About me

My name is Nathalie Kriek. Nice that you are interested in my work. I am not clairvoyant, but I am 'clear-eyed'. I don't think in boxes and like to colour outside the lines. This is the 'about me' page. It is said to be the most important page of the website, because it reveals the face behind the company.

Who am I, what do I do, why do I do what I do and how did this come about? And most importantly, what sets me apart from the rest in this industry?

I hope to give you an answer to this in the next 3 minutes.

Apart from more info about myself, you can also read here how my companies Open Card Productions, VIP Tarot and VIP Astro came to be and what I might be of service to you.

Copywriter

Over the years, as a copywriter, I have specialised mainly in astrological content and other spiritual entertainment.

Given the requests in my mailbox, there is a need for authors or copywriters who are knowledgeable about astrology and spirituality.

From this I conclude that there are apparently (with a few exceptions) many astrologers who cannot write and many writers who know nothing about astrology. So this is where I thought I had discovered the well-known gap in the market; for Open Card Productions does not have this problem!

Apparently, every now and then there is still doubt about my abilities. A question I regularly get is: 'Can you really read tarot cards and calculate horoscopes or are you just sucking something out of your head?'

Astrologer

No. Nothing is being pulled out of any thumb; I do master these disciplines. I come from a very spiritual family that held the paranormal in high regard and was also seriously into spiritualism.

My paternal grandparents had been affiliated with a large spiritual society (Harmonia) since the 1950s, where it was a coming and going of psychics, mediums, trance mediums, psychometrists and other clairvoyants.

When, as a child, I visited them every Saturday afternoon with my father and mother, they would frequently talk about what went on at 'the spiritualists'. Seances, ghosts, out of body experiences, the afterlife; by the age of five, I already knew about the clairvoyant hat and the spiritist edge. My grandmother told me I was also mediumistic; clairvoyant. So I just took that from her too. After all, my grandmother could know.

When I was 15, I learned from her the carding. First with the ordinary home, garden and kitchen playing cards, later with the tarot I love so much. I myself had been involved with the Chinese astrology. I also liked Western astrology, but only superficially. My divorce ten years later changed this.

The lawyer who assisted me during the trial placed enormous importance on the influence of stars and planets. He was the one who inspired me To learning western astrology.

Besides my job as a teaching assistant, I took an intuitive development course in the evenings and did home studies astrology, gemology and dream psychology.

Tarotist

The year 2000. By now I was 28 years old, a single mother of two with a full-time job at a primary school. When my eldest child (aged 7 at the time) appeared to be suffering a lot from the divorce and indicated that he found it upsetting that I worked outside the home so often, I took this extremely seriously.

When his teacher invited me for an interview and it turned out that he wasn't enjoying himself at the day-care centre either, I decided to quit my job immediately. After discussing this at work, the director gave me an 'honourable discharge'.

Suddenly, I was a stay-at-home mother and had all the time and space to work on a new career at home. This was the time to start doing what I had actually wanted to do since childhood; open my own practice. A home-based practice seemed ideal in this case.

Within weeks, my tarot practice was a reality. For twelve years (2001-2013), I worked here as a tarotist/astrologist/paragnost/spiritual therapist.

I also gave tarot courses and readings at spiritual associations, organised spiritual group evenings at people's homes, cleansed homes of negative energies and counselled psychic children and children with behavioural problems.

Having had years of intensive and personal contact with people from all walks of life and also of all ages in my practice, I can empathise with a range of audiences while writing, doing readings and providing spiritual entertainment.

The experience I gained as a teaching assistant allows me to explain theory and practice clearly and, above all, in a fun way during my tarot courses.

Author

Writing has always been my passion. From the age of nine to 16, I wrote faithfully in my diary every day, invariably illustrating my experiences with colourful drawings. In the third grade of primary school (now group 5) I actually got my first 'fan'; teacher.

Where my classmates were allowed to read or draw in their free time, I was writing essays. At her request, because she thought I could do this so well and she would love to have a little book from me. Actually, I also preferred to draw, but as I did not want to disappoint teacher either, I solved this by adding full-page illustrations to my stories.

When summer holidays arrived, teacher actually took home the collection of fledgling penmanship. I never saw my debut again.

When I was 14, I wrote my first real horoscope for the school newspaper with the help of a stack of astrology books from the library. I found out what the constellations of the teachers were and made an astro-caricature of the corresponding master or teacher for each horoscope.

So I knew at quite a young age what I wanted to do later on. 'Something creative with writing or spirituality'. That you could also combine these things didn't occur to me at the time.

I did not start my actual career as an author until 2004 at the age of 32, when I had launched my first tarot website after opening my living room practice. Meanwhile, I had also had my third child.

Although I wanted to keep working, I also loved taking care of my children myself at home. The website gave me the opportunity to offer online consultations from home as well, which rapidly expanded my clientele. In addition, I had developed a tarot course under the motto 'why do it the hard way when it can be easy', which I had put online free of charge for the enthusiast.

When I received a huge number of positive responses to this, a light went on for me. This was perhaps my chance to combine my passion for writing with my love for tarot.

I removed the course from my website and sent it as a manuscript to Schors publishers. The very next day, David Schors called me to say that he liked the idea immensely and would be happy to print a booklet of it. A bull's-eye; with The Tarot in Brief, my first published work was a fact.

After the publication of my second book 'Numerology and Tarot in a jiffy', David asked me if I felt like revising the now somewhat dated Tarot Agenda at my own discretion, which of course I was delighted to do.

For publisher Bark, I ended up nine books written and six tarot agendas created. My book "Hoezo ADHD?" (a practical guide to learning to cope with this behavioural problem without medication), to my amazement, won the 2010 Paravisie Award for the "most inspiring book in the national category".

This resulted in me being asked to work both in front of and behind the scenes on the Zembla documentary 'the ADHD hype' and to give an interview for the Nieuwsuur item 'Toddlers on Ritalin'. Around the same period, I was approached to write an article for 'Brainquest (the brain central)'.

Having immersed myself in psychology for some time, I happened to find in it various explanations for so-called 'paranormal' matters. Especially with regard to my own work as a psychic, several pennies suddenly dropped! Partly thanks to these new insights, I stepped into the psychology business in 2012 definitively of my faith.

In a large box on my practice's website, I made it clear to my clients that I had discovered that, instead of possessing psychic abilities, I had been acting mainly in a more spiritual and psychological way during my consultations.

That I psychic ability had mistaken life experience, people skills and empathy and that from now on I would also like to continue my work on this basis. Nothing else would change about my consultations, I only gave another explanation to my methods. As a result, three-quarters of the practice completely ran out of...

Nevertheless, I stood my ground. I either do my job honestly or I don't. More or less by necessity, I lifted the practice.

I did, however, continue to engage in astrology and tarot, disciplines that still fascinated me after all these years and which I 'rediscovered', as it were, as a creative psychology after my faith fell, spiritual tools.

VIP

By now it was 2013 and I had disbanded the tarot practice. Fortunately, not long after that, I was approached by WOMAN/Telegraph asking if I could be their house astrologer would like to become. Nothing more, of course! 

Step by step, more websites and magazines followed. On the homepage of Open Card Productions you will find the names of some of the companies I have had the pleasure of working with so far.

Since, after all these years, I was still receiving requests from people who would like a tarot consultation from me, I decided to open a tarot practice again after all. Online, this time:  VIP Tarot.

And because, besides writing horoscopes for the media, I still enjoy making personal horoscopes, I also immediately added an online astro practice: VIP Astro.

VIP because everyone is a Very Important Person and everyone gets the attention they deserve with me.

Great to see that more and more people are open to a less floaty approach to tarot and astrology. Thereby, an online practice is easy for me to combine with my writing work.

Nathalie Kriek >HOME.