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Astrology, Tarot, and the Struggle to Make Sense of a Pandemic
When everything falls apart, spirituality becomes medicine
In early May, Tiffany Coffman was talking to me on the phone while sitting on the porch of her new house in North Carolina. I could hear the lilting birdsong of the Pisgah National Forest. Coffman had been offering acupuncture treatments on cruise ships for most of the last decade, but was now, like millions of Americans, indefinitely furloughed.
As a deadly pandemic grips much of the world and reconfigures almost every aspect of daily life, Coffman decided to start a YouTube channel and Facebook page — both named The Insight Circle — for people “who might be struggling emotionally and spiritually.”
In one guided meditation video, Coffman speaks extremely softly, a smile fixed on her face, about the feelings of uncertainty that have become ubiquitous over the past months. “Just feel that sense of trust that the next breath is going to come,” she says, encouraging her adherents to focus on the small things they can control. “Meditation is a really wonderful way to prove to yourself that everything is going to be okay without having to take someone else’s word for it.”
Coffman has been employing a number of different practices to keep herself calm and grounded right now. In addition to frequent meditation, which she says facilitates “compassionate inquiry into the self,” she has also been using hape, a Shamanic snuff that’s comprised of sacred tobacco and herbs. “When you’re going through a difficult time and you can’t move forward, this really helps you to reset and process your emotions,” she says.
Coffman says that the pandemic and recent social upheaval have provided the optimal opportunity to embrace spiritual practices as a way to feel more whole and even healthy. “People are looking for guidance to feel better in their bodies, for confidence, and for higher meaning in their life. If they’re not drawn to it now, I don’t know when they would [be]. What else are you going to do?”
Spirituality collides with a pandemic
I met Coffman in Miami back in December when we were both having our auras photographed at 9th Chakra, a shop in South Beach full…
