296. The Cultural Roots of Tarot with Sanyu Estelle
Tarot for the Wild Soul with Lindsay Mack
Lindsay Mack, founder of Tarot for the Wild Soul
4.9 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 15 August 2025
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Wow, what a gift to share this conversation with the legendary Sanyu Estelle, aka The Word Witch! Sanyu is writing an incredible book called "The Cultural Origins of Tarot," and needs our help and support to truly be able to dive in and do the extent of research on it that the book deserves!
Click here to support Sanyu's Indiegogo campaign for the book (which ends on August 18th!)
PS, if you're listening to this after the deadline to contribute to the campaign, no worries! There are other ways of sending support to Sanyu, and they are linked below in the show notes!
About Sanyu:
Sanyu Estelle is a Soothsayer, artist and writer who has been published by The New York Times, Row House Publishing, and Red Wheel/Weiser. Her work revolves around the subjects of ontology, sociology, history, and criminology as she explores the intersection of culture, politics, and spirituality. With 11+ years as a professional reader and existential advisor, she is known for giving clients "the reading they need, not (necessarily) the reading they want."
Currently completing her first full-length book, "The Cultural Roots of Tarot" (Red Wheel/Weiser, Fall 2026), Sanyu examines the deck's multicultural origins through rigorous and groundbreaking historical research. Known as "The Word Witch" due to her profound love for etymology and philology, she combines 15+ years of Daoist practice and 10+ years in Ifa tradition with academic grounding to offer perspectives that honor ancestral wisdom, cosmic coherence and that challenge colonial narratives.
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Transcript can be found on Spotify!
SANYU'S LINKS:
Website: https://www.sanyuestelle.com
Tarot Research Campaign: https://bit.ly/TarotsRoots
Instagram/Threads/TikTok/YouTube: @sanyuestelle
Ways to contribute to Sanyu outside of the Indiegogo campaign:
Venmo: @Sanyu-Estelle
Square: $Sanyu
PayPal: [email protected]
Zelle: [email protected]
LINDSAY'S LINKS:
Book an August/September Reading with Lindsay here!
Got Q's for Lindsay to answer on the podcast and beyond? Ask them here: https://www.tarotforthewildsoul.com/ask-lindsay
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PODCAST EDITOR: Chase Voorhees
PODCAST ART: Rachelle Sartini Garner
Honoring and acknowledging that this podcast episode was recorded on the unceded land of The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, currently called Portland, OR, with the deepest respect to the Kalapuya Tribe, Cowlitz Tribe, and Atfalati Tribe.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Tarot for the Wild Soul, a podcast that explores the tarot through an inclusive, soul-centered, trauma-informed perspective for growth, healing, and evolution. |
| 0:17.6 | I'm your host, Lindsay Mack. |
| 0:20.1 | Hello, sweet friends. Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here. |
| 0:25.7 | Wow. Do I have an incredible interview and conversation for you today? Remarkable. Incredible. |
| 0:33.9 | We are talking to, frankly, the legendary, Soniu Estelle. If you know her, you get it. She is |
| 0:40.5 | legendary. She is incredible. Been a fan of Sanyu's for forever. Sanyu is one of the original contributors |
| 0:48.0 | to Tara for the Wild Soul course 100 billion years ago and has been doing remarkable work for so many years, just an |
| 0:56.9 | extraordinary writer, an extraordinary terror worker, and San Yu is writing a book. It's been a very |
| 1:05.2 | special week over here at the podcast because just the last episode I published was an equally incredible conversation with |
| 1:14.6 | two also remarkable taro workers, Romani healers, Paulina Stevens, and Yasmina von |
| 1:23.6 | Thiel talking about their book Secrets of Romani Fortune Telling, which I truly believe that |
| 1:27.9 | every single person working with taro must have, both of those beings deserve to be completely |
| 1:35.4 | supported. And Son Yu also deserves, on behalf of the collective and the community of tarot readers that I know all of us are, |
| 1:48.1 | Son Yu really is deserving of our support. And we talk about that and so much more in this |
| 1:54.3 | conversation. Soniu is currently writing a book called The Cultural Roots of Tarot, which is set to be published by |
| 2:02.9 | Redwheel Weiser in the fall of 26. San Yu in this book is Ames and is examining the Dex |
| 2:12.7 | multicultural origins through rigorous and groundbreaking historical research, known as the |
| 2:19.3 | word which, due to her profound love of etymology and philology, she combines 15-plus years |
| 2:25.8 | of Taoist practice and 10-plus years in IFA tradition with academic grounding to offer |
| 2:31.2 | perspectives that honor ancestral wisdom, cosmic coherence, |
| 2:35.9 | and that challenge colonial narratives. So as we talk about in this episode, there is, of course, |
| 2:45.5 | one sort of linear idea of the historical origins of the tarot, but frankly, there really is not that much |
... |
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