Remember, the cards do not command your future.
They simply hold up a lantern.
Allow me to light the flame.
— S.L.
The Tarot Room
There are times in life when we find ourselves searching for a little guidance, a different perspective, or perhaps a glimpse into the things we have yet to understand.
There are some things better written than spoken.
Here at Smokey Lonesomes, tarot is an old-fashioned form of divination. Intimate, thoughtful, and a little mysterious.
Your cards are drawn by hand and read slowly, with attention given not only to their traditional meanings, but to the particular story they seem to tell together. Your reading is then written for you as a private letter of sorts — a record of what was found in the cards, what may be hidden beneath the surface, and what might be worth carrying with you as you go.
You needn't have any experience with tarot, nor know precisely what you're searching for. A little curiosity is quite enough.
Your reading may speak to what has been, what is presently taking shape, what remains unseen, and the paths that lie ahead. But the cards do not dictate your fate. They illuminate the road enough for you to recognize your own footprints.
Each reading is written especially for the person who orders it. No two are alike. It is something you may sit with, return to, and discover new meaning in as time goes by.
Consider it something sent to you from the little back room of Smokey Lonesomes, where the lamps burn low, the scent of smoke and dried herbs hangs in the air, and a deck of cards rests upon the table, waiting quietly beneath the weight of whatever question has brought you here.
There are certain callings we hear long before we understand them. A faint sound carried from somewhere beyond the life we have already made. A road we keep looking toward. A piece of work, a different way of living, a creative hunger or some unnamed thing that continues to tug at us no matter how many times we turn our attention elsewhere.
The Far-Off Call is a reading for the seeker who feels themselves being drawn toward something, but does not yet know what answering that call might ask of them.
Together, we will begin by exploring the source of that pull and considering why it may have found you at this particular time in your life. We will look honestly at how you feel about following it, what has kept you from doing so before, and what could begin to unfold should you choose the road now.
From there, the cards will help us consider the spirit you will need for the journey and what may need to be left behind in order to continue.
Before you depart, there is one last thing.
We will draw a final car for The First Tool— a gift, strength, or ability you already possess that can be carried with you as you begin.
The reading ends there.
No card is drawn to tell you exactly who you will become at the end of the road.
That part belongs to you.
What You Will Receive
An eight-card tarot reading, personally drawn and written for you. Your reading will arrive as a beautifully prepared digital document, with each card interpreted within the story of your individual spread, along with the questions and reflections meant to be carried with you afterward.
This is a written reading—there is no live appointment to schedule. After purchasing, you will be asked to share the name you would like used in your reading and anything you feel I should know before I begin.
Your completed reading will be delivered by email within five business days of purchase.
For those who have come to a crossroads.
There are three candles burning on the table tonight.
One for the road you might take.
One for the road you might leave behind.
And one for the traveler who must choose between them.
There are decisions that divide a life quietly into before and after. We arrive at them carrying our hopes, our fears, our obligations, and all the imagined lives we might have lived had we chosen differently.
Sometimes it is not the roads themselves that are difficult to see.
It is our own heart standing between them.
The Three Candles is a reading for those facing a choice that feels too important to make blindly. Together, we illuminate each road—not to foretell exactly where it will lead, but to understand what draws you toward it, what it may ask of you, and which fears might be obscuring the way.
Then we turn toward the third candle.
The one that belongs to you.
There we listen for the quiet knowing beneath all the noise—the truth you may already carry, the part of yourself you can trust and the inner light that will travel with you long after you have left the crossroads behind.
This reading will not choose the road for you. Some choices belong only to the traveler. But perhaps you do not need to see all the way to the end…
Perhaps you only need enough light for the first few steps.
Two candles remain on the table.
The third leaves with you.
What You Will Receive
An eight-card tarot reading, personally drawn and written for you. Your reading will arrive as a beautifully prepared digital document, with each card interpreted within the story of your individual spread, along with the questions and reflections meant to be carried with you afterward.
This is a written reading—there is no live appointment to schedule. After purchasing, you will be asked to share the name you would like used in your reading and anything you feel I should know before I begin.
Your completed reading will be delivered by email within five business days of purchase.
An ever-changing reading guided by the moon phase overhead.
There is an old comfort in knowing that wherever we wander, we do so under the same moon. She finds us in different conditions…
Sometimes we meet her in darkness, when very little can be seen and we are asked to trust what is taking root beneath the soil. Sometimes she catches us growing—our lives slowly coming into view by degrees. There are nights when she hangs full and bright above us, illuminating what can no longer remain hidden. And there are nights when her light begins to leave, asking us to loosen our grip, clear the table and return quietly to ourselves.
Beneath The Moon is a written reading that changes according to the moon phase beneath which your cards are drawn. You will not choose your lunar phase beforehand.
When I sit down at the table to read for you, I will look to the moon overhead. Whether she is dark, growing, illuminated or fading will guide the questions I bring to the cards,
What energy surrounds you beneath the present moon?
From there, the moon leads us.
Under The Dark, we watch the light return and consider what is becoming visible, what asks for acceptance and what might be gently brought into greater alignment.
Under The Growing, we consider what the returning of light is revealing, how to accept what has been shown and what gentle adjustments will strengthen your self alignment as the moon grows.
Under The Illuminated, we bring things fully into the lamplight: what has ripened, what deserves to be witnessed and what can no longer remain unseen.
Under The Fading, we begin putting things away. We discern what still matters, what may be released what space its absence might lease behind and what within ourselves is worth returning home to.
Your completed reading will record the lunar phase beneath which your cards were drawn, leaving you with a small written portrait of who you were beneath a particular moon.
And should you return, the moon may tell an entirely different story.
What You Will Receive
A six-card tarot reading, personally drawn and written for you. Your reading will arrive as a carefully prepared digital document, with each card interpreted within the story of your individual spread, along with the questions and reflections meant to be carried with you afterward.
This is a written reading—there is no live appointment to schedule. After purchasing, you will be asked to share the name you would like used in your reading and anything you feel I should know before I begin.
Your completed reading will be delivered by email within five business days of purchase.
For the feeling that waits until the house is quiet.
There are some things that will not be easily put to rest. An old grief. A peculiar longing. An anger that has outlived its cause. A fear you cannot reason away. You may go months without hearing from it, believing at last the thing has passed. Then comes a certain kind of night…
The house settles. The hour grows late. And there it is, again—
Somewhere in the dark. A knock at the door.
The Night Visitor is a reading for the part of you that has become haunted. The feeling that returns when the world is quiet enough to hear it. Our goal is not to drive it away. Instead, we will bravely light the lamp and let it in. Together, we will sit across from what has been troubling you and ask why it has come. We will listen for the truth beneath its footsteps and look carefully at the face you have been reluctant to see.
For, sometimes, the thing we fear meeting in the dark is not altogether a stranger.
Sometimes, it bears our own likeness.
This reading asks what might happen if you stopped keeping that part of yourself outside. If, rather than fearing its knock, you gave it a chair at the table and learned what place it might rightfully occupy within you.
When the long night is through, we will turn toward the morning. An unfamiliar face will be waiting for you—the person you might become when you are no longer using so much of yourself to keep another part hidden. You may not recognize them yet. But perhaps in time, you will.
What You Will Receive
An eight-card tarot reading, personally drawn and written for you. Your reading will arrive as a beautifully prepared digital document, with each card interpreted within the story of your individual spread, along with the questions and reflections meant to be carried with you afterward.
This is a written reading—there is no live appointment to schedule. After purchasing, you will be asked to share the name you would like used in your reading and anything you feel I should know before I begin.
Your completed reading will be delivered by email within five business days of purchase.
A Past-Life Reading
There is an old portrait hanging somewhere inside Smokey Lonesome’s.
No one remembers who placed it there. The name has long since disappeared from the frame and whatever story once belonged to the face has been carried off with the years. Still, there is something familiar in it. Something in the eyes, perhaps. A posture. An expression you have worn yourself without knowing why.
You could swear you have seen this person before.
The Old Portrait is a reading that looks gently toward the possibility of a life lived before this one—not in search of proof, dates, or names, but of the quieter things that may have endured.
Together, we will turn the cards and slowly bring the portrait into view.
We will ask who you may have been and what kind of life surrounded you. We will look at what you loved, what you lost and what may have been left unfinished. Then we will follow the faint thread forward into the present: the qualities that seem to have returned with you, the old patterns you may still carry and the wisdom you managed to bring home.
Most importantly, we will ask why this particular story has found its way to your door now.
Perhaps there are parts of ourselves that do not disappear entirely. Perhaps they become an inexplicable longing. A familiar place we have never visited. A talent that seems to have arrived already practiced. A sorrow without an obvious beginning. A peculiar feeling of recognition when we encounter something for the very first time.
For a little while, we will sit with the old portrait and see what the cards allow us to notice.
You need not remember the face.
It remembers you.
What You Will Receive
A nine-card tarot reading, personally drawn and written for you. Your reading will arrive as a beautifully prepared digital document, with each card interpreted within the story of your individual spread, along with the questions and reflections meant to be carried with you afterward.
This is a written reading—there is no live appointment to schedule. After purchasing, you will be asked to share the name you would like used in your reading and anything you feel I should know before I begin.
Your completed reading will be delivered by email within five business days of purchase.
Available Readings
A tarot reading for those who have wandered a little too far from home.
They wander down strange roads. They leave things behind. They lose people, lose themselves, begin again. Sometimes they wander by choice. Sometimes life simply opens the door and sends them out into the dark.
Perhaps you left because something in you had grown restless. Perhaps the old life no longer fit the shape you were becoming. Or perhaps, you never meant to wander very far at all—you simply looked up one evening and realized you could no longer see the house behind you,
The road has a way of doing this.
It carries us farther than we intended. Through strange country. Through long stretches of fog. Through places where the landmarks disappear and we begin to wonder whether we have lost our way entirely.
But wandering is not empty time.
The Wayward Spirit is a reading for those who find themselves somewhere between leaving and returning. Together, we follow the road back through what sent you wandering, what you have been searching for, what the fog may have concealed, and what these miles have quietly taught you.
Then we listen for the calling home. Not necessarily to the life you left behind.
Before you cross the threshold, there is something we will leave among the dunes. Something that does not belong in the house with you anymore. And when you finally caome home, we will ask one last question: Who has returned?
Because the road changes a person. And perhaps being lost was never the whole story.
There is a light burning in the window—perhaps it has been waiting for you…
What You Will Receive
A nine-card tarot reading, personally drawn and written for you. Your reading will arrive as a carefully prepared digital document, with each card interpreted within the story of your individual spread, along with the questions and reflections meant to be carried with you afterward.
This is a written reading—there is no live appointment to schedule. After purchasing, you will be asked to share the name you would like used in your reading and anything you feel I should know before I begin.
Your completed reading will be delivered by email within five business days of purchase.
There are some loves that do not leave easily. Long after the door has closed, after the last words have been spoken and the house has gone quiet, something remains.
A little warmth beneath the ash.
Perhaps it is grief. Perhaps anger. Perhaps the memory of who you were when you were loved by them. Perhaps it is the life you thought the two of you would have—the rooms you might have lived in, the years you might have grown old inside, the ordinary mornings that never came to pass.
The heart keeps strange relics.
When a love has ended, it can be difficult to know what ought to be mourned, what ought to be kept and what has been carried long enough.
The Living Ember is a reading for the aftermath of love. Together, we kneel besides what remains. We look beneath the ash at what has not yet been laid to rest. We name what you are truly grieving and what still binds you to the loss. We gather what the love gave you that is yours to keep, and we find what you are finally ready to set down.
Not everything must be thrown into the fire. Some things were beautiful. Some things made you. Some things may be carried onward while others must be allowed to go cold. Then slowly, the reading turns away from the old fire.
Toward you.
Toward the part of you that has been quietly keeping your life together while your heart learned the shape of an absence. Toward the first small things that might make you want to look beyond the ruins. Toward whatever desire, courage, tenderness, hunger or hope has begun stirring beneath the soot.
This reading does not ask you to forget the person you loved. It does not hurry you toward another. It asks you something quieter: What inside of you is ready to live again?
For there are fires that belong to a particular love and there are fires that have always belonged to you. Sometimes heartbreak makes it difficult to tell the difference. But beneath all that has burned and lost, there may yet be something glowing.
Let’s cup your hands around it—
The relationship may have ended. The fire did not.
What You Will Receive
An eight-card tarot reading, personally drawn and written for you. Your reading will arrive as a beautifully prepared digital document, with each card interpreted within the story of your individual spread, along with the questions and reflections meant to be carried with you afterward.
This is a written reading—there is no live appointment to schedule. After purchasing, you will be asked to share the name you would like used in your reading and anything you feel I should know before I begin.
Your completed reading will be delivered by email within five business days of purchase.
Leave A Note
Not quite sure where to begin?
Leave a note for me here. Whether you have a question about an old object in the shop, need help choosing a tarot reading or simply wish to ask after something you’ve found within Smokey Lonesome’s, write me a line.
I’ll send word back as soon as I can,