Hollywood tarot reader

The story of Angie Banicki, an inspirational young woman who, after working in the entertainment industry for ten years, decides to quit her job and then become Hollywood's celebrity tarot reader.

How it all started.

During a charity dance marathon which she helps organise as a student at Northwestern Univisity, Angie meets Joel Goldman, the director of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. The EGP AIDS Foundation is one of the organisations involved in the event.

During the event, hundreds of students dance for 30 hours nonstop to raise money for the various charities. Angie's job is to host and take care of the attending celebrities who have come here to make speeches. With Joel, she appears to have a good click.

PR Manager

When Angie gets her Bachelor of Communication in 2001, she moves to L.A where Joel helps her get a job. Angie is able to start at the foundation as a fundraising coordinator where she helps students organise large benefit events as she had done herself at university.

She soon works her way up to PR manager but eventually quits her job to continue growing at the huge concern Harrison & Shriftman, a firm that works with big brands like Grey Goose and Blackberry. Angie's job there is to look for suitable celebrities who want to become ambassadors for Harrison & Shriftman's clients.

When the firm organises large-scale parties and events for their clients, it is also Angie's job to invite as many celebrities as possible for this. As a result, she gets to know more and more Hollywood stars, and they her!

The bottom of every invitation sent out reads 'RSVP to Angie Banickie' and she soon became known as a hostess of the coolest parties. This leads to her herself - both business and personal - increasingly being invited to parties hosted by celebrities.

Chateau Marmont

Because of the 'party animal' image that now sticks to her, Angie almost feels obliged to be the entertainer for everyone not only for her work, but also outside it.

Angie:

"I remember at one point bringing Dustin Hoffman and Adrian Grenier to a BlackBerry launch event in L.A.; flying to Houston the next morning for a Super Bowl event and a Playboy party with Bradley Cooper, Alyssa Milano, and Kristen Cavallari and flying to New York City the next morning for another BlackBerry event with Seth Meyers and Julianne Moore. When I got back to my hotel room, I think I slept for 12 hours."

(Source: Cosmopolitan)

She maintains this lifestyle for ten years. Then she runs out.

After ten years of partying with rock stars and accompanying Oscar winners to awards ceremonies, parties and afterparties from Las Vegas to Mexico and all the big cities in between, she is at the end of her rope and quits her job on a whim. She does not yet know what she wants to do next, but there is no doubt in her mind that this cannot go on any longer.

For two and a half years, she has been working as a freelancer in PR, travelling far and wide and writing a book. Just when she is wondering whether she wants to continue in the PR world or pursue a career as a writer, the New Age movement is emerging in L.A and a friend gives her a set of Prada tarot cards as a gift.

Although she has never believed in psychics and psychics or been involved in them at all, she is immediately attracted to the beautiful, colourful tarot cards. She jokingly draws a card from the deck and asks the question: 'Shall we go to Chateau Marmont go or to the Soho House?' The card she chooses advises her to go to Chateau.

She then draws another card that predicts she will meet a foreign man there, which actually happens. Angie and her friend go to Chateau Marmont where they actually have a very nice conversation with an English businessman.

Feeling

Of course, it was obvious that they would meet a foreign man in this luxury hotel. Angie therefore sees the cards mainly as an entertaining game and mainly takes out her tarot deck from her bag at the bar.

After a while of predicting futures for fun in the nightlife, she finds that the tarot is more than just just a game.

Angie starts reading tarot books and visits mediums to ask how they work. Yet she does not see herself as a psychic. She does not talk to spirits but intuitively feels what will happen to the person for whom she consults the cards. She also decides not to learn the meanings of the cards all by heart; she does everything by feeling as much as possible.

As she works on her intuitive development, strange things happen in the house. In the small flat where she lives, not infrequently the lights start flickering when she pulls out her tarot cards. Although she finds it exciting and sometimes even a little scary, she does not think of quitting.

In addition to flickering lights, she also increasingly gets predictive dreams about people around her, and notices that the tarot readings she does for friends are becoming more in-depth.

The more she engages with tarot, the more she calms down and the less she feels like rejoining the hectic jet-set life she used to lead.

Friends increasingly drop by to have the card read for themselves and bring along people who would like to do the same. This way, they make not only themselves happy, but also Angie, who, since quitting her busy job, loves nothing more than reading tarot cards all day. She enjoys this many times more than any party. 

Word-of-mouth advertising

Although for the first two years she does not charge money for her services but does her readings in exchange for dinner or a bottle of wine, more and more people offer her money for a consultation, which reawakens the businesswoman in her. In the process, she starts to worry more and more about the bills that have to be paid anyway, so she will soon really have to make a choice regarding her career. Then she comes up with a brilliant idea.

If she loves doing this so much and people apparently benefit from it and are willing to pay for her services, why not make it her job? 

The rest is history. Angie has since moved to a more spacious home with a teepee in the garden where she receives her clients. Since many celebrities already knew her from the large-scale events she used to organise, these are now also her clients now that she works full-time as a tarot reader.

Whereas at the beginning of her career as a tarot reader, she charges $100 per reading, the price is soon inflated to $200 per hour. Meanwhile, she charges as much as $400 an hour for a Skype reading and $555 an hour for an in-person consultation.

Of course, she is sometimes wrong. In that case, she asks the tarot cards for advice again and usually comes up with an answer that the client can work with. That too is part of the job, Angie says. Nobody is always right, fortunately my clients are very understanding. 

Angie has done tarot consultations for celebrities such as Lea Michele, Emma Roberts, Usher, Gwyneth Paltrhrow, Kat Graham, Sophia Bush, Nikki Reed and Ellen Pompeo, among others.

I am therefore immensely honoured that, in addition, she was willing to take the time to do a reading for me. Free of charge!

To be continued...

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