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…
