The remarkable teachers who guided my tarot journey

There's a particular kind of education that doesn't happen in classrooms — or at least, not in conventional ones. It happens in day courses where you think you're learning one thing and discover something entirely different. It happens across lunch tables, in evening studios, on retreats, in the presence of people who carry knowledge the way others carry light.

I have been extraordinarily fortunate in my teachers. This is my small act of gratitude to each of them.

Where it all began: Gahl Sasson

I booked onto a day course called The Graphic Novel of Your Soul expecting a writing workshop. What I found instead was one of the most riveting days of my life.

Gahl Sasson guided us through all 78 tarot cards — not as fortune-telling tools, but as a map of the human journey. Because that is exactly what they are. Every struggle, every triumph, every moment of transformation that a person can experience is contained within that deck. Gahl made that visible in a way I had never imagined possible. I was transfixed.

At lunchtime, I found myself sharing a table with a stranger who mentioned she had just booked onto a beginner's tarot course at the College of Psychic Studies. By the end of the meal, I had booked myself onto it, and that stranger has become a lifelong friend, bonding over a shared love of tarot cards and G&Ts.

The foundation: Avril Price

Avril Price became, in the truest sense, my guide through the entire architecture of tarot.

She began with us at the beginning — the individual meanings of each card, learned with patience and care. From there she took us into intermediate territory, where the deeper symbolic currents start to surface and simple readings begin to feel like conversations rather than recitations. And then onward into her advanced sanctuary class, and ultimately to her retreats in Glastonbury, where the work became something else entirely.

In those later spaces, Avril taught us how to step aside. How to let the spirit of a reading come forward. How to find the many layers — and there are always many layers — within a single spread. She introduced me to tarot not just as a skill, but as a practice of presence.

Mastering the question: Adrien Mastrosimone

If Avril gave me the language of tarot, Adrian Mastrosimone taught me how to use it with precision.

His gift was showing me that the question is everything. The relationship between what you ask and what you receive in return is not incidental — it is the whole mechanism. Adrian taught me how to frame questions in ways that open doors rather than close them, and how a poorly formed question can obscure the very answer you are seeking.

He also introduced me to the Marseille deck — those austere, non-illustrated cards that seem at first to offer nothing, just patterns, lines, symbols. Through Adrian, I began to learn how to read what isn't shown. How to find meaning in the spaces, in the geometry, in the apparent blankness. It was a profound lesson in trusting the depth beneath the surface.

Grounded wisdom: Delphine at Treadwells

What Delphine brought was earthedness.

She taught me how to take the symbolic richness of tarot and land it somewhere real — in the actual texture of someone's life, their relationships, their decisions, their questions. With her, I learned to see the connections that run between cards, to follow the symbolism as it threads through a spread, and to offer something genuinely useful: down-to-earth guidance, rooted in insight, that a person can actually take away with them.

The art of deep structure: Josephine Ellershaw

Josephine introduced me to the life spread and the anchor spread — highly structured systems that create the conditions for extraordinarily deep readings.

There is something about working within a carefully designed framework that paradoxically allows you to go further. The structure holds the space open. Through Josephine, and through her introduction to the Gilded Tarot deck, I discovered that depth and precision are not opposites — they are partners.

Opening to spirit: Richard Knight

And then there is Richard, who began opening my eyes to something I hadn't fully allowed myself to explore: the psychic dimension of tarot.

A good friend of the amazing Uri Geller, his enthusiasm for this territory is genuinely infectious. He carries a belief in what is possible that makes you believe it too. Richard introduced me to the energy work that can surround a reading — practices that invite the spirit side of things in, that make the whole experience feel less like an intellectual exercise and more like a genuine conversation with something larger.

A reader in the making

Each of these teachers gave me something distinct, and each gift built on the last. Gahl sparked the flame. Avril built the foundation. Adrien sharpened the craft. Delphine brought it into the world. Josephine gave it structure and depth. Richard reminded me to stay open to what lies beyond.

I am not a finished reader. I don't think any honest practitioner ever is. But I am becoming one — and I know exactly whose hearts and minds helped shape me.

To all of them: thank you.