Welcome!
The San Francisco Tarot Society was born from the hearts of two San Franciscans with a deep love for divination. We wanted to create an online hub for Bay Area tarot enthusiasts, readers, and folks looking for a place to start, continue, or deepen their tarot journey.
But we didn’t want to stop there. While this site provides a guide to anyone interested in tarot, we also are dedicated to fostering a welcoming and inclusive local tarot community. We want to support the work of Bay Area artists, healers, teachers, and shop owners, who, like us, have been profoundly affected by our relationship with the tarot and its wisdom. We created this space because we love tarot and we love the Bay.
Our Story
San Francisco Tarot Society founders (and locals!), Leslie Schaffer (she) and Lynae Zebest (they/she), met in Florida of all places, at StaarCon 2024 (a hybrid tarot conference run by the incomparable Christiana Gaudet). They instantly connected over their love of tarot and San Francisco and lamented the fact that the Bay Area Tarot Symposium no longer held a local conference. Both felt a deep desire to bring a tarot conference back to San Francisco and help foster a thriving tarot community in their home town. Lynae told Leslie about their struggles trying to promote a tarot-themed art show. Leslie was so sad that she’d missed an event that she would have attended but simply didn’t know about. The two talked about the idea of a centralized place where Bay Area folks interested in tarot and witchery could learn about upcoming events and classes, find local readers and witchy shops, and learn more about divination and witchcraft. And so the San Francisco Tarot Society was born.
Leslie Schaffer, ADmIN WITCH
Leslie is a native San Franciscan and a longtime tarot reader and teacher. She helms the SFTC website and administrative operations. Leslie came to tarot in 1993 when she purchased her first deck. As a young teenager, she made many a pilgrimage to Curios and Candles on Divisadero between Haight and Page where she found a wealth of witchy resources. In 2010, she began taking classes with local reader, Rowan Cutler. From there, she was off to the races. Leslie hasn’t met a tarot class she doesn’t want to take, and she has studied with dozens of tarot masters. In 2017, Leslie began teaching tarot and started her professional tarot business, Tarot Moderna. She loves sharing her knowledge and appreciation of tarot with others and providing them with practical tools for reading the cards themselves. She reads for private clients, at events, and has taught tarot classes at Scarlet Sage, the San Francisco Public Library, and Florra. She also runs her own online introductory course. In 2024, she was named Divination Star by the World Divination Association.
LYnae Zebest, EVENT WITCH
Lynae is a lifelong artist and maker, whose work frequently deals with the wild or animal side of the self: the way that wilderness interacts and overlaps with the industrial world as created by humans. Lynae grew up as a strange genderskewed goblin child, traveling around the globe (particularly the Caribbean) with their parents, running around half feral, writing their own urban legends and mythologies and reading 3-5 books per week. They began experimenting with magic at an early age - which, oddly enough, may have just saved their sanity. They created their first illustrated book (an abecedarium of rare and extinct animals) at age 13, and has worked professionally at various times as a potter, sculptor, jewelry artist, illustrator, and experiential/participatory artist. Lynae has been working with the tarot for over 20 years and is passionate about creating welcoming and inclusive spaces for the magically-minded. They helm the monthly San Francisco Tarot Salon. In 2023, they created The Primodial Dreams Tarot, an intuitive deck deeply inspired by Neolithic artwork.