Like innumerable writers before me, I had a revelation while plunging into a glass of red wine. Unlike most, I'd also perched myself before a tub of my own spit, and my revelation was about tarot.

I was at the Napa Wine Academy in a weekend-long certification training. The goal: to supplement textbook learning with actually tasting wine.

It was all as blissful as it sounds until a Rioja Reserva almost broke me. I glitched upon swishing, like a cow at a cattle guard. Books tend to offer the same vocab words about Rioja Reservas. I rifled through my memorized textbook datapoints: "Complex notes of dried fruit"; "leather"; "vanilla"; "structured flavors with firm tannins." But I tasted none of that. Just grape juice and fresh panic.

I gave up, fatigued. I decided to just sip and zone out.

Surprisingly then an image arose: The '90s. A fig newton from my grandmother: deep, jammy figs, dried almost to a hippie-store-fruit-leather's burnish. Some dough with baking spices. Ohhh, this is Rioja. Neural pathways: forged.

Feeling first, thinking second. I learned that the "petrol" note on some Rieslings is just my memory of sprinting around Toys R Us inhaling the perfume of pungent plastic dinosaurs. Fino Sherry is my grandmother's pork chops. And, to the horror of probably most wine people, Sauternes is animal-style fries at In-N-Out. (I will die on this hill—feel free to fight me in a reply to this newsletter.)

Are these "correct" wine descriptors? No! I would get harpooned for sure with a Champagne sabre in a formal blind tasting exam. But they worked.

I realized I was just relearning lessons from more than a decade ago when I started tarot. There's a pressure to memorize what the "experts" say—key words, themes, history, symbols, herbal, deity, crystal, and planetary correspondences. It's a wealth of knowledge. But wisdom that bypasses the body isn't wisdom. It's just a vocabulary test.

When you're reading the cards—using tarot as divination—the message comes through what you sense. The memories and associations only you have, and the body only you inhabit. These correspondence systems weren't just handed down from the astral plane.

They were forged piece by piece by curious people paying close attention to their sensory Earthling experience. The system came second. The noticing came first. Let's return.

Since I was an arts and culture correspondent, you'll hear about TV characters, dishes, songs, herbs, lesser-known stories behind beloved works, and historical figures you might have never heard of but will admire henceforth. They'll all be portals to understanding a specific card of the week.

Reply with what sounds the most interesting to you.

Thanks for reading,

Cristina

I am not the authority on any of this — no one person is. These traditions belong to lineages, communities, and teachers who came long before me. I will do my best to trace ideas to their sources, spotlight the voices who shaped them, acknowledge how history has shaped them for better or for worse, and collaborate with other practitioners and experts. If I get something wrong or miss a credit, tell me. This is a living map, and it gets better with more hands on it.