By 
She prayed the rosary, volunteered for Catholic charities, and did crystal healing on AIDS patients in the 1980s. My grandmother lived at the crossroads of faith and mysticism — and I’ve been standing there ever since.
When I think about my spiritual life, I don’t just think about church or the Bible. I think about my grandmother.
She was a deeply Roman Catholic woman who, in many ways, lived like a quiet white witch. She went to Mass, prayed constantly, and gave herself away in service. At the same time, she healed with crystals, studied Western occult traditions, read tarot cards with uncanny accuracy, and took me to a psychic when I was a child.
She never called herself a witch. But she walked that line between faith and magic with a confidence I’ve never quite managed to match.
She left me 30 tarot decks when she died. And she left me with a question I’m still trying to answer.
A Catholic, a Healer, and a Survivor
My grandmother wasn’t casual about her faith. It showed up in her actions — in the decades she spent volunteering for Catholic charities, in the way service wasn’t a hobby for her but a way of life.
But she was also something harder to label.
She worked with crystals and energy healing. She offered that healing to AIDS patients at a time when they were heavily stigmatized and often left to die alone. She didn’t turn away from them. She leaned in. She studied Golden Dawn–type traditions and Western esoteric spirituality — not as a trend or an aesthetic, but with real seriousness.
She had hundreds of crystals, all carefully collected and cared for. To her, they weren’t pretty rocks. They were tools, helpers, conduits for energy and healing.
She also had a whole life before all of that. She wrote a book called Saigon Is Burning under the name Laurette Heger. She had five children and two husbands. She married well and got out of Vietnam before the war broke everything open. She lived through history, survived it, and then quietly built a life where faith, family, and strange spiritual gifts all coexisted.
The Woman People Bartered to Read Their Cards
One of the most unforgettable parts of her life — at least for me — was her tarot reading.
People didn’t just ask her to read their cards. They bartered to get a reading from her. They brought her things, paid in favors, whatever they had, just for a chance to sit with her and let her lay out the cards.
She wasn’t a stereotype. She was my grandmother — a Catholic woman with a crucifix, a strong prayer life, and a reputation for accuracy that made people take her seriously. People walked away from her readings feeling like they had been seen, not just told their future.
I remember her taking me to a psychic when I was a kid, along with my aunts. I was just a child, but the memory is burned into me — the room, the energy, the feeling that something unseen was being treated as entirely real. It fascinated me. It also unsettled me a little.
That day taught me early that the spiritual world is bigger than the walls of a church, and that not everyone is afraid to walk into those spaces.
Inheriting Her Archive: 30 Decks of Tarot Cards
When she died, she didn’t just leave behind stories. She left me a literal archive of her spiritual life — around 30 decks of tarot cards.
That’s not just a collection. That’s a legacy.
I still have them. I’ve used them. I’ve read cards for other people, and the readings have sometimes landed in ways that honestly shook me. There have been moments when the cards were so specific, so on point, that the whole atmosphere in the room shifted. People have gotten quiet. People have cried. People have said it was eerie.
Those moments are powerful. They’re also complicated for me — because I’m a religious person. I believe in God. I believe there are spiritual lines you shouldn’t cross just because you’re curious. My grandmother may have walked those lines with a certain confidence, but I feel the weight of them differently.
Living in the Tension Between Faith and the Unknown
Here’s where my story splits.
On one hand, tarot and crystals and esoteric study are woven into my personal history. My grandmother read the cards, studied occult traditions, surrounded herself with crystals, took me to psychics, and healed people who needed it. I inherited her decks and, maybe, some echo of her gift.
On the other hand, I have a living faith. I believe in God. I believe that not everything in the spiritual world is meant for us to poke at or play with. That conviction sits right next to my curiosity — and my experience.
Because of that, I don’t treat tarot as a game or a party trick. On rare occasions, I will read the cards. I’ve seen them offer genuine insight, clarity, and even comfort. But I also believe some things are better left unknown. I don’t want to use tarot to control outcomes, manipulate fate, or dig into spaces that belong only to God.
So I live with the tension:
- I honor my grandmother and the gifts she passed down.
- I acknowledge the accuracy I’ve witnessed with my own eyes.
- I hold tight to my belief that discernment matters — and that not every question needs an answer.
Honoring Her Without Becoming Her
She’s everywhere in my spiritual life. She’s in the decks on my shelf. She’s in the crystals she left behind. She’s in the stories about AIDS patients and healing. She’s in the memory of that childhood room, that psychic, my aunts sitting quietly around me.
But I’m not her. I have my own conscience, my own relationship with God, my own sense of what crosses a line.
Honoring her, for me, means:
- Remembering her courage, her compassion, and her willingness to sit with suffering when others wouldn’t
- Recognizing that her practice came from a place of service and conviction — not spectacle
- Being honest about my own doubts, fears, and boundaries
I may continue to read tarot on rare occasions, when it feels truly necessary and my spirit is at peace about it. I may always keep her crystals as reminders of her faith in unseen things, even if I interact with them differently than she did.
But I also accept that some mysteries are meant to stay mysteries.
My grandmother may have walked comfortably in that liminal space between faith and magic. I walk there more cautiously. But I walk there because of her — and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
She showed me that a woman can be Catholic, compassionate, deeply mystical, and a little bit witchy, all at the same time. Whether I shuffle the cards or leave them in their boxes, that part of her lives on in me.
Tags: faith and spirituality, tarot, Catholic, family stories, mysticism, personal essay, grief, spiritual inheritance SEO focus keyphrase: Catholic grandmother tarot cards spiritual legacy