Justin Page, a Tarot Card reader and occult scholar from New York City who has lived in Portland for the past five years, is now calling Gorham home after moving here a month ago. Page is well-known in New York City for his accuracy in his readings and says he has conducted thousands of readings. He also conducts readings at The Magick Closet in Portland. He said he also has ties and attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan with a former cast member of the NBC show “Friends.” Page would not name the cast member because he does readings for her. He recently sat down with the American Journal to discuss his readings, why he got into spirituality and quell myths about his profession.

Q: What got you into Tarot reading.

A: First, I admit that I’m from away and I was born in Manhattan. My father was disabled, and I was put into the position of not only being a kid with a lot of responsibility but also a kid with a lot of freedom. I was in Atlantic City, N.J., where I would go during the summers, and I saw a pack of Tarot Cards in a store, and I just had to have it for some reason. I didn’t know what they were, so I bought them and began reading more and more about them. My father, who was as Atheist as they come, asked me to give him a reading and he was impressed by it. He would tell his friends, “hey, you have to check out Justin giving you a Tarot reading,” and eventually people started coming back and wanted more readings because what I was providing was on the money. My father became a big fan of mine and encouraged me to keep doing it.

Q: What compelled you to move to Maine?

A: I moved here five years ago, and New York City had just sort of lost its appeal. I had a few friends in Portland who knew about the spiritual side of what I do and that this area would be an ideal location for me. Indeed, the spiritual community and the metaphysical community here has been very outgoing. It’s a very small but friendly community, and I couldn’t have asked for a nicer reception. I was working in a week and not many people can say that. It has to do with me, but it also has to do with the metaphysical community in this area.

Q: Have you ever had a reading where the cards came up and you didn’t want to tell the person what came up in front of them?

A: No, because although I’ve done readings where the tidings have not looked good, Tarot Cards do not give you a definite, unchangeable result. They show possible problems, they show trends that lead to problems, but if you use the Tarot correctly what you would do is help the person break the trends that would ultimately lead to bad results. There is always a way to present any information that is constructive and not merely prophetic. The Tarot Card is a little more subtle and complicated than that.

Q: What do you think the biggest misconceptions are about this realm and how do you overcome those misconceptions?

A: Talking to people mostly. Fortune telling, if you will, has gotten a real bad reputation because there are a lot of bad people involved in it and they are not legitimately trying to help any one. They are trying to rip people off using various schemes. Fortune tellers around the world haven’t done the best PR job for spiritualists and readers today. One of the biggest misconceptions is that under some faiths this is sinful and that’s just not true when you do the research. I have a real blended background. I’ve done a lot of research within different religions, and actually all of them have some form of adoration that is very much like what we’re doing here. I guess the other thing is a lot of clients come and they think that it’s a trick so they try to stiffen up and not give you any information, and you can only sort of give them a stilted reading and they leave disappointed, saying “he couldn’t guess anything right about me.” When people are more open and talk about their problems we get better information, and it’s not used to manipulate later so we’re telling the person what they already know.

Q: Have you ever faced anything where someone’s told you this is Satanism and forged protests against what you do?

A: As a child in New York at the occult shop we saw every kind of lunatic and very, very sick people. There were a couple of times where people lost it and Satanism is a real popular one. If you read Tarot Cards, then you’re involved in Satin. There are times where I’ll just end the reading because when somebody’s convinced that Tarot Cards are involved with Satin, there’s nothing I can do to change their mind. I prefer to just give them their money back and go on to the next person who I can help.

Q: This is very Pagan-based, is that correct?

A: One of the things about the Magick Closet here is that we really serve all different spiritual needs. One of my favorite things to tell people is that the word pagan isn’t a bad word and it actually means people. Spell casting, intent and will has been used by the people in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and different parts of the world for thousands and thousands of years. This is the people’s way.

Justin Page…Justin Page, D. Div is a Master of Tarot and Spell Casting.

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