Podcast episode 8 - Interview with Emilie Muniz, creator of Simplicity Tarot (includes transcript)

A hand with red manicured nails holds a tarot card called "Spiritual Guide" The card shows a woman wearing red sitting at a table with candles, crystal ball, tarot cards, tambourine and a ukelele.

"I set the second stretch goal for the spiritual guide card that just got revealed - my Gitana. I practice Espiritismo and she's one of my spiritual guides. I created this Tarot deck in her honor.  We made a pact. I told her if she gets me to that second stretch goal on Kickstarter, I will share her with the world and she will travel. The card is my Gitana, and she's dressed in red, she likes roses and she's my spiritual guide for divination and helping others." - Emilie

Listen to the podcast interview or look for TarotCraft on Spotify or wherever you pod.

Read more for full transcript

(Hey! If you love this episode, consider donating even $1 to make more interviews and more Tarot information accessible to even more people with hearing and vision difficulties. $1 pays for one minute of professional audio transcription and helps out a Tarot fan who can't hear so well!)

Transcription begins

*background music*

Welcome to the TarotCraft podcast. I’m Allison Jean, a Tarot enthusiast from Australia. Please join me on this journey into the mystic depths of Tarot and divination.

You can find the link to the transcript for this episode in the show notes, or go to my blog at www.Tarotcraft.com, that’s t-a-r-o-t-c-r-a-f-t dot com.

Today we are talking to Emilie Muniz, the creator of the Simplicity Tarot deck. Emilie is a New York City native who started to dive into the world of Tarot & spirituality over 20 years ago. Following her passion, after finishing her BA in business she decided to take on divination as a full-time career.  Now with over 11 years of divining full-time for a living, she has decided to help others with Tarot through its art and its teaching as a Tarot instructor. The Simplicity Tarot had a successful Kicksterter launch in February 2020 and will be published by US Games later in 2020.
​
Allison
I'm here with Emilie, who is the creator of Simplicity Tarot. Thanks so much for coming on. My first question is, can you pronounce your name correctly for me, please?
 
Emilie
Emilie, Emilie Muniz. Emilie, my mother was just trying to be extra special and added an I. E is instead of the Y.
 
Allison
Some of us have special spellings of our names. I changed the spelling of my name. Anyway, so we were just speaking before we started recording that you've reached another stretch goal for the Simplicity Tarot. Congratulations!
 
Emilie
Yes, thank you. I'm so excited. I'm in shock still, but I'm just so excited and just, I can't believe we did it, you know, and now we onto the third stretch goal. We just revealed a new card yesterday and we just revealed a new card that will be added to everyone's deck today, so thank you so much; it's so exciting. Right on time too.
 
Allison
Yeah. I'm really thrilled for you.  This is, it's such a special thing.
 
Emilie
So what made me decide to create a Tarot deck? Well, first I'm a professional Tai reader. I've been reading full time professionally for 11 years; I've been reading Tarot for over 20. I started as a tween most like everyone, I guess. But in my professional reading, a lot of people want to learn how to empower themselves through Tarot and receive their own answers and information and they want to learn how to read Tarot, so I was, it was an idea I had for a long time. I want to teach Tarot, I love it, but I want to teach it through my own recreating of the kind of the Rider Waite deck, but in a simple way so they could get it. So everybody was asking me, teach me Tarot. I don't have time, so I was like, let me just create a Tarot deck. Let me create a Tarot deck that could really help people read Tarot, kind of revamp it with some light colors, white backgrounds, so it'll kind of just break that stigma that Tarot’s negative or bad and it'll kind of pull them in, and give them a peaceful way of reading, so they can really enjoy the experience. So I came up with Simplicity Tarot with the keywords and there you go. It was about that, trying to teach people how to learn Tarot
 
Allison
How did you decide on the keywords? Because I mean, you could write a book about each card, so how did you narrow it down, I think you've got two keywords on each card?
 
Emilie
Yeah, two keywords on each card. How do I know? Well, I already had a course, but I think the way I read Tarot and teach, it's like compound words, right? So I already have it on there, so I just think; I chose the keywords on what I would think will be the most common one word for the card, the most common thing and it was pretty easy. I also teach my daughter, she's a teenager and that helped influence which was the keyword to use as well.
 
Allison
You are dropping out just a little bit. One of the things that I noticed straight away is the back of the card, so I'm wondering if you can tell us how you decided on the design for the back of the card and also I know that red roses have a significance for you [Inaudible], could you talk about that a little?
 
Emilie
Did you see the new card that was just revealed?
 
Allison
No, I haven't seen it yet.
 
Emilie
Oh, you got to! You will understand where everything came of, you just looked at that new card. It’s called the spiritual guide card, right? So I set the second stretch goal was the spiritual guide card that just got revealed and that was my Gitana. I've practiced espiritismo, so she's one of my spiritual guides and I created this Tarot deck in her honor, right. We kind of made some pacts here. I told her, if she gets me to that second stretch goal, I will share her with the world and she will travel. So roses is a really big thing with me, it's tied into my spirituality. I create a card after her, so that's where all of that came from. It's my Gitana, and she's dressed in red, she likes roses and she's my spiritual guide for divination and helping others. 
 
My personal friends all know about her. She has a shrine here in my house, they bring her things. So she had a great influence on the designing of the deck and even my own branding as well, so I incorporate her into everything I do with divination. She just helped me so much throughout my whole life, so there you go. It's very personal to me. I'm glad you caught that.
 
Allison
It's a beautiful story.
 
Emilie
Yeah, it is, you're going love the next card because I have an artist just draw her in detail, so it's exactly her. 06:07 [Cross talking]
 
Allison
Oh, that's amazing. Oh that's, that's so great. Like me coming from sort of a look basically like white middle-class kind of background. When I learned about spirit guides, it was very much in the sort of the pagan European tradition and that's a bit different to I guess how the spirit guide is seen sort of Caribbean traditions, can you talk a little bit about that?
 
Emilie
In espiristismo?  Well, I don't really know how the spirit guide is in paganism, so I can't compare them, but I know these are guides that walk with us since we are born, you know, and they basically guide us through every step of the way. We served them food, we served different alcohols, and we make different pacts with them so they can help us throughout the way. And literally we treat them like they're a part of the family, like to us, they are very real, we smell them, we hear them do, we see them physically, like literally they're part of our family and we cater to them just like that, we talk to them. So when you see a doll, right, it's not just a doll to us that's attached to it, there is a symbolism for a spirit that walks with us. It just helps us connect better to it because we've got something that represents them physically, right? So that's part of it. I don't know if they do that with paganism, but we treat them like they're family members, cater for them and everything, and tend to them.
 
Allison
Yes, I understand.
 
Emilie
So they are elevating us while we are elevating their spirit and illuminating their spirit and this why kind of the pact was important for me. I know that she wants other people to recognize the gypsy spirits, the Gitana, so I was like, hey, you helped me do this, I'll help you travel the world, everybody will know about you, so she's a very free spirit, she likes to travel the world, so I knew that would be something very attractive to her that she will help me because she will be helping herself too. Do you understand? It's an exchange.
 
 
Allison
Absolutely, I absolutely understand. Okay, so how long did it take you from start to finish when you first sort of, I guess, made the very first start on designing the deck, how long did it take from start to finish?
 
Emilie
About three years.
 
Allison
That's a long time. Did you draw them by hand?
 
Emilie
No. I originally started another Tarot deck right before that, but it fell through. My spirit was no longer aligned with it; it felt like I was going against the tide, rather than with it. It was just not aligned, so I threw that, I kind of just deaded that project, and then I started this one about three years ago. I did it secretly. I hired an artist, a group of artists, and it took about three years, start to finish. It was a lot of things, the keywords like you said; I had to narrow it down. I think that was probably the easiest but its like writing about each card on top of that. It comes with a guidebook, but it's a book. It's a book about detailing how to read Tarot and breaking it down from every step by step, and then breaking down every card on top of that, so about three years. It's a big thing.
 
Allison
That's a big chunk of time. And the artists that you worked with, were they artists who are familiar with Tarot? Like how would you explain to them how you wanted the cards to look?
 
Emilie
No, they wasn't, they're not familiar with Tarot. I gave them a Rider Waite deck, different pictures Rider Waite deck. I was like basically teaching them Tarot and the meanings of each card, so they could understand my vision and what wanted to change on top of that, yeah. So that was a whole process in itself, like going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, but as you spend more time with them, talking to them, then they see your vision and it gets easier towards the end, they know your style, so yeah.
 
It took me, this is basically about the fourth or fifth version of this deck that you are seeing now at its final state, but there was about four or five different versions of this one until we narrowed it down, that this is why we were going to do and put it out there.
 
Allison
Wow! That's a lot of work.
 
Emilie
Yeah. And then you work full time on top of those, and I have got three kids. It's so much energy and people don't see that, people don't see how much energy and time it really takes to create 11:19 [cross talking].
 
Allison
They just see that little box at the end and they don't realize how much has gone into it.
 
Emilie
Yes, yes.
 
Allison
You mentioned you've got three kids, are all your children, sort of psychic or have those kinds of faculties?
 
Emilie
Yes, they all have their gifts. It's so amazing because, my home is like; I call it like a little shrine. There’s just shrines everywhere. We're very spiritual family here, it's a part of our lifestyle, it's just us. So they all have their gifts and it's amazing. Like you see them all coming into their gifts, like Jeremy, he's the dreamer of the family. He got my gift of dreams. Like he'll come to me, "mommy, I had a dream", and it's so detailed, it's so vivid, it's so much alive, with colors, and it's definitely what I was speaking about, or what I was thinking about, or something that's going to happen and it was it something always of importance, so that's his gift.
 
Stella, she's just pure psychic. I mean, she knows things that are going to happen, she'll just say it, and it's so innocent because she's only five, right? It's just comes out. We're always in shock and Starlene is the medium.
 
And Starlene speaks to spirit, see spirits, smells of them, all of that, she's like more than medium, it's like a magical thing. It's just, I'm so proud and I just hope then you know, that they will follow along when they're older. If they don't, then that's fine too, that's their choice, but yes, they all have gifts, they do.
 
Allison
That's so interesting. I think over the years I've spoken to a lot of people whose children do have psychic faculties in one way or another. And also I was a child that had psychic faculties, but I grew up in a family that wasn't spiritual, that wasn't religious, and I didn't know until I was an adult that not everybody had the same kind of experiences as I did. So to me, I'm fascinated by families where the young people are encouraged to grow in their faculties and not told, oh, you're imagining things or it was just a dream, that kind of thing. 13:45 [cross talking]. Did you grow up in that kind of environment as well?
 
Emilie
Well, I grew up, I feel like my family grew up in everything, but I did grow up and I started reading the taza de café, which is the coffee cup. My mother will always have, I don't even know what religion, I just stay Christian very liberal. Because I grew up in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and in Bushwick, we just incorporate everything like we do, we believe in everything, Orisha, the Catholic church, the regular Christian Church, then we have our spirit guides and we serve them too when you go into our house, so we're just probably not religious, but just like kind of spiritual. 
 
I grew up as a Christian, but my mother was very into the occult and spirituality and she will always have people come over, and read for her, her friends, and serve the spirits and stuff, and she still does, the saints. So I grew up in an environment like that, so she would have people come over and they will read the coffee cup. And then one day she was, the woman, her friend, was like, come over. I call her my Tia, but she probably wasn't because, in Puerto Ricans, everyone's a Tia and our Tio even if they're not related. And she's like, come and read this for me, and I was like, read what? She's like, just look into the cup and just tell me what you see. I was like, whatever, I just took the cup and I started reading it, she was like, Oh my God, you know, she has the gift and she will come over more often and she would teach me and that's how it all started, then I got into the Tarot and that's how it was.
 
Allison
Do you remember the first time you handled the Tarot deck?
 
Emilie
Kind of, I don't know if that was the first time I touched one, but I know what my first Tarot deck was. It was the Witches Tarot, the one from 007.
 
Allison
It is a lovely deck.
 
Emilie
That one that was my first Tarot deck and I was kind of creeped out about it because it wasn't the Rider Waite, it didn't have all these imagery. It was the pipes, you know, six wands or six sticks and it was like that, so yeah.
 
Allison
A lot of people find that style of deck harder to read with. I read with the Crowley deck, the Aleister Crowley deck.

Emilie 
Oh you are a brave soul.
 
Allison
I've used it for a really long time, but that too has like a keyword at the bottom of each card, and it has just six sticks or six cups or whatever, but yeah, that's a deck that really speaks to me.
 
Emilie
It took him 10 years to create that deck, 10 years.
 
Allison
Have you seen the correspondence between him and the lady who created the art? There's like a whole series of letters that they wrote back and forth to each other about his instruction to her on how to create it, her response to him. It's really interesting, I'll see if I can find it and I'll send you a link, it's so interesting.
 
Emilie
It was 10 years, that's a decade of just drawing each picture, so much went into it too, is it very intense, it's very intense.
 
Allison
If you were going to create another deck, what would you do differently this time?
 
Emilie
Which I do have planned. What would I do differently this time? Oh my goodness, there are a lot of things. Okay, so I think the first thing that I would do differently, I would be more I think organization.. Do you understand? I think that is something that could just make people run away because there's so much information at once. I think being more organized with my marketing strategies, and have them really set, that's something I would definitely do. I just would write things down and they'll just be a pile of papers and I lose the pile of papers and had to research something all over again, so I would definitely do that, yeah.
 
Allison
What advice would you give people who are interested in creating their own decks?
 
Emilie
Hire a professional to teach you the ropes. I mean hire a professional, like really hire a professional. I feel that people think they could just create a Kick starter and, a Tarot deck and just wing it on their own. It's like someone running a business, they see people on Facebook or whatever, running a business, they are like, well, let me just copy what she's doing, I could do that. But there’s a lot of things in the background that you don't know and strategies that can really help and push you along the way faster.
 
My coaches were Lisa - she wrote the Mermaid Tarot, and Pam. She did the Crystal Unicorn Tarot, so they really were my coaches on creating this Tarot deck and how to run a Kickstarter, before, after all of that. And I hired them and they really helped me come up with strategies and things like that and how to do this successfully. So when the Kickstarter launched, it just broke, it just went crazy.
 
Allison
It really did, yes.
 
Emilie
Amazing, amazing and I was just so happy. So hire someone who knows the ropes. Don't try to wing it on your own. I feel like it's going to be much harder if you do that, when you could be just more successful if you already hired someone who's been there and done that and have the experience to teach you, that would be my number one advice.
 
Allison
Hire a professional.
 
Emilie
Yes, it's worth.
 
Allison
And I noticed with the deck, you've actually got two versions of the deck, the standard deck, and also one that you've called the diverse deck; can you explain why you decided to create the two different decks?
 
Emilie
Okay, so the two different decks, so one of them, the Simplicity Tarot version, they don't have any facial color at all. I did that purposely, me and my artist, we were like, people are too much into racism and stuff, and we're like, how about we just eliminate that and just make them with no skin color at all? And it just made everything so clean looking, right? The Simplicity Tarot was really just simple and it came out really nice. 
 
And then we were into some comments, the comments were like, well, not everyone's white skinned, and we're like, no, they're not white skinned, they just have no color. And we're like, well, let's just create one with different diversities, just to hit everybody, so we changed literally the faces, the hair, the skin color, nationalities. And the other one, we're like, let just people pick and choose which one they want, so that's how that went.
 
Also U S games, they took over the diverse version, and it's going to be published by them too, so they really liked that idea.
 
Allison
Really? It was the diverse one that they picked up that they’re going to publish?
 
Emilie
Yes, they picked it up and contract signed and everything, so probably by, I'm guessing maybe the end of this year or early next year, they’ll  be around Barnes and Nobles, flying around. So, yeah, it's interesting because I read for them too, I do their trade shows. I'm their reader for their trade shows in New York City, and that's all people come up to us. I want to know how to read, is it okay to read?  I don't really know how to read, but I would like to learn how to read, I wish I could. So after hearing all of these, they were like, you need to create a deck that people can read easily. They would just buy it, and there you go.
 
Allison
Just, congratulations. I just think it's such a great effort on your behalf and I can see how your lovely spirit guide, I can see her hand in this, her guidance and direction. Thank you to your spirit guide as well for bringing this to everybody.
 
Emilie
Yeah, well she's like probably here. This is exactly what she wanted, she wanted to bring everyone together, not just a specific culture, just everybody. And I think it was important in the guidebook, it’s just not her. It just talks about connecting with your spirit guide. I added a cart into the Tarot deck that says, hey, your spirit guide is trying to reach out to you; it's trying to connect with you, open yourself now. Don't deny that push, that sensation and feeling, take some time to spend more time with them. So I think it was an extra card that I just needed to add to the deck too, because we have spirit guides that always want to connect with us and I think this was a very kind of in your face with saying, hey!, your spirit guides are trying to reach out to you. Pay attention to them. And the extra card I added, I don't know if you saw this one, it's called the spiritual cleansing card.
 
Allison
Yes, I did see it.
 
Emilie 
It’s a card of limpieza, so it’s also I think a card that people need to see about ridding negativity. Maybe you want to do a cleansing, maybe the person got negative energy around them, maybe they need to do some feng shui and rearrange things, but they need to kind of break some kind of negative pattern or musty energy around them. So I think it was another way of saying like in your face, “come on, cleanse yourself of the negative vibes, the surrounding because you have them”. And I thought it was just a nice touch, right, to add to a deck.
 
Allison
I think it's wonderful to have these unique cards that just kind sort of differentiates your deck from other decks. I think one of the beauties of Oracle cards I think is that they have, sort of a very a unique range of different cards for different meanings and things like that. Because I think sometimes with the Tarot, well I'll speak for myself; sometimes I get a little bit bogged down in like the meanings. Because like you I've been looking at these cards for 20 years and sometimes I think just feel a little bit blank and I think I might pull an Oracle card and that will go, Oh yeah, that's just it, so I think having those extra cards that are unique to yours and unique to how you work spiritually, it can only be a plus and something that people will find even more interesting and make them want that deck even more.
 
Emilie
Yeah, I like Oracle cards because you could put always your own spin on what it means, you know? So I loved adding that too but what it can mean a cleansing for me, could mean something else for someone else [Inaudibl] or maybe they talking about the of circle the friends they're around too, so it can mean a lot of things. And when you like add it with the Tarot I’ve been reading with both of them together,  you can tell specifically. And so if the spiritual, I mean the cleansing card is next to like the emperor, so it was like, okay, maybe you need to kind of cleanse the area or you know, there are some icky vibes with the people you work with or in your organization or at work, you would think things like that, so it's good when you combine those cards.
 
Allison
Yeah, I think it's a big plus, yeah. Well I think this is probably a good spot to wind up. I have so enjoyed talking to you and I've got so many more questions I'd like to ask you.
 
Emilie
It's very interesting. I'm so happy to connect with you. Thank you so much, yeah.
 
Allison
Well, thank you. Hopefully, we can have another chat and I can ask you even questions.
 
Emilie
Yeah.
 
Allison
But now if you could let people know, how can they get a reading with you and how can they get a hold of the Simplicity Tarot?
 
Emilie
Okay, so to get a reading with me, it's Tarot by Emily dot com and remember that my name is spelled E. M. I. L. I. E. because my mother likes things extra fancy. So that's Tarot by Emilie dot com, and the Simplicity Tarot. You just typed Simplicity Tarot in Kickstarter and  it'll just pop up right there, or you can visit my Facebook page: Tarot by Emilie, Emilie Muniz, it just pops up real quickly, but Simplicity Tarot is on Kickstarter right now and is running until March 22nd of 2020. All the two’s purposely chosen.
 
Allison
Okay, well thank you so much. It's been great talking to you.
 
Emilie
You have an amazing day.
 
Allison
Thanks, Emilie. Bye-bye.
 
Emilie
You're welcome. Bye-bye.

*background music*
​
Thank you for joining me on the TarotCraft podcast. This is Allison Jean and you can find my page on Facebook at TarotCraft, and you can also join the private group, TarotCraft Group.

Transcription ends

How to contact Emilie Muniz
 
www.TarotByEmilie.com
www.Facebook.com/Tarotbyemilie
Www.Facebook.com/SimplicityTarot
http://bit.ly/KickStarterSimplictyTarot
www.instagram.com/Tarot_by_Emilie
www.Instagram.com/Simplicity_Tarot
​