Hello and welcome back to the Reading Room, where I interview professional diviner colleagues and pals about their practices and perspectives on their craft, and weave in something of how their other passions and pursuits enrich their approaches to their prognostication, clientwork, and conjuration. This time, I have the considerable fortune to sit down over a Google Doc and chat with Phoebe Hildegard Finch, a dear friend and compatriot.
Phoebe is a writer, herbalist, and surrealist occultist. She combines direct spirit work and necromancy with poetic logic as she seeks to reanimate the traditions embedded in folklore and the grimoires in new ways. Recently she has been exploring the magical possibilities inherent in collective narrative through her creation Amor Fati: a Tarot-based Role-Playing Card Game. Phoebe lectures regularly on esoteric subjects in person and online. She consults with clients as a professional sorceress, an old-fashioned card reader, and a practical conjurer.
A: Hello Phoebe, thanks for having this conversation with me. I wanted to begin by reflecting on how you see the role of the professional diviner. In either very general or concrete terms, what (if any) are the ethical considerations you think matter when divining for others, let alone yourself?
P: I’ve got to be sure that they’re ready to hear the information I’m receiving. I put real effort into maintaining my bedside manner here, even extending to supplemental divinations on the side. Asking things like, “If I put this to them bluntly, will they be able to sit with it?”
It’s crucial to me that the information I provide be clear and actionable. In general I’m working to give people more options, more agency to make the changes they wish for in themselves, their lives, their stories. So everything I’m doing as far as sorcery or divination for a client is going to be filtered through that lens - Is what I’m telling them going to help them achieve their desires? There are so many voices competing for our time and attention and resources, I want to cut through all that and help others find both clarity and personal power.
“Inspiration” is relevant here, in terms of its root meaning being tied to an intake of breath.
And then the messages I receive through the cards and my own mediumship are typically not subtle at all. I’ve cultivated a very no-nonsense approach. So I just have to be sure that I leaven that sharp clarity with some tact and kindness.
But I’m known, maybe unlike a lot of readers who favor the tarot, as someone who gives a quick, sharp, and blunt read.
It should be a single sentence, maybe two, at the core of it. And I want to show the client where they are in the story that life is presenting them and lay out their options for intervening with some style and grace moving forward.
I believe strongly in a model of diagnosis and prescription. So you’re going to leave a reading with me with some practical homework assignments - things to try.
A: Hurray for remediation and strategies as well as just describing the lay of the land, absolutely.
Are there any kinds of readings or questions you can do but really dislike doing? Or perhaps not “dislike”; but what are the trickiest or subtlest for you?
P: I will read for anybody, but it's trickier to connect with people who are coming from certain social points of view.
I’d say that I’m a very political person, but I tend to express that in simple daily ways of being, through things like housekeeping and hospitality and mutual aid. But absolutely, I am involved in magic, both personally and professionally, because there are certain ways of being human and doing life that I fiercely believe in.
As the daughter of working class artists and immigrants I’m interested in supporting original thinkers, bold and plucky women, and those who’ve been maligned by the world… to help people find some agency in their own stories, change their fate, and create the lives they want to be living.
A: Well said. Do you do much sorcery or spellcraft with your divining tools? Do you place Tarot cards to act as images or icons on an altar or anything like that?
P: I do! I’m currently down in Texas studying Hoodoo & Southern Conjure with Professor Porterfield. Playing card magic is one of the specialities of his lineage. I work a lot with tarot and tarocchi decks as well.
As far as divination, mostly the sorcery I do is around keeping myself clean before and after reading for others. I keep my main deck in a special place, talk to it and care for it. I have certain prayers and very quick rituals to open a session of divination, to help ensure accuracy. Other decks are keyed to particular spirits, and different spirits like different things. There is a very passionate spirit I work with for love readings and works of feminine power, and she likes to get candles and offerings on the side when I’m really having her work for someone. The saints are more chill and I can just maintain that connection before bed or give some water in the morning. I also work with herbs to strengthen my sight. Of course with any practice that we devote ourselves to we want to be always improving.
The tarot is my bread and butter. But I can’t read a Smith-Waite deck well. It’s got to at least be a Marseille and I favor the Italian stuff, tarocchi, tarocchini etc. I like the old decks from back when people actually used these cards to give practical readings on fate & fortune, life & death, before the modern psychological turn.
One of the categories of clients I get are other magicians, witches, conjurers, whatever terms people use. Those who are literate in occult symbols can get a lot out of the Minchiate decks, which are these hyper extravagant Italian tarots that have 40 major cards instead of the usual 22, and bring in the 4 elements, the cardinal virtues, the zodiac signs, etc.
If someone’s an occultist and their reading includes the Aries card and the Fire card, they’ll often get a clear idea of what they need to do and how to get it done.
For matters of the heart I favor the Sibilla oracle, or “La Vera Sibilla”. It’s an antique Franco-Italian fortunetelling deck, the type of thing you’d find in an 18th century parlor. In Italian, the deck is nicknamed “Chiaccherine”, which means “chatterbox.” I find the Sibilla to be the most cutting, precise tool for love readings. It’s like having a best friend whispering secrets to you across the table.
Lastly I do read playing cards and I’ll choose those for hard edged issues that are very cut and dry, and when the emotions are less important than the practical outcome. The way I read tarot really developed out of sitting with playing card reading over an extended period. When I wanted to really learn the pips, I spent about a year reading only playing cards and I recommend that discipline to any cartomancer even if you eventually expand back into the more flowery decks like the tarots.
A: What are your go-to sorceries, rituals, and tricks to keep your divining muscles fit and active?
P: A great deal of my magic is plant based. I have been deepening my relationship with Jasmine lately, growing the plants and working with her in as many ways as I can. I’m a big fan of Clary Sage as well for sharpening sight. Also anise and angelica. I make use of traditional hoodoo formulas such as Psychic Vision and King Solomon Wisdom regularly. My colleague Loretta Ledesma, who also studies with Prof. Porterfield, makes an excellent Divination powder that she sells through her site. I frequently use that to dress my cards or blow a pinch of it over my reading table.
I consider my constant work with St. Hildegard von Bingen to be bound up with clairvoyance and divination as well. Not that she was reading cards during her life, but even leaving aside her visions and prophecies she was constantly sought out for practical advice and counsel as well as outright healing and even some exorcism. In her letters that have come down to us we can read a lot of her advice for high-ranking members of her society, but we have to also bear in mind that she was serving the common people in a way that was a lot more like a cunning woman or a root doctor than a medical doctor. She was prescribing herbs, sure, but also prayer, song, dietary and behavioral changes.
Her Physica, which is often described as a materia medica, includes lots of spells. Not that she as a pious medieval catholic would have wanted to call them that, but hey, it was 800+ years ago. For example there's one spell with a mandrake root to cure depression, and another that uses Wood Betony as countermagic to nullify a love binding. The Physica is not just about herbs either, it addresses the active properties of trees, stones, metals, all manner of animals...
One of my favorite sections has her explaining the differing characters of the major rivers in her region and it's entirely magical and animistic. She expounds on things like the way each river flows, the rivers' origin points, the unique sands, the effects all this has on the fish populations in each river, the healing applications of the various waters of the rivers. You get the sense that she knew these rivers as individuals. She definitely plays favorites with them.
A: So along with all your divining and conjuring, you’re the designer of Amor Fati, a tabletop roleplaying game that uses Tarot cards instead of dice. I would love to hear more about how you developed this and what you’re excited to do with it!
P: Amor Fati is an easy way to tell original stories with your friends using the tarot deck.
It goes much deeper though: Amor Fati, or "Love of Fate" is a rules-light, quick play tabletop RPG that centers on the Four Suits of the tarot and makes use of their connection to the Four Elements and the Four Humors. It's inspired by the literature in the European grimoire tradition and by a mix of classical and early modern ideas about magic, the elements, fate, and fortune.
I created the game to be really uber-simple to pick up and play. It comes in a set of five little zines that you can cross-reference as you go.
Even if you've never used a tarot deck in your life, you can learn the basics of actual tarot reading by playing the game. All the magical information and bits of occult philosophy in the game books are real, and I've done my best to make it all easy to digest and maybe even apply in your own life away from the gaming table.
The way the gameplay works is unique. I call it a "roleplaying card game". Everyone at the table has a hand of cards, including the GM (Game Master, like a narrator for the story). And the gameplay, the story you weave together in real-time, unfolds by simply playing the tarot cards. The cards drive the story, 100-percent. It's so much fun and it leads to really unexpected situations. I've been playing Tabletop RPGs since I was 10 and I've never seen a game that moves in this way.
As far as what's next for Amor Fati, the first edition went so well that I’m now working on the second edition. The box set is getting a full redesign and I'm adding some rules that make the game more well-rounded and better able to support long term, campaign style play.
I'm quite excited because I hired a proper artist to make the new cover for the game. I've received the initial sketches and they look fantastic. I can’t wait to share it!
A: I’ve been thinking about divination and gaming a fair bit of late; I have a class coming up in July on dice magic, so I really appreciate getting to chat with you about this. As a game designer as well as a professional reader, how do you find it useful to frame the commonalities or influences of gaming and divining?
P: Gaming and divination have a shared origin in culture which is often forgotten today. Dice are commonly associated with role-playing games, since they feature so prominently in Dungeons & Dragons. Historically we see the use of dice for divination, whether that's in casting geomantic charts or consulting old “Books of Fate”, which are those old divination manuals that essentially consisted of lookup tables. That then folds back directly into tabletop RPGs. Games that center on lookup tables are becoming more and more popular in the scene lately.
The earliest origins of the Tarot are still debated, but it's safe enough to say that from very early on the symbols we associate with Tarot decks are connected with a card game called Triumphs, or “Trionfi”. Tarot and related decks were widely used to play trick-taking games (games that are similar to Bridge). Tarot games are still played today in the regions where these decks were created.
Amor Fati is another card game you can play with a tarot deck. Through simply playing the cards a unique story is generated. I love to create art, magic, and magical art that "rhymes" with history.
A: That makes such an elegant sense in the way you put it. You know, I find some occultists and magical practitioners can be a bit wary to talk about also being into gaming – like people will think you are less of a Serious Magician if you also enjoy fantasy or RPGs or something. But in my experience tabletop gaming of those sorts offer all sorts of opportunities for honing imagination action and (I suppose outside of PvP stuff, which isn’t really my jam) are one of the few games that usually foster teamwork over competing with your friends and family on game night. What for you are some especially useful transferable skills between these two crafts of gaming and divination?
P: One very important skill that’s shared by both good diviners and engaging gamers is a healthy sense of improvisation. You never truly know what’s going to happen once a ritual starts and spirits are called or cards are cast. It is best to know how to think on your feet and that applies to narrative roleplay too whether you’re running a game or participating as a player.
Then another is the awareness of the power that story actually holds magically. That applies at the divination table equally as it does in a circle or at the crossroads. Mythic tales and what gets called historiolae, or stories of ritual precedent, these make for both great gaming and effective communication in a magical context, whether I’m communicating with a cartomancy client or negotiating with spirits in a conjure context. It’s deeper than merely being inspired by tales of past sorcerers and conjurers — telling their stories, or you could even say wielding their stories, seems to wake up their spirits and allow us to don a kind of “mask” that gives our words and actions a greater weight.
Lastly, and this is by no means distinct from the other concepts I’ve mentioned, but I note that professional divination, practical ritual magic, and storytelling games are all linked by the general principles of stagecraft. So a basic sense of what makes a powerful performance gives a lot of punch in all these areas. Often I find that modern people are confused about performance — we tend to think it’s inauthentic, fake. But (and I’m saying this as the daughter of an actor and stage director) I find that in a successful performance we really do access a power greater than we can in “everyday” life. And that power is needed when reading for clients, working spells, or creating meaningful gameplay experiences.
A: Oh I especially love that framing of *wielding* the magical precedents that have come before us and that still hold mythic and ritual weight, brilliant! Are there some examples of this element of stagecraft being useful for conjuring you can offer for folks still worried that sounds, like you say, inauthentic?
Two examples from my studies with Professor Porterfield come to mind. One is actually a story that his conjure teacher, Mr. Charles Hanson of Georgia, told while he was still alive. Mr. Hanson used to talk about times when it was necessary to conjure in public — that occasionally he had to take certain actions where he was obviously calling to spirits in a place where people could hear. And that he would often attract stares. Now a lot of people would feel embarrassed by that and might lose their conjurational focus. But Mr. Hanson saw it differently. He’d just laugh and say “See who’s boss now?” And he’d go about his business, using the power of that attention to amp up his conjuring.
Now the other example is coming from a textual source, and it’s one that I wish more people knew. The folklorist Harry Hyatt had an assistant later in his life named Michael Bell.
In 1980, Bell wrote a thesis called “Pattern, Structure, and Logic in Afro-American Hoodoo Performance”. In this thesis Bell argues that there is an underlying structure behind the way conjure actually works, and that that structure is activated through sets of actions that he calls both “performance” and “transaction”. The implication here is that there is a type of stagecraft inherent to conjurational magic and that the quality of a particular performance has a real effect on magical results.
Bell’s thesis is by no means perfect, but is very interesting and well worth reading to get at some of the deeper ideas of how a game like Amor Fati can help us build skills that we can use in practical magical work.
A: Amazing. Thank you Phoebe dear. Is always a joy to get to chat with you.
All of Phoebe Hildegard Finch’s work – including tickets to upcoming classes, recordings of past classes, and limited-edition magical products, as well as the means to book her for card readings and individual teaching sessions – can be found over at https://www.phoebehildegard.com/