We were lucky to catch up with Sansa Asylum recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sansa , thanks for joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I have been able to earn a full-time living doing creative work. I currently work 24/7 running a small event entertainment company in which I perform Magic, do psychic readings, and set up elaborate rental equipment that I designed and built myself. I run pricey advertising, so when I am not available for an event, I pass on the lead to anyone in my team of trusted performers and take a small cut. This cut usually covers the cost of advertising, making it possible for me to continue getting us all the event work that comes from running ads. I began this business about 15 years ago when I was still living in Oakland, working as a touring artist. I was a tap-dancing, singing accordion player for a very large touring show from roughly 2001-2012, with some breaks in the middle. During the world touring years, I still had some side jobs (some that I can’t mention here), and my rent was only $100 because I lived in amazing artist collective housing.
About 9 years ago, just before I moved to LA, is when I really started working on the business full-time. I took all of the event gigs I could, garnering massive amounts of positive reviews and creating an impressive internet presence and following. Then, when I moved to Los Angeles, I started reaching out to event production companies and very, very slowly made connections and built the lovely business I have now. I also couldn’t have done it without my supportive, reliable, talented and unique friends who have showed up on time for our events and made us all look good!

Sansa, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started performing as a musical artist when I was 14. I played lead guitar in a psychobilly band. Made my own costumes, danced around, etc. I felt like a natural performer. Wild, creative, and passionate. At the age of 18, I fell in love with the Accordion. I was only about 21 when I started touring with the big show as their accordion player. I was extremely lucky and honored to be chosen by them, especially at such a young age. Although I had always felt directed by a deep sense of connectedness and mysticism in my life, It wasn’t until around age 28 that I found out I was an extremely talented clairvoyant psychic. Fast forward to now, my very extreme passion for performing, mysticism, music, magic, community, art, costuming, and psychology has culminated into everything I do.
As a Magician, I go by “Sansa the Singing Mind Reader”, a rhinestone be-decked psychic magician, who practices mentalism, mind-reading, and classic magic of all types. She is available for roaming magic at events and stage shows. I make my own costumes, props, and illusions, including the beaded fringe chandelier dress shown in the photo.
As a psychic reader, I have private clients, but I mostly do readings at events in elaborate costumes that I make myself. I also offer extremely detailed fortune teller tents that clients can rent along with my services. The tents are really out of this world beautiful, and range anywhere in size from 16 to 100 square feet. Because of the great range of sizes, I bring the tents, along with my psychic readings, to very large scale music festivals, corporate events, weddings and even some small events. All of them are handmade and designed by me. A couple people have tried to copy my designs, but I keep ahead of them because I’m always making new ones!
My third endeavor is necessary due to my passion for learning, consciousness studies, and helping people through spiritual counseling. I’m currently in grad school to become a licensed marriage and family therapist. In the meantime, I just secured a job at a clinic run by a doctor of psychotherapy who very recently hired me as his new intuitive life coach. It is a great bridge between psychic readings and clinical therapy, because I’m able to use my intuitive talent to help clients in an ongoing supportive environment that can slowly and steadily create real change much more effectively than a few psychic readings can.
The only thing I’m currently missing is travel!! I’m hoping to tour more, but it’s a bit hard to do while being in school full-time, having regular online clients, and running all the business stuff.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect is feeling appreciated for just being my authentic self. I love creating, I love building community around Art, music and performance, and I love everything that I do. But, it is still not an easy journey. The greatest reward of all of my hard work is really just being able and allowed to live in this world as my authentic self, making a living doing what I decided to do, and definitely not doing what anybody else told me I should do! Whenever things get rough, and I feel overwhelmed, I bring myself back to the simple joy of just being. We are all vessels for a beautiful, divine energy, each a unique expression of the same source. I have always felt deeply led by this mystical and exciting force. And, as hard as the work can be sometimes, I’m always grateful that I’ve been able to grow up and become an adult who gets to do what I love to do and watch it’s effect on people. I am also very grateful for all of the kind humans who have come into my life and been genuinely loving and appreciative of me.

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

Learning to love myself and go easy on myself was the hardest thing to learn because of all of the messages I received and believed early on in my childhood and into my teen years. I had to unlearn a lot of messaging around my own self-worth and basically invent and build my own sense of Self from the ground up. It took a lot of unlearning, a lot of strength, a lot of resilience, and a lot of surviving. Part of why I am a good counselor, part of why my art is deep and wild and beautiful, and part of why I have so much conviction to help others is because I’ve been through so much myself. Things so dark that no one will ever know about them. I think the most important thing for people like me to learn is the ferocious power of simply our own self-worth.

Contact Info:

• Website: MysticalTarotTent.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/sansa_asylum
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/xdz-5MGARLQ?si=7hUHL_9X29vIsxzB

Image Credits
Deevolutionary Photography