How one tarot reading changed a cheerleader’s life course

This article was written as part of my Journalism undergraduate degree.

Sitting in her silver Mazda in the gravel parking lot of the Pi Beta Phi house, Julia Baddley pulled from a deck of tarot cards to decide her future.  

Baddley, now a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, had been a UNC cheerleader for two years. She loved fastening her blue bow to flip across the turf and yell “Go Heels!” on the sidelines.  

But going into her junior year, she felt overwhelmed, worrying about applying to law school and keeping up with her course load. Should she hang up her pom-poms or push herself to keep her spot on the team that she worked so hard to earn, even if it meant sacrificing her mental health? 

“At a time when I was really stressed out, kind of on the verge of tears, trying to make a big life decision, I consulted the cards,” said Baddley. 

Looking at her three-card spread, she flipped each one over one after another.   

Baddley is not the only one in Chapel Hill trying to figure out life with a deck of tarot cards decorated with swords, devils and half-naked figures.  

Shuffled throughout a town formed around a top-tier research university, people are turning to the cards, believing in their power to foretell the future or just offer comfort in periods of uncertainty. Since the pandemic, tarot card reading has grown, as people searched for insights or just a fun way to pass the time.  

On TikTok, #tarot has 33.4 billion views. Over the pandemic, google search results for tarot rose, hitting its all-time peak in September 2021.

Baddley found tarot in 2020 because of TikTok trends and learned to read the cards through websites and YouTube tutorials. Tarot helped her mental health during the pandemic, she said, because she was able to lose herself in a creative and insightful hobby. She often lights a candle and reads tarot as a calming night ritual before bed. During parties, she breaks out her deck to do amateur card readings for friends.

But, tarot began centuries before any social media trend on TikTok or YouTube. 

Dr. Randall Styers, a professor in the Department of Religious Studies, said that tarot cards originated in Europe as simply a card game, but people in the eighteenth century began using them for occult and divination purposes. Styers has a research interest in supernaturalism in contemporary culture.  

Styers doubts the cards possess magical abilities: but tarot card readers are skilled at reading subtle signals from those that sit for their readings.  

“It has a kind of interesting feedback loop,” said Styers. “It is drawing information and responses from the person who the reading is being done for and then using that to continue.” 

While some people see tarot as a “fun exercise” or “party game” without believing it is real, others look to divination with great seriousness, he said.  

Like Baddley, many Chapel Hill residents turn to tarot in times of uncertainty, especially when COVID-19 hit.

 Lynn Magikcraft Swain, a psychic in the Triangle area, said she had to expand room in her work schedule to manage the increase of appointments during the pandemic. People were more desperate to get a reading, she said.   

Swain has been a practicing psychic and tarot reader since she was 13. Her grandmother was a Romanian immigrant, she said, who first taught her tarot card reading. She now teaches her own six-year old granddaughter the practice. 

Swain said her main goal is to heal her community with tarot and her other medium practices. She said she gives her clients information and then homework to deal with it.  

“I love instilling hope in people because the sun’s going to rise tomorrow and you just have to get through today,” said Swain.  

Swain has been reading tarot for decades, but the divination practice has a rising young generation.  

Cody Grady, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, is also a true believer and has given hundreds of tarot card readings by his estimation. Grady said witchcraft runs in his family and his great-grandmother was a “fire-talker,” meaning that she could heal burns. Grady said he self-taught himself tarot through YouTube to connect with his family’s past.  

According to him, Grady has been able to predict his friend’s dog passing, a co-worker’s pregnancy, and the attempted suicide of his ex-boyfriend.  

“I kept on pulling like one after another like physical death and the hanged man,” said Grady. “So, I was able to reach out and get [my ex-boyfriend] help.” 

Grady said tarot gives him “a sense of security” and “hope” for the future.  

Traditional churches might not be a fan. The opinions on the presence of tarot in Chapel Hill are a mixed deck.  

Elijah Moree, a Christian and sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, dislikes the rise of tarot in his community. He said that tarot places people in contact with the occult, which they are not prepared for like priests who are trained to conduct exorcisms.  

“There are traditions going back of how we relate to the spiritual world and so I would say if it is not of God than it is of deeper darker forces that I just wouldn't mess with,” said Moree. “I would say that inviting those types of spiritual sources is not healthy for you or society.” 

Moree’s negative opinions towards tarot is nothing new. Styers said there has been historic opposition from religious people and skeptics to tarot and other practices that are in the realm of witchcraft.  

“At various points in the past, some kinds of [witch] practices had laws passed against them and tarot kind of gets caught up in a lot of that,” said Styers.  

The Witchcraft Acts of 1603 and 1604 passed under King James I made invoking evil spirits or communing with familiar spirits punishable by death without clergy. Authorities in Salem, Massachusetts utilized these laws as a legal basis for executing 19 people in 1692, according to the Boston Globe.    

Baddley said tarot allows her to engage with her spirituality, but does not believe it “necessarily” shows the future. Instead, tarot offers her a method to contemplate her plans and find inspiration.  

Back in her Mazda, Baddley’s cards did not indicate another year cheering for the Tar Heels. Instead, they signaled a change coming, so she decided to retire her uniform to pursue a future in law. After weeks of deliberation, Baddley stuffed the cards in their cardboard box, feeling at peace.  

“I don’t think [tarot] is satanic at all,” said Baddley. “Personally, for me, it is a way to help set my intentions.”