EP133 A Journey into Divination

By

With Erika Robinson

Erika Robinson brings a unique perspective to Lenormand readings. In this episode we cover the foundational pieces like how Lenormand differs from Tarot, learning why Lenormand’s focus on everyday questions can provide practical guidance and clarity for real-life concerns. And explore Erika’s methods for going much deeper through intuition.

Throughout the episode, Erika shares actionable advice on how to deepen your intuition and approach readings with greater authenticity. If you’re looking to enhance your divinatory skills, the episode provides practical tips for connecting more effectively with clients and for asking better, more insightful questions that yield richer results. Erika’s emphasis on the importance of self-reflection will inspire listeners to examine their personal journeys within spiritual practice and embrace continuous growth.

Beyond the technical level Erika and Andrew’s discuss using divination as a tool for activism and community building. Digging into how spiritual practices can be a source of personal power and collective action, providing ways to find joy and purpose even in challenging times.

This is an episode for anyone seeking inspiration, solace, and practical guidance to navigate both the mystical and the everyday with clarity and courage.

Listen to the episode on all the platforms. Or use the player below.

You can download the audio here.

You can find us on the socials. Or Eika is here and Andrew is here.

Please share widely!

Andrew

Episode 133 Transcript

Andrew McGregor (00:00)
Hello, Welcome back to the Hermit’s Lamp podcast. This is the start of the fall, winter 2025-26 series of episodes. I am delighted to kick it off with Erika Robinson, who is a wonderful human being, a talented Lenormand reader, and is very engaged in all of the complexities and

various politics of this point in time. This is a wide ranging conversation. I really hope that you enjoy it deeply. I also want to take a moment and thank my friend Amir Elsaffar for the amazing new podcast music. Big gratitude to him for that. And if you don’t know Amir’s work, go check it out under his own name as well as under Rivers of Sound.

delightful ⁓ jazz music mixed

Andrew McGregor (01:02)
playing beautiful music, rich with their own experiences and history and background playing Macomb music. ⁓ It is delightful. You will be delighted to go check them out. All right. Thanks everybody.

Andrew McGregor (02:01)
Hey folks, welcome back to the Hermit’s Lamp podcast. This is the first episode of the fall 2025 season. I don’t know if there’s a season number for this. There’s a lot of episodes. You can go check them all out. ⁓ Today I’m hanging it with Erika Robinson and Erika is a amazing Lenormand reader. I’ve known Erika for a number of years now and got the pleasure of their company in person and

You know, I really think that they have some very interesting things to say about sort of the intersection of where does that spiritual practice and divination and so on exist? And what does that mean in our lives as we walk through the world? And, know, really that’s the crux of this podcast for me, right? What does it mean to walk in the world as a spiritual person? ⁓ hopefully a lot of you are already very familiar with Erika’s work.

But Erika, for those who might not know you yet, how about a little introduction to yourself?

Erika Robinson (03:01)
Well, so hi, Andrew. It’s great to be with you. ⁓ Been with you, as you say, a couple of times, few times in person and delighted to be here with you on your podcast. So yeah, I am a Lenormandist. I didn’t start out to be or didn’t intend to be. I come late to the metaphysical world. ⁓ I came to it when I was a widow.

And people would say, oh, call me any time. You need to talk. But that’s not exactly always what people mean. If you called somebody at 3 AM, it would be fine the first time. But when you did it the second time, they might not be so thrilled. So I found Tarot. So I’m a Tarot reader before I came to Lenermont. And then found Lenermont years ago, 15, 16 years ago.

Andrew McGregor (03:45)
Mm-hmm.

Erika Robinson (03:56)
when there was very little written ⁓ in English on, on, there was one book and I always give it a shout out because I so appreciate it by Sylvie Steinbach called The Secret.

Andrew McGregor (04:00)
Mm-hmm.

Erika Robinson (04:13)
I don’t know, think the secret, I don’t know, because I’m getting confused with what my title is. But anyway, Sylvie Steinbach wrote the first book in English. I thought it was great. And then I could read the French sources, but I couldn’t read the German. And then what I did was I just started to practice on everybody that I knew. And, you know, at first they’d run the other way, but then they realized I was getting kind of good and…

I’d have to hide sometimes at work. People would say, I’d go in the bathroom and they’d knock on the door. Are you going to be reading during lunch? So I thought, right, but that’s my friends, my family, my colleagues. Maybe they’re just being nice.

Andrew McGregor (04:45)
no!

Erika Robinson (04:53)
So then I knew that there were forums online. So I threw myself into forums and where people from all over the world, as you can imagine, have questions about their lives. I would throw my, I was a teacher. ⁓

in my muggle life and I’d throw my school bag down and I’d make a pot of coffee and I’d open myself up and I’d say, okay, I’ll do 10 readings. And I don’t know why I did them on my phone. And I would write these long narratives from my readings. And people would ask me things like, from India, I remember I got this one question from India, this was the question. What does he think about her? And I’m like, my ego is saying,

Can I have a little more detail? Is this father daughter? Is this employee boss? Is this brother sister? Is this a love thing? ⁓ But I said, Erika, nobody’s asking your ego. Nobody’s asking your opinion. They’re asking the cards. So I did the reading, wrote what I saw, and it was spot on. So next week when I would say, OK, I’ll open for 10, 100 people would want a reading.

Andrew McGregor (05:55)
Hmm.

Erika Robinson (06:01)
And just it grew, it grew, it grew. And what I didn’t realize was that, you know, the greats of the card world were watching my work. That’s how Carrie Parris came to know me. She was watching what I do. Donnalay De La Rose at the time was watching my work. And they would send me notes saying, you’re really good, keep it up.

And then a little shop, there’s a little metaphysical shop in New Jersey where I used to live. And they called me and asked if I wanted to read. And I said, well, I’m a teacher. I have a job. And they said, well, what about the weekends? And I thought, well, OK. So then I got to read fast because 10 minute readings and people would pour in. So it’s a very famous little shop. And on the weekends, it would be jammed. And that really built my muscles.

Andrew McGregor (06:34)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Erika Robinson (06:49)
and made me trust my intuition and certain things would happen like in the Lennarmon world, there’s a school of thought that says you don’t need to use intuition to read Lennarmon. And that is true, you don’t. If you wanna read like a first grader, you don’t. And as I always say, when a first grader learns to read or a kindergartner learns to read, it’s so exciting. It’s so exciting. I I made my daughter’s favorite dinner.

Andrew McGregor (07:13)
Yeah, it’s wonderful.

Erika Robinson (07:16)
And I baked a cake when she could read her first book. It’s great. But if you stay at that level, what are you doing? So my thought is that you absolutely can use intuition. And what I found out when I let myself open up was that I would read for someone and I would smell something or hear a lyric of a ⁓

a song and I would say, listen, I don’t know why I’m smelling this certain perfume or this certain tobacco or hearing this certain lyric. And they would say, my God, that’s because they, would do mediumship through the cards. And so that was great. And then I got approached by Wiser, the publisher, and they asked me if I would write a Lennarmon book. And I thought, well, sure.

Andrew McGregor (07:56)
Hmm.

Erika Robinson (08:06)
And so I did. So I wrote the language of L’Enormand, which for our French readers is actually also in French. I have it here somewhere, but it’s called Découvrez la langage du lénrement. And so it’s, ⁓ I mean, I’m thrilled that it’s in French as well. And then when I had a birthday, not this one in the summer, but the year, summer before, I thought,

Andrew McGregor (08:24)
Yeah.

Erika Robinson (08:32)
I want to do something different to mark the occasion. And I thought, maybe I’ll do a YouTube channel. And two things had kept me from doing it all this time. One was that I thought I had a terrible voice. And I thought, my god, who’s going to listen to this froggy voice? And then the other was I thought I was camera shy. But come to find out, I put this channel up. And what I do is I read on

Andrew McGregor (08:45)
Mm-hmm.

Erika Robinson (08:57)
political and cultural and racial issues around the world with it obviously because of things that are going on with an emphasis on the states. And what I found out was that people think my voice, they love my voice, they say it’s ASMR. Well, they find it calming. So I thought, okay, well that hurdles. And then I realized that when you do a broadcast, you can see yourself.

Andrew McGregor (09:12)
You have a great voice.

Erika Robinson (09:22)
And so I’m like, ⁓ Erika, it’s just like talking to yourself, so it’s fine. And my goal was twofold. One was to help people through this, Jesus, this hard, hard time that we’re all, the whole world is going through. So I wanted to help by doing predictive readings, but I also thought, you know, nobody knows about Lennarmon.

Andrew McGregor (09:41)
Hmm.

Erika Robinson (09:44)
In Canada, they do, in Europe, they do, in India, they do, in South AmErika, they do, Australia, they do. But the States was very slow off the mark. And I thought, I would love to teach people how to read. So if I do it through my political readings and I show them the cards, they see me pull the cards, and then I explicate how I get what I got. ⁓

Andrew McGregor (09:55)
Hmm.

Erika Robinson (10:11)
maybe they’ll get excited about this because I believe to the nation is everybody’s birthright. If you’re a human being, you are part of the earth and cards are also part of the earth. they not? come from trees and ink, which comes from flowers and berries and all of that. These natural materials that are sort of our intermediary ⁓ device.

to take us from the language of Kairos to the language of Kronos. Time without end, or my mother would call it the fullness of time. And then the time that you and I live in, time on the clock, time on the calendar. And so I wanted people to see that they have this ladder that goes back and forth from time to this time. And that spirit is thrilled to communicate with us.

Andrew McGregor (10:49)
Yeah.

Hmm.

For sure. Yeah.

Erika Robinson (11:08)
You know, so that’s what

I try to have people do. And so I have a course online that is through Ethany, you know, Ethany, ⁓ and she’s great. And so we put up a course last summer. And so it’s a self-directed class. ⁓ I have the book as well, of course, and my deck is available. And so people are learning, AmErikans are, know, wide swaths of them. The channel grew in ways that I could never have imagined.

Andrew McGregor (11:16)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Hmm.

Erika Robinson (11:37)
The people

are very kind, the questions are terrific. And I’m introducing Lennarmon to the world, so I couldn’t be happier. That was my mission and that’s what’s going on.

Andrew McGregor (11:45)
Yeah, that’s wonderful. Yeah.

I think it’s, I think La Normande is a, is an interesting thing. And, you know, so I first encountered it. went to a tarot conference in Dallas in 2014, I think it was, and I met Rana, Rana George, Carrie Paris. I think Donnalay De La Rose was there and it was just starting to sort of emerge into

Erika Robinson (12:04)
⁓ huh. Yeah.

Andrew McGregor (12:14)
kind of a public consciousness within the tarot world. I had such a, know, for me, I had a very interesting and different perspective than a lot of the tarot folks at the time, because the predominance of tarot as a psychological tool had really held sway over the tarot world and was sort of the dominant narrative. And it is a psychological tool.

for sure, it’s also possibly other things. And so when folks ran into Lenormand, it gave them the opportunity to explore predictions, to explore other ways of working, to ask those questions that were, you know, maybe not always officially, but sort of like unofficially kind of looked a little down on in the tarot community is like, well, you shouldn’t ask a question like that. Why do you, you know, let’s, let’s look at life purpose. Let’s look at our soul purpose, right?

I love soul purpose. Don’t get me wrong, right? ⁓ But for me as a tarot reader, and I’d already been reading tarot professionally for like 14 years by the time I ran into this. ⁓ And where I started reading as a store was predominantly Caribbean and Eastern European folks and bit Africans and South AmErikans and stuff, you know, and folks were coming in wanting to know

Erika Robinson (13:15)
Bye.

Andrew McGregor (13:44)
things, right? And, and because because I hadn’t really had a lot of contact with the broader terror world, I was only interested in Toth and Crowley stuff. When people are like, I’m not gonna tell you anything, you tell me why I’m here, I’d be like, okay, I guess that’s the job. And I would, you know, find my way to it, you know? And so so for me, when I discovered it, I was kind of like,

Erika Robinson (13:44)
Yep, exactly.

Mm-hmm.

Andrew McGregor (14:10)
But I already do this with tarot. I don’t understand what the big deal is per se. And then I kind of pieced it together that this was people’s first brush with this kind of stuff. And I also think that it’s really liberating to have options and to be able to be aware that you could ask any number of things.

Erika Robinson (14:20)
Mm-hmm.

It is. Well, you so you brought

up a lot of really interesting things just now. So the first is that ⁓ is your accurate. think Lennar Mond is ⁓ an oracle that that absolutely understands us where we live and can answer those those those sort of quotidian ⁓ sort of

everyday questions like, is it gonna rain if I have this outside party? Or, you again, what does he think of me or whatever. And I remember that terrorists would say things, I would hear terrorists say things like, get, terror doesn’t like it when you ask those kind of questions. And I’m like, terror doesn’t like it.

Okay, because Lennarmon doesn’t mind. Lennarmon, you can ask any question and it will give you the answer. It loves it.

Andrew McGregor (15:22)
Lennar Mond loves it. Lennar Mond is

like, hell yeah, let’s go.

Erika Robinson (15:26)
Well, and what it will do is it’ll answer the question. And then if you ask it again, which is another no-no in the tarot world, don’t ask it. The Lennarmond will say, sweetie, okay. Let me use other words to tell you the same thing. That’s all it does. And the other big difference between Lennarmond and tarot is the fact that tarot is an imagistic language. Everything on a given card has significance and meaning.

Lenormand, even though it’s pictures on cards, is not really an imagistic language. It is a word language. So for example, I went to China for work that’s unrelated and I wanted to take a deck, but I was afraid to take a deck because I knew I was traveling by myself all over China and I didn’t want to get my cards confiscated and God knows what else, because certain parts of China are, they feel way more communist kind of than.

than other parts. So I said, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to take a set of index cards. I’m just going to number them one through 36 because Lennarmon is numbered. And I’ll be able to do readings that way. And I could because Lennarmon’s images are archetypal. So for example, everybody knows what a house looks like or has their version of what a house is, a tree, a dog. Everybody has those images. They’re all identifiable. The only one that might be ⁓

unfamiliar would be a scythe, but it’s a farming implement and all you need to know is it’s got a blade and a curve, right? So it’s kind of the way that we used to, when we learned how to read, ⁓ we learned that you could put letters together and that letters made words. That was very cool. Then we were taught, ⁓ and when you make those words, depending on the order that you put them in, you can say anything in the world.

Andrew McGregor (17:01)
Yeah.

Erika Robinson (17:23)
Well, Lenormand, being a word language, is just like that. And I think for terrorists who are trying to get into Lenormand, ⁓ they need to understand that it’s the way you would learn, again, Chinese. If you learn Chinese, you don’t want to have your reference point be English.

because there is no reference point. Leave your English outside the door and immerse yourself completely in the learning of Chinese. Well, Lennarmon is that way. Leave your tarot tools outside. They won’t go anywhere. You’ll still have them. And then learn Lennarmon because it’s its own thing. What I try to do in my sub stack, and I did it yesterday for the first time in my channel, my video channel, was that

Andrew McGregor (17:46)
Hmm.

Erika Robinson (18:07)
⁓ I have, I use all three. use Lenormand, I use Tarot, and I use the African oracle, the Odinqara. And I have them have a conversation with each other. That’s what I do on my Substack. Because if you let each oracle habits say, there’s no cacophony, there’s no confusion. But if you confuse the rules of one language for the rules of the other language,

It’s the Tower of Babel. You can’t understand what anybody’s saying. So I let each oracle play their part and have their say. And they’re very respectful of one another. And the conversation is seamless. It’s a beautiful thing to watch. So I think my best advice, if you want to learn Lennarmand and you’re a tarotist, is put your tarot tools outside. Commit to Lennarmand. And there will be a time when those two friends

Andrew McGregor (18:59)
Hmm.

Erika Robinson (19:04)
can come together and make beautiful music together.

Andrew McGregor (19:08)
for sure. Yeah, there’s a it’s not a wise approach to sort of pull the it all comes from the same place. It all ties to the same archetypes. It all ties to a singular truth. ⁓ It’s not particularly I mean, it’s generally a dubious approach anyway, I think. But ⁓ but I think it’s a ⁓ especially dubious in this way. Because if we think I like to think of it this way.

Erika Robinson (19:29)
Right.

Andrew McGregor (19:37)
Tarot divides the universe into 78 pieces. Lenormand divides it into 36, other systems divide it into various other pieces. And the way you delineate those pieces as complete changes the way they speak. So the Lenormand card, the rider,

Erika Robinson (20:00)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

Andrew McGregor (20:05)
You know, it’s a complete thing in and of itself within its system. And it’s not leans into this and leans into that. We can understand those analogies, but at best they’re metaphors.

Erika Robinson (20:18)
Well, the

big thing about that is that Ryder, the example I give in my book is the word dog, the card dog. That is actual Lenormand card. When I say dog to you, you may get a certain image in your mind because of the dogs that you may have interacted with in your life or seen in your environs. Exactly, okay. But we, so we all get an image and the images of a snout

Andrew McGregor (20:38)
snuggled on my couch this morning.

Erika Robinson (20:48)
of a tail, four legs, teeth, ears. Okay, that’s it. But it’s not until you join that card dog to other cards that the dog comes alive, as would be the case in a sentence. If I said the big black dog with its fangs dripping saliva leapt at my throat, well,

That’s very different than saying the little brown dog wagged its tail so hard that its whole body was moving. You see, I took the word dog and I surrounded it with words and that evoked an image in your mind. That’s how Lennarmond works. Each card is discreet, but it’s not alive. Because Lennarmond is a group sport, a, what do call it?

Andrew McGregor (21:25)
Hmm.

Erika Robinson (21:44)
Yeah, it’s a group activity, team sport, thank you. It’s a team sport. Mm-hmm, yeah.

Andrew McGregor (21:45)
Team sport? Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. I also think that the question, the issue of unasked questions is also very interesting, you know? And I think that like, there’s rightly so a lot of conversation about asking good questions, asking thoughtful questions.

Erika Robinson (22:01)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Andrew McGregor (22:13)
being clear about what you want, you know? you know, I tend to, you know, after years and thousands of readings of reading for folks who not only didn’t want to tell me a question, but didn’t want to move at all and just sat there like stones while I read them, ⁓ you know, I’m like, I’d rather know why you’re here, you know? ⁓ Maybe that’s my ego, maybe it’s whatever, maybe it’s just easier. And I’m getting lazy as I get older.

Erika Robinson (22:40)
Well, yeah, I mean, I’ll tell you something with that. That’s an interesting thing, too. So when I worked in the shop, occasionally there would be people who would come in and the body language said everything that they needed. You know, their arms were crossed, their legs were crossed. They had an expression on their face. And I wouldn’t read for those people. I would say, you know what, there might be somebody down the hall that can read for you, because here’s what I’m not. I’m not.

a circus performer. I’m not, this is not a joke. This is an interaction, an agreement, a sacred agreement between my higher self and your higher self. I can show you things that you don’t realize you know. The only way I can do it is that your higher self has shown me what it is. So that’s the thing, that’s how I would handle those.

Andrew McGregor (23:11)
Mm-hmm.

Erika Robinson (23:39)
But beyond that, with Lenormand, for example, it’s as you said earlier, a lot of people have particular areas of their life that they want information on. know, love, money, employment, you know, there’s a few others. And so there’s always a card for that that I can use. But you’re right. A lot of times people will say, especially with Lenormand, because they’re very unfamiliar with it, they don’t even know what it is. So they might say, they’re nervous. And they’ll say, I don’t even know what to ask.

And I’ll say, that’s fine. So what I do in Lenerman, there’s a card for that too, which is the person card. So I will, you know, designate a card that stands for the person and then pull cards around it. And then what will happen is it’s like, it is magic. I’m just going to say it’s like magic. It is magic. What will happen is it is identical to magic. It is the same thing. Is that whatever is uppermost in their mind,

Andrew McGregor (24:29)
It is in fact identical to magic, being magic.

Erika Robinson (24:38)
whether they’re conscious of it or not, will be shown to me on the table. You can tell their eyes will get wide. You’ll be like, how did you know? this is what your higher self is trying to communicate to your egoic self. So let’s work from there. So it’s beautiful because I used to say, you’ve got to have a question. But for years I’ve said, no, if you don’t have a question, that’s fine. Let’s see what…

your higher self feels is the issue of the moment. And then from there, that’s the other thing is that there’s a there’s a spread in Lennar Mond that is that is everyone finds quite daunting. It’s called the Grand Tableau. And it’s a spread that all the cards and so I learned it. And I have taught it in my course. It’s obviously I’ve taught it in my book.

Andrew McGregor (25:11)
Hmm, for sure.

Yes, the table of everything.

Erika Robinson (25:32)
But I’ve never loved it. And the reason is that for me, it’s a spread that does tell you a little bit about everything. But in my experience, reading for clients, nobody’s really interested in a little bit about everything. What they’re interested in is a deep dive on a certain area or a couple of certain areas. So what I did was I thought, you know, how can I make this oracle truly my own? I’ve learned everything there is to learn.

I’ve learned from all of the great teachers. I’ve mastered this. How can I make it mine? I thought, okay, what I want to do is a riff on something original. I said, I want to do a riff on a five-card spread, which is a traditional spread. The riff is, I’ll pull five cards, but then I want to know more. I thought, well, I’m an English teacher. Pretend all of those five cards are nouns. I need adjectives and verbs and stuff. I want details.

Andrew McGregor (26:13)
Mm-hmm.

Erika Robinson (26:31)
So I’m gonna pull three clarifiers for each of those five cards. And then that gave me a nice box. But then I thought, okay, but I still have a bunch of cards in my hand. I don’t wanna be greedy and I don’t wanna reinvent the wheel and do a grand tableau. So I’m gonna limit myself to just three more cards, which I’ll put off to the side and those will serve as a postscript. Is there any last thing that I need to say? Is there any caveat that I need to say?

Andrew McGregor (26:36)
Mm-hmm.

Erika Robinson (27:01)
And what I found out was, as I worked with this spread, it gave me a narrative. So the overview is the first five cards. That’s sort of the summary. The first two vertical lines are backstory. This is stuff that my client already knows. So a couple of times I had clients that said, well, I already know that. Why are you telling me that? It always struck me so funny because I’m like, okay, you knew that. But did I know that? No.

Andrew McGregor (27:12)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Erika Robinson (27:31)
So I feel like Spirit gave me those two lines to make the Yes.

Andrew McGregor (27:34)
And I also think that just to jump in for one second, think

that just because the person getting the reading knows things doesn’t mean that they weight them correctly or they understand their significance. know, like sometimes they do, right? But like sometimes you put a few pieces together in a specific context and they’re like, ⁓ now I see the flow or the pattern, right?

Erika Robinson (27:44)
True,

Yes. NYC, that’s right. That’s right.

So that’s what those two lines are. The center line is what’s going on right now. And then we have two lines of what’s coming in. And then we have the postscript, sort of any last words. So each reading becomes this really comprehensive, beautiful narrative so that invariably, I mean, this is really eerie.

When I say, you have any questions about this? Because when I read, it’s not a back and forth, I’m channeling it. So I have to say everything I see. And then I’ll say, do you have any questions? And invariably they say, they don’t. It answered every question. So I was very happy to be able to make that contribution to the card world and to the Lennarmond world and show people, people who are really expert at Lennarmond who didn’t realize

Andrew McGregor (28:41)
Yeah.

Erika Robinson (28:48)
what the Oracle was capable of. People have always thought of it as the little sister of tarot, or it’s not that deep, or the questions that you ask it are superficial. That’s not true. It’s all about how you use the tool, and it is eager and anxious to show what it’s capable of doing.

Andrew McGregor (29:09)
Yeah,

yeah, for sure. And I think that that’s true of so many divination systems, you know, you know, I mean, as an initiate in, ⁓ you know, Lakumi, Afro Caribbean, Orisha practice, you know, we have a variety of, of oracles and the simplest one is just casting four pieces of coconut and the amount of information that can come from that when you’re in it, when you’re in the flow.

as we would say when your ashe is flowing, but you know, when you’re in the channel, right? It’s amazing, you know? And as you say, sometimes stuff comes through and people are just like, what? Whoa, how do you, you know, it’s like, I know, I know, cause they know, right? And by they, mean, maybe the person, maybe the higher selves, maybe the spirits themselves, all of them’s come together, right? Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. And I think,

Erika Robinson (29:56)
Right. Exactly.

All of it.

That’s right.

Absolutely.

Andrew McGregor (30:09)
And I think it was a real blessing for me in many ways to spend five years with no expectations of what Tarot could or couldn’t do. And with the only expectation being that the owner of the place was like, we send you the clients, you read for them, whatever they want to ask you, answer it. I was like, all right, that’s the deal. Fair enough. You know? Yeah.

Erika Robinson (30:18)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Well, I mean, right, because when you can eliminate that sort of egoic self-consciousness or those egoic expectations, well, you open up to everything that’s possible, you know?

Andrew McGregor (30:46)
Hmm, for sure. Yeah. So I guess we last hung out last November, right? Almost creeping towards a year ago now. And you know, the world has changed a lot since then, you know? And I think that we talked a little bit before the call about how divination and all these tools help us through this time and so on. And I know that on your

Erika Robinson (30:54)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Andrew McGregor (31:16)
YouTube you do a lot of You know your YouTube and your sub stack commentary on these kinds of things ⁓ Yeah, what’s going on what’s happening with the world? How are you getting through it?

Erika Robinson (31:23)
Mm-hmm.

⁓ First of all, to

your Canadian listeners, I am sorry. I I had nothing to do with it. I did everything I could to have it not happen. I am sorry, as you like to say. I really am. It’s just a humiliation and an embarrassment. I will say that, and I said this to you before we went on the air, is that as a Black person,

I have always felt that I lived in a fun house living in AmErika. We all had this agreement, you know, we say the pledge, you know, mom, apple pie, AmErika, blah, whatever. But if you’re black, you’re like, this is not real. This is not really my experience. But I’m gonna act like it is because that’s what I’m supposed to do. And if I call attention, so to me, it felt like being in a, ⁓

Andrew McGregor (32:18)
Mm-hmm.

Erika Robinson (32:27)
at a county fair ⁓ in the fun house where you’re in the house of mirrors and everything is distorted and crazy looking. And so for me, the one consolation that I have about this ugly time that we’re in is that it’s very, very clear that we’ve been in a house of mirrors. My hope is that AmErika right sizes itself in terms of its ⁓ place in the world. ⁓

⁓ We are not an exceptional nature as we can see. We are prone to the same vicissitudes as any other nation ⁓ which a tyrant sniffs around and decides they might want to take over. We are not immune from that. We’re a very young nation and young nations are like young people. They can be arrogant because they know it all. Can’t tell them anything. We are finding out the hard way and I think that

⁓ It’s an opportunity. ⁓ on the verge of our 200 and whatever it is 50th anniversary. We have an opportunity to decide what it means in our documents when they say build a more perfect union. What exactly does that mean? Never said perfect, but it said more perfect. I think we’ve walked around ⁓ assuming that we were perfect already. We are far from it. This is an opportunity to really ⁓

Andrew McGregor (33:52)
Hmm.

Erika Robinson (33:56)
look at ourselves deeply, see, you know, turn that rock over and see all the slime underneath and decide whether are we gonna put the rock back down and act like we didn’t see it or are we gonna clean it? ⁓ And cleaning it is like cleaning a burn, right? Where they abrade it and they pour stuff on it. The agony is exquisite, but that’s the only way you get to the root.

Andrew McGregor (34:08)
Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Erika Robinson (34:25)
of it and clean it out. I think the jury sadly is out as to whether we want to just turn the rock back over or whether we want to clean it. ⁓ Because it’s also true that this is a nation that is built on capitalism, the dollar, ⁓ money is a king. We’ve got God on our, the eye of God on our money.

Andrew McGregor (34:25)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Erika Robinson (34:53)
us, there’s money, and then it was built also on violence and slavery, the ownership of people. So if that is the root, how do you grow a healthy plant from a rotten root? Can we rip that root out and replant what’s good and pure and decent? Some people are not trying to do that. We’ve got this big Christo nationalist

movement that’s trying to take over everything with Project 2025 and everything else. And I do think there’s fewer of them than there are of the rest of us. But I don’t, I mean, I don’t know. The election, the election was, I do believe that there was a degree to which, yes, it was monkeyed with, it was toyed with. But I also think a lot of people said they were going to do one thing and then went in the

vote voting booth and did a whole other thing except for the 92 % of us. So ⁓ that’s interesting because it makes you look at everybody and say, know, are you? Which side are you on? so my channel, ⁓

Andrew McGregor (35:58)
Hmm.

Yep. Yeah.

Erika Robinson (36:11)
You know, I think I was concerned about whether I would have a lot of ugliness on there. And I did kind of in the beginning, people would say, it’s like, you should tell your audience that this is a black channel. I feel betrayed. I mean, it’s a black channel because I’m black. So I mean, ⁓ if you want to call that a black channel, is that a problem for you? Then this is not the space for you. But people are.

Andrew McGregor (36:33)
Mm-hmm.

Erika Robinson (36:40)
And I have a policy of, just get rid of people who are unpleasant. I used to try to reason with them and I realized, that’s what they mean when they say trolls. Now I understand. ⁓

Andrew McGregor (36:50)
Yeah, yeah. I think that

the,

think that the era of discussion on the internet is over. think that there’s nothing, except in the smallest of spaces, anything good ever comes from that.

Erika Robinson (37:10)
Right, right, because you’re

hiding behind a screen and you can be anyone.

Andrew McGregor (37:14)
Right? You know, and I think that this notion of like discourse and this and that, I’m like, I’m not interested in discussing things online. If I want to have a conversation about something, then I will have people on the podcast and have a conversation about something. and you know, ⁓ have a deep conversation about it in some way, because this sort of transient back and forth and, know, whatever it’s, it’s fruitless. doesn’t, it doesn’t accomplish anything, you know? Yeah.

Erika Robinson (37:39)
Right, absolutely, absolutely.

Absolutely. So what I do during the week is I prognosticate, yes, and talk about issues. And then on Sundays, when I need a break, I have someone on and model how to have those kinds of deep conversations, you know? And people seem to appreciate that. And I think they learn.

Andrew McGregor (38:03)
Yeah.

Erika Robinson (38:07)
oh, maybe I can do this in my real life, talk to somebody whose opinion differs from mine or I don’t know about. So it’s been a really good, I think, tool. Yeah.

Andrew McGregor (38:20)
Hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that, I think the question of what are folks going to do as these wounds surface, you know, is, is significant, you know, you know, I mean, I remember, I remember when Rodney King, you know, was assaulted and there were the riots and all the things that came from that and all the backlash and so on. And, you know, I remember chatting with folks.

⁓ after George Floyd was killed and You know people were asking me like well, how do you know about this stuff? I’m like cuz I’ve been listening to punk rock since the 80s like you go back people have known all along black people have always known and In variety of other pockets there’s access to this knowledge You know and yet people find their way to Entrench themselves against it in their own best interests

Erika Robinson (39:16)
because they’re,

but they’re encouraged to do that. I mean, Trump has a tagline that he used. It didn’t really ⁓ gain traction. He wanted it to, but this was the tagline. AmErika will be woke no more. Now, when you think about it, is this an aspir, I mean, clearly for him, this is an aspirational goal for AmErika. I will say that AmErika,

Andrew McGregor (39:41)
Yeah, for sure.

Erika Robinson (39:45)
has been asleep for 250 years. And what I find on my channel that I find really moving is people of a certain age who were asleep and listen to what I do, look at the cards and all of that, listen to the conversations and say, I didn’t know this. I had no idea because

Andrew McGregor (40:08)
Yeah.

Erika Robinson (40:12)
Again, it’s kind of like that funhouse experience. There is this agreement that we’re all going to pretend like things are a certain way. And if you step out of that, certainly as a white person, you run the risk of being ostracized, thrown out of your tribe. And then who are your people? Because you’re still white. And your job is still to make inroads with those people. But now you are sort of ⁓

Andrew McGregor (40:31)
Hmm.

Erika Robinson (40:41)
You are groupless, community less, seen as a traitor even, right? And that’s a very big price to pay. And the opposite is if you are not that way, and if you decide to go along to get along, there are infinite rewards for white, infinite rewards. So it’s about what you value, which you consider a reward.

Andrew McGregor (40:44)
Sure.

for sure.

Erika Robinson (41:09)
What are the benefits of being awake? Really awake. It’s unpleasant. We all want to go back to sleep, but there are benefits to being awake. It’s like, it’s literally like sleep. You know how when you’re sleeping and you’re having good dreams and your bed is comfortable and soft and warm, it’s great. But

Is that where you want to stay forever? When you could get up and you could have breakfast and you could meet a friend and you could go for a walk and you could see a movie and you could cook a meal. Right. So the benefits you will find, I think, outweigh the benefits of staying asleep. And really, if you’re staying asleep.

Andrew McGregor (41:38)
Hmm. You could drink coffee. ⁓ coffee. Yep.

Erika Robinson (41:53)
somebody’s benefiting, somebody’s aware and awake. So they’re telling you that it’s benefits to be sleepy and narcoleptic and all that, but really that’s not true. So one of the things I do see is this slow waking up, this very painful acknowledgement of white fragility. I gave, there’s a book called White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. She’s a white woman, very good book.

I have given that book to several people, white people, and each person didn’t even crack the book before they said to me, I’m offended by this. They’re offended by the title, by the implication that there could be, but that’s what sleep does. Sleep makes you think, I can’t handle the truth. I’m too delicate for the truth. The truth is, but who, to whom, to whom accrues the advantage when you do that?

Andrew McGregor (42:49)
Yeah, you keep the advantage you already have, right? Yeah.

Erika Robinson (42:49)
So one of the things I always, yes,

the thing I always say is that as people wake up, when we actually storm Versailles, because that, you know, everything’s gold now, and the way that when we storm Versailles and you look to the left of you and the right of you, you’re going to be surprised at who you see. It could be a corporate executive who can’t handle the tariffs that he’s being told to eat on the one side.

And it could be a disenfranchised MAGA on the other side. And all of you are now comrades in arms because you what? You woke up and realized that whoever’s created this system, it’s not for you, it’s for them. And that they’re the ones who’ve been telling you, you should be enemies with these people. They’re like.

Andrew McGregor (43:28)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Reminds me of ⁓ Homage to Catalonia about the civil wars and the anarchists and communists in Spain, right? And how there was the prospect of everybody creating something quite new and yet the factions couldn’t get over themselves and everything fell back apart, right? You know, so.

Erika Robinson (43:49)
Yeah. Yep.

Right.

Right,

right. But there is a movement, you can see it all over Instagram, it’s called the, I think they’re calling it the Purple Revolution. Now, purple, what is purple? Purple, you get purple if you put together red and blue. And so there are people on each side, rabidly on each side, who are starting to say, wait a minute, the enemy of my enemy could very well be my what? my friend.

Andrew McGregor (44:11)
Okay.

Erika Robinson (44:30)
And so there is this purple revolution and I think that that is growing. My hope is that it will grow. My intention is that it will grow. I think that the more you talk about things, know, thoughts become things, the more you talk about it, the more you call attention to it, the more people are aware of it and awake and the more that purple revolution I think will grow.

Andrew McGregor (44:52)
Yeah. Well, and I think like to kind of circle back to where we started a little bit for a moment, I think that if you’re a person who’s interested in reading for others, it is important, crucial for you to consider and learn about all these kinds of things, right? Especially if you’re going to read from people of different backgrounds and so on, you know, I mean, the, the understanding

You know, the limits, the history, the biases, you know, all these kinds of things. It is very difficult to deliver clear readings if you have not undone some of this stuff and woken up.

Erika Robinson (45:38)
Well, you bring up something that I hope is not too incendiary, but maybe it could be. Well, you know, like you, you and I both know a lot of the same people in the magical community. One of the things, and again, because I come late to the work, I was in my 50s when I first started this work, so I come very late.

Andrew McGregor (45:42)
Let’s go blow it up.

Erika Robinson (45:59)
But one of my early assumptions was, oh, everybody’s so nice. Everybody’s so friendly. OK, and you know, all right. But when, now that we’re in this, the era of the felon, because that’s what I’m calling him now, not 45, not 47, not by his name, the felon, the magical community.

I see it in a different light. So one of the things I see is something that you alluded to, which is this, ⁓ you know, everything is love and light and I don’t deal with politics. don’t, you know, because I’m living in the fifth dimension over here and you know, don’t miss me with that. Or people who are rabidly felonish.

And I’ll tell you, at first, it just shocked me. ⁓ I get that it’s a byproduct or a manifestation of ⁓ spiritual bypassing. ⁓ But it’s unfortunate, because you know what? I think of the witches of in World War II in England. Diane Fortune, that who it was?

Andrew McGregor (47:19)
Dion Fortune,

yeah.

Erika Robinson (47:20)
No,

it’s unfortunate. Who put that dome around London and protected it? And I said to myself, wouldn’t it be cool if the magical people could get together today with all of the better tools that we have at our disposal? And we did something like that. And then I realized, wait, that can’t happen because there was a common cause at the time.

There were people from all over the world who participated in that back then, but we are too splintered in our understanding of what magic is, what magic is for, what it should be used for, and what is right and what is wrong. And so, you know.

Andrew McGregor (48:05)
Well, I think there’s a thing that ⁓ people don’t like to admit or face, which is, generally speaking, magic is completely amoral. It has no inherent anything attached to it. And as much as we might like to say, well, the threefold law says it’ll come back to you and this and that and whatever, ⁓ none of that is really true. And

Magic can be whatever it is that you want it to be and especially Right. Yeah, and especially because you know one of my understandings about magic is our unconscious or whatever we want to call it is inherently tied into our magic as Is our ego and other pieces and all of those exert influence on us on sorry on the magic we do and

Erika Robinson (48:36)
because you’re the ingredient. You are that special ingredient. That’s right.

That’s right. Yes.

Andrew McGregor (49:02)
So if we have unresolved issues, if we have, you know, unattended to, you know, racist color, cultural biases, personal biases, traumas, and whatever, it’s not impossible for our magic to work. In fact, it’s easy for our magic to work, but kind of like AI, it’s always going to tilt in certain directions, right? And people don’t really want to sort of, in general, take a good look at that.

Erika Robinson (49:23)
Yes, yes.

Andrew McGregor (49:30)
And people are always shocked when prominent magic people stand up and say whatever. And it’s like, well, yeah, I mean, there’s no, we’d like to think that they are mindful of humanity and interaction, you know, what they might owe humanity and our higher calling to other people and whatever. But a lot of that language is just hierarchical lingering stuff from Golden Dawn and Victorians and previous people. It’s not actually.

Erika Robinson (49:36)
Hmm.

Andrew McGregor (49:59)
inherent thing in and of itself. One of my teachers actually said, you know, he ⁓ refused to teach to take students who didn’t have either a religion that they were actively engaged in bettering themselves through or some other path where they were actively working on themselves because of the indifference of magic to everything ultimately, you know?

Erika Robinson (50:02)
That’s right.

Now I think that that should be a revelation to people because we are that final and first ingredient in any magic that we do.

Andrew McGregor (50:35)
Yeah. Yeah.

Erika Robinson (50:38)
Wow,

yeah, well, you know, it has been quite an education to see who people are.

Andrew McGregor (50:48)
Yeah. And as the saying goes, when someone shows you who they are, believe them, believe them, take it, be like, there it is.

Erika Robinson (50:53)
And

credit where it’s due, Maya Angelou, she knew what she was talking about. That’s right. And I don’t need to be shown more than once. And then I just back away from the door because you’re not my people. Yeah.

Andrew McGregor (51:10)
Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. ⁓ I also had on my list of things here as I make little notes, as we have our conversation and stuff, I’m curious if you have anything that you feel you’d like to share around how people get through these complicated times, right? Cause ultimately, you know, the economy is wild. The world stage is wild. We’ve got more active war than we’ve had, you know, in recent memory for

most people, know, there’s so much going on. You know, what what are you seeing? Are there patterns or the things that you sort of see coming up again for you know how people keep going day by day how people get through this kind of time?

Erika Robinson (51:41)
Mm-hmm.

Well, think

the term day by day is an important one because even in the midst of all of this madness, we have our daily lives to attend to. And our daily lives have a regularity and a rhythm to them that can bring us deep solace and deep comfort. So I think there’s a saint that I frequently quote, and I’ve

remembered this line since I was a young girl living in, living a hard life. And then certainly when I was a new mother for the first time, by the way, I’m a grandmother, a month ago, so I’m thrilled. Thank you. But when, you know, when, when I was a girl and when I was a new mother, I thought of the words of St. Teresa of Avila and the words were my every act, a prayer.

Andrew McGregor (52:33)
Woo! Congratulations.

Erika Robinson (52:50)
And so when I was doing dishes or I was vacuuming or I was whatever I was doing, if you can make every regular act that you do in the course of your life that makes your life, your personal life and the life of those you love better, no matter how simple it is, make it a prayer, make it intentional and be conscious. So that’s one. ⁓ Another thing is that ⁓ so that everything is a practice.

Andrew McGregor (53:12)
Yeah.

Erika Robinson (53:19)
Right? Doing the dishes is a practice. I think in terms of practice, I think it’s important to have one. For me, doing Leathermond is a practice. ⁓ I think it’s a good thing to turn off the news occasionally. We do not need to be immersed 24-7 ⁓ in what is going on in the zeitgeist.

So there’s that, but then at the same time, think number three, find community, ⁓ know who your people are. It’s great to know who they’re not, but it’s also good to know who are your people and find a way to ⁓ exercise activism. This can be small. If you shop for groceries for an elderly, you know, or ill neighbor, ⁓ give people rye.

Andrew McGregor (53:51)
Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. People, people always

think activism needs to be like getting in front of, you know, riot cops and doing stuff or whatever, but it’s like, no, could be many things, right?

Erika Robinson (54:21)
Right.

Many things, many, you know, donate to a soup kitchen. For me, I know if I did not have my work, I mean, I always read for clients and that’s great. And I love that. And that’s one-on-one and I love helping people. But without my writing and the work on YouTube, I would feel, as they say, at sixes and sevens around all of this. But my activism,

is through that work that I do. So in ways large and small, if you find ways to exercise activism, if you find your community, if you have a practice, and if you understand that your microcosm life has as much importance as what’s going on out there in the macro. And they say as above, so below. Well, as in here, so out there.

If you’re living in a loving way and going through your daily life, making your bed and all of those kinds of things and saying my every act of prayer, I think that shifts energy in a good way. So I think those are some of the advice that I would.

Andrew McGregor (55:18)
for sure.

Hmm, yeah.

You know, for me, I go back to it’s kind of a rambly story that doesn’t entirely make sense, but makes perfect sense for me. So I’m going to share it. When I was in high school, there was this guy, Jeff, know knew and in the summers he worked on a sod farm and his job was to ⁓ mow the lawn and or collect sod 12 hours a day, I five or six days a week, right? Just him in a tractor.

This is like, you know, maybe he had his Walkman. Did he have enough batteries to last the day? Questionable. And he started smoking during that time. And somebody asked him, he’s like, Jeff, why, why are you smoking? He’s like, well, imagine you’re going to stand around and do nothing forever, or you could stand around and do nothing forever and smoke. Now I’m not saying people should smoke, but there’s something about that story that stuck in my brain. And then you fast forward many, know, many years ahead and

Erika Robinson (56:27)
Ha ha!

Andrew McGregor (56:37)
You know years ago two of my brothers passed away within six weeks of each other and it was horrible and hard and difficult and You know during a time like that in the same way. I think like a political time like this you feel like everything should be different you should just somehow like nothing could be the same and I remember sort of

for some reason thinking about this story from high school and somehow I got to the phrase, yeah, this is horrible and you’ve got to do something with your time. And I’m not going to smoke, you know, at least not at this point anymore. ⁓ But, you know, it’s good to do something with your time and that something with your time might be going to the coffee shop, sit and chat with people. It might be completely, you know, frivolous.

Erika Robinson (57:18)
Right?

That’s right.

Andrew McGregor (57:36)
In sense of the grand scheme of things and absolutely necessary to your heart, right? and so I think that we we have to do something with our time and It can’t be all paying attention to this. It can’t be 24-7 activism. It can’t be any of those things because as you say, you know your bed needs making and the food needs cooking and we need to move our bodies and we need to forget

Erika Robinson (57:38)
No.

Yes.

Andrew McGregor (58:05)
for periods of time, not go back to sleep, but forget for a couple hours here and there in order to be rejuvenated, at least in my mind, you know?

Erika Robinson (58:13)
Well, you know, yes, it’s being in the moment right now. know, the Christians have an expression in them. They say it at funerals, in the midst of, what do they say? In the midst of life, we are in death. And I’m like, what? I flipped it. In the midst of death, we are in life. And so we need to live it and find pockets of joy.

Andrew McGregor (58:34)
Yes.

Erika Robinson (58:40)
It may not be one whole river of joy, but there are absolutely in everyone’s life moments of joy. That first sip of coffee is joy. If you are in that moment and if your every act is a prayer, you will appreciate that cup of coffee as a singular, magnificent moment. So looking for those and realizing that in the looking, you will find them because they’re always around us all the time.

Andrew McGregor (59:09)
There’s always something,

yeah, for sure. All right, so go find your joy and we’ll hear from you. Let us know what’s working for you too. ⁓ Erika, thank you so much for this time today. ⁓ I’ve really enjoyed the conversation. I didn’t have super intense, clear ideas of what I wanted it to be, but I knew that we would have good talk about stuff. ⁓ Yeah.

Erika Robinson (59:11)
Yeah, there’s always something.

I think we would too. Thank you for having me, Angela.

Andrew McGregor (59:36)
⁓ Folks should follow you in the various places. Where are you? Where should people come find you?

Erika Robinson (59:42)
So I am in the Company of Cards, both on YouTube, that’s the name of my YouTube channel, in the Company of Cards. Erika Robinson, you can put either one in the search engine and you’ll find it. And also on Substack, my name or in the Company of Cards is where I write my book.

the language of Lenermond, can find anywhere and any bookstore will have that. if you go to my, I have a website, which is LenermondwithErika.com. And if you go to my YouTube channel, you know how there’s like a more button, you can find access to the website, the book, the deck and the

Andrew McGregor (1:00:27)
I’ll put

all the links in the show notes too. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much, Erika.

Erika Robinson (1:00:29)
Yeah, so it’s all a deal.

Thank you. Appreciate it, Andrew

Andrew McGregor (1:00:40)
Alright folks, that’s the end of this episode. Big thanks to Erika for spending that time with me and again to Amir for the beautiful music. This is the point where I ask you for a favour. It is so hard to reach people now. Everybody’s so inundated that nobody really connects with very things very much. So I would love it if you could spread the word, tell a friend, share it somewhere, do something to help.

this podcast, which I think is one of the best podcasts on these subjects out there to reach a wider audience. All right. Much appreciated.

Spread the word. Share this post!