TOP Tarot Card EXPERT Predicts The FUTURE of US Economy & the REST of 2024! with Julia Gordon-Bramer

Julia Gordon Bramer 0:00
I could play a game of cards with my Tarot pack in the same way that I could take a regular deck of playing cards and I could read fortunes from that Tarot shows you the path that you're on. If we see something coming up that you don't like, it's an opportunity to do it differently. I have had clients who look at these pictures and they can read it with no knowledge of the Tarot, because they're just feeling the pictures, because the pictures are so loaded with with emotion or what they're going through, sometimes literal symbols. You know, the magic of the Tarot is, how do the right cards fall at the right time with these specific questions. It's, it's not an easy you know, certainly that's the spiritual component to it. I am totally not satanic.

Alex Ferrari 1:03
I'd like to welcome to the show Julia Gordon Bramer, how you doing Julia?

Julia Gordon Bramer 1:06
Hi nice to be here Alex.

Alex Ferrari 1:09
Thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm I'm really looking forward to talking to you, because I know just enough to be dangerous with Tarot cards, and I've never had anyone on the show who's an expert in and who's been doing it for a long time, and I'm looking forward to diving into that world, because it's something that many, many people around the world know. So my first question is, what got you interested in tarot cards and doing all of that?

Julia Gordon Bramer 1:37
Yeah, well, in my book Tarot Life Lessons. It's the first chapter. Is sort of the story of how I came into tarot and found my my psychic abilities, both of which happened around the age of 16 and and the story goes, you know, just to paraphrase it, I was walking around the mall on a hot summer day and in the 1970s and came upon a magic shop and, and back then, magic shops weren't what they are today, like, you know, today we have our metaphysical stores and our crystals and our pendulism pendulums and and all of that. Back then, it was tricks, you know, it was gag gifts and rabbits out of hats and, you know, trails of silk scarves and all of that. And so I wandered into the shop just looking at the goofy stuff, and a girl behind the counter motions to me and says, want to see some real magic. And I come over and she shows me these tarot cards. And that was it, and, and so I talk about how I plunk down my babysitting money and, and they were a part of my life for the next 45 plus years. I'm 60 now.

Alex Ferrari 2:56
That literally sounds like the beginning of an 80s movie. You go into a magic shop, you want to see some real magic, and then you buy Gremlin and you take them home. It's a whole thing,

Julia Gordon Bramer 3:08
Right!

Alex Ferrari 3:11
So let's go into Tarot Exactly. So what are the origins? What are the historical origins of tarot cards? When did they first come on the scene all of that.

Julia Gordon Bramer 3:21
So what we know definitely, yeah, what we know definitely is the oldest deck that has been found is is in a museum in Milan in Italy from the 1400s so we know they're at least as old as you know the the Renaissance and in the Crusades. And I think that's an important part. So there's a lore around the Tarot and the here's where the Crusades come in. Because, of course, the Crusades were when the Catholic Church was the government and and they were kind of terrible to a lot of people who were not Catholic. Stop it, including the Romani travelers known as the gypsies. That's not, not A, not a nice word anymore, but, but a lot of people have used that term over the many years, and and also the Jews. So Tarot is, you know, Taro embodies a lot of of belief systems. It's got numerology, and it's got mythology, and the the lore is that the gypsies traveled with this card game. Should the authorities say anything? But it actually contained a lot of mystical secrets and was also, of course, used for fortune telling and divination. Tarot is structured on the Kabbalah Tree of Life, Kabbalah being ancient Jewish mysticism, so we have two sort of repressed cultures there, you know, which are united in the. Arrow and and so there's just all of this, you know, deep spiritual information encoded in the cards with their pictures and their meanings and the numbers on the cards, the astrology associated with the cards. There's, you know, all these different influences. And so the lore is just that these were secrets, you know, embedded and and carried along. That part cannot be proven. And a die hard Tarot scholar is going to say it just, just rumors, just lore. But it's kind of fun.

Alex Ferrari 5:42
No, absolutely, so. So they basically, so they have Italian origins, essentially Renaissance origins?

Julia Gordon Bramer 5:48
We, we know the first deck was Italian, yeah, Renaissance Italian, um, but, you know, there's also the Terra de Massai, which is a very old deck, which, of course, de massized French, some people hold that there are Egyptian secrets and that there are Egyptian versions of tarot. Certainly, Egyptian versions of Tarot have been made in, you know, the last 100 years, but, but we don't have any ancient Egyptian evidence, so you know that they used to but, you know, I kind of think, as a as a spiritual gourmet, you know, I have a little of this and a little of that. I see that that truth is truth is truth across all these religions and mystic practices and so much is shared. You know, what, what Carl Jung would call the collective consciousness and, and it's, or I believe he may have called it unconsciousness because we weren't aware of it. But this shared body of knowledge, what people today would call the Akashic records, and we all have these unifying ideas and and even across cultures, we all have symbols that are represented in the tarot. You know, every culture has a mother figure, a father figure, the lovers, the warrior, the wise man, the wheel of fortune with blessings or the tower with tragedies. We all share this, no matter where we come from and what kind of person we are, and, and so the Tarot tells the story of the human experience and reflects, you know, where we're going and and and our ideas and our hopes and our dreams.

Alex Ferrari 7:38
So how did the Tarot evolve to what it is today, from those old decks that the oldest decks that we have access to at this moment, how did they? How did they evolve, and how did they kind of melt into the zeitgeist, into something that was in the back corner of a magic shop, to kind of a little bit more mainstream, not completely mainstream, but a lot of people understand and have heard of tarot cards and understand what they kind of understand, what they do. How did that evolve? Yeah, evolution happen over the last 600 plus years?

Julia Gordon Bramer 8:16
Yeah. I mean, that's kind of a hard question. So when it was hidden, and in medieval, or I could say Renaissance Italy, it was used as a card game. And there are people who still play Tarot as a card game today, called taroky, or taro versions of that. But so I could play a game of cards with my Tarot pack in the same way that I could take a regular deck of playing cards and I could read fortunes from that, because I know enough about the Tarot to know how the symbols relate, and what would be the spades in the deck of playing cards becomes the swords and the Tarot, And what would be the hearts? What becomes the cups? And, you know, they, they have these interchangeable meanings. So, so some people do still play card games and and certainly it was, you know, card games in Renaissance Italy were for royalty. Most Italians were working and out in the fields or the bakeries or, you know, doing whatever their their skill was, and, and so the people of leisure played games. So, so Taro was a game initially. Now I think Tarot really got radically transformed around the turn of the century. You know, just in Victorian times, when we're looking at the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn was a group of mystics. Wb Yates, the famous writer was a part of it. You know, a lot of famous authors and writers have been connected and direct. Rapidly and indirectly with the Golden Dawn, and most famously, probably, Aleister Crowley, the the, you know, I don't know if you want to call him the great mystic or the the controversial mystic, will say, but so so Crowley and the Golden Dawn really modernized the Tarot. They aligned it perfectly with the Cabal tree of life. They saw the correlations and the similarities many people had either seen it or intuited it, going back to like William Blake in early England, before the Tarot had reached England. Blake had just intuited his own version of tarot. And him, being an artist and a poet, there is a I have, I have a copy of the William Blake Tarot. It's really phenomenal, and it's so close to the Tarot that did come to England, you know, more than 100 years after the fact, but he just felt it all, you know, this is a system of our behavior. This is a system of, you know, who, how, how we maneuver ourselves in the world and in the things we come up on. So, gosh, where am I going with this? So So Crowley and the hermetic order the Golden Dawn. They did a couple Switcheroos. Most notably, they switched the Justice card and the strength card to perfectly align. When I say they switched, they changed the number, they changed the ordering. They made strength used to be the 11th, and they made it the eighth and justice vice versa. But they, what they did with I, you know, I use the universal weight, also called the rider weight. This is the best deck to learn on, I think. And they so perfectly captured the meanings in the pictures. Really credit to the artist, Pamela Coleman Smith, who worked with Arthur wait to do that. And I have had clients who look at these pictures and they can read it with no knowledge of the Tarot because they're just feeling the pictures, because the pictures are so loaded with with emotion or or what they're going through, sometimes literal symbols. You know, the magic of the Tarot is, how do the right cards fall at the right time with these specific questions? It's, it's not an easy you know, certainly that's the spiritual component to it. It's very psychological. Just to take it a step further into modern times, Carl Jung, the famous psychologist, he used Tarot. He used it with his patients. He believed it was a way to expand our consciousness and to see into our subconscious and what was kind of ruling us that way. And that's really how we use Tarot today. So that's a long winded explanation.

Alex Ferrari 13:15
It's a perfect explanation. I'm fascinated, especially when you start going into the historical aspects of things, because I I always like because, you know, tarot, just like numerology, just like astrology, has gone into the Woo, a little bit too much, a little Woo, woo, very discredited, kind of, like other crazy if they think that, or that kind of, those kind of things. And I really like to connect grounded to like, Well, wait a minute, yeah, truly, where did these cards come from? I can't believe this was just made by somebody in Wisconsin, somewhere in a factory. Like, we need some cards. Let's do that like there's a historical background to it and it's and if there's a historical aspect to it, there's also a mystical and spiritual aspect to those cards. So that's why I'd like to ask these kind of deeper questions.

Julia Gordon Bramer 14:02
I liken it to dream analysis. So, you know, we all have dreams, and we all, you have a dream, and it's a symbol, you know, I actually just wrote about a dream the other night that I had, and I was traveling on a road, and there was this big tree in the middle of the road that I could not get past, you know. So it's this obstacle, this thing I can't get around, right, you know? And so I have to say to myself, you know, is this a relationship or is this a work problem? Or, you know, I have to take this symbol of this tree and identify it for myself. Well, reading Tarot cards is some is similar that way. So, you know, I may pull up the strength card and know that this is a time that is really challenging my strengths. Maybe I'm maybe I have to step into my strength. Maybe I don't. Maybe I'm doubting my strength, you know, and and so what I'm going through at the moment. It is really going to help with the reading and show you know, like the tarot card reader doesn't necessarily know you, doesn't know what you're what's happening, or where you come from, or whatever. So the person I'm reading for is reading it with me. You know, I'm just saying I'm seeing this symbol, and I'm seeing this symbol, and this is applying to you, and this is what I'm getting here, and you're processing it, you're going, oh, right, that's my spouse, or that's my mom, or this is my job, or, you know, you're putting it together with what you're going through.

Alex Ferrari 15:39
So let's, let's, let's dive into what Tarot is, because you've been talking about strength cards and and this card or that card. What exactly is the system? What? What are these pictures? What do they mean? How do they correlate in a reading, or in any aspect of what you're doing with them? Can you explain what this is?

Julia Gordon Bramer 16:00
Yeah, yeah. So, so most of us have seen some tarot cards, you know, especially in the movies, right? We've seen the death card. We've seen the lovers card, you know, we've, we've seen

Alex Ferrari 16:14
The gold coin, yeah, like the gold.

Julia Gordon Bramer 16:16
Right, right. And, you know, in Led Zeppelin's fourth album, they put the hermit on, you know, with his, you know, on top of the mountain, with his lantern and everything. So. So these are iconic cultural images, but most people don't know much beyond that. In the Tarot, there are 78 cards altogether, so a few more than the traditional playing deck. When I say I can read fortunes or whatever from a traditional deck of cards, that is with what we would call the minor arcana. So, so 56 or Well, the 56 in the tarot, 52 I believe in a regular playing deck, right? Not counting the chapters and and so, the so in the tarot, we have the major arcana and we have the minor arcana. The major arcana is 22 cards, and it's those superstars that you see, like in Hollywood, the lovers and the death card and the hermit and and all and all the rest. The Minor Arcana is the more mundane day to day details. So, so the major covers the big events, those those milestones, and the minor arcana is sort of the day to day stuff. And the idea is they both work together, because it all happens together. Not every day is a major arcana day. Not every day we're getting married or having babies or or graduating or divorcing, or, you know, all of the things that the majors Express. A lot of times it's just putting nose to the grindstone and getting the job done or, or having some kind of minor conflict with somebody. So it all shows up within the Tarot every every, as I said, every culture experiences these things within the Minor Arcana, just like in a regular deck, we have four suits. So we have the cups, we have the ones, we have the pentacles, and we have the swords. And the idea is that these suits embody, you know, they're the elements. So Pentacles are Earth and wands are fire, and cups are water, and swords are air. There's also the idea that they embody different sorts of actions. So cups are love, pentacles, our work and career. I'm doing this all out of order. I know wands are ideas and excitement, or I'm sorry. You know imagination and inspiration and enthusiasm, and swords are about action and striking out so they have their meanings within their suits, and then the numerology of them gives us more meanings. So aces the ones are about, you know, going solo and new beginnings and fresh starts and new loves and things like that. The twos tend to be duality. They tend to be couples. They, you know, and any sort of joining. The threes tend to be like a commitment sort of card. The fours tend to be stability, I think of like four table legs, you know, fives tend to be conflict and on and on. So each number has its meaning, and each suit has its meaning, and the way they work together will tell a story. So the two of cups, for instance, is two people joining in love. This can be a best friend. This could be a lover for life. This could be, you know, some other. Sort of harmonious joining does not have to be a lover when it's in, when it's along with the lovers card. It usually is, you know, the way the cards work together tell the story. So I I put the cards down, and depending on the question, I see where they fall. I see how the cards interact with each other, how they may look at each other or not, you know, any sort of conflicts. It's all. It's all a big picture, telling a story

Alex Ferrari 20:30
And how, and I, if I remember, I mean, I've probably had my cards thrown at one point or another in my life. I haven't done it in the long, long, long time. But how does it? How do you cut it? And how do you well, how many cards do you pull, and all of that kind of stuff, the procession, okay.

Julia Gordon Bramer 20:48
So, so, you know, Alex, if you called me up and said, Hey, Julia, I want to have a reading, you know. And let's, let's book some time and, and let's say you did 15 or 20 minutes. And if you had no specific question. You just wanted a reading. I do something general. And I probably do what we call the Celtic cross, which is an 11 card spread, and it's a little bit of past, present and future, and it gets into your longer range future, which I read as, like the next couple years. And just sort of you know who you are now, what you've been through what's happening at the moment, where you're going in the near future, and then that farther out future, and it can offer you some advice. I like to tell my clients, you know, Taro shows you the path that you're on. If we see something coming up that you don't like, it's an opportunity to do it differently. So I'm never going to tell you you're doomed. You know, I believe I can read your cards because we're connected just by being alive. When I'm reading for you, I am tapping into you. I believe that your life force is God, as mine is. I don't tell people how to do God or what to call God, that's your business. But I'm, I'm like, alright, you know, we're a part of this thing. You know, we we can put, we can put the sperm and the egg in the test tube and create life, but that sperm and egg have to be alive first. You know that life force is bigger than us and not in our ability to create that. And, you know, consequently, I believe that when we go away, that life force doesn't die, energy doesn't die, it just goes somewhere else. Science has proven that. So you can call it energy, you can call it source. I do not tell people what to believe, but if you can sign on to that, if you can say, all right, I'm alive. I'm hooked into this god system, whatever, however you want to frame it, then you do have great power. And what we put our mind on grows, you know. So just in the same way that the athlete keeps their eyes on the prize, and an athlete does not belittle him or herself and say, I'm not strong enough, I'm not fast enough, you know, and an athlete does not obsess over what could go wrong, you know, what if I trip and fall? What if I don't make it to the finish line? You know? Because that opens up the space for that negative thing to happen. So I'm giving you with the Tarot a heads up, and I'm letting you see where your energy is going kind of organically at the moment. And then you can go, I don't like that. And then I'll say, okay, Alex, that's your opportunity to change it and to go for what you want, not what you don't want, because what we put our mind on grows, and we're always growing what we put our attention on. So if we're very negative, I mean, you know, I tell people, with all this politics going on today, Love him or hate him. We have grown Donald Trump because all the attention has been on him. You know, good or bad, if your focus is on loving someone or if your focus is on hating someone, you're growing that energy of that person you know. So so you know the the thing is, you put your energy where you want it to be, you know, where you find peace, where, where you can be the highest good and the greatest blessing.

Alex Ferrari 24:08
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Julia Gordon Bramer 24:44
So when I work with my clients, and, you know, I, I can say that in my earlier days of being a professional, I probably, you know, I was still stretching my wings and figuring myself out and and I don't know that we're ever totally. Evolved, but I've evolved a lot over the last few, you know, 20 years or so of being a pro doing this, I've been reading since I was 16, so over 45 years, you know, just as a reader, but I'm talking about for money. And, you know, in the earlier days, I would get a lot of parties and a lot of sort of, you know, does he like me? You know, this kind of silly kid questions and and my clients now, I'm attracting a much more highly evolved, spiritual caliber of client that that wants to be here for a reason and wants to make this world a better place, and wants to show up in their highest self and self actualize, which is my goal, too. I mean, I think that we're called right now when I say we, I'm talking about me, my clients, people like you, who are. We're at service to the world, to be a light in a very dark time, and the world needs us more than ever, and so we are and and the Tarot can be a guide to get you there.

Alex Ferrari 26:11
Julia, I have to ask you, because when you started this, it wasn't, it wasn't the cool thing to be a taro card. It wasn't. It wasn't quite accepted. It's not, I mean, in the scope of the of the abilities that I've had on this show, Tarot is one of the more mundane meaning, more acceptable, as opposed to being a psychic medium. I see dead people, or I'm a channel and I channel entities and all of that, that's so Tarot lower on the acceptability more kind of they look at you, kind of like, really, how did you come up closer to do this professionally? How did you deal with colleagues, your friends, your family? Is she nuts? What's going on? How did you how did they deal with it? And how did you deal with the world, dealing with it, when you came out of the tarot card the Tarot closet.

Julia Gordon Bramer 27:02
Yeah, well, I've always been the black sheep in my family, you know.

Alex Ferrari 27:07
Surprisingly so have I surprisingly so the weirdos do that. It's okay. It's okay.

Julia Gordon Bramer 27:15
Yeah, we just came out of the gate that way, right? Um, yeah. You know, I have a sister, two years younger, who's like, you know, quite intellectual. And I have a brother who's a philosophy PhD. And I, you know?

Alex Ferrari 27:29
Great, great Christmas and thanksgivings.

Julia Gordon Bramer 27:32
So you can imagine it's sort of like, oh, Julia. You know, wacky Julia. Um, my other my little sister, she she gets me, she gets me, but, but, and I don't think my mother's ever known what to do with me, fair enough, but, yeah, you know. So some of us, you know, just, just don't really fit. And you're right. You know, as a teenager, it's funny. I think most psychics that I have met, and I lump myself in that group. I think as teens, you know, we get, we get labeled. First of all, the world wants to call you over sensitive. That's, that's a key thing. Almost every psychic is going to be, you know, kind of punished and blamed and called over sensitive, like, just get over it. And even though you're seeing and feeling what you know is to be the truth, you gotta shut up and pretend it's all fine, you know, and and so, like a lot of psychics, I did a lot of drugs and alcohol, you know, of course, it was also the 70s.

Shaped up in my early 20s, when I had my my first son, actually, first of two sons, wonderful kids and and so, you know, I think we have our way of handling that. But the real persecution came much later, when I got into my work, my scholarship work on the poet and writer, Sylvia Plath. So my most recent book, The occult Sylvia Plath with inner traditions. This is 15 years in the making, and I discovered that Sylvia Plath when I was back in graduate school, getting getting my MFA in poetry and fiction. And I discovered that Plath had a lot of Tarot symbolism in her in her work. And I pointed it out to my professor, and I said, it's the deal with this. And and he said, I don't know what you're talking about, and I realized nobody had seen it. And you had to be both a Tarot scholar and a Plath scholar to see what Plath was doing, you know, and that this radically changed the meaning of her work, that nobody it has basically escaped everyone who's held her in this really. Narrow view of just, you know, being suicidal and depressive, which she was, but that wasn't all of who she was. You know, what? Everybody has many complex layers and dimensions to their personality. You don't, you don't say somebody's whole life is a suicide, you know, and and so I kind of got on this mission, and I so I've been doing this work for for about 20 years now, with with the plaque stuff. And I thought that the academic community would embrace it, because, my gosh, here's her, here's a hero, right? Yeah, okay, you're seeing where this is going. Here's a hero. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm showing this genius and these multiple layers of meaning that she was including in all of her work. And my gosh, but what I realized is number one, although I have an MFA, it's not a PhD, so instantly, you know, no cred there. And of course, I'm a crazy tarot card reader, right? So they just dismiss me and, you know, and I don't think it's an accident, whole careers are built on her being just miserable, you know, the suicidal they don't want to see beyond them. So. So for a lot of years, I really, you know, I was iced out at conferences, and I, I really suffered. I mean, I cried over how awful they were treating me, and then one day, I kind of woke up and I was like, they're not my tribe. You know, they're, they're just going to stay in their narrow little view. And you know, maybe a couple of them will see what I'm doing. Most of them won't. Most of them won't even read it, because I'm a kook, you know, because I'm a tarot card reader. And, you know, I wasn't willing to betray who I am. I wasn't willing to put all that away and just say, Oh, I don't believe that anymore, and I'm all academic now. No, it this is the truth of me, and I'm really good at what I do, you know, and I to the point that I'm probably the only full time tarot card reader, certainly in the St Louis area where I'm based. But you know, I'm, you know, not, not to brag, I'm pretty successful and and I'm on television, and I'm on radio, and I just recently was on Gaia and MTV and Nick at Night, and, you know, so, so stuff is happening, but I, yeah, I'm not going to betray who I am, because I've been given a gift, and I'm very good at it, and it's helped a lot of people, and I have people every day. I've regular clients every day who want to work with me, especially when they have problems or challenges. And so I feel really blessed to do work that I love with people I love and form real friendships. And, you know, supportive friendships people who who are building me up and even giving me money, gosh darn, it's amazing, and, you know, for something I love and and so, you know, to hell with the haters. People are always going to hate, you know, I'll get on Twitter and I'll have, you know, maybe inbox with a few people who want to be my clients, and then I'll have some really snotty put down, you know, or or some thread of somebody who's just mocking me because I'm obviously an idiot, because I'm not signing on To the atheistic, you know, belief system, whatever. Yeah, so it's, it's an interesting world right now and and just like when I was telling a fellow writer, you can't be a writer for accolades like, you are going to get rejected, same with being in this field of work, and I'm double so I get rejected both ways. You know, that's just how it is. Gotta be wrong.

Alex Ferrari 34:05
I always ask that question because, you know, a lot of people think that this is an easy path and like, Oh, they're just trying to scam people out of money or something along those lines. There's a lot easier hustles out there. It really, truly is. It's one thing to be that, you know, in a carnival or something quiet, that nobody knows you, but once you get put out there, like you have, you know, in public, author, on television, on on the internet, things like that different, you're really putting yourself out there. You're like, you're rolling the dice that this is, this is the route I'm going, guys. So I just wanted, I just, again, I always like to do that for people, so people can kind of demystify this whole idea, because there has been so much association with Tarot and psychic readings and and with the, you know, the crystal ball and the quote, unquote Gypsy, and that image that we have from Hollywood that, you know, people stealing and things like that from people that I want.

Julia Gordon Bramer 35:00
Ms. Cleo, yeah,

Alex Ferrari 35:02
Oh God, just not even go there and all that kind of and all that kind of stuff. But you so you've mentioned a couple times that there's a psychic aspect to the tarot cards. Can you? Can you explain to me how your psychic abilities are connected to the tarot cards? I've heard this before, but I'd love to hear you explain it to everybody how those two work. And can you read tarot without being psychic?

Julia Gordon Bramer 35:30
Yeah, well, so first of all, Alex, I think everybody's psychic to a certain degree. You know, we've all had dreams that tell us something important, or we've all had, you know, just the moment of thinking of someone and they call you and it's just gonna call you, you know, that connection, you know. And so everyone has some, I compare it to, like singing. So everyone can sing at least a little bit. And some people you could listen to all day. And some people it's like, Oh God, please stop, you know. And so we can all do it, but it's teaching yourself to pay attention. And I think a spiritual path really helps to develop your ability. So some people are just not interested in developing it at all. You know, some people just don't believe, and they're like, No, I only have this many senses, and that's it. And then other people are like, wow, you know, I really do have a good understanding of people that, you know, I always say men frame it differently, like men don't usually say they're psychic. They say I have a sense about somebody, or I have a gut feeling. That's like, the masculine way to do it, you know, and with women, it's more intuitive or psychic or, you know, premonitions, things like that. But we've all got it, you know, somebody could use just a book and read tarot. So if you know nothing about it, you know, in my book, tarot life lessons here from last year. This is my, my real life stories of being a tarot card reader, and I believe it's the second story is, is a story of I was at a party, and a drunk guy took my cards and he said, I'm going to read for you. And he had no knowledge of tarot, and he just threw down some cards and he gave me a surprisingly accurate reading. And I believe he did that because, first of all, he was Blotto, so he was just open, you know, he had no judgments. He wasn't afraid to be wrong, which I consider as one of the big enemies of intuition, is putting our ego in it. And like, be afraid to tell somebody wrong or steer somebody wrong or, you know, and we have all this judgment, you know. So this guy was just, you know, just just looking at the cards and riffing off it. And it was, and it was, surprisingly, a good reading with no knowledge at all. And I think that's important, because I know some people who study those books. You know when I when I did write Tarot life lessons, I did not want another how to read tarot book, because there's already tons of them about what this card means and this card means, etc, and different layouts. I wanted somebody to be able to see real stories and practical application of tarot and and so the way I do it, well, we all have our different psychic gifts. I have a couple. I am mostly what we call clairaudient, and what that means is I hear it in my head. So if I'm reading a card, reading your cards. I set them down, Alex, and maybe you've asked me a question about your work or something, and I'll have a card, you know, show up, and I'll hear something. I'll hear just a word in my head, you know, or a phrase. And so I've learned over time to trust that and to just tell it to you. I don't know what it means necessarily, but it usually relates to you, you know. And usually you go and you know, and or that's what so and so always says. Or that's exactly what I was thinking earlier today. You know that that's the kind of response I get. And so that's so usually I'm clear audience. I do also have premonitions, you know, I dream both, both at night and actual sleeping dreams, and also daydreams, which I consider to be visions. So in this book, and in the first chapter, which is my story, I talk about my first premonition being just I was I had just gotten my driver's license, and I'm going down the road, and I thought about a big crow on the side of the road with a broken wing. And. Thought I did. I think about that, you know, just kind of came into my head, and then within five minutes, I saw exactly what I had thought, this bird was there with a broken wing. And I think, well, what does that mean to this day? I'm not sure, but I do think that as we get stronger, we're flexing our muscles, and we're getting better and better, and it's that paying attention. So that was my first conscious premonition, and I talk in the book about what crow symbolism is and how it unites, even with my Plath work and and different things there. So it was a meaningful symbol to me. And like, like, the Tarot will have meaningful symbols, you know, the right cards come up for you to give you the information you need to know. So I'm just the messenger, and I am, you know, telling you what's coming in really you as the the person who's getting the reading, you're applying it to your life. Because, of course, I don't know your life, so it's just, yeah, it's just, that's how it works.

Alex Ferrari 41:12
So when you are a clear audience, what are you connecting to? What? What is? What are you? Are you connecting to your higher self? Are you connecting to the other side? You connecting to your clients by yourself? What is where's the information coming from on the other side?

Julia Gordon Bramer 41:27
So, because I have a background in the Episcopal Church, and because, and that's another part of my story, that in Tarot life lessons, my Episcopal Church was a little different. They taught me meditation. They taught me automatic writing on church retreats. They spoke in tongues, so it was definitely more mystic. They called it charismatic, but that was my foundation, and so I call it Holy Spirit. I'm also a teacher and a practitioner of A Course in Miracles, which would call it Holy Spirit as well. Now that said, you know, it's just a name, so you could call it God, you could call it source, you could call it goddess. You could call it mother, father, God. A lot of my friends do that. You know, you could call it spirit, energy. I don't think, I don't think God has an ego to care about what the name that's a human thing

Alex Ferrari 42:29
According to the Old Testament. He has a tremendous ego, but that's a whole.

Julia Gordon Bramer 42:32
Yeah, I reject that. I think God's a little higher than that, in my opinion,

Alex Ferrari 42:42
He's not that insecure, or she is not as secure, exactly. So do you so being a psychic, do you you don't technically need the cards, you just use them as a tool, essentially. Or do you need the cards? Yeah, right, because from what I heard from other other channels and other psychics who were afraid of their gifts as being a psychic or a channel, they would use the Tarot as a buffer, because Tarot was much more acceptable than, hey, I'm channeling Mary Magdalene, right?

Julia Gordon Bramer 43:21
There's some of that. I love the cards. I mean, I always have. I love how beautiful they are, and I love that it gives a visual for my clients, so if they can see it with me, it's sort of like another layer of trust if I'm just saying things, well, that might impress them, but if I'm saying things and showing them the picture and explaining how this picture is working and what, you know, that's sort of like, whoa. And really, I think it helps them to learn some of these spiritual lessons and learn, you know, just some life skills to evolve and rise out of some troubles and maybe bad habits and things like that. You know, the terror will call us out on some of those things. And so I just think that there's such a valuable tool. Sure, I can talk to somebody. And I do all the time, you know, a lot of times my clients will call me up, and maybe I'll be on a long drive. I'm doing a lot of traveling for a book tour right now, and it's not unusual for somebody to say, Hey, can I just talk to you for a minute? And, and I'm, you know, in the middle of nowhere, you know, and like, sure, and, and I'll help them process something by what I'm feeling about it. And, you know, I do that all the time as well, which is another kind of reading that has nothing to do with the Tarot. But, yeah, you know, I just think that the cards themselves. Are so valuable in in building the depth and furthering the meaning and the teaching that I would not want to do it without the cards.

Alex Ferrari 45:09
What is the biggest misconception people have about tarot cards and tarot card readers and and all of that.

Julia Gordon Bramer 45:14
That it's satanic. You know that it's evil.

Alex Ferrari 45:18
Well, honestly, this is the devil's work. This is obviously the devil's work. Julia, yeah,

Julia Gordon Bramer 45:24
I get a lot of that. People are just afraid of it because it's, you know, fundamentalist Christians especially. But anybody who meets me and talks to me kind of gets it like I am totally not satanic. I am not, you know, I think a lot of that witchy occult stuff, you know, getting to my Course in Miracles teachings, A Course in Miracles says that the world is illusion. It's very Buddhist, and I'm also Buddhist. Surprise, surprise. So, so this, this illusion is our sandbox, and this is where we get to play with our relationships and and manipulate the illusion you know, and grow and learn from it, and ideally heal our stuff and become a higher version of ourselves. So that's the world. And then And then so the magician who is practicing magic spells, charms, anything like that. They're working in the illusion to manipulate the illusion. Miracles are a higher level. So miracles are about healing and restoring the oneness, and we're not, we're not playing in the illusion. Really, we're above it. And I know that sounds maybe a little bit conceited or superior, but it's just a higher goal. And so it's what the alchemist does. You know, Alchemy is, is a three level thing. So alchemy is practical, Alchemy, which is in the world, which is the lead to gold idea in chemistry. And then it's the emotional alchemy of, Let's heal our stuff, like Jungian alchemy, you know, getting into the dark night of the soul and rising out of it. And then the spiritual level of alchemy, which is becoming one with your God Self. And that's my goal. And so if that's my goal, wow, to call me a Satan, it's kind of interesting

Alex Ferrari 47:29
You're a horrible Satanist. Horrible.

Julia Gordon Bramer 47:32
I'm failing miserably, Satan. Satan would be in the earth stuff. You know, Satan is in the earth and ego realm. So I've had people back back when I used to do the renaissance fairs, and I have a story and Tarot life lessons of somebody wandering into my tent and, you know, this teenage boy in his goth clothes with his buddy and and they're, you know, thinking that the satanic stuff is really cool, and just making an assumption about me that I was into the dark stuff like them. And boy, did I disappoint them. And I also called them out on a lot of stuff and and I also mentioned that that people in people dabbling in that dark stuff, there might be some energy there. I don't deny it, there may be, but there's a price to pay, and almost all those people have physical health problems and emotional problems and relationship problems. There is no happiness there. It's like, sure, you might have a little bit of of an effect. You know, Aleister Crowley did some, but, but he was, you know, he was very much in the ego, and he had a lot of relationship problems, and I wouldn't want to be him, you know.

Alex Ferrari 48:47
Sure. Fair enough. Fair enough. Now there's a lot. There seems to be a lot of stuff happening in the world. This year has been a pretty chaotic, heavy,

Julia Gordon Bramer 48:58
Intense.

Alex Ferrari 48:59
Intense, especially of since, of since certain things have happened in the last last week or so. Yeah, the assassination attempt and everything. What? What? I have to imagine that you have thrown the cards down on what's happening in the world and where we're all going. Do you have any does the cards have any predictions for I don't need you to tell me who wins the other election. I could care less, but more just generally, like what is happening here in the States, what's going to happen in the world for the rest of this year and coming next year.

Julia Gordon Bramer 49:32
So here's the thing, Tarot is personal. It's micro, not macro. So I really cannot tell you who's going to win the election in the same way. You know, people say, why don't, why don't you, you know, bet on horse races, why don't you use, you know, pick your cards for lottery numbers. It doesn't work like that. It's about a personal connection. So you. My example, if, if somebody asks me, you know, I can read about people close to you, if you were close to Joe Biden or to Donald Trump, and if them winning the election, whichever one would affect you, then maybe I could read that. I have been reading that we're going to have a pretty rough economy for a while yet. And I've been reading that because everybody's cards are reflecting concern about their retirements and concern about, you know, being able to buy groceries and and all of this, this basic stuff. So things are in turmoil economically, and I have seen that just by gaging from so many clients with the same kind of readings I can get that we're not coming out of this really quickly. You know, economically.

Alex Ferrari 50:54
Is it going to get worse before it get because right now the economy is, for some doing extremely well, but for many not doing well at all, is that that high eventually going to come down to a place where everyone's hurting, like an oh eight,

Julia Gordon Bramer 51:09
Yeah, yeah, I would say, in the next couple of years, I'm seeing most people hurting. So I'll frame it that way. Now, I do have a very large sample of clients. I have billionaires. I have a group of Miami billionaires that I read for regularly. I say that and that's, there's for sure, one and and a bunch of multi millionaires just, just to keep it totally.

Alex Ferrari 51:39
I mean, semantics, semantics, Julia, they're all rich.

Julia Gordon Bramer 51:42
Yeah, they're all rich, correct? They've flown me down, and I've done parties on their yachts and that sort of thing. So I have, I have that group of people, and then I have, like, the hard working single mom in the city who calls me, you know, once a month for 15 minutes, because that's all she can swing. But she's got her questions, and she's, you know, really applying herself and on her evolution. And what I will say is, financially, everybody looks concerned. So that's interesting.

Alex Ferrari 52:16
That's, that's very interesting.

Julia Gordon Bramer 52:18
Yeah.

Alex Ferrari 52:18
What other, what other kind of, what other kind of broad strokes have you've seen in in this pool of clients of yours that you can actually kind of say, well, this is kind of where everything is going in this area or that area.

Julia Gordon Bramer 52:31
You know, I'm not sure I want to say beyond the money, because, like I said, it's so a reading is so Personal. And, you know, it's, it's how we're responding to the world. And you know, there's so many different kinds of jobs, for instance, and so sure, some industries may go under because of AI, for instance, but, but they all won't. And I've seen a lot of trouble in the teaching world, but I used to teach myself in the universities. And so, you know, they're, they're doing so much with just, they're basically taking all the class plans that everybody works so hard to develop, and they're just sticking them in a computer and letting the computer teach. Now, you know. And so, yeah, so, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of pain in the academic world that way, but I don't know it's a, it's a personal thing. I just don't want to make a big blanket statement,

Alex Ferrari 53:37
And when you're saying about academic, there's no question. You could just see academia starting to it's on a downward, downward slope, across the board, across because, because it was expensive. It got so expensive

Julia Gordon Bramer 53:51
Right now we've got Harvard presidents who are forging papers and, you know,

Alex Ferrari 53:57
Well, there's, there's all of that stuff too. But then it got so expensive, but to the point where the investment in the education doesn't you're never gonna the job that you get from that doesn't pan out in certain in certain industries. But I have family members who are doctors, who they go, I wish it would have never become a doctor. The system is so broken, and they're just like, where it's, where it's it's not like it was in the 80s where you could, you know, make a really, really, oh, you're a doctor right now, nowadays, it's different.

Julia Gordon Bramer 54:30
I'll tell you something interesting, Alex, when in 2016 when Trump took the presidency, and, you know, every I kept getting the tower card, and I found that so fascinating, because, you know, I said, Love him or hate him, he was the tower card. Because the tower card is, it can be frightening. It says it can it's sudden change when I read it, when I read it for someone at. Says the foundation was wrong. The building has to come down. It's time to rebuild. It is a card for the game changers, you know, the big upheavals, that everything's different kind of thing and and how interesting that Trump's own symbol is Trump Tower, you know? So I thought that, yeah, God. God really knows how to pick the right tarot cards sometimes, because it just kept coming up and and some people, did, you know we, we have had a status quo government for a while, and some people didn't like the changes he made, good or bad. Like I said, I don't want to make a political statement here. We have this fight right now, in this division right now that I really hate, because people are we're dehumanizing each other, you know, and and that's just not, not the way of God. And I, you know, and I'm about oneness. I'm about unity. I anger people because I will not take sides. And I've, I've lost friendships over it, you know. And especially since, like, 2020 because they want to see me, they're saying, this is the time, and we have to unite, and you have to be on this side. And I'm like, I'm on the side of humanity, I'm on the side of love, and I'm not going to divide. I will not do it and and so you know that that has frustrated some people about me, but, but, yeah, but, but all this stuff you know, it will show up for the individual you know. So how your experience of the political situation that will show up? But I just can't give you a universal experience.

Alex Ferrari 56:53
Fair enough. Fair enough. Do you have any advice for someone who is wanting to start using tarot cards? Either, yeah, themselves or others. What advice would you give them?

Julia Gordon Bramer 57:05
That's, that's in my book Tarot Life Lessons, um, you know, at the end of every chapter, I have sort of a tip, you know, on selecting your own cards, or, you know, kind of dispelling some of the the superstitions, like some people believe you have to be gifted a deck versus buying your own things like that. So I talk about all of these things. I talk about layouts. And again, people are overly concerned about being wrong, you know. Do I lay the cards out properly is, you know? And so I talk about leaning into your intuition and offering tips like that. I am a big believer in trusting yourself and trusting what comes to you, and that that's intuition, and that in in my world, there aren't all these rules. I don't like rules. I'm a Sagittarian. I've never liked rules, you know. So I'm about going with what I feel.

Alex Ferrari 58:02
Now, I'm going to ask you a few questions. Ask all my guests, what is your definition of living a fulfilled life?

Julia Gordon Bramer 58:08
I think it's reaching my highest potential. I don't think it means that we're happy all the time. People talk to me about, oh, I just want to be happy. And I say that's ridiculous, because that's not an appropriate emotion for most of our experiences. I like to have joy, and I like to try and feel some joy every day, but to have this blanket happiness that's like Soma, you know, and brave new world, and it's just not it's not appropriate. So, so a fulfilled life is reaching our highest potential and using our talents to the max, to the best of our abilities. And really, I think just living big, you know, I want to experience everything I can in my time on this planet. I want to live broad and deep. I want to feel. I want to connect with people. I want to love and and so that, to me, is fulfillment.

Alex Ferrari 59:15
Now, if you had a chance to go back in time and talk to little Julia, what advice would you give her?

Julia Gordon Bramer 59:20
Yeah, you know, assuming I had the knowledge I have now, I probably get away from some of the family environment early, and which I kind of did anyway, honestly, but I think maybe more emotionally, don't take it on. Don't, don't take it as my problem. You know that, getting back to one of the first questions you asked me today, well, you know, being a psychic, growing up psychic like the first thing you say is, what's wrong with me? You know, why doesn't everybody get me? Why doesn't anyone understand me? Why doesn't anybody love me? And and I asked all those hard questions. And I blamed myself, as most do for a long time, and so that's what I would relieve myself of if I could, but then I wouldn't have the knowledge and wisdom I have today, either. So

Alex Ferrari 1:00:11
Fair enough. How do you define God or Source energy?

Julia Gordon Bramer 1:00:15
That gets back to that life force, that connection, you know, when I, when I look at you, even through this phone, I feel connected to you. And on some level, I feel you, and that's because we're both alive, and I love that, you know, and that, to me, is God. What is love? God? God is love? Kind of, you know, I it's, it's bigger than just the emotional feeling. But of course, the emotional feeling is in there, and it's how we express it. But it's, it's that highest source.

Alex Ferrari 1:00:57
And what is the ultimate purpose of life.

Julia Gordon Bramer 1:00:59
I think, to love in every way and every form, including loving ourselves, to reach, to self actualize, to reach that God potential.

Alex Ferrari 1:01:09
And where can people find out more about you and the work that you're doing in the world?

Julia Gordon Bramer 1:01:12
Oh, well, they can go to juliagordonbramer.com, they can also pick up one of my most recent books. I mean, I have five books altogether. But recently, last year, last November, Tarot Life Lessons came out with Destiny books. And this past May the occult, Sylvia Plath came out. This is a biography. This is not about me, but Tarot life lessons is a lot about me. So if you're interested, I recorded them both on audiobook as well distributed through Simon and Schuster if there are any bookstores listening and and I'm on a book tour, they can find the dates on my book tour, on Julia, Gordon raymer.com they can get a reading with me by contacting me through that website. They can also find me on Twitter and Instagram, J Gordon Bramer and yeah, I love to talk to people who are into this. I, you know, I'm getting busier and busier with all this traveling. I don't always have tons of time to to just, you know, shoot the breeze, but I'm happy to answer some questions about taro or myself or anything.

Alex Ferrari 1:02:23
And do you have any parting messages for the audience?

Julia Gordon Bramer 1:02:28
Not really just thank you for having me and it was a joy.

Alex Ferrari 1:02:33
I appreciate you being on the show, and thank you so much for helping awaken the planet. My dear thanks again.

Julia Gordon Bramer 1:02:38
Thanks Alex.