The Queen’s Gambit actor Anya Taylor-Joy said recently that she carries her tarot cards around everywhere. Of course, famous and powerful people looking to seemingly ‘alternative’ sources for help and guidance is nothing new. The Tsar and Tsarina Nicholas II and Alexandra had Rasputin, Ronald Reagan had links to Nancy’s spiritualists, and Princess Diana looked to psychic Sally Morgan for guidance. But with social media, mystics and psychics are more accessible than ever.

There are now endless tarot influencers on Instagram, including Biddy Tarot (146,000 followers), The Moon Tarot (963,000 followers) and Abby Cliff, aka Dunkitlikeabby, who is also the go-to reader on TikTok (267,000 followers). On YouTube there’s Intuitive Tarot by Nicholas (316,000 subscribers), Queen of Cups (137,000 subscribers), Intuitive Gems (78,000 subscribers) – the list is endless, as are the views. Plus, there’s now a slew of podcasts – Sassy Tarot, The Antifragile Tarot Podcast, the Wildly Tarot Podcast – where people talk about the tarot and mysticism and everything in between.

From being so far left-field, tarot is becoming much more visible. Dalston nail salon Still London offers a reading with your manicure, and astrologist Zoe Hind, who runs the Tarot Club, which meets up every month in a secret London location, now has a waiting list of hundreds.

A booming industry 

It’s not just tarot that is booming in popularity. Emma Lucy Knowles has become big in the crystal healing world – Victoria Beckham is among her clients. In the US, Laura Day, an ‘intuitionist’, has become the go-to for alternative financial advice and has six bestsellers under her belt. She doesn’t describe herself as a psychic but says, ‘I just get a sense of the right thing to do.’ We British have always been more resistant to these ideas, but you need only look at the Sunday Times bestsellers list to realise there is a shift underway, with Roxie Nafousi’s book on manifesting currently in the top 10. Would that have made it up there even a few years ago?

I often get asked if you need to be psychic to read cards – a question I don’t know the answer to. All I can say for myself is that, when I am doing readings, I feel something – a heat, a buzz, a tingling – and I pull the cards with a feeling of certainty that every one is the exact right one for that reading. I cannot explain it more than that.