Why Highly Competent People Seek Tarot, and How I Learned That

One of the strongest lessons I learned after commencing a year long sales course wasn’t about funnels, personas, or market research spreadsheets.

It was much simpler than that.

If you want to understand who your work is for, you eventually have to stop theorising and start selling, and then listen carefully to who shows up.

So that is what I did.

My sales mentor spelled out that you can do all the marketing research you want, but what you mostly end up with are prospects. Prospects at the very least provides you with the data that tells you who is curious, who is willing to engage in conversation, or who might like the idea of your work in the abstract. There’s nothing wrong with looking at prospects. However, it is far less reliable when it comes to understanding who is actually willing to spend money on your services. And what you’ll find out very quickly is that gathering prospects does not automatically translate into revenue.

By actually putting myself out there and just selling my services (mostly via markets and special events), I wasn’t surprised that a pattern emerged. What stood out was how consistent it became once I stopped trying to imagine a hypothetical audience and instead paid attention to the people who were actually willing to part with their money for my work.

That approach appealed to both the researcher and the project manager in me. Rather than running endless discovery exercises about “prospects,” I treated my practice as a live project, gathered real data through action, and adjusted my understanding accordingly. It was that data that helped me work out what actually needed to be on my banner, what people needed to see when they landed on my website, and which parts of my work they were responding to most clearly.

It also made something else obvious. I did not need to overdo it on social media or exhaust myself churning out reels that very few people were going to watch anyway. Not to mention that the Meta algorithm hates my demographic anyway but I digress…

However, an important takeaway was that people who were already finding and paying for my work were responding to clarity, not volume. Paying attention to real engagement and real revenue was far more informative than trying to maintain constant visibility for its own sake.

I never resisted the idea of having a niche. What I resisted was guessing who that niche might be in advance.

People Who Have Done Everything Right and Still Feel Unsettled

The people who come to me for tarot, past life readings, deity connection and shadow work etc. are, in many ways, deeply familiar to me.

They tend to be high achievers who have worked in professional or intellectually demanding roles. They are capable, conscientious, and accustomed to responsibility. Many have excellent track records and have made careful, rational decisions about their careers and lives.

What brings them to my work is not a lack of effort or intelligence, but the grief of realising that doing everything right did not protect them in the way they were told it would.

Often there has been a rupture of some kind. Sometimes this is institutional, involving workplaces, professions, or systems that promised stability, meaning, or fairness and failed to deliver. Sometimes it is relational, emerging when long-standing dynamics collapse once they stop over-functioning. Sometimes it is existential, the slow recognition that success did not answer the deeper questions it was meant to resolve.

They are not looking for escapism or reassurance. They are trying to understand what happened, what still belongs to them, and how to move forward without losing their sense of agency.

That is where my work begins.

Why Tarot Appeals to “Rational”, Educated People

One of the most persistent myths about tarot is that it appeals primarily to people who reject rationality and logic. My experience has been almost the opposite.

Many of my clients are deeply grounded and logical people who remain interested in the magical and the esoteric, not because they reject science or intellect, but because they are acutely aware of what those frameworks do not fully address.

They read widely, think critically, and have spent years operating within systems that privilege reason, efficiency, and measurable outcomes. At the same time, they feel the absence of meaning, symbolism, and wonder, particularly when facing questions about identity, loss, desire, or direction.

My own background matters here. I am academically trained and have worked within mainstream institutions, and after months of being conferred I recently had the grounding experience of finally walking across the stage at my PhD graduation. I understand how knowledge is produced, legitimised, and defended in formal settings. I also understand what those settings tend to strip away.

Tarot, in my practice, is not positioned as an alternative to rational thought, but as a complementary symbolic language that allows people to think through experiences that do not respond well to “logic” alone.

Disenchantment, Integration, and the Search for Meaning

This tension between meaning and modern life is not new. Émile Durkheim in the early 20th Century argued that religion and spirituality played an important role in maintaining social integration, providing shared meaning, moral orientation, and a sense of collective equilibrium. As traditional forms of religion weakened, they were not simply replaced by rational thought, but by what Durkheim described as the cult of the individual, which placed the burden of meaning, purpose, and moral coherence onto the self.

The result was not greater stability, but often fragmentation, strain, and an intensification of individual responsibility without the collective structures that had previously helped hold people together.

Max Weber took this further in his discussion of disenchantment and the iron cage of society. Weber described how modern life had become increasingly rationalised and stripped of magic, even as fundamental questions about why humans act, believe, and desire remain unresolved.

People do not stop needing meaning simply because institutions no longer provide it. They look for ways to re-enchant their lives. The problem is that many contemporary spiritual spaces are not particularly safe or accountable, especially for people who are already vulnerable after institutional or relational harm.

My work sits in that gap. It offers a space where symbolism, intuition, and depth can be engaged without abandoning critical thinking, ethical boundaries, or personal responsibility.

Shadow Work as Containment, Not Collapse

The people I work with are not afraid of the dark. They are willing to sit with grief, anger, shame, and uncertainty, and they understand that growth is rarely neat or linear.

What they need is not endless excavation or premature resolution, but a safe container where these things can be examined honestly and over time. My shadow work practice is designed to hold that process without judgement or coercion, while maintaining a clear distinction between support and enabling.

The work is never really finished, but it is always grounded. Clients know they can return when another layer surfaces, and they know their agency remains intact throughout.

Why I Am Clear About Who This Is Not For

I have no interest in serving everyone. And I dislike sales funnels precisely because they treat people as interchangeable, and because they encourage practitioners to speak vaguely enough to capture the widest possible audience. They also consume an enormous amount of time and energy on the practitioner’s side. You can do extensive research, build elaborate systems to draw people in, and still find that none of it reliably translates into meaningful engagement or sustained income.

When observing other practitioners, I found that this kind of effort often produced a lot of motion without much clarity. It generated attention and interest, but not necessarily commitment. Paying attention to who actually chose to work with me, rather than trying to optimise every step of a funnel, was far more informative and far less exhausting.

My work is not for people who want quick fixes, external authority, or someone to tell them what to do. It is for people who are capable, reflective, and willing to think creatively about their lives, but who need a space where intellect and intuition are allowed to coexist.

Understanding this did not come from market research exercises. It came from selling my work, paying attention, and trusting the evidence of who chose to engage.

That, more than anything, clarified my niche.