Spirit Garden: Explorations in the Spiritual

Author, artist, and spiritual advisor Catt Foy shares experiences and knowledge on a wide range of spiritual topics.

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My Psycards Story OR How I Got Into This Crazy Business

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Many people recognize my name (Catt Foy) as being associated with the Psycards—the 40-card oracle deck based on Jungian archetypes.  Many people think I created them, but I didn’t. 

It was through a crazy series of synchronicities that I ended up what my friend, Leah, called “Queen of the Psycards.”

Here is the back story.

While living in Houston, Texas, I made a couple of good friends while attending the University of Houston. Glynn was about my age, and Chotsie was in her early 50s.  Chotsie was the survivor of a spinal injury and needed some help in her daily activities.  Glynn and Chotsie ended up roommates as a result. Together, we frequented  a couple of New Age bookstores, and shared a mutual interest in metaphysics.

Fast forward two years.  My second husband and I had moved the family to Scottsdale, Arizona. Glynn and Chotsie had moved to Flagstaff.  I drove up one weekend for a visit, when Chotsie showed me a deck of Psycards.

Before leaving Houston, she had visited our favorite bookstore where she discovered a used deck of cards sitting on a table of used books.  She felt instantly attracted to them and asked the clerk for a new deck.  The sales clerk reported that this was the only deck they had.

Chotsie reasoned that she could purchase a new deck somewhere else and put the cards back on the table, and continued shopping.  Again and again, she found herself drawn back to the used deck of Psycards. Finally, she decided to purchase them.

In spite of this, she never used them and when I visited, she remembered this unusual deck. 

I had been doing psychic readings off and on for several year, working primarily with Tarot, but I often struggled to understand the Tarot cards. That winter afternoon in Flagstaff, I shuffled the Psycards and laid out a reading for myself. I was intending to read the cards using the small insert that had come with the cards, but as soon as I laid them on the table, I discovered that I instantly understood their meanings!

With the Psycards, I suddenly had a clarity of vision I had never been able to achieve with Tarot. Something inside of me thought “I’m going to write the book on these cards…”  That very afternoon, I began writing the book that today is Psycards—A New Alternative to Tarot, working on Chotsie’s Tandy TRS-80 computer with its new amber screen.

When I returned home to Scottsdale, I set about getting a deck for myself (Chotsie was not willing to part with hers). I contacted every bookstore in the Phoenix metro area, then called bookstores in other states, including the bookstore in Houston, only to find that nobody carried them.

I called Chotsie and got the publisher’s address from the box and wrote to “Network, Ltd.” In London, asking where in the U.S. I could find Psycards. Nick Hobson, the creator of the cards, wrote back to me, stating that Psycards were not available in the U.S., but I could purchase them directly from his small publishing company. 

When I wrote back to make my purchase, my then-husband, Bob, suggested that I might inquire about distributing the cards in the U.S. A few weeks later, I received my deck and a proposal to purchase the cards at a distributor’s price. 

I quickly put together the money I needed to purchase 100 decks.  I designed a cover letter for bookstores, perused yellow pages at the local library (long before the Internet!) for the names of metaphysical bookstores in various cities and began sending out sample decks, in batches of ten stores at a time.

Within a year, I had almost 100 bookstores across the country buying Psycards. My friend, Leah Santos, recommended me to a promoter of psychic fairs and I began doing metaphysical events, selling cards and giving readings.  I did readings and taught classes in bookstores in Arizona and California. 

I completed the book in the meantime and sent a copy to Nick.

Shortly afterward, Nick licensed the Psycards to a large international publisher of Tarot and other oracles.  The president of this company—whose own book on Tarot was the first Tarot book I ever owned—called me at home to request my manuscript. 

I was thrilled.  I was going to be published!  With the Psycards!  My joy was over-the-moon. 

My joy was short-lived.

The big company never called me back, never wrote, refused to take my calls.  Psycards did not get published into a couple of years later, and never really got off the ground.  Bookstores all over the country were calling me asking for them.  When I told them the company carrying them, they reported that the cards were always on backorder. 

A divorce and a series of personal disasters filled the next several years, as Psycards became just a painful memory. As I struggled with poverty, homelessness, and the loss of nearly everything in my life (home, job, marriage, children, hope), Psycards hovered in the back of my mind.

When the Internet became a reality for me, I looked up Psycards.  The big company still owned them and they were out-of-print.  I sold a copy here and there of my own book, now self-published—printed at the local Kinko’s and sold for only a dollar or two over printing and binding costs. Bookstores somehow found my email and wrote to me trying to purchase Psycards—twenty years afterward!

Then in 2010, I Googled once again, “Psycards” and discovered that Nick Hobson once again regained control of the printing and sales of his deck.  I contacted Nick via email and reminded him who I was.  He remembered me, asked me for a copy of my manuscript. 

In October of 2011, Nick flew to Chicago and I met him there, for the first time, face to face.  We spent the day discussing the Psycards market in the U.S. and I left Chicago that day the official representative for Psycards in North America.

Nick published my book shortly thereafter and my long-ago dream finally came true—after twenty-three years of waiting. Never give up on your dreams.

Since then I have taught classes, given readings, hosted book signings and sold Psycards to bookstores across the nation.  I have made appearances in Illinois, Iowa, Colorado, Arizona, California and Oregon. I currently work a series of fairs in the Willamette Valley and the Central Coast of Oregon, in Portland, Eugene, Salem, Albany, Corvallis, and Yachats.

Today, Nick is ready to retire and I have the opportunity to purchase his interest in the Psycards.  This would take PsycardsUSA and Psycards, Ltd. of London and allow me to create Psycards International. 

If you would like to support my current campaign to raise money to purchase Nick’s copyrights, inventory, images, and web sites, you can go to http://gofundme.com/Psycards-international.

As always, you can purchase Psycards and related books and products on our website http://www.Psycardsusa.com.

 

 

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Catt Foy has been a professional psychic and astrologer since 1978 and a freelance writer and photographer since 1981.  She is the author of Psycards: An Oracle of Archetypes, Rune Stones & Their Interpretations, and the novel Bartleby:  A Scrivener's Tale.  She holds an MA from Western Illinois University and an MFA in Fiction from Spalding University, and is currently Queen (CEO) of Psycards USA.  Catt likes to garden, paint, and make jewelry, and is currently working on several other novels.  Catt is also an ordained minister and certified hypnotherapist specializing in past-life regression.

Comments

  • Catt Foy
    Catt Foy Wednesday, 18 April 2018

    Update: Today Nick Hobson officially declared me the "boss" of Psycards International. I am proud to take the helm to continue to promote this wonderful deck help others develop their spiritual gifts!

    I am available for classes, seminars, psychic readings, private parties, and book-signings. Feel free to contact me for more information on anything related to Psycards!

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