Will it snow for Christmas? Will we survive the cuffing season? Will we be engaged within the year? Does our favorite thrift have the blood-red tie missing from our Patrick Bateman Halloween costume? So many questions that would remain unanswered, if it weren’t for the Tarot card in Montreal…
Over the past few months, the city has become a little more mystical, and more and more cafés, pop-ups and boutiques are offering Montrealers the chance to read their future in the cards.
Montrealers are getting their Tarot readings and learning how to decipher its medievalist graphics, and it’s all happening in the metrophole’s hotspots of coolness …
Mystic Revival
In the 1970s and 1980s, North America grew its hair down to its buttocks, dressed in corsets inspired by medieval paintings, stuffed its pockets with crystals and fell in love – again and again – with Dracula, Heathcliff and the sexy esoterica of Anaïs Nin.
It was a period of neo-Gothic rock, Anne Rice’sInterview with the Vampire , magical rituals, dancing around a fire in the forest – a revival of mysticism that lasted almost 15 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1pMMIe4hb4
In recent years, the zeitgeist has turned away from the smooth, white technology of the 1990s and 2000s – plastic, minimalist, Lululemon and Apple and the global Internet community.
After the periods of confinement caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, it seems the world has turned on its axis, and after praying at the altar of the smartphone, we want to reconnect with the ancient gods, nature and the stars.
Tarot, destiny and Instagram
For the record, the Tarot de Marseille (the original) is an esoteric deck containing 78 cards, decorated with medieval-inspired imagery and used since the 18th century in cartomancy and taromancy.
Taromancy (or divinatory tarot) is the art of drawing and interpreting Tarot cards as oracles. Card interpretation reveals the future, the secrets of the universe and the hidden psychologies of the person having the cards drawn.
It’s a practice beloved of our grandmothers and most woo-woo friends, but in recent months everyone is getting in on the act. In a world of unstable information, where most media are unreliable, it seems only logical to ask the stars for advice.
The popularization of this mystical revival is attributable to the climate of global anxiety and to “WitchTok”, the side of social networks inhabited by witches, feminists and mystics 2.0 that promotes a life in tune with nature and occult forces.
Tarot readings in Montreal
In Montreal, you can have your Tarot drawn, but you can also learn to draw it yourself, and above all you can meet the city’s baby witches and form a community.
The mystical revival of recent years is above all a way of reconnecting with one another, by way of the stars…
In Montreal, we go;
- Moonbrew Magic Café for a Tarot reading by Shehla, at 271 Avenue Duluth
- Sciences Maudites to take part in their mystical events, at 3731 Notre-Dame Street West
It’s spooky season again, and Tarot readings are at almost every fall market, pop-up shop and independent bookstore in town…
Have a good Tarot reading!