We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Zoe Rusga. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Zoe below.

Zoe, appreciate you joining us today. Can you tell us the backstory behind how you came up with the idea?

It took a pandemic to realise my unrealised dreams languishing in a corner in a cobweb-covered recess of my mind.

Approximately 11 days after the first national lockdown in the UK, I found myself furloughed from my full-time job as a Brand Content Creator. One minute I had a secure job; the next, the rug had been pulled from under my feet. No job and no Plan B in place as the world held its breath.

I did return to work after three months, but the idea that my sole financial income could disappear that fast made me feel very uneasy about my future.

With the nightly news reporting on the daily death toll, conversations turned to – “if your life ended tomorrow, what would you most be annoyed about that you hadn’t gotten around to achieving in your lifetime?”

For me, it was learning to read tarot, a lifelong ambition since becoming enchanted with the psychic arts as a teenager. In that moment, I set the intention to read tarot professionally by the age of 50*

Without hesitation, I enrolled with renowned online learning community ‘Biddy Tarot’ and signed up to the Tarot Certification Program.

I passed my certification within 14 months, having passed three signature courses and delivered 50+ tarot readings.

I was finally a tarot reader, and it only took a pandemic to change the next chapter of my professional life.

*I joined online psychic and medium platform ‘MyGuru’ as a professional tarot reader 15 days before my 50th birthday

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’ve always been interested in fairytales, fiction and the art of storytelling. Having been enchanted as a child by the written work of C S Lewis’s ‘The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe’, the animated Disney works of Alice in Wonderland and deliciously terrified by horror writer Stephen King, I discovered in my 20s that I could hold an audience captive by bringing stories of the everyday to life using my magical imagination, a touch of devilish wit and expressive hand movements to aid my re-enactments.

There is no denying that Tarot Reading is an art.
And like any art, every artist works differently.

Tarot to me, is simply your story re-scripted through my eyes.
Whether the current story is good, bad, or downright ugly, I will always re-purpose my client to be the hero/heroine, to recognise their choices and how to make empowering changes in their life (but without the fairytale – no one is coming to save you, its your job to live your life on your terms!)

Working with custom-designed spreads, I leave my clients with renewed spirit and fight, especially if they have arrived discouraged and ready to give up! More importantly, I provide a non-judgemental space to talk, to be heard and the clarity that change is achievable, from whatever point thaey are at. Using everyday examples and common metaphors as well as demystifying the tarot as a tool to be feared, is my USP as a tarot reader.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Creativity will never leave you if you have creativity in your veins. A particular creative path may end, but the desire to use your imagination to create something tangible will never cease.

Famed for quirky illustrations to tell a story, I ran the award-winning wedding stationery business Bunny Delicious for fifteen years. After the financial crash of 2008, society no longer craved big heads of family-oriented weddings. I successfully diversified into smaller tailor-made weddings abroad for a few years. However, after the trends changed from handmade to digital in 2015, I knew this particular path was over for me. When I finally called time on my brilliant business three years later, it was with relief but with a sense of extreme sadness that I didn’t know how to express. How could I go back to being … ordinary?

Little did I realise that only two years later, my creative talent would resurge in the form of storytelling via tarot reading. The creativity coursed through my veins, and I felt whole again – hence the name of my new business, Bunny’s Kaleidoscope!

The world will always need your story; you just need to adapt to the ever-changing way in which it’s told.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

You don’t need 20 years of experience to know what you are talking about!

When I entered the arena a little over 18 months ago, I’ll admit that I had huge imposter syndrome and cowered in the shadows of my social media profiles – scared to pull a tarot card and give my take on it, for fear of a fellow tarotist eye-rolling my lack of 20+ year experience and mocking my interpretation.

All good tarot readers will work with a spiritual team; our guided intuition is what makes a reading so accurate. Learning to trust what you see, hear or feel is the most significant stepping stone to becoming a good reader.

In one of my early written readings, I saw a lake of ducks, but the word I was getting was swans. Why show me ducks and call them swans?
My mediumship mentor taught me that even if something doesn’t make sense to you – it will probably have meaning to someone else, so do not change the message to make it fit. My client responded and said the message was utterly profound as she passes a lake on her way to work every day and watches the ducks land. It reminds her of a scene in the love story ‘The Notebook’, of swans landing on a lake – this was the love story she was looking for, for herself, so including this in her tarot reading had significant meaning to her.

In that moment, I learnt that it doesn’t take 20 years to become a good reader; it just takes courage to listen to your intuition.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.bunnyskaleidoscope.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bunnys_kaleidoscope/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bunnyskaleidoscope
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoe-rusga/