When Tyler Richards sees the Temperance card, he thinks of his Caribbean-born mother and aunts making hot cocoa for him as a child. In order to cool down the chocolate from the heat of the stove, they’d slowly pour the liquid back and forth between two cups. “It was like the act of manifestation,” he explains. “Our ideas in the 5th Dimension are too hot to handle. With Temperance, we figure out what is needed to bring the 5D dream into our 3D world.”
Tyler, pictured here with his current go-to deck, the Crow Tarot, is a tarot friend and fellow professional — the owner of Reckless Abandon Tarot here in Seattle. He has taken me up on the invitation to be interviewed for this blog, where I explore how different people learn to read tarot cards.
When and where did you first discover the Tarot?
Tyler brings me back to the end of 2019 when, unbeknownst to all of us, the world was on the cusp of the Covid pandemic. He had moved from Atlanta to Seattle a few years earlier. He had shelved some artistic pursuits, quieted his metaphysical curiosities, and was doing ‘survival-mode’ office work to get by. But at a certain point that fateful winter, he recalls, his days started to fill with synchronicities. Angel numbers (3 of the same digit in a row) were cropping up constantly, multiple times every day. He responded by staying especially alert for nudges from the universe, pledging to pursue any sign that might help him align to his greatest good. A discarded flyer led him to an energy worker, who told him he had significant healing gifts of his own. Then a friend suggested he try tarot, so he got himself a deck and began to read for himself.
By the time Covid shut the outside world down, Tyler’s inner world was just opening up.
With so many people experiencing change and seeking meaning during lockdown, Tyler began to read for others. He started an Instagram channel and found that he readily learned by doing, responding to the cards in context rather than by studying their book definitions. He relied on his energetic sensitivity of others — an ability that he had recognized in himself earlier in life, but that had been relatively dormant for some time.
His readings were also informed by an extensive understanding of astrology, which he had been studying on his own for many years.
While Tyler considers astrology to be his first metaphysical love, that practice for him is a solitary study. Tarot, on the other hand, is social. It’s an interactive inquiry with the power to validate a querent’s connection to a greater reality. Tyler’s face lights up at the thought. He says, “I’m so happy my business allows me to be who I am and do what I love.”
The Millennial Treatment
At Reckless Abandon Tarot, Tyler describes himself as a “Modern Empath” who reads tarot through the culture of the Millennial-and-younger generations. He favors quick visual communication, reaction images, and he dreams of someday making a deck comprised entirely of memes. (With this thought, the two of us start to geek out on tarot. Were Pamela Colman Smith’s pip images simply the memes of the day?)
As our interview draws to an end, Tyler gets ready for his next activity — performing as a professional roller skater at a nearby park. I haven’t mentioned yet that back in 2019, when Tyler was being bombarded by angel numbers, one of the signs he followed led to the local skating rink, where he quickly blossomed into an accomplished skater and performer. Like the Tarot, skating is a natural fit for Tyler. It’s another medium in which he can be himself, and do what he loves.
Tyler talks about the importance of putting as much effort into his physical life as he does into the spiritual. Like the matriarchs in his family pouring their element between two cups, Tyler is deliberate about tempering his “5D” and his “3D” interests. Tarot, Astrology, and Modern Empathy are his outlets for 5D spiritual exploration. His 3D counterbalance — the way he remains grounded in the physical world — is to skate with reckless abandon.
You can find more about Tyler Richards and Reckless Abandon Tarot on his website and Instagram.
Yetta Snow is a professional tarot reader and educator based in Seattle, Washington. Her business, Present Day Tarot, approaches the Tarot as a way to bring meaning into every moment of every day.
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