Well it’s mostly an academic religious term and for a lot of people those two things don’t go together for one reason or another. It’s sad because they both have a lot of benefits.

And yes on the tarot cards. I actually used them in a therapy session recently because I haven’t done it in a while and I feel like that’s pretty symbolic of my current life state.

It gave my therapist a lot to work with because she does EMDR and I basically started babbling about which people in my life resembled the court cards and events in my life that were similar to the pips and so on and so forth and her EMDR direction / redirection technique helped go in the right directions more consistently.

And no it’s not rude, I love TIL moments.

My honest recommendation is that you calculate your chart, then pick one thing in there that resonates with who you actually are, then emphasize that when the conversation comes up. The charts are long and messy with lots of different meanings mixed in for a reason. Even just between the sun, moon, and ascendant signs you should be able to find one of the three that describes you. If not you can look into the planet / house alignments or even just have the chart made sidereally.

It’s a small amount of information to memorize, then you can say,“oh my sun sign is Aires but honestly it’s my Libra ascendant that matters most of the time. I’m just always looking to make the world more equal.” It’ll both satisfy the person you’re communicating with while also providing them with a way to conceptualize your personality within their worldview (which is basically the entire point of dating, or even just vetting sexual partners).

For the uninitiated: You need your birth time to calculate your full astrological chart. There’s definitely a looot of crazy in the western esoteric mystery tradition (loose term for the religion-lite surrounding tarot, astrology, tea leaf reading, palmistry, etc). I should know, lol.

I spent about two years learning to interpret tarot cards as a regular introspective practice. Whenever you learn one thing though, you wind up learning about the others since they all use the same spiritual model (a lot of Christian influence, but highly syncretic with especially greco-roman mythology but also a touch of Babylonian, Zoroastrian, and new age Buddhism, all through the lens of four-element alchemy and kabbalah, although the specific mix varies highly from person to person).

So anyway I also wound up learning about, history, multiple religions, and symbolism of various symbols, plants and animals, gemstones, etc. It was fascinating and has the benefit of deterring pretentious men (although that’s less important now that I’ve picked one).