Written by Chelsey Pippin Mizzi
Illustrations by Aaron Lopez-Barrantes
Some say the tarot reveals the future. Others say it exposes truths you might not be ready to face…
I say: it tells stories.
And if you’ve found your way here, it’s because you’re ready for a new story.
So: Take a breath. Imagine the soft shuffle of cards, the whisper of pages waiting to be turned. Let your shoulders drop. Let your curiosity rise. This is a reading for readers — a divination designed to deliver your next great literary adventure. The cards drawn will reveal tales meant for you, each one chosen with care by a tarot reader, author, and former librarian who knows the power of a well-timed tome.
The first card turns: The Devil
The book: Huis clos by Jean-Paul Sartre
Heat radiates from the table as the Devil lands — horned, theatrical, impossible to ignore. In the card, two figures stand chained and naked, watched over by a demon. It’s a card of entrapment, of distorted desire, of patterns that seduce us into staying stuck.
The same dark gravity pulls at No Exit, Sartre’s famous one-act play. Three characters. One locked room, sans issue. “L’enfer, c’est les autres.” Hell is other people.
The Devil doesn’t carry resolution or condemnation, just a clear-eyed acknowledgement that each of us is capable of being the architect of our own worst nightmares. And Sartre delivers the same message with a sting. Still, unlike the doomed cast, your exit is simple — just turn the final page.
The next card: Six of Pentacles
The book: Le Chapeau de Mitterrand by Antoine Laurain
The scene softens, and gleams. The Six of Pentacles is the card of exchange — giving and receiving, charity and pride, generosity tinged with power.
So it is with Laurain’s whimsical, sharply observed novel. One evening, a man accidentally walks off with the hat of former president François Mitterrand. Several twists of fate follow. The hat travels from head to head across Paris, invoking confidence, confrontation, clarity. For some, it’s a gift. For others, a test.
The card and the book ask the same question: What does it cost to receive? What happens when you’re suddenly the one with power in your hands — or resting just above your brow?
The final card: Three of Swords
The book: Réparer les vivants by Maylis de Kerangal
A gasp. A storm. A heart pierced clean through by a trio of blades. The Three of Swords never arrives quietly. It marks grief, yes, but also precision, clarity, the sudden truth of what really matters.
In Kerangal’s novel, translated into English as The Heart, a teenage boy dies. The eponymous organ — still whole, still alive — must be carried forward. From mother to doctor to recipient, the novel traces the sacred chain of loss and life renewed.
Like the card, it cuts deep. But de Kerangal also offers us something rare: a kind of healing. A reminder that we are stitched together not just by what breaks us, but by what we choose to give in the aftermath.
The deck stills and the candles burn lower, but the stories beckon: a future full of new pages, ready for you to turn the next one.
This article originally appeared in Issue 1 of SOUVENIR Magazine, which you purchase here. Annual subscriptions can also be purchased on our website.
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“This is a reading for readers — a divination designed to deliver your next great literary adventure.”
That feels playful and a little mystical — as if the right book is already on its way to you, just waiting for the moment you’re ready to open it.