Whether she existed as a historical person remains debated. Yet for nearly seven centuries, the story of a woman who rose through the Church disguised as a man captured the imagination of Europe. Pope Joan Tarot Card by SR Laing for Dark Folio Press The Legend According to medieval accounts, Joan was an extraordinarily intelligent woman born in the early Middle Ages. Denied access to education because of her sex, she disguised herself as a man and adopted the name Johannes A

This card asks: Are you choosing from truth… or from hunger?

One of the biggest shifts in tarot happens when you stop reading cards individually and begin reading the relationships between them. A card’s meaning does not remain static. It changes depending on: where it appears, what surrounds it, and how its elemental energy interacts with the spread itself. This is where tarot begins to behave less like a collection of definitions and more like a symbolic ecosystem.

One of my favourite things about tarot is that the smallest details often open the largest doors. A recent question on LinkedIn asked what the four symbols hidden in the corners of the Fool card represented.