My Story – How I Learned to Make Magic That Makes Change

I followed “the rules” once. Get good grades. Don’t talk like a hick. Don’t let anyone know you’re queer. Get a degree in something useful.

And it pulled me farther and farther from who I was, who I wanted to be, who I was meant to be. It pulled me away from my roots. I moved across the country, leaving my home and my family. I got degrees in physics and mechanical engineering. I quit making music and writing poetry.

And as I got further and further from my roots, I became increasingly powerless to act within my own life.

You see, three years ago I was getting my PhD in Environmental Engineering, hiding my queerness, neurodivergence, learning disability, and my witchiness. I was constantly exhausted from denying myself at the most basic level and trying to be someone entirely different. I was betraying my values every day. I hadn’t made a single piece of creative work for over 4 years (a devastating fact for someone who entered college as a jazz performance major/creative writing minor). I was in utter inner chaos. I was mentally and physically exhausted, living with a deeply unfulfilling feeling like it was all wrong and I was powerless to fix it.

But I felt the lie of this deep in my soul. Deep inside me there was something that refused to believe that I was powerless to do anything about the way things were. I knew there HAD to be a way that I could live my values, that I could be present for life, AND to take ACTION and make CHANGE in my life and my world. Luckily, on a whim I bought myself a tarot deck and I began the journey l that brought me back to myself.

Tarot was the tool that brought me back to myself. Out of my high-flying career track, back to my home state, back to my working class, Rustbelt/Appalachian roots, creating, living, and taking aligned action.

This wasn’t my first encounter with tarot. I was first introduced to tarot as a kid, just eleven years old. A friend’s grandmother was a reader, a real old-school psychic. She showed me the deck, explained what the cards meant. The cards were fascinating, gorgeous, layered, & so powerful. I learned to read in her style. Back then, 3 of Swords showed me only heartbreak, betrayal, trauma. The Devil was addiction and pain. It was scary, fixed, disempowering, not to mention gendered & normative as fuck. I stopped reading cards before I turned 13.

But when I was at my most paralyzed, tarot was there for me. This system of 78 cards, impossibly mystical to me when I first encountered it at 10 years old, grounded me, brought me into and down through myself. Tarot connected me to my magic, to the place where I held power over my own life. I was finally able to take the steps, to make the choices, to change my life for the better, to live my dreams.

I re-wove my connection to the root of my own power, my ability to take radical and joyous action for the better. I rewrote the rules that kept me small. Out of the utter, unaligned, disempowered chaos of my life I was able to build the life I wanted. I quit my PhD and left behind the high-flying career track that meant I’d have to betray my values to earn a pay check. I moved back to my home state, back to my roots. I planted a garden and slowed way the fuck down. And I created my own business that supports me and allows me to support my community. I learned to make magic that makes change.

I’m Lex (They/Them). I am a chronically-ill, neurodivergent, radical, queer mystic living in the Great Black Swamp (traditional lands of the Miami, Potawatomi, and Peoria). I am here to help you connect to magic that makes change through tarot and folk magic!

If you’re ready to connect to your magic you can get the FREE Folk Magical Ritual guide that will help you make your magic to make change today!