A Tarot Reader's Plight

“Maya, are you sure you are not clairvoyant?”

The question from Toyol the other day kept bothering her. She joked about being a highly stimulated, burnt-out autistic person with special interests in spirituality, esotericism, and occultism; however, she honestly wondered about her situation. How could she be the only one who could see Toyol when the others could not?

She tossed and turned on her bed. It was now half past 1:00 AM, and the glow of the salt lamp painted her wall the colour of sunset. Her phone was facing down on the nightstand, vibrating with notifications that she could not bring herself to check. Probably another brand deal offer, another hate comment, or just another follower questioning, “Can I get a free reading?”

She stared at the collection of her tarot decks, and her eyes landed on the first one that she bought at a flea market few years ago out of curiousity. Although she ran a TikTok account where others would call her a “spiritual hustler” as she posted about witchcraft, manifestation, and cheap spiritual hacks, they are all her true special interests that she dedicated her time and energy to.

She had never considered herself to be spiritually gifted; no, it was quite the opposite. She has been quite strategic in her approach, particularly regarding the engagement and marketing techniques she used to make her online posts go viral.

All of them were slowly becoming hollow for her.

Being half-Malay, Maya realised she grew up disconnected from her folk magic roots, and preferred quick, viral rituals over real tradition. What started as fun has now slowly become an existential crisis. Then again, she has no elders to turn to, no mentor to learn from, and although she isn’t religious, folk magic has been rather taboo to discuss openly in society.

So she turned to the witchcraft community due to its accessibility online, despite feeling disconnected from her roots and heritage. She continuously felt an ache and a hole inside of her despite her active participation in the witchcraft and spiritual community.

Maya got up from her bed and walked to her desk. Without her knowing, she has been staring blankly at the wall for 20 minutes. Shaking her head to ground herself in reality, she grabbed a lighter to light up a white candle and lavender incense. She knew just what she needed.

“Dear spirit guide, if you are there, please grant me a wish,” she set her intention and prayed before the candlelight flickering gracefully.

Maya’s fingertips grazed the edges of her tarot collections with each deck, a chapter in her journey. The Wild Unknown, with its inky shadows. The Thoth, dense with esoteric weight. Then, her fingers stilled.

There. The Light Seer’s deck, with its gilded edges catching the light, flickered like a candle in the candlelight. She had not used it in months, not since her readings became content instead of communion. But tonight, the deck seemed to hum under her touch, a magnetic pull in her heart answering back.

“Fine,” she murmured, as if the cards could hear her. “You win.”

Maya cradled the deck between her palms, letting its energy settle against her skin. She closed her eyes and took a slow breath, surrounded by the aroma of lavender incense and candle wax, with the quiet static of midnight pressing in around her. The cards warmed beneath her touch, as if waking from a long sleep.

Focus.

She exhaled, loosening her grip just enough for the first card to slip free with a whisper of cardstock against her fingertips. Then another. The shuffle began in earnest now, her hands moving with the rhythm of a heartbeat, each pass a silent prayer.

What do I need to know?

The question unfurled in her mind, not as words but as a weight in her chest. She did not force it. She let it sink into the spaces between the cards, trusting the deck to carry it where it needed to go.

A moment of uncertainty appeared: “What if I am in the wrong?” But she smothered it with another breath. The only sound now was the soft riffle-raffle of the shuffle, the occasional card catching the light as it turned over in her hands.

And then, a pause. The deck felt heavier suddenly, or maybe it was her pulse thudding in her wrists.

Now.

She drew three cards.

Eight of Cups with an image of a woman walking away from a bowl containing burning fire, which is floating in the middle of a lake.

“Walk away from people and beliefs that no longer serve you,” she whispered the meaning of the card to herself.

Next was The Moon with an image of a drowning woman under the water, where there were two dogs, black on the left and white on the right, howling at the full moon above the sea.

“Deception, illusion and lying to yourself.”

Third was The Star card with an image of a woman kneeling while holding onto a thread carrying far to the burning star in the sky.

“Have hope.” Maya read out the meaning of the card monotonously.

A single hot tear escaped before Maya could blink it away. It fell in perfect silence, striking the face of The Star card with unexpected weight. The droplet caught on the card’s shimmering surface, distorting the celestial figure’s serene expression for just a moment before spreading into a tiny translucent pool.

She watched, transfixed, as the tear slowly evaporated from the glossy cardstock. The moisture left behind the faintest ring, a watermark of vulnerability on the symbol of hope.

“I don’t even know what I’m asking anymore,” she whispered, her voice cracking like dry kindling in the midnight stillness. The words hung suspended in the air, heavier than she’d intended.

Across the table, the candle flame shuddered in response. Shadows leapt wildly across her small apartment before settling again, now slightly dimmer than before. The wax had pooled into an uneven landscape of translucent amber, one side collapsing inward as if mirroring her own crumbling resolve.

Maya brought a trembling hand to her cheek, surprised to find more tears waiting just beneath the surface. When had she last cried like this? Not during her carefully curated “vulnerable” Instagram stories, not during her performative moon rituals for the camera. This was different. Messy, unplanned, and real.

The Star card seemed to glow more brightly in the flickering light, with its golden foil catching the scant remaining illumination. That single tear had left its impression, and now the card felt forever altered in her hands. It seemed that it was no longer merely a tool for her readings, but a witness to her unravelling.

Night after night, the cards taunted her. Her body ached from nights spent chasing answers in glossy cardstock, only to find the same three staring back. The Moon’s drowning woman, the Eight of Cups’ abandoned bowl of fire, and always ending with The Star, they all seemed to be mocking her.

Hope? For what?

She scoffed, hurling the deck across the room. Online, her posts flatlined. No likes, no comments, just the echo of her own doubt bouncing back at her. The algorithm had abandoned her. Or perhaps she had abandoned herself.

Her phone buzzed with another notification from a follower: “Your readings used to feel real. What happened?”

Maya’s stomach dropped. She chucked her phone onto the bed, where it landed facedown like a bad omen.

Delete the app. Burn the deck. Pretend this was all just a phase.

The thought slithered through her, tempting. It would be so easy. No more forced positivity, no more performing magic she was not sure she believed in anymore.

But then the exhaustion hit like a wave. Not just tiredness, but the kind of deep, bone-aching surrender that appeared when you were sick of fighting yourself.

Without thinking, she reached for the cards again. This time, forget about Palo Santo, she did not cleanse them. Did not set an intention. Did not even light a single damn candle.

She just pulled.

And there she was, the High Priestess, staring back at her with a knowing half-smile, her pillars of wisdom, her scroll of secrets.

Maya heaved a one sharp exhale.

For the first time in months, the cards did not feel like props. They felt like a mirror.

Maybe the magic was not in the ritual. Maybe it was in the moment you stopped pretending you needed one.

Dawn seeped in through the blinds with pale, tentative light pooling on the floor. Maya did not move. Her legs had gone numb hours ago, her back pressed against the bedframe, her fingers still absently tracing the edges of the High Priestess card.

The realisation hit her like a slow-moving train:

You turned your intuition into a packaged product.

It was all there, ugly and undeniable. The way she had sanded down the rough edges of her readings to fit into tidy, shareable clips. The way she had scripted “channelled messages” to sound more viral. The way she had started to care more about the aesthetic of spirituality than the quiet, unmarketable truth of it.

A dry, broken laugh escaped her. The irony was almost funny. She had sold “authenticity” so hard that she had almost lost it entirely.

Outside, a bird began its morning song. The sound grated against the silence. Maya’s phone lay beside her, screen cracked from when she had thrown it earlier. She picked it up now, wincing as the glass bit into her palm.

No setup. Not a ring light. No agonising over the perfect caption.

“Maya! Do you know that your name is a wordplay? In Malay, it means the Internet world. And in Sanskrit, it means 'illusion or magic'. Cool, right?” The voice chat from Toyol appeared suddenly. The goblin toddler she once helped to free from his master has now transformed into digital form, but he keeps bothering her every few days in the week.

“Toyol! Not now!” She yelled into the voice chat.

She sighed and hit record.

The camera lens stared back, a black pupil dilated in the low light. For a long moment, she just breathed.

“I’ve been scared.” Her voice came out raw, the kind of hoarse that came from hours of unshed tears. “Not of being wrong. But of being real.”

She glanced at the cards strewn across the floor, the same damned trio that kept appearing. The Moon. The Eight of Cups. The Star.

“The truth is not in the performance,” she whispered. “It’s in the pause.”

Her thumb hovered over the post button. For once, she did not overthink it.

The phone clattered onto the nightstand. Maya dragged herself onto the mattress, her body heavy with exhaustion. The pillow smelled like stale incense and salt, proof of the night’s unravelling.

As sleep finally pulled her under, she thought dimly, “The magic did not leave. You just drowned it out with noise.”

In her sleep, she dreamed of coming home to her old two-storey house. Only to find a serpent’s shed skin tracing a path up the stairs, glistening like oil on water. She followed its ghostly trail to her room, where the skin pulsed and split, and from its husk emerged a dragon. It turned its great head toward her, eyes reflecting her face back at her, not as she was, but as she might become.