24 Before 24: Get a Tarot Reading

I’m doing 24 fun new things before I turn 24. You can see the rest of the list here

DSC_2221Getting a tarot card reading has always seemed so fun and exciting to me. Like most people, I am equal parts skeptical and giddy when it comes to mysterious things like having my fortune told or getting my palm read. I always think it sounds a little bogus, but not enough to discount it entirely – there’s always still a part of me that wants to believe in the magic of it.

This was one of the things on my first list that I never got around to, so I was excited to get the chance to have this experience while I was in Seoul! It was kind of fun, but kind of strange, too. It made me feel a little weird afterwards, but it was overall a pretty cool experience.

DSC_2222In downtown Seoul we walked past a whole line-up of tents offering fortune-telling services – apparently they are quite common in Korea. I got excited, then remembered that I didn’t speak Korean. But my friend offered to translate for me, and before I knew it we’d ducked into one of the tents! It was very kind of her to offer, and it ended up being a fun thing for us to do together.

Initially I’d thought to just get the tarot card reading, but after learning it only applies to the next 3 months of your life, I thought I’d go for something potentially more interesting: a reading of my birth chart! I gave the sweet woman who ran the tent (dressed totally normally by the way, and no crystal ball in sight!) my birth date and time, and she typed it all into her computer to find my chart.

DSC_2223The results weren’t overly surprising. According to my birth chart: I can be stubborn, I always have an opinion and I like to get my way. I’m a great teacher, I like learning, and I’m good with languages. I should get married later in life, after age 30. It will be important to me that both me and my partner are passionate and work hard at our respective careers – she went so far as to suggest the possibility of being a “weekend couple”! I should work to build a specialized, professional career (whatever that means).

And that was it, really! Nothing overly dramatic or revealing. The whole time I was in the tent though, I had this sense of forboding, like she was going to say something I really didn’t want to hear. For a while afterwards, I felt a little uneasy and couldn’t put my finger on exactly why. So while I wouldn’t entirely rule out the possibility of doing a tarot reading again in the future, or even looking deeper into my birth chart, for now I’m happy to have done it and am closing the book on this one.