Intuition is one thing. The ability to connect with the spirit world to help others is entirely another. And for Tatianna Morales a lifelong pursuit in understanding and channeling the wisdom in the occult has resulted in legions of fans, helped her find her purpose, and launched a lucrative business.
Follow Tatianna @tatiannatarot. If you loved this episode, listen to What Happened After Zulema Arroyo Farley Stopped Denying Her Own Truth and How Documentarian Cristina Costantini Fed Her Soul While Making Mucho Mucho Amor. Show your love and become a Latina to Latina Patreon supporter!
Alicia Menendez:
Tatianna Morales always knew that she had special gifts and she’s built a following and a business by taking her unique intuition, and her skill for tarot and healing, and applying it to personal development. Today, I talk with the entrepreneur and Instagram star about where her intuition has led her and how she’s building an empire that is bigger than any one platform.
Tatianna, thank you so much for doing this.
Tatianna Morales:
Of course. Thank you for having me.
Menendez: Would you take me back to the first moment in your life when you knew that you had these gifts?
Morales: The earliest memory that I have had to be around maybe six, seven, eight years old. Very, very young. Essentially, when I first discovered playing cards or tarot in general, what I would do is I had this bad habit of just bringing toys to school, right? And one of those things would be playing cards, and I didn’t grow up particularly with a family that was familiar with divination, tarot, if you go into Latino culture, we have the baraja. I wasn’t raised around any of that, so I don’t know where I had the antics of, “Oh, let me bring these cards to school and start reading kids and people.”
I would just make things up in my mind. The hearts would be love, the clubs would be luck, the spades would be bad luck, and literally I’m a little boss at lunchtime, negotiating. Hey, you want this reading? Let me exchange for a pudding or some chips, you know? That’s my earliest memory of doing that. Now, anything actually more poignant than that would be in high school when I would read palms. Again, during lunchtime. Or I would bring the cards. And the memory would be just them having a very impactful face. Because, you know, I went to a school where it was predominantly Latinos, and so I was reading Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, Colombians, what have you, and so within the culture, you have people that go to readers and whatnot.
I’m Puerto Rican, but unfortunately, I wasn’t raised around that growing up. I just didn’t know it existed. So, they are already inclined to go to readers, and they were very shocked to hear that I was accurate. The things I was telling them, it was accurate. Whether it’s about their love life, their friends, how they’re doing in school, and so they would invite their other friends from neighboring schools to get a reading with me after school. That kind of grew into some word-of-mouth business, where they were not paying me and waiting for me after school, because they knew the girl was gonna give readings, right?
And so, that’s when it finally hit me, like this whole time I was on to something, because it was making me feel good or what have you. It was almost as if I was raised by it. That’s when it was like, “Maybe I should be charging for this or maybe I should be looking into various ways to monetize from this, because I’m not even asking people for money. Now they’re bringing me clients. They’re bringing me people.” And I enjoyed doing it, but there’s something here.
Menendez: When did it go, though, from you as you said making stuff up, to it feeling as though it was informed by a deeper knowledge?
Morales: Well, this is the thing. I was always intuitive, even as a child. I would stop my family and I would tell them, “Oh, so and so is coming over,” or before the phone would ring, I would be like, “Somebody’s about to call.” And it would be that person. Or I had a dream, and this is what happened, and it would happen. They already knew me to be kind of like the black sheep. She’s into different things. And gladly enough, they welcomed that. They fostered that. They supported that. But like I said, it wasn’t really until I was more mature in high school to really realize, “Whoa, this is having an impact. It’s making my friends cry.” Or there’s something that I couldn’t have possibly known that happened in her childhood that’s now coming out of my mouth.
And because I’ve always been interested in the occult, in things like Walter Mercado, Miss Cleo, fortunes, and forecasts, and gitana and gitana culture, and gitana music, and all of that stuff, it didn’t even seem like it was something foreign to me. But it was in that moment that I realized I definitely have something here that I can’t ignore. I didn’t think I was going to make it into a business like I’m doing now, but it definitely was an eye-awakening moment that like, “Oh, this stuff that I was seeing in pop culture, there’s some validity to it.”
Menendez: Part of what’s so interesting to me about your story… You know, we had on Zulema Arroyo Farley. She’s a medium. Quiara Alegría Hudes, her mom was a santera. And ordinarily, there is an element of secrecy that surrounds having some connection to the divine, but it really wasn’t that way with you, right? It wasn’t a secret that you kept from your family. When you brought this to their attention, there wasn’t a big freak out. In fact, you come to learn that there are other people in your family who have these gifts.
Morales: What’s interesting, there is an element of secrecy. So, I’m Black and I’m Puerto Rican. My mom is African American, and my dad is Puerto Rican. And I was raised with the Puerto Rican side of my family. So, as I got older, and started doing more ancestral research, and really started to dive into my roots, and lineage, and hang out with my family on my mom’s side, there is a huge component of secrecy that they were all raised with all of this. Almost in a very cult-like setting, and they were not exposed to it in a positive way. It wasn’t mystical woo woo. It was almost very dark the way it was being used by the women in my lineage.
And so, around them, they can recognize that I have the gift, but we wouldn’t talk about this amongst your grandma, because she would freak out, even though she was like the pioneer of doing it in the family. They’re all fundamentalist Christians, for the most part, so it’s very taboo to even talk about this. It brings up a lot of discomfort because of the way it was used and the repercussions of that in the family. But amongst the puertorriqueños, no. I mean, my grandma grew up with readers and stuff, like she’s also Christian. She wouldn’t do it herself, but I’m really grateful to have a very supporting family that was like, “As long as you’re doing it with integrity, as long as you’re doing it for the goodness of other people, and you have a good heart, and we know we raised you to be a good person, then we’re not concerned that you’re getting into all of this.”
But it was really my dad who had a very open-minded approach about everything. He’s not religious, so he was very spiritual and dived into very different methods of spirituality, and he was the one that kind of encouraged me to kind of find your own path and get into whatever calls you. He’s a medium. He sees spirits like you’re seeing a person, right in the flesh. And so, I think part of that really helped him raise me in a very non-judgmental, non-criticizing way.
Menendez: For someone who has never had their cards read, can you explain how a tarot card reading works?
Morales: Yes. So, there are two ways, and this is all contingent on the reader, because every reader has their own technique and way of servicing the client. I facilitate a space of ease. I like to open up the space. If the client is sitting in front of me, we engage in light conversation, chat, what’s your intention for getting a reading. What I normally do is I start with light libations of water, so I’m paying homage to that person’s ancestors, and muertos, you know, their dead guides, and mine too, and I’m kind of calling forth those guides to come through, and also letting them know we want the highest of information. It’s me, I’m about to tap into your daughter or your son. Come through.
And then I do another prayer with my cards. And then I ask the client, “Okay, what’s your intention? Do you have a specific question, a concern you want to look into, or you just want to see what shows up?” Sometimes they want to be surprised. They just want to hear what a spirit has to tell them, and sometimes they’re really coming forth for a purpose, so they want to know right then and there what’s going on.
I just kind of start pulling the cards. I shuffle and sometimes spirit will tell me, “You need to pass on the cards.” Sometimes they don’t, right? It’s kind of like spirit-led in the moment. Very intuitive. Shuffle, read, let them know the information that’s going on, and then we break it down. Card by card. I like to explain card by card any intuitive messages that I’m getting, and so I’m leading them. It’s almost like I’m taking their hand and I’m guiding them, so that they can see what I am seeing, so that they’re not lost, so the pieces fit together. It’s essentially their own story playing out in the form of illustrations.
And then we add onto that. Do you have any questions with this? Do you want elaborations? Does this resonate with you is a big one. A lot of my readings, I find that clients, they will make sense of it in the present moment, but it won’t be until maybe a year or two later that they’re like, “Wow, this actually played out and in a major way that I’m still listening to that reading three years later, and it’s still giving me value and information.” Since there’s no such thing as time, particularly with my spirits, I just let them know what I see. Sometimes people have something in mind that they don’t know how to articulate and so I’ll help them formulate that question, but it’s a really, really intimate moment.
Menendez: One of my producers got tarot cards for Christmas. He’s a total novice, doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he’s like, “I kept trying to pull your cards,” he’s like, “There’s only one card that kept coming up again and again.” It was the hangman?
Morales: The essence of the hangman, if you actually look at the symbolism and the iconography, it’s a person hanging upside down from the tree, but they only have one leg attached, whereas the rest of their body is pretty liberated and they’re just in limbo land. So, we can take this to see it as someone who is willingly holding themselves up, someone who is willingly not letting go, you know? There is some resistance here. And so, the essence of that card is you need to let go of something. There is something that you must release and in order for you to release that, you must adapt a different perspective.
Another attribute of the hangman could mean patience. You need time in order to acclimate to this new perspective, new lifestyle, or these changes that are going to happen. But you can’t resist forever. And what’s interesting is that the hangman generally has some sort of a halo around their head as they’re hanging upside down, so this is very symbolic of the higher self, the more expanded sense of consciousness, your wiser self, your godlike self, and so in some way, this person knows what they need to be doing, but they’re resisting that very action, right? And it could be that their spirit guides are like, “How many times are you gonna ask this freakin’ question? How many times are you gonna go to us when you already know what it is that you need to be doing? You need to let go and go ahead and do your homework.”
Menendez: I mean, it’s clearly for me that I have to let go of some ego, which is why every time he got the card I was like, “Next. Next. Not ready.” Tatianna, it strikes me that among your many titles is entrepreneur. What was the first step in building this, which you started when you were very young, you did not go into it as a business. How did you begin to build it as a business?
Morales: My dad is an entrepreneur and an artist, so I grew up seeing him as an actor, entrepreneur, businessman, many modalities and varieties of that, many avatars of that. Literally, just alongside of him, doing business, and learning that in that way. I incorporated a lot of that business model in my dance career, as a solo artist, and a teacher, and I was doing tarot along the side. So, it inevitably turned into side gigs in college, to then Tatianna now is dancing professionally for several companies, and pretty big-name events and stuff, and so I have an agent, and now the agent knows I’m doing tarot readings. Let me book Tatianna for a private party here, or Tribeca Film Festival, or that, and so it started not like the intention to do business in tarot, but them knowing like if you’re a jack of all trades, and we need you, we know you’re a reliable worker. We’re gonna pull you in, hire you for this party. That’s when it started.
I was talking to my dad about this. He was actually the one that also encouraged me to start dancing professionally. Now, this was just at the point where we’re starting to get social media popping, like Instagram had just started, Twitter had just started, YouTube was just starting to be a thing, and so he was like, “You need to kind of take what you’re doing now, because we don’t know the longevity of your dance career and you’ve always expressed that you want to do something that is sustainable, now that you’re picking this up you need to have some sort of an online presence and have people come to this website that can book for you.” So, I looked at that as my business model, took a lot of the wisdom that he’s applied into his business and what he’s taught me. He runs a dog sitting, dog rehabilitation business, The Hyper Pup, and so he has a podcast, he does YouTubes, he is on social media, Facebook, Instagram, blogs, so taking this model and applying it, and also taking the inspiration from Miss Cleo, Walter Mercado, people who I didn’t get to see a full representation of an Afro Latina doing this stuff in spirituality.
And so, that’s what really kind of catapulted me to start doing this consistent content of daily tarotscopes, is okay, I’m seeing all these horoscopes, but I don’t see anybody doing anything with tarot that is of my color or is of Black descent or anything, right? And so, with consistency over the years, that kind of built up and became its own thing. I wasn’t really looking to make this into a full-fledged business, just something that can help sustain me during the offseasons where I wasn’t getting hired as much with dancing.
I transitioned out of dance and really just kind of drove in let’s make this tarot thing into a thing now that I see that you can do this with social media, you can… This is a thing now. You have all these spiritualists online. How can I now serve my market in a way that’s integrity-driven, but still is a sustainable model that I can take care of myself and my future and what have you? And create a legacy out of it. And so, my dad really was like the catapult to that.
Menendez: You now focus on clarity and personal development through traditional healing modalities. What made you realize that you could apply these healing skills and use them in the world of personal development?
Morales: My own experience. I don’t teach or promote anything that I haven’t personally used and hasn’t changed my life, whether it’s from the Akashic records, to any guided meditations, energy clearing, espiritismo, limpias, tarot, Ifa, all of it is literally what you’re seeing are things that have gotten me to this point in my life, and have… If I have been out of alignment, has brought me back into alignment. If I have been struggling with inner-child work, past-life healing, things with my parents, working with my ancestors when I didn’t grow up with that side of my family, learning how to communicate with the dead, learning how to develop your intuition, learning how to sharpen your divination skills, all of these things are like a toolkit of what I’ve had to personally figure out because it wasn’t out there.
Nobody was really talking about this stuff 10 years ago. A lot of it was just astrology-based, if that. Or like yoga wellness, you know? Very just a different kind of spirituality that I couldn’t relate to. And so, I really, really pride myself on servicing my community using the very things that I know have been proven and tested in my own life. And in the lives of my clients.
Menendez: I think there are a lot of people who seek out this type of help initially because they have like a bad boyfriend or girlfriend. I feel like that is a very common entry point. It is interesting to me to take all of this and apply it to one’s ambition, to one’s career, to one’s businesses. It’s like that is to me already an elevation of the art.
Morales: You could apply it to anything, because let’s say hypothetically speaking you want to elevate your business and you’re stuck, and you’re not making as much money as you’d like, or you just don’t see yourself propelling. Well, that can break into a lot of things. Let’s say there’s something subconsciously that deals with a poverty blockage that you were raised on, and you’re not gonna know that unless you do some deep, deep searching, some meditations, and knowing, okay, did you grow up being shamed, not having a lot of money, or is it like money doesn’t grow on trees, or you feel like you are the caretaker of your family, so whenever you do make money it just falls out of your hands? Things of this sort, like where is this karma coming from, where you’re always attracting the same person. Is this something that your parents also had, or your grandparents have also had, or is it more like spiritual in the sense of your spirit guides, you have a particular spirit guide that doesn’t like X, Y and Z? And you need to know them, and you need to appease them in order to have this sort of effect in your life.
And there’s so many ways that we can go about this. It all really goes back to your ancestry, your ancestor court, your spirit guides, and what’s going on subconsciously. And what you’ve picked up and what you’ve been accepting as truth since childhood, and how that molds and affects your decisions and your thoughts in a way that you’re completely oblivious to.
Menendez: I love that idea of an ancestor’s court. I’ll be thinking about that all day. A lot of what you’ve been sharing on Instagram these days are your meditations. Where do those fit into your practice?
Morales: The meditations were my way of learning the cards, so to speak. I never took a course. I never really read a book about tarot. It was just like boom, the girl is kind of going about her gut and she’s reading people. Tarot meditations were a way for me to further develop my definition of the cards and provide some sort of a general energy forecast for whoever would resonate with it, like a horoscope, but something much more universally approachable. And also, help people see that you can come from various different walks of life and it could still resonate with you in different ways. So, someone who’s a Christian, and someone who’s a Muslim, and someone who’s into ATRs, and someone who’s a single parent can all find meaning in the queen of swords for that day that it was posted and apply it to their life differently, so they can see the multifacets of tarot and know that this is a universal tool that you can use despite your denomination, and you can still use it as a healing modality for yourself, a tool of exploration and empowerment.
Menendez: How do you balance putting content out for free? I mean, you give us all a lot as your followers. You give us a lot of access to yourself. You give us a lot of things for free. How, then, do you balance that with the reality that this is your business, and this is a skillset that you have honed in order to be compensated for your time?
Morales: So, certain content, which is the oracle meditations, the tarot meditations, and the monthly tarotscopes are like breathing underwater at this point. I’ve done it for about 10 years, so it’s almost part of my morning ritual. Whether or not I get to do it the day before or content in advance, it’s done. It’s boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, like I don’t sit and think about it. I pull the cart with intention and it’s a done deal.
Now, what it ties into is if people resonate with the work and they like it, and they feel like it’s impacted them in some way, they resonate with it and they feel like it’s impacted them in some way, they can go ahead and book a more personal session. I also have a lot of boundaries on that. I’m a single mom. I’m scaling my business. I’m working with brands now. And so, I’m being pushed and pulled in so many directions. I’m creating several courses, so that people can learn how to read themselves. They don’t have to be codependent on a reader. It’s all about for me, does this provide value? I want to teach you what I’m implementing in my own life. In many ways, people can learn tarot just by studying my page that are interested. What books did you read, or when are you teaching a class, but if you’re really savvy and you’re really resourceful, start taking pictures of all the tarot meditations, write them down, take notes, look at my videos and how I’m reading, study my prayers, study the way that I do things.
It’s no different from how I taught myself how to scale my business, and if it resonates, you can book with me through these modalities and these ways. I have the tools so that you can best help yourself or not.
Menendez: It is just so clear that you are in control of all of this and you have a vision for it. I just want to spend more time with you, so I’m gonna go book my session for after this so we can do this all again. We will not be recording and sharing that one. Thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate you.
Morales: Thank you so much for having me on this platform. It was a delight! It was a treat.
Menendez: Thank you for joining us. Latina to Latina is executive produced and owned by Juleyka Lantigua-Williams and me, Alicia Menendez. Paulina Velasco is our senior producer. Our lead producer is Cedric Wilson. Kojin Tashiro is our associate sound designer. Manuela Bedoya is our social media editor and ad ops lead. We love hearing from you when you email us at hola@latinatolatina.com, when you slide into our DMs on Instagram, when you tweet at us @LatinaToLatina. Remember to subscribe, follow us on RadioPublic, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, wherever you’re listening, and please, I know I ask this all the time, but do leave a review. It is one of the fastest, easiest ways to help us grow.
CITATION:
Menendez, Alicia, host. “What Medium Tatiana Morales Sees in Her Own Future.”Latina to Latina, Lantigua Williams & Co., April 25, 2021. LatinaToLatina.com