Food Fortunes Tarot Cards,style A,tarot deck

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Various pieces of artwork and old glass bottles at Jessica Dore’s home. Photograph: Caroline Gutman/The Guardian I would challenge you to consider that this set of images – that are derived straight from mythology and folktales and fairytales in many cases, and even religion and spirituality – might also have meaning too, if you can step out of the rigid mindset.” As well as serving as a prompt for introspection, the cards’ storied past made Dore think of history repeating – circular narratives and mirror images through literature, folklore and legends. “It felt very nourishing for me, just to be like: ‘Someone drew this illustration; someone created these various interpretations – that means that I’m not alone.’”

As the German philosopher Theodor Adorno wrote in 1953, of the popularity of astrology: “the kind of retrogression highly characteristic of persons who do not any longer feel to be the self-determining subjects of their fate, is concomitant with a fetishistic attitude towards the very same conditions which tend to be dehumanizing them”.Tarot simply asks that we hold ourselves open to it, says Dore. “The beautiful thing about tarot is that you will meet the card where you’re ready to go.” One upshot of the 21st-century embrace of “wellness” is mounting awareness and acceptance of the real benefits of non-clinical practices such as meditation, yoga, spending time in nature, journalling and mind-altering drugs. After nearly 100 years of work to ground psychology in evidence and empirical studies, we might see such idiosyncratic influences as outside the scientific scope. But all through human history, spirituality has factored into concepts of mental health and wellbeing – not necessarily reductively.

Considered in this light, tarot has more in common than one might think with therapy. As Dore points out, Carl Jung studied archetypes, symbols and synchronicity in seeking to understand the human psyche.On TikTok, tarot cards are drawn by algorithms. Even the Sun newspaper recently published its own guide to major and minor arcana, a surefire sign of steady online search traffic for spiritual guidance. Certainly, the care and palpable sense of responsibility with which Dore approaches her work might surprise those who see tarot as essentially exploitative, the pastime of the cretinous and the credulous. The dismissal of tarot – and likewise astrology, another interest popular among young women – is often suggestive of whose suffering is taken seriously.