and
the Golden Dawn really modernized the tarot. They aligned it
perfectly with the Kabala try of life. They saw the
correlations and the similarities. Many people had either seen it
or intuited it, going back to like William Blake in
early England, before the Tarot had reached England. Blake had
just intuited his own version of taro. And him being
an artist and a poet, there's I have. I have
a copy of the William Blake Tarot. It's really phenomenal
and it's so close to the tarot that did come
to England, you know, more than one hundred years after
the fact. But he just felt it all. You know,
this is a system of our behavior, This is a
system of you know, who how how we maneuver ourselves
in the world, and and the things we come up on.
So gosh, where am I going with this? So so
Crowley and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, they
did a couple switcheroos. Most notably, they switched the Justice
card and the Strength card to perfectly align. When I
said they switched, they changed the number, they changed the ordering.
They made the Strength used to be the eleventh and
they made it the eighth and Justice vice versa. But
they uh what they did with you know, I use
the universal weight, also called the writer weight. This is
the best deck to learn on, I think, And they
so perfectly captured the meanings in the pictures. Really credit
to the artist Pamela Coleman Smith who worked with Arthur
Waite to do that. And I have had clients who
look at these pictures and they can read it with
no knowledge of the tarot because they're just feeling the pictures,
because the pictures are so loaded with emotion or what
they're going through, sometimes literal symbols. You know. The magic
of the tarot is how do the right cards fall
at the right time with these specific questions. It's not
an easy you know, certainly that's the spiritual component to it.
It's very psychologue. Just to take it a step further
into modern times. Carl Jung, the famous psychologist, he used taro.
He used it with his patients. He believed it was
a way to expand our consciousness and to see into
our subconscious and what was kind of ruling us that way.
And that's really how we use tarot today. So that's
a long winded explanation.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a perfect explanation. I'm fascinated, especially when
you start going into the historical aspects of things, because
I always liked because you know, taro, just like numerology,
just like astrology, has gone into the wu a little
bit too much, a little woo woo, very discredited, kind
of like other crazy if they think that or that,
kind of those kind of things. And I really like
to connect grounded to like, well wait a minute, where, yeah, truly,
where did these cards come from? I can't believe this
was just made by somebody in Wisconsin somewhere in a factory.
We need some cards, let's do it like there's a
historical background to it, and it's and if there's a
historical aspect to it, there's also a mystical and spiritual
aspect to. So that's why I'd like to ask the
kind of deeper questions.
Speaker 2: I liken it to dream analysis. So you know, we
all have dreams, and we all you have a dream,
and it's a symbol, you know. I actually just wrote
about a dream the other night that I had and
I was traveling on a road and there was this
big tree in the middle of the road that I
could not get past, you know. So it's this obstacle,
this thing I can't get around, right, you know. And
and so I have to say to myself, you know,
is this a relationship or is this a work problem?
Or you know, I have to take this symbol of
this tree and identify it for myself. Well, reading tarot
cards is similar that way. So you know, I may
pull up the strength card and know that this is
a time that is really challenging my strength. Maybe I'm
maybe I have to step into my strength. Maybe I don't,
maybe I'm doubting my strength, you know. And uh, and
so what I'm going through at the moment is really
going to help with the reading and show you know,
like the tarot card reader doesn't necessarily know you, doesn't
know what you're what's happening or where you come from
or whatever. So so the person I'm reading for is
reading it with me. You know, I'm just saying I'm
seeing this symbol, and I'm seeing this symbol, and this
is applying to you, and this is what I'm getting here,
and you're processing it. You're going, oh, right, that's my
spouse or that's my mom, or this is my job
or you know, you're putting it together with what you're
going through.
Speaker 1: So let's let's let's dive into what tarot is because
you've been talking about strength cards and this card or
that card. What exactly is the system?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: What are these pictures? What do they mean? How to
the quarterly in a reading or in any aspect of
what you're doing with them? Can you explain what this is?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, So so most of us have seen some
tarot cards, you know, especially in the movies. Right, We've
seen the death card, We've seen the lover's cards, you know,
we've we've seen coined the coin, right right, and you
know in led Zeppelin's fourth album they put the hermit
on you know, with his you know, on top of
the mountain with his lantern and everything. So so these
are iconic cultural images, but most people don't know much
beyond that. In the tarot there are seventy eight cards altogether,
so a few more than the traditional playing deck. When
I say I can read fortunes or whatever from a
traditional deck of cards, that is with what we would
call the my or arkana, so fifty six or well
the fifty six and the taro fifty two. I believe
in a regular playing deck, right, not counting the jokers
and so so in the taro we have the major
arcana and we have the minor arcana. The major arcana
is twenty two cards, and it's those superstars that you
see like in Hollywood, the lovers and the death card
and the Hermit and all the rest. The minor arkana
is the more mundane day to day details. So the
major covers the big events, those those milestones, and the
minor ar kana is sort of the day to day
stuff and the ideas. They both work together because it
all happens together. Not every day is a major arcana day.
Not every day we're getting married or having babies, or
or graduating or divorcing or you know, all of the
things that the majors express. A lot of times it's
just putting those to the grindstone and getting the job done,
or having some kind of minor conflict with somebody. So
it all shows up within the taro. Every every as
I said, every culture experiences these things within the minor arkana,
just like in a regular deck. We have four suits,
so we have the cups, we have the wands, we
have the pentacles, and we have the swords. And the
idea is that these suits embody you know, they're the elements.
So pentacles are earth, and wands are fire, and cups
are water and swords are air. There's also the idea
that they embody different sorts of actions. So cups are love,
pentacles are work and career. I'm doing this all out
of order. I know, uh, ones our ideas and excitement
or I'm sorry, you know, imagination and inspiration and enthusiasm,
and swords are about action and striking out. So they
have their meanings within their suits, and then the numerology
of them gives us more meanings. So faces the ones
are about you know, going solo and new beginnings and
fresh starts and new loves and things like that. The
twos tend to be duality. They tend to be couples
they you know, and any sort of.
Speaker 1: Joining will be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.
Speaker 2: The threes tend to be like a commitment sort of card.
The fours tend to be stability. I think of like
four table lengths, you know. Fives tend to be conflict
and on on. So each number has its meaning, and
each suit has its meaning, and the way they work
together will tell a story. So the two of cups,
for instance, is two people joining in love. This can
be a best friend, This could be a lover for life,
this could be you know, some other sort of harmonious
joining does not have to be a lover. When it's
along with the lover's card, it usually is. You know.
The way the cards work together tell the story. So
I put the cards down, and depending on the question,
I see where they fall. I see how the cards
interact with each other, how they may look at each
other or not, you know, any sort of conflicts. It's all.
It's all a big picture telling a story.
Speaker 1: And how if I remember, I mean, I've probably had
my cards thrown at one point or another in my life.
I haven't done it in the long line a long time.
But how does it? How do you cut it, and
how do how many cards do you pull and all
of that kind of stuff. Where is the process of
at Okay?
Speaker 2: So you know, Alex, if you called me up and said, hey, Julie,
I want to have a reading, you know, and let's
let's book some time, and let's say you did fifteen
or twenty minutes. And if you had no specific question,
you just wanted a reading. I do something general, and
I probably do what we call the Celtic cross, which
is an eleven card spread, and it's a little bit
of past, present, in future, and it gets into your
longer range future, which I read is like the next
couple of years, and just sort of you know who
you are now, what you've been through, uh, what's happening
at the moment, where you're going in the near future,
and then that farther out future, and it can offer
you some advice. I like to tell my clients, you know,
Tarot shows you the path that you're on. If we
see something coming up that you don't like, it's an
opportunity to do it differently. So I'm never going to
tell you you're doomed. You know, I believe I can
read your cards because we're connected just by being alive. Uh.
When I'm reading for you, I am tapping into you.
I believe that your life force is God as mine is.
I don't tell people how to do God or what
to call God. That's your business. But I'm I'm like,
all right, you know we're a part of this thing.
You know we can put We can put the sperm
in the egg and the test tube and create life,
but that sperm and egg have to be alive first.
You know that life force is bigger than us and
not in our ability to create that. And you know, consequently,
I believe that when we go away, that life force
doesn't die. Energy doesn't die. It just goes somewhere else.
Science has proven that. So you can call it energy,
you can call it source. I do not tell people
what to believe, but if you can sign on to that,
if you can say, all right, I'm alive, I'm hooked
into this God system, whatever however you want to frame it,
then you do have great power. And what we put
our mind on grows, you know, So just in the
same way that the athlete keeps their eyes on the prize,
and an athlete does not be little him or herself
and say I'm not strong enough, I'm not fast enough,
you know. And an athlete does not obsess over what
could go wrong, you know, what if I trip and fall,
what if I don't make it to the finish line,
you know, because that opens up the space for that
negative thing to happen. So I'm giving you with the
tarot a heads up, and I'm letting you see where
your energy is going kind of organically at the moment,
and then you can go I don't like that, And
then I say, okay, Alex, that's your opportunity to change
it and to go for what you want, not what
you don't want. Because what we put our mind on grows,
and we're always growing what we put our attention on.
So if we're very negative, I mean, you know, I
tell people, with all this politics going on today, love
him or hate him, we have grown Donald Trump because
all the attention's been on him, you know, good or bad.
If your focus is on loving someone or if your
focus is on hating someone, you're growing that energy of
that person, you know. So so you know the thing
is you put your energy where you want it to be,
you know, where you find peace, where where you can
be the highest good and the greatest blessing. So when
I work with my clients, and you know, I can
say that in my earlier days of being a professional,
I probably, you know, I was still stretching my wings
and figuring myself out. And I don't know that we're
ever totally evolved, but I've evolved a lot over the
last you know, twenty years or so of being a
pro doing this. I've been reading since I was sixteen,
so over forty five years, you know, just as a reader.
But I'm talking out for money, and and you know,
in the earlier days, I would get a lot of
parties and a lot of sort of you know, does
he like me? You know, this kind of silly kid questions,
and and my clients. Now I'm attracting a much more
highly evolved, spiritual caliber of client that wants to be
here for a reason and wants to make this world
a better place and wants to show up in their
highest self and self actualize, which is my goal too.
I mean, I think that we're called right now. When
I say we, I'm talking about me, my clients. People
like you who are We're at service to the world
to be a light in a very dark time and
the world needs us more than ever, and so we
are and the Tarot can be a guide to get
you there.
Speaker 1: Julie, I have to ask you because when you started this, uh,
it wasn't it wasn't the cool thing to be a
Tarrant card. It wasn't it was it wasn't quite accepted. Uh,
it's not. I mean, in the scope of the of
the abilities that I've had on this show, tarot is
one of the more mundane, meaning more acceptable as opposed
to being a psychic medium. I see dead people, or
I'm a channel and I channel entities and all of that.
That's so Tarot lower on the acceptability more kind of
They look at you kind of like, really, how did
you come out publisher to do this professionally? How did
you deal with colleagues, your friends, your family, she nuts
what's going on? How did you How did they deal
with it? And how did you deal with the world
dealing with it when you came out of the Tarot
Clark the Tarot closet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I've always been the black sheep in my family,
you know.
Speaker 1: Surprisingly so have I surprisingly the weirdos do that. It's okay,
it's okay, Yeah, we just.
Speaker 2: Came out of the gate that way, right. Yeah. You know,
I have a sister two years younger who's like, you know,
quite intellectual, and I have a brother who's a philosophy PhD.
Speaker 1: And I you know, you know, great great Christmas and thanksgivings.
Speaker 3: So you can imagine it's sort of like, oh, Julia,
you know, Julia, my other my little sister.
Speaker 2: She gets me, she get me. But but uh, and
I don't think my mother has ever known what to
do with me. Yeah, you know, so some of us,
you know, just just don't really fit. Uh. And you're right,
you know, as a teenager, it's funny. I think most
psychics that I have met, and I wump myself in
that group. I think as teens, you know, we get
we get labeled. First of all, the world wants to
call you over sent That's that's a key thing. Almost
every psychic is going to be, you know, kind of
punished and blamed and called over sensitive. Like just get
over it. And even though you're seeing and feeling what
you know is to be the truth, you got to
shut up and pretend it's all fine, you know. And
so like a lot of psychics, I did a lot
of drugs and alcohol, you know, becaurse. It was also
the seventies. Maybe that's just harder becorse shaped up in
my early twenties when I had my first son, actually
first of two sons, wonderful kids, and so you know,
I think we have our way of handling that. But
the real persecution came much later when I got into
my work, my scholarship work on the poet and writer
Sylvia Plath. So my most recent book, via cult Sylvia
Plath with in her Traditions, This is fifteen years in
the making. And I discovered that Sylvia Plath when I
was back in graduate at school getting my MFA in
poetry and fiction. And I discovered that Plath had a
lot of taro symbolism in her in her work, and
I pointed it out to my professor and I said,
it's the deal with this, and he said, I don't
know what you're talking about. And I realized nobody had
seen it. And you had to be both a Terot
scholar and a plant scholar to see what Plath was doing,
you know, and that this radically changed the meaning of
her work that nobody it has basically escaped everyone who's
held her in this really narrow view of just you know,
being suicidal and depressive, which she was, but that wasn't
all of who she was. You know, everybody has many
complex layers and dimensions to their personality. You don't say
somebody's whole life is a suicide, you know.
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Speaker 2: And so I kind of got on this mission and
I so, I've been doing this work for about twenty
years now with the Plath stuff, and I thought that
the academic community would embrace it because, my gosh, her,
here's a hero. Right, yeah, Okay, you're seeing where this
is going.
Speaker 1: Here's a hero.
Speaker 2: And I thought, oh, my gosh, I'm showing this genius
and these multiple layers of meaning that she was including
in all of her work. And my gosh, but what
I realized is number one, although I have an MFA,
it's not a PhD. So instantly, you know, no crid there.
And of course I'm a crazy tarot card reader, right,
so they just dismiss me. And you know, and I
don't think it's an accident. Whole careers are built on
her being just miserable, you know, the suicidal. They don't
want to see beyond then.
Speaker 1: So so for a lot of.
Speaker 2: Years, I really, you know, I was iced out at
conferences and I really suffered. I mean I cried over
how awful they were treating me. And then one day
I kind of woke up and I was like, they're
not my tribe. You know, They're just going to stay
in their narrow little view and you know, maybe a
couple of them will see what I'm doing, most of
them won't. Most of them won't even read it because
I'm a kook, you know, because I'm a tarot card reader,
and you know, I wasn't willing to betray who I am.
I wasn't willing to put all that away and just say, oh,
I don't believe that anymore. And I'm all academic now. No,
this is the truth of me. And I'm really good
at what I do, you know, and I to the
point that I'm probably the only full time tarot card reader,
certainly in the Saint Louis area where I'm based. But
you know, I'm you know, not to brag. I'm pretty successful,
and I'm on television and I'm on radio, and I
just recently was on Gaya and MTV and Nick at
Night and you know, so stuff is happening. But I, uh, yeah,
I'm not going to betray who I am because I've
been given a gift and I'm very good at it
and it's helped a lot of people. And I have
people every day. I have regular clients every day who
want to work with me, especially when they have problems
or challenges. And so I feel really blessed to do
work that I love with people I love and form
real friendships and you know, supportive friendships, people who are
building me up and even giving me money started. That's amazing,
and uh, you know, for something I love, and and so,
you know, to hell with the haters. People are always
gonna hate, you know. I'll get on Twitter and I'll
have you know, maybe an inbox with a few people
who want to be my clients, and then I'll have
some really snotty put down, you know, or or some
thread of somebody who's just mocking me because I'm obviously
an idiot, because I'm not signing onto the atheistic you know,
beliefs and whatever. Yeah, so it's, uh, it's an interesting
world right now. And and just like when I was
telling a fellow writer, you can't be a writer for accolades,
like you are going to get rejected, same with being
in this field of work. And I'm double so I
get rejected both ways. You know, it's just how it
gotta be. I wrong.
Speaker 1: I always ask that question because you know, a lot
of people think that this is an easy path. I'm like, oh,
they're just trying to scam people out of money or
something along those lines. There's a lot easier hustles out there.
It really, truly is. It's one thing to be that,
you know, in a carnival or something quiet that nobody
knows you. But once you get put out there like
you have, you know, in public, author on television, on
the Internet, things like that, it's not different. You're really
putting yourself out there. You're like you're rolling the dice
that this is this is the route I'm going guys.
So I just wanted to I just again, I always
like to do that for people so people can kind
of demystify this whole idea because there has been so
much association with tarot and psychic readings, and and with
with the you know, the crystal ball and the quote
unquote gypsy and that image that we have from Hollywood
that you know, people stealing and things like that from.
Speaker 2: People and I want to miss Cleo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh god, not even go there, and all that
kind of and all that kind of stuff. But so
you've mentioned a couple of times that there's a psychic
aspect to the Tarot cards. Can you can you explain
to me how your psychic abilities are connected to the
tarot cards. I've heard this before, but I love to
hear you explain it to everybody how those two work.
And can you read Darrow without being psychic?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, so, first of all, Alex, I think everybody's
psychic to a certain degree. You know, we've all had
dreams that tell us something important, or we've all had,
you know, just the moment of thinking of someone and
they call you and it's just going to call you.
You know, that that connection, you know, And so everyone
has some I compare it to like singing. So everyone
can sing at least a little bit, and some people
you could listen to all day, and some people it's like,
oh God, please stop, you know, and so we can
all do it. But it's teaching yourself to pay attention.
And I think a spiritual path really helps to develop
your ability. So some people are just not interested in
developing it at all, you know. Some people just don't
believe and they're like, no, I only have this many
senses and that's it. And then other people are like, well,
you know, I really do have a good understanding of
people that you know. I always say men frame it differently,
like men don't usually say their psychic. They say I
have a sense about somebody, or I have a gut feeling.
That's like the masculine way to do it, you know,
and with women it's more intuitive or psychic or you know,
premonitions things like that. But we've all got it. You know.
Somebody could use just a book and read Taro. So
if you know nothing about it, you know, in my
book Taro Life Lessons here from last year. This is
my real life stories of being a Tarot card reader,
and I believe it's The second story is a story
of I was at a party and a drunk guy
took my cards and he said, well, I'm going to
read for you, and he had no knowledge of taro,
and he just threw down some cards and he gave
me a surprisingly accurate reading. And I believe he did
that because, first of all, he was blotto, so he
was just open, you know, he had no judgments. He
wasn't afraid to be wrong, which I consider as one
of the big enemies of intuition is putting our ego
in it and like, you afraid that's tell somebody wrong
or steer somebody wrong, or you know, and we have
all this judgment, you know. So this guy was just,
you know, just just looking at the cards and riffing
off it. And it was and it was surprisingly a
good reading with no knowledge at all. And I think
that's important because I know some people who study those books.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: When I did write Tarot Life Lessons, I did not
want another how to read Tarot book, because there's already
tons of them about what this card means and this
card means, et cetera, and different layouts. I wanted somebody
to be able to see real stories and practical application
of Tarot. And so the way I do it, well,
we all have our different psychic gifts. I have a couple.
I am mostly what we call Claire audience. And what
that means is I hear it in my head. So
if I'm reading a card, reading your cards, I set
them down, Alex, and maybe you've asked me a question
about your work or something, and I'll have a card,
you know, show up and I'll hear something. I'll hear
just a word in my head, you know, or a phrase,
and so I've learned over time to trust that and
to just tell it to you. I don't know what
it means necessarily, but it usually relates to you, you know,
and usually.
Speaker 1: You go.
Speaker 2: And you know, or that's what so and so always says,
or that's exactly what I was thinking earlier today. You
know that that's the kind of response I get. And
so that's so usually I'm clear audience. I do also
have premonitions, uh, you know. I dream both uh both
at night and actual sleeping dreams and also daydreams, which
I consider to be visions. So in this book, in
the first chapter, which is my story, I I talk
about my first premonition being just I was. I had
just gotten my driver's license, and I'm going down the
road and I thought about a big crow on the
side of the road with a broken wing, and I thought,
why did I think about that? You know, it just
kind of came into my head.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.
Speaker 2: And then within five minutes I saw exactly what I
had thought. This bird was there with a broken wing,
and I think, well, what does that mean to this day?
I'm not sure, but I do think that as we
get stronger, we're flexing our muscles and we're getting better
and better, and it's that paying attention. So that was
my first conscious premonition. And I talk in the book
about what crow symbolism is and how it unites even
with my plathwork and different things there. So it was
a meaningful symbol to me. And like the taro will
have meaningful symbols, you know, the right cards come up
for you to give you the information you need to know.
So I'm just the messenger and I am, you know,
telling you what's coming. And really you, as the person
who's getting the reading, you're applying it to your life
because of course I don't know your life, so it's
just yeah, it's just that's how it works.
Speaker 1: So when you are a clear audience, What are you
connecting to? What is what are you? Are you connecting
to your higher self? Are you connecting to the other side?
Are you connecting to your clients by yourself? Is where's
the information coming from on the other side.
Speaker 2: So, because I have a background in the Episcopal Church,
and because and that's another part of my story, that
Terrow life lessons, my Episcopal Church was a little different.
They taught me meditation, they taught me automatic writing on
church retreats. They spoke in tongues, so it was definitely
more mystic. They called it charismatic, but that was my foundation,
and so I call it holy spirit. I'm also a
teacher and a practitioner of a course in miracles, which
would call it spirit as well. Now that said, you know,
it's just a name. So you could call it God,
you could call it Source, you could call it Goddess,
you could call it Mother, Father, God. A lot of
my friends do that. You know, you could call it
spirit energy. I don't think. I don't think God has
an ego to care about what the names.
Speaker 1: According to the Old Testament, he has a tremendous egot.
But that's a yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Reject that I think God's a little higher than that.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, He's not that insecure. I think, sure.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: So do you so being a psychic, do you you
don't technically need the cards? You just use them as
a tool essentially, Or do you need the cards? Yeah? Right?
Because from what I heard from other channels and other
psychics who were afraid of their gifts as being a
psychic or a channel, they would use the taro as
a buffer, because taro is much more acceptable than hey,
I'm channeling Mary Magdalen.
Speaker 2: Right for something like those there's some of that. I
love the cards, I mean, I always have. I love
how beautiful they are, and I love that it gives
a visual for my clients. So if they can see
it with me, it's sort of like another layer of trust.
If I'm just saying things, well, that might impress them.
But if I'm saying things and showing them the picture
and explaining how this picture is working, and you know,
that's sort of like whoa. And really, I think it
helps them to learn some of these spiritual lessons and learn,
you know, just some life skills, to evolve and rise
out of some troubles and maybe bad habits and things
like that. You know, the Tarot will call us out
on some of those things, and so I just think
that they're such a valuable tool. Sure, I can talk
to somebody, and I do all the time. You know,
a lot of times my clients will call me up
and maybe I'll be on a long drive. I'm doing
a lot of traveling for a book tour right now,
and it's not unusual for somebody to say, hey, can
I just talk to you for a minute, And I'm
you know, in the middle of nowhere, you know, and
like sure, And I'll help them process something by what
I'm feeling about it. And you know, I do that
all the time as well, which is another kind of
reading that has nothing to.
Speaker 1: Do with the Tarot.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, I just think that the cards
themselves are are so valuable in building the depth and
furthering the meaning and the teaching that I would not
want to do it without the cards.
Speaker 1: What is the biggest misconception people have about Tarot cards
and terror card readers and.
Speaker 2: All of that, That it's satanic? You know, that it's evil.
Speaker 1: Honestly, I guess it is the devil's work. This is
obviously the devil's work.
Speaker 2: Julia, Yeah, yeah, I mean I get a lot of that.
People are just afraid of it because it's you know,
fundamentalist Christians especially, but anybody who meets me and talks
to me kind of gets it. Like, I am totally
not Satanic. I am not, you know, I I think
a lot of that witchy occult stuff, you know. Getting
to my course in Miracles teachings of course in Miracles
says that the world is illusion. It's very Buddhist, and
I'm also Buddhist, surprise, surprise. So so this illusion is
our sandbox, and this is where we get to play
with our relationships and and and manipulate the illusion, you know,
and and grow and learn from it and ideally heal
our stuff and become a higher version of ourselfs. So
that's the world. And then and then so the magician
who is practicing magic, spells, charms, anything like that, they're
working in the illusion to manipulate the illusion. Miracles are
a higher level. So miracles are about healing and restoring
the oneness. And we're not we're not playing in the illusion. Really,
we're above it. And I know that sounds maybe a
little bit conceited or superior, but it's just a higher goal.
And so it's what the alchemist does. You know, alchemy
is is a three level thing. So alchemy is practical alchemy,
which is in the world, which is the lead to
gold idea in chemistry, and then it's the emotional alchemy
of let's heal our stuff like Jungi in alchemy, you know,
getting into the dark knight of the soul and rising
out of it. And then the spiritual level of alchemy,
which is becoming one with your god self. And that's
my goal. And so if that's my goal, wow, to
call me a Satan.
Speaker 1: It's kind of horrible, horrible thing.
Speaker 2: I'm failing miserably Satan. Satan would be in the earth stuff,
you know, Satan is in the earth and ego realm.
So I've had people back when I used to do
the Renaissance fairs, and I have a story TERI Life
Lessons of somebody wandering into my tent and you know,
this teenage boy and his clothes with his buddy and
they're you know, thinking that the Satanic stuff is really
cool and just making an assumption about me that I
was into the dark stuff like them. And boy did
I disappoint them. And I also called them out on
a lot of stuff. And I also mentioned that that
people in people dabbling in that dark stuff. There might
be some energy there. I don't deny it. There may be,
but there's a price to pay. And almost all those
people have physical health problems and emotional problems and relationship problems.
There is no happiness there. It's like, sure, you might
have a little bit of an effect, you know, Alister
Crowley did, but he was you know, he was very
much in the ego and he had a lot of
relationship problems. And I wouldn't want to be him, you know.
Speaker 1: Sure, fair enough, fair enough. Now there's a lot there
seems to be a lot of stuff happened in the world.
This year has been a pretty chaotic, heavy, intense, intense,
especially of sense of since certain things have happened in
the last last week or so, Yeah, the assassination attempt
and everything. What what I have to imagine that you
have thrown the cards down on what's happening in the
world and where we're all going. Do you have any
did the cards have any predictions for I don't need
you to tell me who wins? The other election, I
could care less, but more just generally like what is
happening here in the in the States, what's going to
happen in the world for the rest of this year
and coming next year. We'll be right back after a
word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing, Tarot is personal. It's micro, not macro.
So I really can not tell you who's going to
win the election in the same way. You know, people say,
why don't you, you know, bet on horse races, why
don't you use, you know, pick your cards for lottery numbers.
It doesn't work like that. It's about a personal connection.
So you know, my example, if if somebody asks me,
you know, I can read about people close to you,
if you were close to Joe Biden or to Donald
Trump and and and if them winning the election, whichever
one would affect you, then maybe I could read that.
I have been reading that we're going to have a
pretty rough economy for a while yet. And I've been
reading that because everybody's cards are reflecting concern about their
retirements and concern about, you know, being able to buy
groceries and and all of this this basic stuff. So
things are in turmoil economically, and I have seen that
just by gauging from so many clients with the same
kind of readings, I can get that we're not coming
out of this really quickly, you know, economically.
Speaker 1: Get is it going to get worse before it gets
because right now the economy is for some doing extremely
well but for many not doing well at all. Is
that that high eventually going to come down to a
place where everyone's burt like an.
Speaker 2: Eight Yeah, yeah, I would say in the next couple
of years, I'm seeing most people hurting, So I'll frame
it that way. Now, I do have a very large
sample of clients. I have billionaires. I have a group
of Miami billionaires that I read for regularly. I say
that and that's there's for sure one and a bunch
of multimillionaires.
Speaker 1: Just just to keep it totally semantics to the written, yeah, yeah,
they're all rich.
Speaker 2: Correct, They've flown me down and I've done parties on
their yachts and that sort of thing. So I have
I have that group of people, and then I have
like the hard working single mom in the city who
calls me, you know, once a month for fifteen minutes.
Because that's all she can swing, but she's got her
questions and she's you know, really applying herself and on
her evolution. And what I will say is financially, everybody
looks concerned. So that's interesting, That's very interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what other what other kind of what other kind
of broad strokes have you seen in this pool of
clients of yours that you can actually kind of say, well,
this is kind of where everything is going in this
area or that area.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not sure I want to say beyond
the money, because like I said, it's so a reading
is so personal, and you know, it's it's how we're
responding to the world. And you know, there's so many
different kinds of jobs, for instance, and so sure some
industries may go under because of AI, for instance, but
they all won't. And I've seen a lot of trouble
in the teaching world, but I used to teach myself
in the universities, and so you know, they're they're doing
so much with just they're basically taking all the class
plans that everybody works so hard to develop and they're
just sticking them in a computer and letting the computers teach, now,
you know, And so yeah, so you know, there's a
lot of a lot of pain in the academic world
that way. But I don't know, it's a it's a
personal thing. I just don't want to make a big
blanket statement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and when you're saying about academic there's no question
you could just see academia starting to it's on a downward, downward,
the slope across the bord across because because it's it
got so expensive, right.
Speaker 2: And we've got Harvard presidents who are forging papers.
Speaker 1: And you know, well there's there's all of that stuff too.
But then it got so expensive, but to the point
where the investment in the education doesn't you're never going
to the job that you get from that doesn't pan
out in certain in certain industries. But I have family
members who are doctors, who they go, I wish it
would have never become a doctor. The system is so
broken and they're just like where it's it's not like
it was in the eighties where you could you know,
make a really really oh you're a doctor? Right now
nowadays different.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you something interesting, Alex. When in twenty sixteen
when Trump took the presidency, and you know, every I
can getting the Tower card. And I found that so
fascinating because you know, I said, love him or hate him,
he was the tower card. Because the tower card is
is it can be frightening. It's said it can it's
sudden change when I read it, when I read it
for someone, it says the foundation was wrong, that the
building has to come down, it's time to rebuild. It
is a card for the game changers, you know, the
big upheavals that everything's different kind of thing. And uh
and and how interesting that Trump's own symbol is Trump Tower,
you know, so I thought that, Uh yeah, God, God
really knows how to pick the right tarot cards sometimes,
because it just kept coming up. And uh and some
people didn't. You know, we we have had a status
quo government for a while, and some people didn't like
the changes he made, good or bad. Like I said,
I don't want to make a political statement here.
Speaker 1: We have this.
Speaker 2: Fight right now, in this division right now that I
really hate because people are we're dehumanizing each other, you know,
and that's just not not the way of God. And
I you know, I'm about oneness, I'm about unity. I
anger people because I will not take sides. And I've
lost friendships over it, you know, and then especially since
like twenty twenty, because they want to see me. They're saying,
this is the time and we have to unite and
you have to be on the side. And I'm like,
I'm on the side of humanity, I'm on the side
of love, and I'm not going to divide.
Speaker 1: I will not do it.
Speaker 2: And so you know that that has frustrated some people
about me. But yeah, but all this stuff, you know,
it will show up for the individual, you know, so
how your experience of the political situation that will show up.
But I just can't give you a universal experience fair enough.
Speaker 1: Do you have any advice for someone who wanting to
start using Tarot cards, either yeah themselves or for others?
What advice would you give them?
Speaker 2: That's in my book, Tarot Life Lessons, you know, at
the end of every chapter, I have sort of a tip,
you know, on selecting your own cards or you know,
kind of dispelling some of the superstitions, like some people
believe you have to be gifted a deck versus buying
your own things like that. So I talk about all
of these things. I talk about layouts, and again, people
are overly concerned about being wrong, you know? Do I
lay the cards out properly? Is?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: And so I talk about leaning into your intuition and
offering tips like that. I am a big believer in
trusting yourself and trusting what comes to you, and that
that's intuition, and that in my world there aren't all
these rules.
Speaker 1: I don't like rules.
Speaker 2: I'm a sanitarian. I've never liked rules, you know. So
I'm about going with what I feel.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm going to ask you a few questions. Ask
all my guests, what is your definition of living a
fulfilled life.
Speaker 2: I think it's reaching my highest potential. I don't think
it means that we're happy all the time. People talk
to me about, oh, I just want to be happy,
and I say that's ridiculous, because that's not an appropriate
emotion for most of our experiences. I like to have joy,
and I like to try and feel some joy every day.
But to have this blanket happiness that's like Soma, you know,
and brave New World, and it's just not it's not
a pro. So, so a fulfilled life is reaching our
highest potential and using our talents to the max, to
the best of our abilities, and really I think just
living big. You know, I want to experience everything I
can in my time on this planet. I want to
live broad and deep. I want to feel. I want
to connect with people I want to love, and so
that to me is fulfillment.
Speaker 1: Now, if you had a chance to go back in
time and talk to little Julia, what advice would you
give her. We'll be right back after a word from
our sponsor, and now back to the show.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, you know, assuming I had the knowledge I
have now, i'd probably get away from some of the
family environment early, and which I kind of did anyway, honestly,
but I think maybe more emotionally. Don't take it on,
don't take it as my problem, you know that. Getting
back to one of the first questions you asked me today, well,
you know, being a psychic, growing up psychic, like, the
first thing you say is what's wrong with me? You know,
why doesn't everybody get me? Why doesn't anyone understand me?
Why doesn't anybody love me? And I asked all those
hard questions, and I blamed myself as most do for
a long time. And so that's what I would relieve
myself of if I could. But then I wouldn't have
the knowledge and wisdom I have today.
Speaker 1: Either, So fair enough, how do you define God or
source energy?
Speaker 2: That gets back to that life force? That connection? You know,
when I look at you, even through this phone, I
feel connected to you and on some level I feel
you And that's because we're both alive and I love that,
you know, and that to me is God?
Speaker 1: What is love?
Speaker 2: God? Kind of you know, It's it's bigger than just
the emotional feeling. But of course the emotional feeling is
in there and it's how we express it, but it's
it's that highest source.
Speaker 1: And what is the ultimate purpose of life?
Speaker 2: I think, to love in every way and every form,
including loving ourselves, to reach to self actualize, to reach
that God potential.
Speaker 1: And where can people find out more about you and
the work that you're doing in the world.
Speaker 2: Oh well, they can go to Julia Gordon Bramer dot com.
They can also pick up one of my most recent books.
I mean I have five books altogether, but recently last
year Less November, Taro Life Lessons came out with Destiny Books,
and this past May, the Occult Silvia Plath came out.
This is a biography. This is not about me. But
Tara Life Lessons is a lot about me, so if
you're interested, I recorded them both on audiobook as well.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: I distributed through Simon and Schuster. If there are any
bookstores listening.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And I'm on a book tour. That can find the
dates on my book tour on Julia Gordonbramer dot com.
They can get a reading with me by contacting me
through that website. You can also find me on Twitter
and Instagram. Jay Gordon Bramer uh and uh yeah, I
love to talk to people who are into this. I
you know, I'm getting busier and busier with all this traveling.
I don't always have tons of time to to just
you know, shoot the breeze. But I'm happy to answer
some questions about Taro or myself or anything.
Speaker 1: And do you have any parting messages for the audience.
Speaker 2: Not really, just thank you for having me and it
was a joy.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you being on the show and thank you
so much for helping awaken.
Speaker 2: The planet, my dear Thanks again, Thanks Alex.
Speaker 1: I like to thank Julius so much for coming on
the show and sharing her knowledge and wisdom with all
of us. If you want to get links to anything,
we spoke about in this episode. Head over to the
show notes at Next levelsoul dot Com Forward slash four
eight one. Now, if this conversation stirred something in you,
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Begin your awakening at Next levelsoul dot tv. Thank you
so much for listening. As I always say, trust the journey.
It's there to teach you. I'll see you next time.