by Shannon Holt | Nov 3, 2022 | Personal & Spiritual Growth
I can hear Van Morrison playing in my head…I was just coming home from Cassadaga from a client’s house and did an extensive two-deck reading for her. I used the antique deck, which was gifted to me, by a mutual friend of a recently deceased friend, and the Light Seers Tarot. She also showed me her beautiful Peruvian spiritual tool bag. We had such a deep conversation. We had some real moments that were eye-opening and significant. When I got home, I was telling my mom about some things I realized about myself today through reading the tarot. Just as I was saying these things, my dog hip-checked my mom running through the kitchen and my mom had a really bad fall. She hurt her knee and her ribs in the back, so I called the ambulance. I’m now waiting for her to come out of x-rays in the ER. Of all the days to not do a card pull for myself and my life it had to have been today. That being said, I did a card pull for myself yesterday and got super wrapped up in packing to go on a trip I intended to post it for you guys but I didn’t so just because I can I’m going to claim this card for today. The card was the sun card and I took this picture of the sun card yesterday now the message of the sun card is that all things come out into the light. Anything hidden that is revealed in the outcome works for the good. It’s also the card of a Leo (my mom is a Leo) and is fire energy, of course and she still gives ’em hell at 73 and is resilient as fuck. The sun is the happiest card in the deck and forecasts a positive outcome and can also be the rival of new, happy times, positivity, and staying positive to produce a positive outcome. It burns up any impurity and mercilessly illuminates the truth. Get well soon Mom. Give ‘em hell.
Black and white photo: This was playing in the ER suite and was the first sign of relief. She says, “Is that Betty Davis? I think that’s Betty Davis.”
by Shannon Holt | Nov 3, 2022 | Personal & Spiritual Growth
I paint faces at Mardi Gras in New Orleans with my best friend Emma and every year I go and I get a reading in New Orleans, world-famous for tarot, psychics, and especially voodoo. I booked a reading at Bottom of the Cup Tea Room, where they have all these little stalls and they set you up with a reader and you go in there and you can get your questions answered. So I go into this tiny stall, no wider than 4‘x 5‘and the reader was sitting there very thin like an Aubrey Beardsley illustration. He was propped against the wall wrapped in a black scarf with little skulls all over it.
He looked utterly exhausted from battling drunken revelers of the Mardi Gras season (side note: the last thing you say to someone who looks tired is “you look so tired!”) So I cheerfully, but quietly greeted him respectfully I wanted to be sensitive to him.
He looked so over it. So I sit down and I’m bright-eyed and bushy-tailed because I’m finally off work and have a mountain of money. He shuffled the cards, cut the deck into three piles and he asks me, “So what would you like to know? I asked him when and what will my true love be like, when is it happening for me, and any other details about romance! He looked at me as if to say “you can’t be serious…” but then in a deadpan tone, he said, “There’s no such thing as true love. There’s no such thing as soulmates.” At that moment I realize that we were at an impasse and I wanted to switch readers. I had a gut instinct to say thanks very much and leave but I thought he might teach me something in this reading that I’m supposed to know and I want to be open to the message. So I said okay and breathed through it like he was taking pints of my blood with a slightly bent but consensual needle. He drew three cards and he said “it looks here like you do have love coming in pretty quickly. He’s kind of wounded by a divorce or past relationship ending but I like him he’s probably an artist or writer of some kind here with the star, maybe an Aquarius.
And he genuinely loves you so that’s coming up.” So I said, well I’m looking forward to meeting, and what I really want is to find my life partner and be cherished. I’m a great girl, and that’s really what I want is to have a partner to go through life with. I want to be done dating.” And he said, “Well I don’t really see that for you here, but you can always petition Mars.”
I asked him what that means, trying not to let my heart sink just yet and then he said, “You can do this thing where you go outside you find Mars and you just scream at the planet Mars! You keep screaming Maaaaaaarrrrrssss!!! and you scream to Mars what it is that you want and you just keep saying it. Then I think he told me I can do this ritual that involves writing something and burning it and/or putting it in a jar with some other things and burying it in the ground etc., there were some steps that he told me to take but I knew immediately I would not be taking any of the advice, I would not be screaming to Mars because as interesting as it was to hear his prescription to find my best friend, it just didn’t feel right in my spirit.
I am open to the information and I know that with spiritual information I can twist my fate but I would never want to force someone into loving me with a spell or willing them to do it. I heard my friend Veroosh’s voice in my head, “If I don’t get it, I’m not meant to have it.” So I felt kind of disappointed in my reading. I usually do feel disappointed when I seek out a tarot reading for myself. I don’t know why I keep getting them actually. I wouldn’t if I could rely on my own readings to be accurate for myself, but it was not a fantastic feeling for me. I remember how it felt with Aubrey Beardsley’s words washing over me. It felt very lackluster and very non-shiny as if my heart had been colored with a scratchy film of crayon wax. I am shiny. I’m sparkly and fiery and have a full laugh, but when damaged it pretty much takes years to get back to feeling like myself. Like a hand-painted holiday ornament, the same kind that I paint and sell each season which is so visually descriptive, and fun. Without a doubt the most interesting ornament on your tree, but don’t drop me because I’ll never go back to the way that I was.
I know what I want. I want my partner to be a creative visionary like myself and have positive energy to have that certain spark of joy and childlike innocence that I have. I have a great sense of adventure and spontaneity and I expect my life to just continue to be exciting and fun! They mustn’t always be this way; I’m not looking for a performance-based relationship. I don’t know why but this is reminding me of how I love to go to the bar at closing time. Sometimes I get to observe the remnants of the night and feel happy for people trying not to look directly at their cute and messy make-out sessions, one holding the other up, a lusty and stumbly and slappy support system. I adore this.
Anyways. When I’m in love, my life is on fire and it feels glorious and blissful, so if I invest in a love reading for myself and I don’t get the progress that I expect because I’m breathing life into loving myself every day and working on me staying focused on living in the moment. I walk away feeling a little disappointed. “How much time am I spending on desiring what I don’t have?” I hear Veroosh say this too. She said, “To achieve something I have to have the desire and I have to feel love but also there’s a fine line between feeling bad about what I don’t have and ruining the things that are mine. Gratitude needs to be the focus.”
That’s why I like to read tarot for people because I feel like my readings give people hope. It certainly gives ME hope. If there is a tough spot in the reading I always find the silver lining to it and we talk about that and I can go deeper and find the really good things that are coming for my client so it gives a whole lot of uplifting things to look forward to and if they take notes they can watch them come to fruition as if they were watching the reading unfold in real time like a love letter that they held up to the light but waited to open.
“May you find a love that radically accepts the parts of you that you’re still working on.” —Vex King
by Shannon Holt | Nov 3, 2022 | Personal & Spiritual Growth
People ask me all the time how I got on the reality TV show “Skin Wars.” it’s kind of what I’m known for locally and I get recognized in public all the time for body painting. Well, the way that I got on the show is: I just did what I loved and I did it addictively.
I painted my ass off. When I discovered body painting I just really fell in love with it and I thought that it was a potentially really good niche way to make money and have fun as an artist so, after my first body painting, I felt like I struck gold. After that, I just wanted to paint bodies to see what would happen if I invested my energy, and I’ve always been able to earn a living in unconventional ways. One day five years into my body painting career, I got a phone call from someone friendly and she said, “Hi my name is Jill Goularte and I’m a Hollywood producer. I’ve been following your work and I think you would be really great for my body painting show! We have to sell the show to a network first but after that would you be interested in potentially being a contestant?” I remember while she was speaking, I was searching skeptically for doubt in her voice; I was laser focused trying to not get fooled, but there was no indication that this was a prank phone call.
Without hesitation, “I said yes I’m definitely interested.” I started to put together a better portfolio and painted as if my future depended on it, trying to make a better image than the last with my friend Ryder Gledhill photographing my work. A year later she called me again and said “we have auditions in three days in LA can you fly to LA for a few days?” My response was yes. Yes, I can. They sequestered us in a luxurious hotel, and we camera tested and then went to fill out a redundant multi-hour psych evaluation where it was obvious the main point in the questions that was just one question phrased twenty different ways; they didn’t want us to kill ourselves.
I refrained from making the joke that the psych evaluation made me want to kill myself…but instead, I held my tongue in wisdom (High Priestess), and now it was time to sit in the poofy chair in front of the doctor who I affectionately nicknamed “the Angel of Death” to discuss my childhood trauma and other issues. My mascara was wet and ominously foreshadowing a large portion of my “final looks” every time someone was eliminated. Many of the artists went to a dive bar around the corner after we were released to decompress. I had one drink and lots of dancing and it killed me to leave the once-in-a-lifetime fun night to be fresh for the painting portion of the auditions at 6 am. In the morning we were escorted to studio city in LA for the auditions. There were about 30 other Body Painters there beside me. The challenge was to complete a six-hour body painting while every painter was filmed; every move and everything that came out of your mouth was being filmed by a camera on a tripod, they selected 10 artists out of the group and I was one of them. It felt amazing and it was truly one of the coolest times in my life. A couple of weeks later, we were filming in West Hollywood; all 10 artists went on a double-decker tour bus with the other contestants for the show Skin Wars. We were asked to draw inspiration from sightseeing and create sketches. As we went around on our tour there were only two moments that were very interesting to me. The first was rolling past the world-famous Viper Room owned by Johnny Depp in person. I love the vampy matte black-on-black design with bright white graphic imagery of a half-snake woman in a top hat; it was known to me to be the location where my favorite actor, River Phoenix overdosed in 1993, the same year I graduated high school. It was haunting to see it in person—very dark stuff. The other thing that piqued my interest was a WeHo psychic shop with the red glowing neon light, the soft crystal ball glow behind a translucent drape in a big front window. “Past, Present, and Future,” it said. Wouldn’t I like to know! I would love some advice from the tarot right about now! It looked so appealing to me and I started imagining who would go in there (besides me) through history to get their fortune told, probably many hopeful Hollywood starlets. I had not had a fantastic experience with Tarot or fortunetelling or Palm reading yet but still the idea of knowing the future intrigued me completely. The occult in general was also a kind of “forbidden fruit” as my faith had dictated.
Forbidden fruit? Yes please, fill up this bowl. Also, can I have a bottle of Malbec and French bread and some California weed? What is life without joie de vivre?!
When we got back to the studio we had a challenge to do immediately: body paint a model waist up, using our sketches for inspiration, something that stood out in our minds from our rooftop bus tour. I felt like I decided that although I really liked the design and the dark aesthetic of the Viper room, I could spin a better tail using the psychic shop imagery. So this painting was my very first on season one of the reality show, Skin Wars. This was not a challenge that I won but I did get an honorable mention. Spoiler alert—I won the following challenge!
Mantra: “Everything is always working out for me.”
Special thanks to my producer Jill, the executive producer of Skin Wars who, if it weren’t for her, the show wouldn’t have happened. She loves body painting almost as much as I do, and cares about her artists. The show aired in 2017 on Netflix and it has helped my career as a body painter tremendously. Jill is also a fierce ally in supporting the cause of rescue dogs everywhere. Thank you for believing in me and for constantly helping the animals. All episodes and seasons of Skin Wars, plus the reunion can be seen currently streaming on Pluto TV.
by Shannon Holt | Nov 3, 2022 | Personal & Spiritual Growth
When I was 24, I was living in Savannah Georgia, and I was a waitress at Kevin Barry’s Irish Pub. I busked caricatures on River Street every Thursday Friday and Saturday night. On the river, I would meet various characters who were traveling through and I would make friends with them because I was literally out there on the river all day and sometimes it got lonely and fringe people are always naturally attracted to me. I was speaking with this one gentleman, a fortune teller traveling through and we got to talking and he told me that he needed a place to stay for the night. So I invited him to stay at my house. I told him I only had one bed but it was big enough for two people but he would have to agree to stay on his side, and he said he understood and was excited to take a hot shower.
Well in those days I was really naïve; thankfully he was mostly a gentleman and I don’t remember his name but he told me that he was a Romani fortuneteller and he told me as he was crunching through a neon green bag of Funyuns. He was talking and munching as we were walking back to my place, and I was pushing my bike and remember thinking it looked like his fingers were coated in yellow fiberglass dust. He literally was talking of the side of his mouth waggling his tongue from side to side trying to reach the crumbs stuck in his stubble and he tells me with confidence that he was from some very special original sect of people whose legacy it was to tell the most accurate fortunes. He said he was a traveling gypsy and has traveled all over because of his accurate predictions and that he was world famous. I learned more recently that it is a derogatory term to use the word “gypsy.” The correct term is “Romani.”
Well after he got cleaned up and was in relaxation mode, I ordered a pizza for us and I asked him if he would read my cards for me and he said sure! To my surprise, he pulled out a deck of well-loved but totally regular Bicycle brand playing cards which I was surprised to see—he shuffled and asked me what I wanted to know and I told him I wanted to know what my true love would be like. At the time, I was healing a heartbreak. I fell in love with a painter who was at the time one of my best friends and he lived in the downstairs apartment from me. We had a terribly abrupt and painful breakup; he actually set me up to catch him in the act of seducing someone else and I realized all at once that our “fun” relationship was splattered with cheating, physical abuse, and obsession. While I lived there I had to observe him move on to be with the girl he picked over me, and she was constantly at his apartment sleeping over right under my nose. It was mentally torturous for me; broke my spirit and still, I loved him. Not exactly the dinner party I wanted to be at. So my broken but hopeful heart just wanted to know about love—I wanted to feel better. I asked the Romani traveler and he shuffles and reiterates, “You wanna know what your husband‘s gonna be like?” I said, “Yeah that’s what I want to know I want to know what my husband is going to be like.” He looked at me over his glasses with an eyebrow raised and rolled his eyes a little bit and snarled saying, “You don’t want to know about the secrets of the universe or your life’s mission or anything like that?” I said “No, I’m most interested in the love relationship aspects of my life. I’m pretty sure everything else will fall into place because it always has, but this is just the area of my life in which I’ve had the roughest tumble.” He said, “OK fair enough,” and he pulls out a bunch of cards he looks at him and he goes “Oh, he’s all right, he’s not terrible. He looks a little boring, to be honest.” Not terrible? He said, “Yeah he’s okay, he looks like a good dude.” “What else, any details about it?”
I can’t remember what he said, to be honest, but I just remember that he told me he was just basically like this boring, average dude. He didn’t tell me he was sparkly like I am. I kind of expected it to be someone with a specialized skill, someone who was incredibly funny or bright, or someone who is highly likable, these would’ve been things I would’ve wanted to hear. An animal lover, somebody who has kids already…these would’ve been helpful clues as to who he is so I can keep an eye out for him. But no, he didn’t say any of those things he just told me that he was an okay dude and nothing really was special about him. Just keep my eyes peeled for a boring dude and that’s probably him.” I got kind of pissed off and started defending my future man immediately I said, “Well if he is my man, he certainly is special there is certainly something special about him, and ALSO he is NOT just average he has a wonderful heart and he’s probably tall and handsome and he’s probably got it going on, and he probably loves art and music, and he probably is funny as shit and he probably is as patient as a saint.” The Romani guy just shrugged his shoulders and said he didn’t get all of that but that he was kind of tired. So I said, “okay” and we laid down and I was definitely feeling kind of pissed off.
I was thinking in my head, “World famous bullshitter…I really don’t like this guy anymore….this is annoying and I’m feeling so burnt to a crisp right now.” And then guess what poked me like an evil salmon while we were laying there?! (Ace of wands reversed) I guess he wasn’t intending on just sleeping, the terms we agreed to. He gave me a shitty reading and then he wants to make it with me…LOL. I wasn’t having it! EW DAVID, THANKS BUT NO. (Four of cups energy with a flick of Santorum). So I kind of kicked him out of bed the second time he tried something and I made him sleep on the floor. He was gone at sun up like a vapor and my studio apartment smelled like an onion ring fart. Mild consequences and barely escaping unscathed in countless instances prove to me the realness of guardian angels.
by Shannon Holt | Oct 2, 2022 | Personal & Spiritual Growth
I am a body painter. I would body paint and face paint at music festivals and one of my vendor friends used to own an esoteric store. One night we sat in my face paint booth, knocking back frosty cold beverages and enjoying the music and we really bonded that night and became friends. In the morning when it was packing up time, he helped me load up my truck with my tent and equipment and he gave me the Aquarian Tarot. I told him, oh—thank you! Yet, I don’t know how to read tarot cards! Jamie said, well maybe you’ll learn one day. If not that’s ok too! The deck hung around me for years in my bookcase, I opened them, thumbed through them, and admired the artwork but decided it was too foreign for me to learn and I wasn’t psychic. I thought I had to be a psychic to read tarot.
Fast forward to a body paint gig I was on in San Francisco. I got hired to camouflage a model into the booth of an internet security company at the Black Hat Convention. On my day off, I decided to seek out an authentic tarot reader, someone on the main street, with an electric neon sign that had a crystal ball on it. Someone, reputable. I went up to the door and rang the doorbell and there was a woman who was feeding her family. Chinese takeout in the psychic shop. I asked if she was open she said, “Yes I’m open but let me put my family away.” I watched the family go through what looked to be a bookcase-style door and all of a sudden she was open for business and I stepped into her parlor. Once inside she took an incredibly dirty-looking deck down off of a shelf when I say dirty I mean it was filthy and it was not the original rider Waite tarot it was pictures of other things I remember a snake—it was not a traditional deck. She shuffled the cards she asked me to focus then she laid out approximately 20 cards. She looked surprised and told me that I was a very confused person who had not figured out what they wanted to do in life, someone who was unlucky in love and didn’t know what the meaning of their life was, someone who felt utterly lost. Most of that was just not true so I just shut up. I have always known that I wanted to be an accomplished and famous artist. I have always been an artist, I have always made money as an artist, and I have always known my path is as an artist. I even went on television and have some celebrity as a finalist in what is basically the Olympics of body painting. 35 million people across the globe have seen me paint on television on 10 episodes of Skin Wars.
I asked her, “Which of these cards said that? What does this specific card mean, and what does that specific card mean?” She only told me if she looked at me frustrated that it would take her too long to explain it to me and that was not her job. I said okay. Then she told me that she wanted to see my palm and while looking at my palm, she said that she was not shocked to see these lines that clearly showed her that I was born under a certain star constellation which dooms and curses me and my future for love health and happiness. And she told me that the only thing that would save me would be if I paid her and her mom $125 each per day for seven days and that in exchange they would pray for me every morning and night and do a ceremony to break this curse. That was the end of the reading. I did not want her to curse me, so I told her I did not have that kind of money but I appreciate it and thank her for her time I gave her $75 for the reading and she warned me not to leave and that it would be a huge mistake. I just was extremely polite and I thanked her again and I left flabbergasted that I had gotten taken for a ride and possibly cursed. I thought to myself I can’t believe she’s got such a prominent space and she’s running such a racket tricking people with her readings of fear. I thought I never want to do that to people I believe in karma and I only want to help people and give them messages for their highest and best. I kept thinking about that reading and got triggered to start learning the tarot.
I did a deep dive on YouTube, watching astrology and tarot readings trying to figure out what signs were most compatible with my fiery Aries sun. Curious as to what signs make the best couples and trying without a shadow of a doubt to mystically tap into the brain of the universe and figure out the deepest mysteries of the universe, including what my crush’s feelings for me were.
I skipped right over the relationship advice videos, and went straight to the general tarot readings for the collective because my impatient heart needed to know pronto if my crush I met on the internet was my destiny! The short answer, no he was not. Many readings said, “Nope girl he’s toxic and not willing to change.” Other readings would say, “You should focus on loving yourself.” Others would say, “Yes he is your destiny, but the timing is off this time around.” You’ll have to try again in another plane of existence.” Really? 😩
I didn’t want to accept any of that advice! So I would look up more “general” readings for the collective and try and lean into readings with a positive title and outcome for me and my crush, because I knew he must be my destiny! (LOL)
Well even though these general readings for the collective told me this man was my soulmate, twin flame, Hotty McHotterson, I got so pissed when I found out truly he was, just on a completely different path than me!
I’m an Aries and I knew that I could enter my birth time and date and calculate my entire astrological chart (for free here).
Then I was looking up videos for my sign the sign of Aries and I found a channel called Veroosh Tarot. She is the originator of the Pick a Card reading and the All Signs reading which have become the centerpiece and backbone of what is tarot on YouTube today.
I reached out to her and shared some of my paintings with her and we became friends. It was a lot of fun she would do a reading for me, in exchange I used a deck that a friend gave me at a music festival and would pull cards for her and kind of fumble through guessing what everything meant. I was inspired to test myself and see if somehow I could be a great reader and so I started to study more deeply, listening to several interpretations from several readers and taking what resonates and leaving the rest as they say. Discovering the many spreads and symbolisms of each of the cards and different meanings for different decks, and even more different meanings depending on what position they’re in and if they are upright or reversed. It became like learning a foreign language—it was intriguing to me. And it only made my curiosity stronger. I resonated with what was going on in my life with my readings at the time. It was a welcome distraction to heartbreak and other issues that I was feeling my way through blinded by love. When things started lining up in my life as I read the cards for myself, I realized there was something more to it, there is a new side of God that I had not seen. Before yet recognized in my readings, this was not just for fun and entertainment. This felt like the hand of god coming to hold me in the palm of his hand.
There’s something beyond the scope of what I am creating dictating these messages through me—benevolent, and familiar. I can only describe it as my higher self, source energy, and possibly messages from my Spirit guardians. But yet I am a skeptic. I’m not entirely sure and still, I’m not sure how it all works. The only thing I am sure of is that it is not evil and does not come from dark energy and although it’s not promoted in the Christian religion, I feel that I have a gift that only God can give which helps me read accurately. I also feel that it could leave me at any time. It is not ingrained in me, like painting. What I paint just flows out, it’s not something I have to “try” and do. Tarot is similar but I have to “get there” first for it to flow. I do this by meditating while I shuffle, focusing on a card or crystal, and allowing. But the things that I end up saying, especially the additional messages I get that come in alongside of the story the cards tell, are nothing less than mystical and mysterious.
I do feel like it’s a spiritual gift. Based on how I feel when I can help people with their problems or the way that they think or be able to warn them if something crazy is coming down the pike. Fast-forward seven years. I am now reading tarot professionally and humbly and I love it. It’s incredibly fun for me too and it feels really good to be able to help people, uncover what is unseen, know for sure what is secret, and see into the future based on a present choice. I feel privileged and excited to be able to offer you The Info—411 Tarot.
