193: LIVE Tarot reading — what this “why choose” novel (Kiss Me) wants you to know

Happy World Tarot Day! In celebration, we are doing our FIRST-EVER live Tarot reading on the Author Diary Entries podcast… This Tarot spread explores the question, “What does Kiss Me (Book 8 in the Polyamorous Passions series) want to teach you, or tell you, as the reader of this story?” 

The 5-card spread: 

• Card 1: Overarching message or theme from this book (III Pentacles) 
• Card 2: Hidden teachings from this book that you might have overlooked (Knight of Pentacles) 
• Card 3: The underlying vibe of this story (XI Justice) 
• Card 4: Key attributes of the main characters to pay attention to (IV Swords) 
• Card 5: General lesson, advice, or overall insights to take away from this novel (III Wands) 

A video was originally recorded along with the audio. The deck used in this Tarot spread is the Rider-Waite-Smith, in case you want to look it up and see what the cards look like visually! 

Tune in to this episode of the podcast to get a full breakdown of the meanings behind each of these cards, and what the cards want us to know about this chick lit novel!  

Resources mentioned in this episode: 

• Kiss Me (Book 8 in the Polyamorous Passions contemporary romance series): https://books2read.com/polypassions8 
• More “why choose” chick lit novels — the Polyamorous Passions series and Small Town Stilettos: SaganMorrow.com/books 
• Connect with Sagan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saganlives 
• Connect with Sagan on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@saganlives 
• Tune into ALL episodes of the Author Diary Entries podcast at https://saganmorrow.com/podcast 

Transcript

You’re listening to the Author Diary Entries podcast. I’m your host, Sagan Morrow, and this is episode #193. Access the show notes and transcript of this episode at SaganMorrow.com/podcast. 

We’re doing something a little different for today’s episode… I’m going to do a live Tarot reading!

Fun fact: I first started reading Tarot cards more than 20 years ago. I got REALLY into Tarot and I read the cards regularly; I was very skilled at it. Over the years, life happened, and now and then I’d drift away from or back toward Tarot. 

THIS year, I’ve been back at Tarot in earnest — nearly every day, I’m reading Tarot cards or expanding my Tarot study. It feels so wonderful to be back at it, reconnecting with my Tarot cards and reacquainting myself with the deck! 

…so with THAT in mind, I thought it would be a lot of fun to do a live Tarot reading based on my most recent “why choose” chick lit novel, Kiss Me (AKA Book 8 in the Polyamorous Passions series). We’re going to use Tarot to uncover what this story wants you to take away from it, as the reader!

As a sidebar, if you haven’t yet grabbed your copy of Kiss Me, it’s available as an e-book on Kobo, Kindle, Nook, etc! You can visit SaganMorrow.com/books, or grab your copy at the link in the show notes for this podcast episode. 

I’ve created a fun little 5-card Tarot spread that we’re going to do together, live, on this episode. 

Our core question that we’re asking the Tarot cards is this: “What does Kiss Me (Book 8 in the Polyamorous Passions series) want to teach you, or tell you, as the reader of this story?”

The meanings of the cards will be as follows for this 5-card spread: 

• Card 1: Overarching message or theme from this book.
• Card 2: Hidden teachings from this book that you might have overlooked.
• Card 3: The underlying vibe of this story. 
• Card 4: Key attributes of the main characters to pay attention to. 
• Card 5: General lesson, advice, or overall insights to take away from this novel.

I’m going to shuffle the cards, cut them, and then lay them out for this spread that we’ve created, and then interpret the cards for you. Typically as I’m turning over each card, I like to make any initial notes and observations, and then once all the cards are revealed, I like to view them all as a whole and how they connect together, and then review my database of Tarot notes to check what I’ve missed from the traditional meanings, or to see if anything else comes up. 

Full disclosure here, I have not tried this specific Tarot spread yet! I created the concept for it and how I want the spread to look visually, but doing this here live is the first time I will have done the spread.

Alright. So with that, let’s do this! I’m shuffling the cards a few times now, and I’m going to focus on that core question that we’re asking with this Tarot spread: 

“What does Kiss Me (Book 8 in the Polyamorous Passions series) want to teach you, or tell you, as the reader of this story?” 

We are interested in uncovering more about the overarching messages or themes from this book, as well as hidden teachings from this book that readers might have overlooked, the underlying vibe of this story, key attributes of the main characters for readers to pay attention to, and any general lesson, advice, or overall insights to take away from this novel.

“What does Kiss Me (Book 8 in the Polyamorous Passions series) want to teach you, or tell you, as the reader of this story?” 

Okay, now I’m cutting the cards into three piles, putting the last pile on top of the other two, and now I’m laying out the cards in the 5-card spread…

We’re all set! Let’s turn over each card: 

Card 1: Overarching message or theme from this book: We have here the Three of Pentacles. 

Okay, so this is interesting because the Three of Pentacles tends to be a lot around community coming together, and you know we see these people standing here and looking at this, this person working on a building, and I feel like the Three of Pentacles is very much around people coming together, people being working in the community, and also being recognized for their skills, for their talents, and this card, thinking, you know, of Kiss Me, of course, because this is a reading for that novel. 

It's kind of funny because in Kiss Me we have Scarlet as the main character, and she's basically being recognized for her talents. She's being invited to become the main feature of a club that's going to be burlesque specific, and she's kind of like, “oh, am I good enough for this or not,” and it's interesting because even in this card — in the Rider Waite Smith deck that I like to use for my tarot readings — it kind of looks in this imagery, this person is kind of like, paused in the middle of their work and they're like, “oh, you, you want to talk to me, like, what's what's going on here,” so I feel like that is very, very representative of kind of that piece around doing your thing, working hard, creating a beautiful body of work, and people coming up and being like, “Hey, this looks awesome, yeah, let's do this, let's all be a part of it.” 

And then the number three, as well, is, I mean, very on the nose when we're talking about this from a, you know, a polyamorous or a why choose trope sort of lens, it's very on the nose, but again, it's really about this sort of coming together and a holistic sort of meeting of of groups and community and that kind of thing, so I think that that's very lovely for this first meaning of the overarching message or theme from this book. 

Okay, so that's the first card. 

Card two is hidden teachings from this book, from Kiss Me (Book 8 in the Polyamorous Passions series) that you might have overlooked. 

Oh Oh, okay. We have the Knight of Pentacles. Interesting. We have another Pentacles. So, Pentacles, as one of the four suits of the Minor Arcana of Tarot, Pentacles is typically around sort of the physical world, material goods, finances, that kind of thing, so here we have the Knight of Pentacles, and the knights are typically in motion most of the time when we see the other knights and the other suits of the Minor Arcana, they are, they are moving, they are like in, in motion, they are moving towards something, and this is the only night that is standing still, which is very interesting to see here. 

Um, I feel like when we're thinking about the hidden teachings from this book, there's an interesting dichotomy between the, the black, the dark black of the horse and the bright sunshine yellow of the background, because I feel like that really reflects this entire concept around sort of the the unknown and hidden things, but there's bright, there's brightness on the horizon. We also do see that there is rocky terrain in the background of this card, and yet this knight is standing on a hill and standing still, so it's kind of like there is, there could be some challenges around, going on, but in the moment, perhaps stopping, reflecting, focusing on what matters most can can make a difference. 

The knight here as well is also very guarded in that he's wearing a full suit of armor, right, but he is exposing his face, so I think that there's also something here in the entire concept around not protecting yourself so much that you have a barrier between you and the world, but rather that you are looking that you, that you have sort of a clarity in your focus, and you are actually inviting people in. 

Okay, so that's my initial impressions of the Knight of Pentacles for this particular context.

I will say, as well as an aside, that anytime that I'm reading Tarot cards, the meaning is, of course, always going to change and shift from one reading to another. Each card is extremely complex and has many different layers of meaning in them, and so anytime that we're doing reading, we really need to take that into consideration. So, the Knight of Pentacles, you know, the Three of Pentacles, these things are going to look different and mean something different and be interpreted differently, depending on the context, and of course, depending on the Tarot reader themselves. 

Okay. Card three is the underlying vibe of this story, Kiss Me. 

Ooh, Justice. Okay, so we have our first Major Arcana card here, and so the Minor Arcana cards tend to be a little bit more around sort of like the the day to day sort of fluctuations, type of things, whereas Major Arcana cards can be sometimes people call it more of like destiny types of things, but really it's just like the bigger types of things at play, and so as the underlying vibe of this story, I think this is also a really interesting one, given that Scarlett feels so torn in and pulled in different directions, and she isn't, you know, she feels like she's being a bit morally gray in some instances, and so here really this is the underlying vibe, this entire concept of Justice and, and things unfolding based on, you know, like karma, and things like that, is really interesting. And also the entire concept of the balance of everything, being able to have that balance, and that is one of Scarlett's biggest struggles, really, is trying to juggle all the different things to have that really beautiful balance. 

Okay, then we have card four is key attributes of the main characters to pay attention 

to. Okay, so we have here the Four of Swords. 

Okay, and so this is an interesting one. Four of Swords. So typically we would look at this as kind of the need for rest and relaxation and rejuvenation, right? Like refreshing ourselves, taking a step back, taking a bit of a break from things, and potentially, I mean, in terms of the key attributes of the main characters to pay attention to — I'm just thinking now in terms of the context of this tarot spread in general, when we do this again for a future book, I might be a little bit more specific about which main character we're talking about — but we could potentially view this as… I don't want to spoil this too much, but Scarlett “putting to bed,” right, putting to rest a particular set of feelings that she might have for someone, maybe. 

I don't want to give away too many spoilers of the book, but I feel like this would be in, you know, a direct connection to a very specific relationship that we get into, you know, by the end of the novel. Another way to interpret this card, again from Scarlett's perspective, is that it could simply be around her passivity and her unwillingness to make a move and to take action, because that is a huge aspect of this novel. 

Okay, then we have card five, which is the general lesson, advice, or overall insights to take away from this novel, Kiss Me. 

Ooh, Three of Wands. Okay, so the Three of Wands: We have here an individual standing on a cliff edge looking out at a sea at an ocean and there are some little ships in the background. One of the things that I love about the Three of Wands is that there's kind of two main interpretations of this card or I mean, there's, of course, many, but the two perspectives that we can kind of have on this card is that either this person standing on the edge of the cliff, looking at the ships, is either watching the ships leave or return. Which are they doing? What's happening in this card? 

I feel as though with this person standing there and watching, you know, looking out at them, I think that there's a really interesting aspect around the entire concept, again, of that sort of passivity versus taking action and participating in your own life, and this whole concept of: Are you waiting for someone else to do a thing, or are you taking charge of your own life? And if you are sitting back and waiting, does that actually make sense for this particular setting? Are you still in control of yourself, or are you letting other people take the narrative? So that's one of the biggest things that I would personally take away from this particular card in this context. 

Okay, so that is a general overview of each card. Now, if we're looking at the cards as a whole, I think it's very interesting here that we have Pentacles, Swords, and Wands all represented, which are three suits of the Minor Arcana. What we do not see, which is really interesting from a romance novel perspective, is we do not see the Cups suit represented here, so what can we kind of take away from that? I think we can really take away is that the emotional aspect of this novel is — even though this is a romance novel, there's it's really about these other aspects around, like the conflict, right, and the, the internal sort of turmoil, and so the romance and the emotions are absolutely there, but they're kind of hidden under these layers of other pieces of other aspects that are going on. 

We have, let's see, we have two cards, are both threes, right? The number three, which is interesting to see there, and yeah, I think that's really interesting again from that sort of polyamory, why choose perspective, that's kind of funny. And also like a bringing together a margin of things. And then, of course, there's also like the three parallel storylines in Kiss Me in this novel, which I think is really represented here. I think it's represented really well. 

There is also a fair amount of yellow in these cards, but it's all it feels like a lot of the yellow in it is in the background, so there is that kind of like there's there's from a color theory perspective, we often look at yellow in the Tarot as being kind of like joy and optimism, and things like that, but what I think is interesting here is that we have yellow, either in the background or on the horizon, type of thing, so it's kind of like joyful times are to come, right, but we need to kind of get through these other things first. 

The other aspect that I think is very interesting about these five cards, when we look at them as a whole, is that there is so much passivity in them. There is very little movement in the cards. In fact, the only movement that we really see is in that first card, the Three of Pentacles, and the meaning around that one was really the overarching message or theme from this book, and that's where they're just interacting with one another. These three people are interacting with one another, could totally represent like the three parallel story lines again, but otherwise it's an individual person standing there, looking out, waiting, being passive, sitting, standing, lying down, right? Like, so it's very interesting to kind of see that, and I think that that is also very representative of this novel, where Scarlett is kind of putting herself in this silo, she's kind of putting herself in a box, she's putting herself in a place where she is being alone and being passive, and she needs to allow herself again, going back to that overarching message or theme from this book, she needs to allow herself to connect with other people and and be part of something bigger than herself. She needs to stop being alone and being that sort of lone wolf kind of character. So those are some of the things that would jump out to me. 

Okay, I want to take a look, I want to take a look at the Tarot database as well, just to kind of double check what these, you know, the meanings around these cards, because these are very much the things that are coming to mind for me. 

But I do want to check that. I will say, as a quick reminder, you know, as we're doing this tarot spread, if you are thinking, “huh, this sounds like an interesting book, maybe I should read it,” I agree! You should definitely check it out. Kiss Me is book eight in the Polyamorous Passion series. It can be enjoyed on its own. 

It's available anywhere you read ebooks or visit SaganMorrow.com/books. Link is in the show notes. There is a healthy amount of exposition, so there's some background if you haven't read the previous books in the series, although it is a lot more fun to have the full background of all the books in the series. 

Okay, okay, so again, before we wrap up this Tarot reading, I want to bring up my Tarot card database that I've created, just to check if there's anything else that we want to make note of, because there could be some other things here, all right, so we'll start again with that Three of Pentacles, let me just bring up the Three of Pentacles in my database. 

Okay, have I missed anything? 

Let's see. Yeah, we have the theme of work for sure, which again would go back to Scarlett's work as a burlesque performer and being invited to perform at the specific club as the main event all the time. Oh, okay. One of the things that I didn't mention here, which I think is a really good, good point, is that this card, as well, can be around a lot around elevating your life, elevating all kinds of different aspects of your life and having the reassurance that you do have a strong foundation, right, because this card literally working on a building and having a very strong foundation, so that's going to be another big piece here, especially again when we are thinking about this card as being that sort of big message or theme from this book, I really like that as one of the main messages that's really about you have a strong foundation, go forth and do the thing, elevate your life, be that next level version of yourself, be that best version of yourself, you can do this, you've got this. So I really, I really do like that. 

And then one of the other aspects around here, as I'm looking at my Tarot database notes, one of them can be around, you know, it can represent a bit of perfectionism, which I think is kind of funny. Not that I think that Scarlet is necessarily a perfectionist, but she definitely has a lot of insecurities around that kind of thing, so that is kind of funny. 

All right, Knight of Pentacles is next. So, card two, Knight of Pentacles, this is about the hidden teachings from the book that you might have overlooked, so let's see here. 

Hmm, okay, one of the the aspects around here that I think I didn't quite get to when I was talking about the Knight of Pentacles is that while he can, like, he had, he's holding the knight is holding the pentacle up, but his gaze is kind of above it, so I was talking about the importance of focusing in on things, and one of the things that we can also take away from this is losing sight of, of, you know, what you're actually working on and what is most important to you and what matters the most, and so I think that that is a really important kind of like hidden teaching from this book is that whole concept of, you know, are you actually paying attention to what matters most, or have you lost sight of that? 

Another aspect of here — there's two more pieces that I think are really good to mention from my Tarot database notes — that this can be about closure, right? So, the importance of having closure is absolutely a theme that comes up in this book, and then also around the concept of, are you so grounded that you aren't allowing yourself to change direction, right? Are you so sort of set in your ways that you aren't continuing to be motivated to move forward? So, the importance of kind of moving forward, and that kind of thing. 

Okay, now let's review my notes for justice. Let's see here… So this is card three, which is the underlying vibe of the story and justice can be around the concept of, you know, acting on connecting with the wisdom from within, right. 

Let me see here, oh, this is interesting too. So this person in the Justice card is holding a sword, and the Sword suit tends to be around the entire concept of intellect, and so kind of like removing emotions from a decision that needs to, that needs to be made, and so I think that there's, there is an interesting aspect there around Scarlett, is someone who does like connecting with herself, with her sort of emotions, her gut ideas, and she kind of loses sight of that a little bit by almost going too much into her emotions, in Kiss Me. She goes a little bit too much into her emotions, and I think that that's represented really well here, if we're thinking about the underlying vibe of the story. And also kind of like trusting in… that any decisions that you are making, if you are doing them for the right reasons, that kind of thing, things will work out right, like you need to have those good intentions. You need to have the to come into things with, with that sort of like being mindful, being intentional, being thoughtful, right, having integrity, those types of things. So that's all at play here as well. 

Okay. Then we have the Four of Swords. So this is card four, which is key attributes of the main characters to pay attention to. 

All right, let's bring up the Sword suit. Let's see. Four of Swords. 

Okay, so again, key attributes of the main character to take, to you know, take into consideration. 

Yeah, okay. This is very much the types of things that I was talking about, you know, having that sort of withdrawal or stabilization type of piece, allowing yourself to strengthen your energies, replenish your energy, and letting yourself take a deep breath and figure things out later, right. So I think that this does come into play if we are, when we're thinking about Scarlett, she is really very much at that sort of attitude of okay, I'm just gonna figure this out in the future, you know? Like, This will unfold on its own, it'll work itself out! So kind of that aspect of things, absolutely, I would say is at play here all right.

And then lastly we have the Three of Wands, card five, which is about general lesson advice or overall insights to take away from this novel. 

Okay, so this is interesting. So one of the notes that I have here is that this can be about emotional maturity, and so having already kind of having like sort of achieved success, right? So being able to be strong but at rest, I think that that's a really important aspect of this, that it's not that passivity is a bad thing, right, but rather passivity can be one of those things where what is the purpose of it, and like, why are we doing it, why are we making use of it, what are we making it mean, right, like those different different aspects, so having a rest, taking a step back from things, allowing things to move around us without us actively participating in them, can be okay, but why are you doing that? And is it out of fear, or is it out of I need to think things over before I rush into something, right? So it's kind of like the, the, the reasoning behind doing certain things, that is really what matters. 

Another piece around here, one of the other notes I have here is that it can be a lot around taking the first step. So, start moving in the direction that you want to be going in, just one step at a time. You don't need to just jump into everything and do it all at once. You can take things one step at a time, and you can have a lot of adventures, and you can be very bold and going on this journey while also taking that sort of slow steady movement forward, and that's okay. 

All right, so there we go, there we go, that is our first live tarot reading here on the Author Diary Entries podcast! What did you think of this? Did you enjoy getting some new insights into this book, Kiss Me, Polyamorous Passions Book Eight, through this tarot reading? 

Do you want me to do more of this? I'm kind of thinking I might want to do this again for some of my other novels, I think this is really fun. I think that this Tarot spread can work. I might adjust some of the questions slightly, but I think that it can work really well. 

I enjoyed this. I think this is a lot of fun, but I would love to hear your thoughts on how this was for you. 

You can now send me a voicemail to share your insights, your comments, your questions. So, please do visit the show notes for this episode at SaganMorrow.com/podcast — there is a little “Send fan mail” link in the show notes. I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts and your insights. If you really enjoyed this, great. If you did not enjoy this, tell me that too, because I don't want to, you know, keep doing live tarot readings if you're not interested! So let me know. 

Click on that little “Send fan mail” link in the show notes at SaganMorrow.com/podcast — I am really looking forward to hearing what you have to say. Talk soon.