Whether we call it magic, prayer, intention, or simply mindfulness, there is power in how we show up in our lives. It’s often just a matter of how much we’re actually paying attention.
In this delightful and seasonally appropriate conversation with tarot reader and witch Julie Miller, we talk about what it means to embrace the magic of the everyday activities that so many of us pour our love and intention into: cooking, gardening, crafts, and whispers to the universe.
We also touch on the misery of denying our own authenticity, the freedom and joy of being who we really are, and Julie offers a nice little tarot reading for the end of October.
Or, listen wherever you listen to podcasts!
Connect with Julie
Visit her website and sign up for Caffeinated Tarot
Follow Julie on Instagram @Salt_and_crow
Resources, References, and Links:
Phyllis Curott – The Book of Shadows. Julie’s first book on witchcraft!
Practical Magic: “There’s a little witch in all of us.” 1998 movie starring Sandra Bullock and Nichole Kidman that gave me and so many other teeny-boppers and aspiring witches LIFE back in the day.
Andrea Leda – a beautiful, magical, amazing coach who I deeply respect and is helping me continue to birth my coaching business and this podcast!
Trout Lake Abbey. B&B, zen center, and druid sanctuary near Mt. Adams in Washington state. Highly recommended treating yourself to a few days’ visit.
The Great Work of Your Life by Stephen Cope.
Dharma. Honestly, I’m going to just suggest that you read Stephen Cope’s book to understand this concept, but it’s a way of thinking about/approaching/understanding what it means to live into our calling or duty or reason for being.
Tarot Cards. Julie pulled the Ace of Swords and the Eight of Swords. I staged a dramatic reenactment at home using one of my favorite tarot decks (Ethereal Visions) so that you could get a visual. Except, the Eight in my deck is a bit different, so please just pretend she’s stepping into water!
Transcript
Note: this transcript was generated by AI and lightly edited by me. Please forgive any malapropisms and misspellings. It’s the robot’s fault!
Julie Miller: I like little rituals. I mean, lighting a candle, setting an intention when you light it, the flame, watching the flame, saying the intention over and over, blowing it out and watching the smoke take it out into the universe, that’s a ritual. That’s magic. That’s spell casting. Cooking is spellwork, right? Needlework is spellwork. You are combining things to make something else, and you’re doing it with intention. Hmm.
[Intro & transition]
Hello, my darling dear. I have a seasonally appropriate episode for you. This week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Julie Miller, tarot reader and self proclaimed witch. She’s a fucking delight. And we had a beautiful, long, rambly conversation that I have judiciously edited down to an hour instead of the, like, 90 plus minutes that we were chitchatting. And even if you are not listening to this anywhere near Halloween or Samhain or Spooky season, it’s still appropriate. Because what we’re talking about is everyday witchcraft, what it means to bring magic into our lives on a daily basis. And it’s all about intention, y’all.
And for those of you witchy and woo woo skeptics, I invite you to listen with an open ear. Because honestly, it all comes down to intentionality and whispering our hopes and dreams into the universe. And I honestly don’t think you have to believe in it for it to work. That’s my take. That’s my two cents. But as I’ve mentioned many times before on this podcast, I’m pretty woo woo. And I do believe in all this shit. And it was really fun to have a conversation with someone who is further along the path of magic than I am. And so I hope that you get a little bit of magic out of this, too, and maybe a little bit of permission to tap into that lovely bit of practical magic witchery that is in each and every one of us.
[transition music]
Julie Miller: Who am I today? I’m a lot of things. And the cool thing is, is that as I evolve, I become more things. And I love that. I love that about. I love that for me. You know, next week, maybe I’ll be a french pastry chef. No, I won’t. They like to measure. I don’t like to measure. Just dump it in and mix it up.
Cate Blouke: So are you a cook?
Julie Miller: No.
Cate Blouke: Oh, no, you’re neither.
Julie Miller: I mean, I can’t cook. Do I want to? No. So, you know, who am I? I mean, I am a lost soul, bound. And the reason I was lost is because when you deny who you are for so long, when you deny what you are, when you deny your soul’s calling and you try to fit yourself, you shave off. You know, I look at myself as a square peg, and I try to shave off those edges to fit into that round hole, and it just feels so icky. So, you know, who am I? Who do I want to be? That’s who I am.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. Okay. You’re also an entrepreneur.
Julie Miller: I am.
Cate Blouke: And a witch.
Julie Miller: This is true. This is true. And a neighbor and a gardener and a tarot reader. Tarot reader. And, you know, a thrift shopper. And so there’s a lot of things that I am, but I think the biggest thing that I am is just somebody who’s really evolving.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. I really want to dive into what it means to be a witch.
Julie Miller: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: When did you discover your witchiness?
Julie Miller: Oh, years ago. Decades. I was a kid. I probably came out of the womb stirring a cauldron.
Cate Blouke: Okay, so what. So what makes somebody a witch in the modern era? What is witchcraft?
Julie Miller: I think that there’s probably a lot of definitions, how I would define it. It is not what I do. It is who I am.
Cate Blouke: Okay, so witch. Being a witch isn’t about cauldrons, necessarily.
Julie Miller: No, no.
Cate Blouke: All right.
Julie Miller: No, it is more of a way that I connect to myself, tap into the universe. It is who I am. It is my way of life. It just is. I mean, I would think so. Magic to me. And you don’t have to do magic in order to be considered a witch.
Cate Blouke: Okay, so you don’t have to do magic.
Julie Miller: No, I find, you know, I can and do spellcraft, but it’s not what you think. What? It’s not what the movies portray.
Cate Blouke: It’s not I of Newt, toe of frog. Something wicked this way comes.
Julie Miller: No, it’s just a very deep intention in how I approach things. Everything from the way I pick my coffee mug in the morning to the words that I whisper into that steaming cup of life, you know, to standing outside of my garden barefoot. You know, it is just. It’s a way of life. It’s. I approach things really intentionally to create a ripple out into the universe of good energy. Just like, how would somebody describe themselves as being, you know, a child prodigy? And I’m not a child prodigy. I’m not saying that. But you just are. You’re born with certain things.
Cate Blouke: Okay. So like, I’m so excited and fascinated about this because, you know, like I’m so. I have, I was for some time in the closet with my witchy shit interest, but in recent years have been more overtly. But I describe it as witchy shit or I’m pretty woo. I like crystals. I pull tarot cards. So I’m really curious about this distinction between what makes someone a witch? Like, am I a witch? And didn’t realize it. Is it about claiming ownership of witchiness?
Julie Miller: Like surprise ending plot twist? Yeah.
Cate Blouke: Okay.
Julie Miller: I couldn’t, I could not tell you if I have a lineage of witches. Yeah, pretty sure I do. Because there’s been some signs, but like, I don’t, I don’t know what, like, my familial heritage is. Right. I come from a very small family. My father, he passed away when I was eleven. I never met his family. Like, his parents died when he was like 13. You know, all. I met one aunt from his siblings, you know, so I wasn’t ever exposed to like the lore. Right, right.
Cate Blouke: So this isn’t a family thing that has been passed down through the generations?
Julie Miller: No. In fact, my mother.
Cate Blouke: You don’t have a grimoire?
Julie Miller: No. My mother said when I was about three, I would talk to her about things and she finally, like, I would say things like when I was here before. Oh, three years old. When I was here before, she’s like, what do you mean when I was here before? And these people were my parents. And what she recognized was that I was talking about reincarnation, past lives. And then I started having a, I guess what you could call premonitions. And you know how you think of a song and it comes on the radio?
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: Only worse than that. Scary things. Scary, scary, scary things. There was a. I’ll tell a really brief story. My father had already passed away. I was on a trip to Vancouver, BC with my mom and her best friend. And then one of my little girlfriends. I was maybe twelve, and we were sitting in a diner restaurant right off the main highway. And I started shaking and crying and I’m like, it’s bad, it’s bad, it’s bad. My mom’s like, what are you talking about? The food hasn’t arrived. And I’m like, it’s bad. It’s bad. There’s blood. It’s bad. And she’s like, what is wrong with you? There was a head on collision right out in front of the diner, and she’s like, she had to get me out of there. She had to rush me out of there. So it was things like that, and she would say things to me like, don’t be weird.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: So what do you do? You don’t want to be weird when you’re a teenager.
Cate Blouke: No. And especially not if you’re getting the messaging at home to not be weird.
Julie Miller: You lock that shit away real tighten. Yeah. So, you know, I stopped, like, trying to develop anything. Had an interest in tarot. She did buy me. She did buy me some tarot cards, and she bought me a book about devil worshipping.
Cate Blouke: Oh, like an encourage. Like, how to devil worship.
Julie Miller: Yeah, I just remember the. I remember the COVID of it, and there was something. I was like, these two things, it doesn’t feel like they go together, so this isn’t for me. And I just threw it away. Right. But then the mixed message of, but don’t tell anybody.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: You know, I think she was trying to appease her daughter, who had lost her father, you know, a teenage girl who had lost her father. So it’s like, here, shut up. Go away, kid. You know, take these tarot cards in this devil worshipping book and run along. You know, what harm could it do? Well, it did a lot of harm in that I locked away everything. And then you fast forward. I’d got, you know, married, two children, divorced. And then I was dating a man, and he was incredible, and he was very spiritually. He had come from a very deep, organized religion and had walked away from it. But he was very spiritually inclined, and he said, we were walking through a bookstore one day, and he said, I think you’re a witch. And I was like, no, that’s crazy.
Cate Blouke: So did he not. So had you been secretly reading tarot this whole time?
Julie Miller: No, no.
Cate Blouke: It just all got locked in the.
Julie Miller: It got locked in the vault. This was 25 years ago.
Cate Blouke: Okay.
Julie Miller: We went down the, you know, the spiritual aisle, and literally a book fell at my feet.
Cate Blouke: Oh, my.
Julie Miller: Yeah, the book just literally fell off the shelf. And it was a woman named Phyllis Carot. She is an attorney turned advocate turned high priestess. Come to find out, she’s amazing. And she became my first teacher. The book is called a book of shadows. And I was like, I found a home there, but I never. I joined a cuban was awful. And. Yeah. And then I said, no. I think this introvert needs to just, if she’s going to practice, she needs to be a solitary witch.
Cate Blouke: Okay.
Julie Miller: I love community. I love community now, but I love the idea of a community. But I didn’t like, I didn’t like organized sports. I drop out of courses that you have to do a group project. I don’t want to be in a coven.
Cate Blouke: Okay.
Julie Miller: Right. So I practice on my own.
Cate Blouke: So what does that mean if it’s not spellcraft?
Julie Miller: Just a really intentional way of living? When I’m washing my dishes, it’s with intention. There’s, these dishes have held food that have nourished me or nourished my family. If my grandkids come over, I’m feeding my dogs or whatever. There’s… Cooking is spellwork, right? Needlework is spellwork. You are combining things to make something else, and you’re doing it with intention. Hmm. Yeah.
Cate Blouke: I mean, is that kind of the core of it is witchery?
Julie Miller: It is. And there’s all sorts of witches. There’s a kitchen witch, and there’s a hedge witch, and there’s a garden witch, and, you know, then there’s the ones that really do big rituals, and I’m. I’m not that. That ain’t me.
Cate Blouke: Right.
Julie Miller: I like little rituals. I mean, lighting a candle, setting an intention. When you light it, the flame, watching the flame, saying the intention over and over, blowing it out and watching the smoke take it out into the universe, that’s a ritual. That’s magic. That’s spell casting.
Cate Blouke: Okay. I’ve got a big smile on my face.
Julie Miller: I see that. Yeah.
Cate Blouke: I’m super delighted by this. And, I mean, I guess I’m just curious, like, for you, what makes that, like, what’s yummy and appealing about that being witchcraft as opposed to, say, just mindfulness or spirituality?
Julie Miller: I think. Because, like I said, it’s not something I do, it’s who I am. And so I think that is just, there’s a fine line that’s very nuanced. You know, you could call yourself a witch and be totally different than I am.
Cate Blouke: Right.
Julie Miller: You know, and that’s okay. I think that we each have our own definition. I’m not. I’m not a real rule follower. Even though I’m a virgo, I’m not a rule follower.
Cate Blouke: I never would have picked that up from our 20 minutes of conversation.
Julie Miller: Just not a rule follower. And so I don’t believe that it has to be any one way. I think that line from, you know, practical magic that every woman who thinks she’s a witch or wants to be a witch, has watched multiple times. There’s a little witch in all of us, or there’s a little magic in all of us. I think it’s. There’s a little witch in all of us.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: And it’s so true, you know? And I think the difference is I live my life with the intention that I am a witch. And so I approach things from that lens, just like somebody who is Catholic would approach it from that legend. And I don’t want to mix in religion into it, but that’s the easiest way. You know, Catholics do.
Cate Blouke: Like, I am a sober person in recovery. Right. That is that I can relate there certainly, of that. Like, that is a way of being in a world that involves abstaining from drugs and alcohol, but also sort of showing up in service and being in gratitude, and there’s kind of a lot to it. So being a witch, what I’m hearing is kind of an identity of being in the world and a way of seeing the world. And so I want to circle back a little bit to sort of, you say there’s a little magic in everyone, or there’s a little witch in everyone. What does that mean to you?
Julie Miller: It’s available to all of us. It’s available. It is truly available. And I think that because I have known this about myself, even though maybe I didn’t deny it, I just pushed it away because I was told to push it away. Right. There has always been this deep longing in me. I always felt like I never truly belonged anywhere. When I was in school, you know, high school, when I got married, any of that. I never felt this deep sense of groundedness, even though I’m a double virgo. Right? And that’s where that Sagittarius came in that I didn’t discover for a really long time. I didn’t know my moon and my rising. And it’s that dichotomy of being very, very grounded and very much needing a place to be grounded, but also needing to be out there in the world, like, needing to explore, needing to travel. I’ve always had this deep, deep, deep sense of wanderlust, but I’ve always will opt to stay home. It’s really confusing, right?
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: But I think that had I tapped into that sooner, I mean, I tapped into it when it was time, but had I tapped into that sooner, I would have recognized that working within the craft of being a witch and knowing what that means to me, I’m earth first. I try to be very mindful of the earth that we live in. I try to be very mindful that the trees have power, that animals can be familiars, that they speak to us, that they’re not lesser than we are. I believe there’s messages being sent to me all the time. Some of them are mine, some of them. No.
Cate Blouke: 100%. Yeah. I mean, I’m listening, and I’m like, I relate to a lot of this.
Julie Miller: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: So what do you mean by magic?
Julie Miller: Yeah. I mean, magic is a belief that has intention and then action behind it. Right. Okay, so there’s magic in everything. Plant a seed. Watch it grow.
Cate Blouke: That’s magic, dude, seriously, I was not a garden person until I moved to Portland.
Julie Miller: So, yeah, plant something.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. There’s flowers everywhere around here.
Julie Miller: It’s magical.
Cate Blouke: I could grow those. So I planted dahlias for the first time this year, and I’m like, oh, my God, this is amazing. On my desk that I have not murdered.
Julie Miller: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: That is thriving. I even repotted it.
Julie Miller: Oh, my gosh.
Cate Blouke: Because it grew, like.
Julie Miller: Because it grew. Because you’re loving it and you’re taking care of it, and that’s magical. I have a friend who is newly pregnant, and I told her that. She’s like, I just. I can’t think about the hustle right now. She’s a career woman. She’s like, I just can’t think about. I’m not in my hustle eradic. And I said, girl, you’re building a human in your body. Your priority. It’s totally changed, you know? And so we think about. I think that being able to take an intention and give it what it needs, like birthing a business. Magical. If you birth the business, you’re a witness.
Cate Blouke: Oh, well, shit.
Julie Miller: Hey, you’re welcome. Yeah. You’re also a mother. You birthed something. You took it from seed to fruition. That’s mothering. Right. And there’s tenderness and there’s teaching and all of that. And so I just. The way I practice magic is through being very intentional about the things that I do, putting that tea together. When Andrea asked me for a tea for the…,
Cate Blouke: For listeners, I just got back from a really beautiful…
Julie Miller: I forgot we weren’t just having a conversation!
Cate Blouke: Yeah. So I just got back from a really beautiful coaching retreat, and sort of my coach is how I connected with Julie, and she made us some tea to drink over the course of the weekend.
Julie Miller: Yeah. And putting that together, if you think that that was not infused with intention and magic and you just thought it was tea, that’s great. But I can tell you, whatever you did with it, that’s for you. But I can tell you that every ingredient that I put in it, the bowl that it was in, the. The way I infused it, the words that I spoke over it, the music I had playing, the candles that were burning, the sigil that I drew on, the bag that I gave to her. I don’t even. She didn’t even ask me what the sigil was. It was the room for prosperity, you know? And everything was infused with intention. Everything. I even told her how to serve it. Whether she did that or not, I don’t know. But I said, you know, if you want to make a ritual out of this, because that’s the other piece of what I do at these tiny rituals, built a business around it, and if you want to make a ritual out of it, here’s how to serve it, you know? And it’s just the things that I do are done with intention.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: The mundane things that I do are done with intention. When I get. When I get in my car and I put my key into the ignition. That’s the word. I’m like the steering wheel. Yeah. Okay. The ignition, I just say, keep me safe. That’s a spell. It’s setting an intention.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. So I’m curious if you see, I mean, listening to you say that. Right. I’m thinking, like, it is similar to saying a prayer. And I’m wondering, for those of us listeners, anyone who’s religious, apologies for what I’m about to say in advance. Right. Maybe that’s a false distinction. I don’t know. So, for me, I go through my day kind of like having a conversation with the universe, because I don’t believe in a particular deity. I like a lot of different ones.
Julie Miller: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: I think they’re all great.
Julie Miller: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: And so I guess I’m just wondering, what’s the difference between a spell and a prayer in the way that you’re describing it, the word that you use?
Julie Miller: Okay, that’s it. The word that you use.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: You know, I could say, you know, like, okay, there’s a second hurricane just hit, right? Devastating. And I have friends that live in North Carolina, so Helene was, you know, I was texting him all weekend. Right. Tell me you’re okay. Tell me you’re okay. What’s happening? And I could say, I’ll send you prayers. And it means the same thing to me, that I’m sending an intentional spell to him that he’s safe, that the bubble around him is safe. You know, so it’s the same. I intertwine those words. I have no problem intertwining those words. But just like I wouldn’t say I’m, you know, if I was a practicing christian. It’s the same way when I say, well, I’m a practicing witch, I just come at it from a different viewpoint. I think it’s. I think it’s one and the same. I think Wicca of the earth. I don’t necessarily identify as Wiccan. I just identify as a witch. I just. I’m a witch just like I’m a female, just like I’m a virgo, just like I’m a mom. It’s just on the resume of, you know, just like I’m irish, you know, it’s just part of who I am. And I think that. I don’t know that I could trace it back. I would love to. I don’t know that I need to.
Cate Blouke: Right. Well, and, I mean, it sounds like what I’m hearing is that it’s not necessarily about a matrilineal lineage of witches. Right.
Julie Miller: No.
Cate Blouke: And I’m just sitting here. I’m curious. So I went, there’s a really lovely spiritual retreat center called Trout Lake Abbey. That is a buddhist center and a druid sanctuary. Yeah. I went to a lovely kind of yoga and art retreat out there last May, and I think that was when I discovered I’m a druid, which I don’t totally know what that means, but they kind of honor the earth, and I worship a variety of deities.
Julie Miller: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: And I’m like, yeah, I’m into this.
Julie Miller: Yeah, absolutely. I think.
Cate Blouke: And then I’m sitting with, like, am I a witch? I don’t know. Like, I’m trying out the metaphorical hat. Well, but. But I don’t know if that’s the.
Julie Miller: Hat I want to wear, then you don’t have to. I mean. Yeah, you know, I. I don’t want to wear the hat of coach.
Cate Blouke: Okay.
Julie Miller: Right.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: So I infuse that in, like, my tarot readings. It comes in real helpful when somebody’s near a breakdown. Okay. Let’s talk through these cards. Let’s talk through the message, you know? And I use it in all my work, and I still coach, but I recognize. I thought I was. I thought I was. I did everything I was supposed to do, and then I got into it. What I realized was, yes, I am supposed to be a. But I’m not supposed to do it in this container of creating a poaching business. I’ll let others do that.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: It didn’t bring me fulfillment. It brought me money. It didn’t bring me fulfillment.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. I similarly recently just realized, like, I am a teacher and I want to teach people things and then coach them around the sort of tools and concepts, things that I have. Purpose.
Julie Miller: Love that.
Cate Blouke: Right? But the traditional model of coaching where they just sort of show up and like, what’s your topic? And like, that doesn’t work for me because I have so, like, I, if I’m anything, I’m, I’m a book witch. Like, I’ve read so many books and like, book recommendations are my superpower. I’m really good at like consolidating information and explaining it in ways that are comprehensible and easy to understand. Like, I’m doing this podcast cause I just like, want to bring together interesting elements and like share information.
Julie Miller: And if you think that’s not spellcasting.
Cate Blouke: Oh, no, it is.
Julie Miller: You’re wrong.
Cate Blouke: You have convinced me, like, I am on board with, I mean, accountants.
Julie Miller: Accountants are spreadsheet witches, right? Yeah. You can use it to whatever degree you want to use it. Call it what you want.
[transition music]
Cate Blouke: Hello, my dear! I’m interrupting to invite you to participate in a very special giveaway associated with this episode. I am going to give away a very nice tarot deck to one lucky listener. And all you have to do is visit settlingisbullshit.com and subscribe to the newsletter. And then send me a screenshot of the review or rating that you finally have left for this podcast. You can email me at Cate@settlingisbullshit.com – that’s C A T E and I’ll be taking entries through October 31. And then I will draw a lucky winner on November 1.
For more details, follow. @Settling.Is.Bullshit on Instagram and you can also find details there on how to get a bonus entry.
To those of you who are already email subscribers, thank you. I love you. You’re amazing. All you have to do is send me a screenshot that you left a review for this podcast and then you’ll get entered and it’ll be great. And I’m also gonna send sticker packs to a lucky few runners up. So please do participate. Leave a review, help me grow the podcast. Make sure you’re getting updates to your inbox anytime we have a new episode. And know that I adore you and you’re magical. And now back to this beautiful, magical conversation.
[transition music]
Yeah, well, I mean, I use the word magical a lot, so I think that’s, I mean, it’s what’s interesting to me. And I think what is part of what inspired me to want to have someone who self identifies as a witch on the podcast to talk about it is because I have long had these interests and this sort of pull or calling towards these things. Right. But until I moved to Portland, Oregon, like, culturally, it’s weird. And so there is a lot of, like, deconditioning. Right?
Julie Miller: A lot, a lot. And you look at the environment, the socioeconomic environment that we live in and the political, uh, political environment that we live in. They’re hunting us. They’re hunting us. They’re hunting women.
Cate Blouke: They’re.
Julie Miller: And mostly women. They’re also hunting men. You know, our. Our queer community is not safe. Our black community is not safe. Our indigenous community not safe. You know, I mean, there’s. It’s a witch hunt all over again. Yeah, it really is. And so it’s a scary time to say, I identify as a witch. You know, they’re just hunting us in different ways.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. So 25 years ago, you got a book jumped out at you. How did we get to today where you’re like, yeah, I’m talking on a podcast about being a witch.
Julie Miller: A lot of inner. A lot of coaching. Yeah. You know, I think it’s one of those things where you. After a while, you just. What good does it do to deny it?
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: What good does it do to hold it in when maybe what you have is something you could offer? And I was sitting with friends, and one friend said, what are you so afraid of? And I’m like, what if I’m rejected? What if that belonging doesn’t happen again? I found this tiny little space, this group of women on this retreat that I fit in with. They sit next to me and say, tell me this. Read cards for me, you know? And I felt safe there. I didn’t have to sand down my square 90 degree edges to fit into a hole. I just was. And this one friend said, what are you so afraid of? And I said, what if I’m rejected? And she said, then they’re not your people. And it’s so true.
Cate Blouke: It’s so true. It’s so hard to live.
Julie Miller: It is.
Cate Blouke: It is hard to get to that place. It is. Yeah.
Julie Miller: So I just said, fuck it.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. So what was your, like, coming out as a witch?
Julie Miller: Yeah. So it was. It was actually bringing tarot to the masses. It was. Tarot is a tool that I use. Right. It’s. It’s like, you know, you podcast or you teach or whatever, that’s a tool. Right. You probably have a gift for teaching. I do I have a gift for receiving the messages?
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: And then giving you the messages in a way that you go, oh, shit, she sees me. No, I don’t. I mean, I get those. You know, I have, I have my little tarot community that’s growing and God, I love it. It’s just like, it keeps me sane. I do caffeinated tarot every week and we talk about that, but I, I do that on Sunday morning. So it’s like, you know, my christian neighbor’s going off to the lutheran church or whatever, right? That’s my sanctuary is sitting with those cards and being like, okay, be kind to us this week. Cause you gave us all swords last week and my people are not happy. And then, you know, yeah, last week was some bullshit. Yeah, let’s throw down the dump card, maybe the tower.
Cate Blouke: Yeah, we’re recording at the beginning of October. We’re on October 10. So last week was the fucking eclipse portal if you’re following astrology, right?
Julie Miller: Yeah. And the cards were following astrology because the cards were like, burn it all down or I will burn it for you. So, you know, I just, I started to come out and it took a while for caffeinated tarot to come on board, but I started doing, in a group chat that I had with these women that went on this retreat, I started doing, they wanted ritual from me. And so I started, I started with tiny rituals. It’s a subscription box. And sold out. You know, I did a very limited run and I sold out. And I just completed the first year of that. They were sent on the solstice. Solstices and the equinoxes. So very intentional and the tools were very intentional and all of that. And so I’m getting ready to launch year two.
Cate Blouke: Yeah, I can’t wait to buy one.
Julie Miller: Thank you. I’m super excited about what this year is going to look like. So, yeah, so I started there and then people were, and I was sending in this group chat that we have. There’s like 13, 1415 of us in it. And I was sending new moon, full moon. Like, this is the sign that it’s in. These are the colors or the handles. This is, you know, maybe a tiny ritual that you could do to celebrate or honor, you know, do as much or as little. I don’t believe that there has to be rules around stuff like that. And then I started sending a friend. I got her direct permission. I said, I need to be able to just send you readings whenever I feel like it. I don’t want to reach out and go, hey, can I pull a card for you? And she’s like, uh, yeah. So I started sending her readings, and whenever I got pinged, and then I said, I’m gonna do this thing, and it’s gonna be called caffeinated tarot. And here’s what it looks like. And she’s like, sign me up right now. And so, you know, I record them on Sundays. They get delivered every Monday morning, and they have, I think the first one went out back in March of this year.
Cate Blouke: Okay.
Julie Miller: And it is such a fulfillment for me, and I do it. Here’s the rub. I don’t do it for. I don’t want to say I don’t do it for. My. Well, caffeinated tarot is free, right? You know, you get this weekly three card recorded reading. You get journal prompts. You get a ritual, and you get me all up in your head on Monday morning. Sorry about that. But this ties back to not having any kind of lineage history. I don’t know. On February 17, 2023, my granddaughter was born, and she lives in Copenhagen, so she’s a world away. And the minute she was born, something. I can’t even describe it, but something visceral happened. It was like. And now I know my purpose, and now I know the purpose of this. And so everything that I do that’s related to the craft, spellwork, intentional living, my card pulls the spells that I. That I make. You know, the tea that I. That I blended, that’s a spell, right? That is all hers. And when I tell you I have two grandsons, and I worship the ground that they walk on, and I’m very close to them, but there was. It was like, oh, now I see why all of this came online when it did. And so I am basically creating a diary for her, and she’s magical. She’s magical. And I just feel this pull to her that I can’t. There’s no way to describe it. So everything that I do. Caffeinated tarot, tiny ritual, all of that, this is my legacy to leave to her.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: And what I’ve told people is, even if everyone fell off the email list, even if a single ritual subscription did not sell, I would still do the work and write the work in order to give it to her. I practice these tools. Every tool in these ritual boxes I use.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: You know, and having a purpose for the work makes the work more important.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. Oh, that was beautiful. And thinking about this podcast for me and how it started, you know, it really is a spell. It really is like, I’m not getting paid to do this podcast.
Julie Miller: Yep.
Cate Blouke: Like, I’m not, you know, sure. Yes, everyone, I’m a coach and would love to work with you, but I’m doing this whether anybody listens, because you know what? I go back and listen to these and get some fucking gems out, right? The little pep, like, the solo episodes. Oh, man. Like, past me was on point.
Julie Miller: Oh, yeah. I go back and listen to caffeinated tarot and go, oh, right, yeah.
Cate Blouke: Because often, like, you know, just thinking about, like, we can’t see the forest for the trees. Like, when we’re in it, it is different from when we’re, like, a couple months down the road and we’re like, oh, shit, that’s what was good. Like, that’s what was there. But I love having these fucking conversations and just getting the opportunity to share the beautiful sort of wisdom and perspective of people who are trying to show up more authentically and more fulfilled and more joyfully in the world in all sorts of different ways.
Julie Miller: Yeah. And I don’t need to have these conversations with people to feel the. The alignment and the joy and the truth behind what I am. But it’s nice to have conversations with people because since I have the world. Yeah. Since I have done that, the amount of women that have said, you know, I’ve always wanted to work with candles or I’ve always wanted to get into crystals, but I didn’t know what they’re for. So overwhelming or, you know, anything like that. Or I have a friend who’s an artist, and I’m like, she’s raised Catholic. And the first time I used the word coven with her, she was, like, making a crowd. I mean, and she’s not. She’s not a practicing Catholic, but it was so ingrained in her, and now all she talks about is, like, infusing her art with magic. And, you know, it’s just like, if I give somebody permission to be who and what they truly are because they see me doing it going, well, fuck it. If you don’t like it, there’s the door. I don’t need you. I don’t need anything from any of this. I could go on doing my work on my own and be just as fulfilled. Just as fulfilled. And I think because it had to percolate for so long, it had to sit in the shadows, so to speak, for so long. You talk about a shadow side. It had to sit there for so long that now I’m. Now that the door is open, it just. I can’t put it back in. Like, the genie’s out of the bottle, dude.
Cate Blouke: I. Yes. Like, I don’t know. I’m just thinking about that fucking scene in practical magic because, of course, I’ve seen it a bunch of times.
Julie Miller: A bunch of times. Yeah.
Cate Blouke: Like, you know where she’s, like, making. She’s like, I don’t want to fall in love, so I’m gonna, like, make this. Like, I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, and I remember distinctly being little and just, like, having this vision of, like, the life that I wanted. And then that got buried because I got pushed towards getting a fucking degree in computer science. Because being a writer is impractical.
Julie Miller: Yep.
Cate Blouke: Right. Yeah. And now I’m, like, 41. Almost 42. And, like, finally making that shit happen.
Julie Miller: Yeah. It doesn’t matter what age. Think. If you had gone to the grave, though, not fulfilling this desire inside you, it would have killed you a lot sooner. Not practicing made me so unhappy.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: And I didn’t realize it.
Cate Blouke: Getting paid by other people to write about shit that I didn’t care about. I was a writer. Like, I was a professional writer.
Julie Miller: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: I made a living writing shit that I had zero fucks to give about, and it was, like, draining my soul.
Julie Miller: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: And two years ago, I committed to, like, just starting to write because I wanted to. And that’s how settling is. Bullshit started, and then I turned it into a podcast in April.
Julie Miller: I love that.
Cate Blouke: And, like, I’m so in love with it, and it’s so fulfilling.
Julie Miller: Mm hmm. Yeah. And it. And it. I think that’s when. That is when the true magic happens, is when you don’t have to tie an outcome to it.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: You just say, I’m putting it out there, and I’m putting my best intention and my truest heart behind it. And what comes out of it is meant to be.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: Whether it’s, you know, uh, number one rating on Spotify podcasts for alternative thinkers or whatever, you know, whatever. Spirituality or whatever. Or, you know, I have 5000 people getting caffeinated tarot each week.
Cate Blouke: Right.
Julie Miller: Whether it happens or not, that wasn’t the intention. The intention was to put it out there to fulfill something in me that needed to be born. Just like the podcast for you needed to come out writing for, your soul needed to come out not writing for, you know.
Cate Blouke: Right.
Julie Miller: Mister Bob over here, he’ll pay you three cents a word to write about widget.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. Oh, cybersecurity. I never want to talk about cybersecurity ever again. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me.
Julie Miller: But don’t click on an unsuspectingly well.
Cate Blouke: Yes, yes. Check the email address from the thing that you have been sent 100%. Do that.
Julie Miller: Don’t just give a password and try to log in over your cell phone.
Cate Blouke: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Julie Miller: I think that once you. The book the great work of your life by Stephen Cope. There’s a part in there where cope talks about, if this is your dharma. He’s talking about Dharma, and we all have it, but it’s like, if you don’t bring it to life, if you don’t, it will kill you. It will destroy you.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: It was. Yes. I was miserable until I started just doing little things that were very intentional and infusing them with the hope that magic would happen, whatever that is.
Cate Blouke: Yeah, yeah. I’m just thinking about. So I’ve been in recovery a really long time. I’ve worked with sponsors and I’ve been coaching for a while now and work with clients, but this really emerged from my work with sponsees in. There’s this tendency to sort of catastrophize the future.
Julie Miller: Yes.
Cate Blouke: Which is totally human, totally normal. And, you know, my sponsor gave me this gift of just, like, if we’re gonna make up the fucking future, we might as well make up good stories. And so, like. Right. Cause it’s all imaginary.
Julie Miller: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: You know, unicorns and aliens are just as likely as getting fired. Like, yeah. It’s all imaginary.
Julie Miller: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: And I’m just thinking about, like, how much nicer it is to live life from this place of magic and hope and intention and believing and acting as if I do believe in self fulfilling prophecies. And there’s a lot of work that goes into getting to a place where I do actually believe in possibility and believe in hope. But whether any of this is real or not, that’s for the listeners. It’s real. Any skeptics listening? Whether or not it’s real, I feel better showing up as if it is.
Julie Miller: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: Right. Like, I don’t know.
Julie Miller: Manifestation. That’s manifestation. Right. You’re really. Manifestation is demonstration. So if you believe that, if you want to live a certain way, that you’re going to manifest that through your demonstration of that.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: Right. And hope and opportunity and possibility and belief that there’s good, that we can craft our own future, we have to have it.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: Because if I opened up any news website today, I’d be like, we’re done. I give up.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. We’re all gonna die. It’s all exploding.
Julie Miller: I’m just gonna eat bread morning, noon, and night. It’s just not gonna matter anymore. I’m gonna drink my weight and coffee and eat bread all day.
Cate Blouke: What kind of bread?
Julie Miller: Any kind. I mean, let’s. I’m not. I’m not picky.
Cate Blouke: Oh, God, I love sour toast is.
Julie Miller: Like, a full food. Yeah.
Cate Blouke: Like, anytime I get six buttered sourdough buttered toast.
Julie Miller: Yes, buttered toast and tea. Call me. Good. Yeah. So I just. I think that, you know, we can create, and I think we need to stop listening to what others wish they had done or tried to do or didn’t do, and they shoved that story down our throat. I wanted to be a writer when I was in love with my mother’s typewriter, like, an actual typewriter, and I would write stories, and I really wanted to be a writer, and my mother would be like, this isn’t good. Well, you hear that so many times from this person that should, in fact, be saying, it’s amazing. Where are you going to take the story next? You know, I think that we got to stop listening to that shit. Yeah, just stop listening to it. It doesn’t matter. Yeah, you want a different life? Craft it. You want to do something? Craft it. You want to find joy, be that thing that you are desiring to be. Unless, of course, it’s, you know, a murderer. Don’t be that. Don’t be that thing.
Cate Blouke: Don’t be a murderer. Don’t be an asshole.
Julie Miller: Don’t be an asshole. Let’s start there.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. Yeah.
Julie Miller: You know, although I think for some people, that’s really hard.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. But not listeners to this podcast.
Julie Miller: Yeah. They don’t listen. No. The only good people. No. They actually would be repelled.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: You’re gonna make me take a hard look at myself. Absolutely not.
Cate Blouke: Right? Fuck that. Also, there’s swearing in the title, so it’s unprofessional. And, like, this is the conversation I just had with one of my coaches yesterday was, like, this, like, internal struggle with, like, how. How can I be playful and professional?
Julie Miller: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: I can’t be both. Blah, blah, blah. And coaching is great. Cause I’m on the other side of that conversation, being like, fuck that noise. I can be both.
Julie Miller: Yeah, you can.
Cate Blouke: I actually super have my shit together and, like, know what I’m doing.
Julie Miller: Yeah. It’s crazy, right?
Cate Blouke: I like cursing people.
Julie Miller: Thank you. People like to put the restrictions that they’ve made for themselves or that they feel they’re living under. They like to project that onto us. I don’t know about you, but I like being joyful.
Cate Blouke: I do.
Julie Miller: I’m not. I can’t say that I’m happy all the time, but what I can tell you is that in those moments when there’s joy, I feel it and I just go, this was good. This was good. And I have enough hope to know that if it’s been three or four days where I’m, you know, stressed or overwhelmed or haven’t had enough water or moved my body or whatever, haven’t slept enough, whatever, I know Joy’s coming. How about if I make a moment of joy? And that’s when I go stand outside and I look at the seeds that I planted and, you know, that’s when I think about these beautiful grandchildren I have and how much fun I have with them and, you know, the safe space that I get to be for them. You know, I’ve never told my kids, you can’t do that. Well, now, you know, drinking and driving, you can’t do that. You know, when they would say to me when they. When my kids were little, and they would say things like, you know, I’m going to bed. I want to be rich so I can build you a house. And I’d be like, yeah, you do. You go do that thing. Absolutely. You know, when my oldest son wanted to join the military, that was. It was right after 911, and so that was kind of a hard pill. But then I said, then go do that thing, and I’ll be here for you. And I’m proud of you. And, you know, my grandkids, you know, my. My oldest grandson is really into science and math, like, genius level stuff, you know, knows planets and stars and all of this stuff. And. And I’m like, what do you want to do when you grow up? He goes, I want to make a lot of money and work at NASA. And I’m like, sweet, let’s do that. I don’t know if you’re going to make a lot of money working at NASA, but, hey, you’re going to work at NASA, you know, but I talk to people, like, in coaching, and they’re, you know, they’re so miserable because they followed the path that was told to them, right.
Cate Blouke: And let the sort of conditioning and the. And, like, the ancestral scripts, like, let’s be real, my parents inherited the stories from their parents.
Julie Miller: And, like, fear and scarcity. Fear and scarcity. Fear and scarcity. Yeah. Yeah. You’ll never be this. You’ll. You know, writing doesn’t pay. You know, I think I wanted to be an attorney for a while. And my mom’s like, people like us don’t go to law school. Well, what the fuck? People like us? What is that supposed to mean? I get that now. I will say, you know, my mom’s a really hard worker, and she. When she retired, she always had a little bit of an entrepreneurial spirit. When she retired, she started a whole nother business. And so, thankfully. Right. So I saw that. That’s great. But why would you tell your child you can’t do that? Where do people like us?
Cate Blouke: Because somebody told her that.
Julie Miller: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I mean, she was born during the depression, so, you know, she carries a lot of that. It was get a job that will always keep the lights on, always pay the bills, and I was always searching for something.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: But super terrified to go find it. And now I’m like, oh, I’ll go find it. Will I be living half the year in Copenhagen in the next four and a half years? Yes, I will be. How am I going to do that? Do not know. Does the Copenhagen. Does the danish government want you? Probably not.
Cate Blouke: Is that. Is that what you whisper into your coffee every morning?
Julie Miller: We’re moving to Copenhagen, and I’ll take you with me. You know it. I mean, I. I believe in that. I believe we can manifest what we want.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: You know, and we do it through a myriad of ways. It doesn’t have to be through witchcraft. It can be through prayer. It can be through journaling. It can be through meditation. It can be through, you know, hitting the tennis ball at 04:00 a.m. 05:00 a.m. 06:00 a.m. seven days a week for 3 hours. You know, if you want to be a pro tennis player, it can be. We can be whatever we want to be if we demonstrate that that’s what we want to be.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: I’m not going to be a tarot reader if I don’t pick up the cards. Oh, yeah, I brought my. Yeah, let me do a little. I’ll do a two card tarot.
Cate Blouke: Okay.
Julie Miller: Right. So we’re kind of where we are and the energy behind it.
Cate Blouke: It’s October 10. This is probably gonna come out in, like two weeks.
Julie Miller: Okay, cool.
Cate Blouke: So we will end of October, Halloween.
Julie Miller: Ish samhain, when the. When the vein. The veil has dropped. Yes. All right. Oh, so we got the ace of swords, and swords, as we know, is air. And it’s all about our communication and our thoughts and beliefs and the way we vocalize things. It’s our words. So how beautiful is that? And aces are the new beginning. And what this is saying is that we’re always connected. There’s always, you know, maybe a new way of thinking, a new thought. We’re starting out on something new, but we’re so deeply tapped in that everything is available to us. You talk about a possibility card. Any ace is a possibility card. So what does that mean for us? Well, let’s find out who the eight of swords. Now that I know, this is like the people go, she’s bound, and, you know, she’s surrounded by swords, and she’s got a blindfold over her face. She is probably, aside from the high priestess, this figure, this feminine energy is probably the most connected to her intuition because she cannot see. And so there’s this. She’s stepping 1ft into water, which is water is intuition is represented our emotions and feelings, and it is intuition. And swords are very aligned with our intuition. So an eight eight, our strength, the strength number we’re in an eight year, 2024 is an eight year. So, okay, it takes a lot of strength just to get to a date through a day sometime. But. So her strength is in her intuition. Her strength is recognizing. I’m not truly bound. I can still take a step.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: I don’t have to see it. I have to know it.
Cate Blouke: Ooh. I don’t have to see it. I have to know it.
Julie Miller: Yep.
Cate Blouke: Talk about juicy.
Julie Miller: Yeah. So that’s a little two card tarot.
Cate Blouke: Great. Julie, this has been a delight.
Julie Miller: A delight. I can’t believe what we’ve been doing this hour and a half. Just riffing. Love it. See, that’s what. That’s how I know that that’s my people. When I don’t feel weighed down, when I don’t feel like, okay, I need to go, you know, lay down on the couch and take a nap after that interaction, when instead, I’m like, oh, kindred spirit community.
Cate Blouke: Absolutely. So, Julie, how do people find you?
Julie Miller: Well, I’m on instagram. Salt and cream crow. Salt and underscore crow. Or my website, saltandcrow.com, and you can sign up for caffeinated tarot there. Also talk about, I do new moon live readings every month on the new moon. So it’s a community that comes in Zoom call. If it’s. If it’s a smaller community, then there’s lots of interaction. I have people ask questions of the cards and all of that. And so that’s all on there. You can book one on one reading with me. So, yeah, saltoncrow.com comma. My website is probably the best place to find me.
Cate Blouke: Yeah. And that’ll be in the show notes. And I know that part of the answer to this question is your grandchildren.
Julie Miller: Yeah.
Cate Blouke: But I always love to ask my interviewees, what brings you joy?
Julie Miller: I think, and this is kind of an interesting answer, but I think it’s understanding that I have radical and rebellious agency over my life. I can make choices. I choose. I have that agency. And that brings me joy knowing that, you know, I sat at this desk all day because I chose to. I chose to be here. I don’t feel like I’m forced to do anything anymore and that there’s a wisdom that comes with age and it’s taken me a long time to get here. But I think that what brings me most joy is just knowing I have choice and I enact it. I take full advantage of it.
Cate Blouke: Fuck yeah. I’m gonna adopt that as one of the many things that brings me joy. Yeah, I love that.
Julie Miller: Yeah. I mean, coffee brings me joy. Absolutely. Being in my garden brings me joy. Absolutely. A good night’s sleep? Absolutely. But I get to choose all those things.
Cate Blouke: Yeah.
Julie Miller: That brings me joy.
Cate Blouke: Brings me joy. Hearing you talk about it. So thank you so much.
Julie Miller: You’re so welcome. This was a gorgeous rue. True delight. I loved it. Love this conversation.
Cate Blouke: Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please help me grow the podcast by subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with any anyone you think would benefit from hearing it too. Your support means the world to me. If you’d like to get updates about new episodes, posts and offerings, please visit settlingisbullshit.com to subscribe to my newsletter. You can also find information there about working with me one on one to build your most amazing life. Until next time, remember that I believe in you and that you are fucking awesome.
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