A Tarot Reading with Rachel Kapelke-Dale, Author of The Fortune Seller.
My first Substack post, featuring an ambitious hybrid interview-tarot reading with the inimitable Rachel Kapelke-Dale!
The first time I interviewed Rachel Kapelke-Dale, for her second book The Ingenue, was the night before my birthday. When I posted about said birthday on social media, where we follow one another, the next day, she indicated that it was also her birthday. How serendipitous!
So for our next interview, to coincide with Rachel’s third novel in as many years (phew!), The Fortune Sellers, which was released on 13th February, we thought it apt that we do something a bit cosmic to mark the occasion. (I originally had lofty designs on travelling to Paris, where Rachel lives, and profiling her during a tandem horseback riding lesson, as The Fortune Seller centers on students in the Yale equestrian team, with prodigious youth who perhaps don’t necessarily live up to their early promise being a recurring theme in her oeuvre—lofty being the operative word, and the profile never materialised.)
Part of the reason I’m starting this Substack, like every other underemployed writer on the planet, is because of the state of media. There are dwindling publications that would take a profile of an author like Rachel, who is prolific and successful, to be sure, but not a household name. And they sure as hell aren’t going to commission a writer like myself to write it. The only outlet that would have been likely to publish it was Shondaland, which offered a plethora of culture writing, creative freedom and remuneration to match and was where my first interview with Rachel was published. But now that Shondaland has laid off most of its editors, including my wonderful editor Mariel Turner, and has stopped soliciting the work of freelancers in the same capacity amidst a ~PiVoT tO ViDeO~ (in the year of our lord 2024? Didn’t they learn anything from 2015. And 2017. And 2020…?), not to mention the closure of a subsequent publication every other week (including Fatherly, another one of my regular clients), I find myself with a surplus of ideas and fewer places to publish them. Enter: Substack, where I can wax lyrical about my financial and creative atrophy in the second paragraph of what is ostensibly an author profile! My aim here is to write probably most books content, but you can likely expect other culture criticism that is slightly outside of the box (another thing Shondaland was great for taking a chance on #RIP 😢). I might post once a week or once a month; I’m still figuring it out, though this week I’ll be launching with two pieces this week, with tomorrow’s post being an interview with New York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers about her new book, American Woman, for Super Tuesday, and confirmed interviews with prolific pop culture author Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, amongst others. But if you’ve ever remotely enjoyed my writing, I hope you’ll consider a paying subscription to my Substack. This post is free to give you a taste of the kind of thing you can expect, but I will likely make the subsequent posts paywalled, especially those that require a lot of legwork, like a two-hour interview with an author encompassing a tarot reading, which took double the time to transcribe, followed by pushing around words to take the form of a lengthy inaugural Substack post with a digression about the dismal state of media! #freelanceisntfree. Now, onwards to the article!
The above screed was pretty much what I spewed out to Rachel when she asked me what I hoped to obtain from the reading, a lay of the land concerning my life and career rather than asking a specific question. Being a virtual reading, Rachel’s first as the reader and my first, period (!), it’s important to try to transfer the energy between the querent, or the person having the reading done, who is speaking about what they’re seeking, and the reader, who is shuffling at this time. It must have worked, because the cards were painfully accurate to my situation!
Rachel read with the Celtic Cross spread, above, and the first card she pulled was positioned at the centre of the deck, and the universe, as it were: the Sun. “The Sun is abundance and joy,” she said. “It’s telling me that whatever changes are happening you’re well positioned for the next steps in your life.”
The second card is what crosses you and represents the challenge that you’re facing. The card that showed up for me was the Knight of Pentacles reversed. Upright, the Knight of Pentacles represents someone who is in control and progressing in a productive way, Rachel said. “The reverse meaning is boredom, feeling stuck, self-discipline and perfectionism.” Yup!
The third card is about the path forward and what to focus on. Mine was a Two of Swords which, in other decks, can be illustrated by someone being trapped. “It’s at the beginning of the suit, so it’s not necessarily the culmination of anything. There’s a lot of potential in this moment and taking time out for meditation on the situation,” Rachel told me.
The fourth card represents the recent past; what you’re leaving behind. The pattern that emerged in my reading was a lot of reverse placements, which Rachel said was indicative of my feelings of stagnation and being held back by forces outside my control. That time around it was the Moon reversed, which upright deals with illusion and breaking through barriers. There, it could represent subconscious fears being realised (hello, regret about major life choices) but it could also mean releasing said fears. That’s promising, I guess?!
The following card represents the present. Rachel pulled for me the Eight of Swords, which is about the intellectual versus the emotional and resisting making an impulsive choice based on what appears to be limited options. It’s also a card that is featured in The Fortune Seller. “The way of getting out of it is through creativity and listening to yourself and not what you feel like you should be doing based on external expectations,” Rachel says.
The next card is the near future and it’s the Page of Wands reversed. Often depicted as a child or youth, it represents inspiration. Though Rachel made sure to let me know that the reversal doesn’t necessarily mean the opposite; for me, it was likely more about budding ideas and how I’m going to build on them.
The final group of four cards helped us get a better idea of me and my situation at the time of the reading. Rachel pulled the Three of Pentacles reversed. “This is generally about building things collaboratively,” Rachel said. “It’s very early in [this part of] the reading, so it’s about getting things going. When it’s reversed it can mean feeling cut off from communities or resources. Pentacles often refer to money, career, and the more material things in life. [Reversed can mean] disharmony, isolation, working alone in a way that’s not necessarily meditative or restful but something that feels imposed upon you.” 🙋♀️
The Knight of Wands reversed was the next card, which is about your environment and the people in it. “It’s usually somebody bringing good news and opportunity,” Rachel said. “Reversed, it can be about delays and frustrations: a messenger being held up.” Rachel indicated that it could be about receiving scattered messages from someone whom I was waiting on to make a decision or embarking on a passion project in which I’m not relying on others.
The next card is hopes and fears, the combination of which Rachel expressed skepticism towards. “It’s usually hopes or fears.” For me, it was the King of Swords reversed, which upright means successful negotiations, but reversed could mean manipulation or misuse of power (fears) or being in tune with that’s right and following one’s own path (hope). “This is something that’s incredibly personal, so that meaning is going to be clearer to you than to me,” Rachel said. People usually perceive me as a pessimist, and certainly I’ve grown that way in recent years by virtue of, you know, being a person in this fucked up world, but I think it takes great hope to bet on yourself and follow your dreams in the way I have this past year, so I chose to see it that way.
“I’m not rigging any of this!” Rachel exclaimed when we reached the final card representing the outcome, the Ace of Cups. “This is a very positive card. The Ace is the final card in the deck or the first card in the deck, depending. It’s this ending and new beginning. The Ace of Cups is emotions, and it can also play into creativity, but it’s less of that spark that you get with Wands and more of a flow.
“You can trust this.”
*
When I told one of my friends that this was the first tarot reading I ever had, they were surprised. But as I told Rachel, I’ve never wanted to have my fortune or tarot read because I don’t want to be influenced by the outcome. I’m in control of my own destiny, not some hag with a crystal ball, if the Disney movies are to be believed. Though Rachel has been immersed in the tarot and other aspects of mysticism from a very young age thanks to her mother, who gifted Rachel with the half-coloured in Celtic Cross rider-waite deck she used for my reading, wrapped in a thick blush-pink ribbon à la her first novel, The Ballerinas, but she tended to agree. “I like [to think of] it as a descriptive tool rather than as a prescriptive one,” she told me. And my reading certainly described my situation to a tee.
Rachel has professional readings done about once a year, and will turn to her own deck in times of crisis or uncertainty, “which is not the highest way to use it and not what I’d recommend to others.” Rachel writes about this in The Fortune Seller and how the resident tarot reader, Annelise, might be abusing the tool. She said she felt a little bit of that when consulted her deck ahead of our reading. Rachel was anxious about reading remotely for the first time, and was also hesitant about reverse and court cards, a lot of which came up in my spread, because she’s not confident about the reverse meanings. (Rachel recommends Biddy Tarot for brushing up on meanings and for those just starting out.)
“I develop my own understanding of each card each time they come up.”
Rachel says she’s better versed in astrology, which she originally wanted to write about in The Fortune Seller, but because of the numerological nature of astrology it wasn’t the right format for a novel. That doesn’t stop her from diving into my chart as an aside—though we share the same birthday, we have different birth years and locations. Echoing the overlaps in our lives, two of Rachel’s main characters in The Fortune Seller are Scorpios. “I like to think of my main characters as Scorpionic because they won’t let things sit still and that’s the bare minimum to tell a story.”
Maybe for our next interview I’ll have to get Rachel to read my astrological chart! Until then, you can read The Fortune Seller, from wherever books are sold.