A first glance, there is little visibly similar between a compact disc and a deck of tarot cards: They both come in square-shaped containers, may or may not be accompanied by a booklet of sorts and can often be inspired by popular media, current events or even seasonal holidays. However, the similarities between music and tarot actually run incredibly deep – as forms of art, expression and inspiration. While largely living in separate worlds, there are notable instances where music and tarot have combined to create something truly unique. Such is the case with empath and musician Jamie Wyman’s latest album, Return to the Mothership, and its accompanying 22-card major arcana tarot deck.
Jamie, who experienced her first tarot reading in college, confesses, “I’ve always felt like spiritual readings were more helpful, for me, for working through things. Somebody’s telling me something instead of asking me something – there’s something to work with. I always really liked that.” Even so, much of Jamie’s early experiences with tarot cards were had in secret. Her first deck was a gift, albeit from an unlikely source. “My ex-husband was a staunch atheist, but he actually bought me the cards,” Jamie recalls, “even though he thought they were a bunch of crap. So, I had to use them by myself. He’d come home and I’d hide them…I was kind of embarrassed about it.”
Back then, the cards were something she did for fun while working her way toward a degree – not in music, but in law. Jamie recounts the foundation of her pursuit. “In college, I took a class – Psychology of Gifted Women – and we had to do this ‘life dreams’ project.” As a result, she says, “My 19-year-old-self decided that my life purpose was to illuminate possibilities for human development in individuals and society.” She laughs. “Not ambitious at all.” Perhaps, but the goal itself was born of real-world experiences that had left a lasting impression. “I was working as an advocate for sexual assault survivors, and I spent a lot of time in hospitals that I just felt were run really poorly, and I wanted a little bit more power to help people. I knew I didn’t want to be a doctor or be in the healthcare profession at all, so I went the law school route and studied health care law.”
Despite this resolution, fissures slowly began to creep in along the journey. Jamie recalls there was a specific mantra she heard repeatedly throughout her academic tenure. “I had law professors tell me: It’s not a justice system; it’s a legal system. So, you’re probably going to be barking up the wrong tree if you think there’s going to be a lot of justice here.” Jamie adds, “And I have a strong sense of justice…and I realized at some point that this was not a great path for me.”
Even so, Jamie passed the bar in 2008, just in time for the global economy to collapse. “I had a hard time finding a job as an attorney that would pay my student loans,” she recalls. “So, I ended up back in social work roles.” If this sounds like the perfect setup for a Saturn return…it is. For those unfamiliar, Saturn returns are characterized by transformation, often through the confrontation of external obstacles and deep emotional turmoil.
For Jamie, this transformation was catalyzed by what can either be interpreted as a passive-aggressive letter from a run-of-the-mill Karen, or a very intentional hand-written curse. She explains, “I had a garage sale, and this lady was unhappy because I wouldn’t let her return something, and she put this note on my car that said: What you put out comes back to you.” Sharing the encounter, one of Jamie’s friends suspected the note was a curse and gifted her a piece of amethyst. “I had no idea about crystals or anything. She was really someone that walked me through that.” Jamie notes she had been exploring multiple facets of spirituality for some time prior, including extrasensory perception and reading signs. “…All of a sudden, I had an epiphany.”
Jamie describes it as a moment of clarity where, all at once, several seemingly unrelated things were suddenly connecting to shed light on multiple truths:
“I’m in the wrong place. I’m in the wrong marriage. I’m not supposed to be hiding my tarot cards. I’d like to sing in a band.”
By the early 2010s, following this epiphany, Jamie was back in her native state of Montana, freshly divorced, and joining her very first band at the age of 30. In the years since, she has released three studio albums, opened for the Marshall Tucker Band and Jamestown Revival, mentored with songwriters Susan Gibson, Jim Messin and Justin Townes Earle and she has also remarried to a fellow musician and bassist for her current band. That journey is baked into the essence of Return to the Mothership, each of its 22 tracks serving as a progression through life’s various stages, much like the major arcana archetypes from the Rider Waite Smith tarot. This alignment between the songs on the album, the beats of the hero’s journey and the tarot archetypes is, of course, intentional. “I knew I needed to make an album that, pretty early on, became something to do with the mothership,” says Jamie, “and there was some meditation involved in that.”
Also, spreadsheets. “I had a concept album – a rock opera – that was a story, but I needed to figure out how to tell it. Because I have all these pieces and I need to place them. So, I put them in an order in a spreadsheet with notes.” She then asked herself: Is this a story? “That was the lightbulb moment,” she recalls. “I had been researching the hero’s journey…my brainstorm ended up with 22 spots…the tarot is the hero’s – or heroine’s – journey.”
In addition to the spreadsheet, other brainstorming sessions were immortalized in a dedicated “mothership” notebook, full of notes and bits and pieces of songs, many of which failed to make the final cut. Songs like “If I Told You”, however, could barely be contained. “It just kind of came forth, and people grabbed onto it so quickly.” In fact, a different version of the song was released as a single in 2024. “Then, I had two different friends tell me, ‘That song has to be on this album, and I know you’ve already done it, but it really has to be on this album.’ And so it was thanks to my friends, my wise women, that it ended up there and got re-recorded.”
As for its card correlation, Jamie admits, “It’s kind of on the nose for The Magician. And I think some of the other songs are [on the nose], too.” The Emperor card in Jamie’s deck, for example, is aligned with the song “Another Day”, and explores the workaholic mentality of the patriarchy. “In the U.S. at least, there’s this pressure to work hard all the time, and create all the time, instead of receive. It’s almost the opposite of receiving,” she explains. “But it’s also a way of keeping ourselves too busy to listen to the divine feminine.” Of course, Jamie acknowledges there is more to the Emperor than ambition, including a lot of positive qualities, but her vision for the song, and its place in her own deck, comes from the perspective of ignoring the call for balance from within.
Many of the cards, she notes, could also align with multiple songs but, ultimately, she says, “It all just came together. I’ve wanted to create a tarot deck since I was 22.” The reoccurring significance of that number is not lost on her either. Twenty-two songs, 22 archetypes and a desire to create from the age of 22. Of course, creating the cards herself might have been an afterthought. “I was like: Who am I going to get to create a tarot deck?” She laughs. “Then I just ended up doing it.”
Indeed, each card features original artwork painted by Jamie herself, using borrowed materials. “I went over to my mom’s house, because she paints rocks. She’s got this art studio with all the paints you could ever imagine – everything you could want.” At first, she cannot recall the type of paint she used – something between a watercolor and an acrylic. “That’s how much of an artist I am not!” she declares, evidence to the contrary be damned, while searching the internet for its actual name. Eventually she finds it: “Gouache paint!”
We digress, she continues. “So, I bought some little five-by-seven canvases, went over to her studio and borrowed all her stuff.” There was, of course, some trial and error. “I thought, I’ll just make some abstract paintings with some lyrics on it.” The Rider Waite Smith tarot served as inspiration, particularly for the colors. “Then, I started getting a little more creative as I went along and ended up redoing some of the early ones.”
As for the scrapbook aesthetic, those details are about as DIY as it gets. At first glance, one might assume the lyrics are overlaid in Photoshop or Canva. Instead, Jamie says, “Actually, I cut out words and put them on the paintings. I scanned the paintings first, so that I would have a background if I ever wanted to use it, and then I put the words on – I taped them on.” As for the state-of-the-art equipment used for digitizing the images? “I just used my printer scanner.”
Conversely, the imagery on the card backs was created entirely digitally but is no less proof that a little ingenuity goes a long way. “It’s a stock photo of a turtle shell I found and then tweaked with the tools on Canva. I wanted it to look like it could either be an emerald or a spaceship.” She adds, “It actually ties into song number eight: Turtles All the Way Down.” In some Native American traditions, she explains, turtles are significant symbols of creation. “It’s the turtle who holds up the earth.” As she explains in the guidebook, the turtles also symbolize one’s ancestral chain.
The mothership of her album, she adds, is a metaphor for the earth, or the divine feminine. “I mean, the earth is like a body in the universe…it’s our own little spaceship floating out there. So, it all just kind of plays into each other.” Jamie confesses, “I can’t even explain how all of this came to me.” Instead, she says, “It was a very organic process that I just followed Spirit on.”
Indeed, Return to the Mothership does feel like a spirit journey, which only seems appropriate as it is the culmination of a metamorphosis 18 years in the making. Yet, rather than another jaded soliloquy about what was lost along the way, its message is somehow still rooted in the optimism of Jamie’s youth – in the self-proclaimed purpose of a 19-year-old law student to illuminate possibilities. “It really still holds true,” Jamie says. Moreover, if listening to the songs and working with the cards feels like a light in the dark, that is its entire purpose.
“I really created it for the light workers, change makers, healers and wisdom seekers to know that they’re not alone,” she explains. “I think empaths, those of us who really are sensitive beings and care about helping people and going deeper, helping ourselves, helping our families grow…the patriarchy’s not working that well for you somedays. The music and the cards, and the community around it, can be a grounding point…a reminder that you’re not alone.”
For those actively looking for that community, Jamie has created The Mothership Experience, a collection of virtual workshops that explore how the album’s music and the accompanying tarot cards can be used to deepen the connection with self. “When I launched the deck, I did eight workshops using the tarot and the music for self-exploration, and they’re all available on my website.” Looking ahead, she adds, “I plan to do live workshops a couple times a year, just using the tools and the songs.” Those workshops will also be recorded, she notes, so that people can approach them at their own pace.
As for those just looking for something to vibe to, Jamie says the album and the cards are for everyone, regardless of what they do, or do not, believe. Instead, the tarot and the music add dimension to each other. “Back in the day, we used to get CDs and we’d flip though the book to see what’s there.” Likewise, she says, the cards give that same hands-on experience. “It’s three-dimensional: It’s visual, it’s tactile and, even if you’re not into tarot – you can take inspiration. You can think about your day differently by pulling a card.” She insists, “It doesn’t have to be magical if you don’t want it to be magical.” A pause, and then: “But why wouldn’t you?”
Those interested in picking up their own copy of Return to the Mothership and its tarot deck can order both directly from Jamie’s website. Or, stream the album now on Spotify. For more news and updates from Jamie Wyman, follow her on Instagram or Facebook @jamiewymanband.
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