YouandTheTarot

  A very sad card in the tarot is the Five of Cups - called the Spilled Milk card. The body language captures that human tragedy of regret.  Over and over I hear from clients for tarot readings how they wish they could turn back the clock to their college years. They would have invested less in chasing high grades and put more in launching a business right there in college. Oh, they have no illusions about being able back then to have produced an end result like Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook.  As most of us know, while in the dorm at Harvard Zuckerberg picked up on a gap: Students needed a way to communicate with each other internally. My clients have a hunch that they too could have figured out where the gap was in student life or in the big world out there.  Since they had no intention of going on to professional programs such in law, medicine or business, there was no need for all those As. And now here they are: scared white collar employees who could be lopped off...

  Three mysticism shops closed down. And a fourth seems to be have slow traffic. That's a major development in this small Southeastern city of 45,000 in Arizona. My cousin in a large East Coast city reports that two of the psychic centers near him seem goners. And, to my inner businessperson, that's a sign that the recession is here. How I'm not only hanging on but thriving providing tarot readings is that my brand is: no-nonsense. The tone is compassionate. But the content is pragmatic. No, I don't deliver a toxic dose of empathy.  For example, those out of work need income. My edict: Grab work, whatever brings in money. Then you go on from there. I am committed to the old-fashioned wisdom of Nothing gets you work like having work.  In addition, I bill what you can afford. I recognize that for many of you a tarot session is the clarity you need.  How do I read the energy in the economy? Not good. The downturn will worsen. UPDATE: Another type of recession indicator ...

My immigrant family came to the New Country because it was the land of opportunity. Embedded in that positioning was this: It was up to you to go out and make things happen. Not ambitious enough? You wound up on public assistance and was shamed. That same early 20th century value system dominates right now. That's even amidst: Wage deflation, which The Wall Street Journal documents isn't pretty. Extreme employment insecurity. If you're fortunate enough to laid another job, Indeed reports that'll take about five months. And, see above, the new job will probably pay less than your previous one. For the over-50, Pro Publica has been telling us for years that only one in 10 of you will earn comparable compensation of the job you were pushed out of. The great unknowns associated with generative AI. Already in the legal sector, chair of elite law firm Paul Weiss Brad Karp has gone on record indicating that Gen AI could eliminate the jobs of junior lawyers. The low hanging f...

  In the tarot, which dates back to at least the 14th century, The Lovers is a major card. The nuances of navigating romantic relationships have been a compelling concern for humanity for a  long time. At least until recently. In a very long-form essay The Wall Street Journal reflects on what might become known as The End of Dating. The reality is that more than 50% of females between 18 and 40 are single. And more of them have thrown in the towel on seeking out a romantic relationship. Here's a snapshot of what's trending: "For young women especially, who tout ... off-the-market status on TikTok and other social media, the focus has shifted toward self-improvement, friendship and the ability to find happiness on their own. Surveys show a decline in teenage relationships, and Gen Z is having less sex than previous generations, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." That means that many business sectors associated with any aspect of ro...

A brutal lesson: Don't use references to literature in tarot readings. When I alluded to "The Great Gatsby" with a woman in her 30s, there was a glaze-over.  Lost to me was a communications tool I had invested so much in learning about. Back in the days when there was blind faith in higher education I matriculated for a Ph.D. in literature and linguistics. Essentially, that has become an overall liability. Of course, I have plenty of company in this pain of losing what had defined so much of us.  Those erudite management consultants no longer have a market for theory. Prospects demand concrete solutions they can implement quickly. Hold the bulked-up slide decks.  Also, less and less marketable is old tech. That is, pre generative AI. Scroll through professional anonymous network Blind and it's a journey through the corridor of employment insecurity. Federal civil service is no longer respected. And, once progressive law firms such as Paul Weiss are going through an id...

The Trump administration's Executive Order, predictably, has delivered a negative impact to the business of law firm Paul Weiss. According to iconoclast conservative Steve Bannon that's exactly the administration's intention.   On the Real America's Voice's War Room Bannon said : " ... he's [Donald Trump] going to put those law firms out of business. Let me repeat this. There's major law firms ... what we are trying to do is put you out of business and bankrupt you. Just so you understand it." Today, reports Bloomberg Law News : "An executive [Steven Schwartz] facing federal bribery charges fired his lawyers [Ted Wells and Roberto Finzi] at Paul Weiss days after President Donald Trump targeted the firm in an executive order." The case, filed by the Department of Justice, is "USA v Colburn, et al." Allegedly Schwartz, when a former senior official at Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp, made a "pay off" in India relatin...

 Bombs bursting in air ... Last week those included the Dow Jones plunge, good guy Paul Weiss losing its security clearance and GDP down to an estimated 2%. Here it is heading into evening Sunday and the uneasiness builds about what bombs could go off this week.  That feeling is exactly what we used to experience when the weekend existed. Remember that? We could stay out late Friday night. Not set the alarm for Saturday. Maybe do a day trip. Brunch somewhere Sunday.  Watch a game. Play a game. Then as the sun was setting our moods darkened.  We knew: Back to setting the alarm clock. Monday was all about the whatevers that went into making a good living. Even on the shifting-back-to-normal early morning start the bombing could start. Cute, they even instituted back then firing you on Monday instead of a Friday. That was supposed to be a humane gesture to provide the whole week for the axed to search for another job. Current Sunday evenings an even worse sense of dread...

 Paul Weiss has been the tipping point.  The Executive Order by the current administration - the third issued - got to us. How vulnerable we all are to power. Forget the grade school lessons about what America is about. Forget how university deans caved during our counterculture protests.  Yes, and forget "rights"  as being sacred. Here's what we now know. The key driven in that EO was that a lawyer who had been a partner at Paul Weiss years ago - Mark Pomerantz - had landed on the US President's enemies list. Of course there were other things about Paul Weiss, such as its mission for diversity, which didn't sit well with MAGA ideology. But that stuff probably was small potatoes. Pomerantz was the trouble spot. How obvious it became: We are all Paul Weiss.  Conversations I have with tarot-card clients, what I read in the media and what's turning up on professional anonymous networks Reddit and Fishbowl scream one message: Everyone can be a target for politica...

During this volatile time you probably will get lost. Several times. The trick is not to panic. If you do you could self-destruct. Strength, openness to possibility and hope come from not making wandering in the abyss worse. Here's what I have to say about that on Substack. Thriving in difficult times starts from the inside. Tarot Readings. Intuitive Coaching. Mediumship. Remote and in-person. Pay what you can afford. For confidential complimentary consultation please contact Jane Genova at 203-468-8579 (text, voice)   or janegenova374@gmail.com .

Is the compulsion to be right imprinted in the DNA of the human species? If so, what does it take to override it? Way too often I encounter in tarot readings how professionals upend their career by choosing to be right in interactional matters at work. Those have no linkage to strategy or operations. Their choice? They could have just ignored. That's even if objectively the others were wrong. The matter is not important.  For example, in discussing the current administration, a few are spouting incorrect facts. Among them are superiors. The person makes it their mission to correct. That does not go over well. Unfortunately, this is a pattern. And it's about relationships. Not business. But it shapes - negatively - careers in business.  Psychotherapist Julia Gregson, based in southeastern Arizona, noted that in relationships there is "no objective reality." To insist on it can undermine, for instance, a marriage. Her quip is: Do you want to be married or do you want to...

  During the Industrial Revolution chronicler of that brutal era - novelist Charles Dickens - decided that the only way through was this: the milk of human kindness. He himself had been badly roughed up in his youth. At a tender age his parents sent him to work in a factory. Dickens never forgot the humiliation. There weren't institutions to turn to, only fellow human beings. Our time is being called The New World Order. The whole essence of getting, holding and moving on to better jobs is collapsing. And there aren't enough institutions to help ease the transition. What had gone before - all those progressive social justice initiatives - are being dismantled.  I vividly recall one of them. That was the free digital Covid relief project. Chair of law firm Paul Weiss Brad Karp mobilized thousands of lawyers at firms throughout the US to work pro bono to set up an online resource where people and businesses, blindsided by the plague, could find help. When I blogged about that am...

  Are the ambitious a menace in organizations?  Too often they are one-dimensionally focused on achieving their professional goals, not moving the dial on those of the organization. Functioning as a stand-alone closed system they can gum up the works. Along the way they usually derail their own careers. For instance, the joke in elite law firms is that grinders finish last.  On Substack I discuss the plight of the ambitious. What can turn around the situation is being roughed up. That can happen at the onset of a career or in middle age as with the late Lee Iacocca. The former iconic GE professional training institution Crontonville is said only to have admitted employers who already had been knocked around. In interviewing at professional schools law firms such as Skadden, Simpson and Paul and management consulting ones such as McKinsey, Boston Consulting and Deloitte should ask: How ambitious are you? Should the answer be very, the applicants should be rejected out-rig...

  "I don't want my children to go through what I have in trying to keep my tech career propped up." Essentially that's what parents have been telling psychics like myself. In addition to empathy for what they've been endured professionally, they want us to project where the work will be in the future.  Well, not even those of us who channel into current energy force fields can guarantee those will be sustainable. There are too many intersecting variables. I for one do agree with The Wall Street Journal that there has been a shift away from the overall tech sector and toward more creative and people-oriented lines of work. Some major names in tech are actually steering their offspring from replicating their career paths. But no one, at least not anyone who doesn't want to sound foolish, is forecasting where demand will be once those children are ready to start to earn a living.  The reality is that pendulums are always swinging. When I get concrete in career g...

  "I was reeling. I had just been laid off. Yes, early that morning. Never saw it coming. And, that evening, a few in my 12-step group congratulated me. Said that now I could now begin a new journey." A client shared that trauma during an emergency tarot-reading session.  This horror is not atypical. Not in 2025.  More and more organizations which are billed as anything from vibration-raising to support pile on various forms of toxic positivity. Essentially the message is: View things optimistically or else. The group doesn't tolerate any shade of inner darkness. And it gets off the hook on having to provide authentic empathy. Toxic positivity is the worst kind of emotional bullying because it's imposed on people going through flashpoints in their life.  I have a hunch: This harsh push onto the sunny side of the street might be becoming an epidemic because human beings are unable to get their heads around the new order of things. That extreme shift extends from knowl...

In the tarot the predator card is represented by the miscreant making off with swords. Swords symbolize the ability of the human intellect. And so much of mankind's inhumanity to each other takes the form of cognitive manipulation and downright oppression.  In too many of tarot sessions clients recount to me the cruel mental arrogance of superiors, co-workers, the smug, the wealthy, dean/professors in higher education and more. Until recently the best guidance I could offer was how clients could insulate themselves from those kinds of mind games.  Now, with the old order coming down - represented in the tarot by the Death card - those platforms for arrogance could collapse.  Unemployment, with no way back to that career path, will do it. Did you ever observe a former professional who's been out of work for two years? Beyond humbled. More like broken. Reduction of power and influence has the same sort of impact. When a corporation is acquired the brass at the conquered vis...

  "I couldn't even get one of those home-care assignments, helping the elderly with daily tasks." That's what a client with advanced degrees blurted out during a tarot reading session. What was obvious to me is they had put the value on their expensively trained cognitive ability, not fundamental human traits such as intuitive listening, empathy, patience and lifting moods.  Right now, as AI takes over more and more complex knowledge work, there's a shrinking market for individual brilliance. In a seminal essay in Bloomberg this weekend, Azeem Azhar poses this question for both professionals and organizations:  "What will you do when intelligence itself is suddenly ubiquitous and practically free?" AI is plenty smart and getting smarter all the time. Azhar points out that work as we have known it had been organized and rewarded based on the assumption that the number of authentically brilliant minds is limited. Pre-AI employers competed aggressively to h...