This Month’s Featured Article

On the list of “firsts” that we can never forget – like a first kiss, a first car, or a first day of school – is another one that’s indelible: a first tarot card reading. It can be truly life-altering. How is it that cards with symbols and pictures on them can be translated to reveal things that are so personal and often profound? 

Derek James Smith remembers his first experience with the tarot. He was 28 years old, living in Northern California. A naturally curious person whose interests took him in many different directions, there was something about the tarot that got him hooked. 

And now, 16 years later, he is a tarot card reader. And as the curious and varied symbols and images that make up decks of tarot cards stand for much more, Derek is much more than just a reader. “I tell people these are lenses to look through,” he said when I met with him on a crisp and clear fall day at his and his wife’s store, Constellation, on Main Street in Catskill, NY.

From here to there and there to here

How did he get here? Derek grew up in Ghent in Columbia County here in the Hudson Valley, earned a degree in video production at Ithaca College in the Finger Lakes, then headed across country to Boonville, California, where he was the caretaker of The Boonville Hotel and eventually owned a yarn shop called The Knitted Brow. Spinning, knitting, and felting yarn, he began working with fabrics and taught himself traditional millinery (hat making). Tarot was there, too, inspiring readings for himself and others, and he traveled, spending time in Mexico and Spain as well as at home in Boonville. 

Then Vermont called. “I started having a feeling about moving to Vermont,” he said “I had a vision of it, and then a couple from Burlington came into the yarn store, we got to talking, and they gave me their contact information in case I ever visited. Not long after,” he said, “another person from Vermont came in, told me he lived in Brattleboro, and also said I could visit.”

The signs were there. Derek got in his 1977 Toyota pickup truck and drove back east, landing in Burlington. “I loved it,” he said. In Burlington, Derek’s imagination and talents led him into performance. “I started a business with a close friend. We built a street cart from which I did all kinds of things,” he said. He was creating felted puppets and masks that he used in his shows, and he started doing more and more tarot readings. “I was doing them in bars for college kids, in cafés, at parties – all over the place.” 

One day a stage hypnotist saw Derek in action and invited him to a gig. Fascinated by what happened with the audience, Derek dove into studying hypnosis on his own for about a year. When I asked how he could practice self-taught hypnosis, he said with a laugh, “I had very adventurous friends.”

Things clicked

The parallels with tarot were there. “The intention of these practices with people,” Derek said, “is to help them look at what will best serve them.” There was the tarot and what that could show. There was also astrology and learning about the influence of natal charts and patterns in the greater universe. And there was hypnosis, which for Derek isn’t a “stop smoking” or “stick to a diet” kind of curative practice, but a way to take people into their subconscious to help them see and understand better parts of themselves. He took hypnosis training in Santa Rosa, CA, and is a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist and member of the National Guild of Hypnotists.

And now here he is in the Hudson Valley, with a storefront on Main Street in Catskill. “I came here to be closer to family,” Derek said of how he was lured away from Vermont. Fortuitously, it was where and how he reconnected with Rosannah von Moritz. They “shared a spark” in high school in Chatham, but went their separate ways. When their paths crossed here, in 2017, the spark was still there, and they were soon living together. They married in 2019. 

My meeting at Constellation was with Derek and Rosannah. “Has he hypnotized you?” I asked her. “Yes,” she said, exchanging a special look with Derek. “It was great,” she said, “like exploring dreams while being awake. The time went by really fast.”

Nature is a ruler

Rosannah is a force of her own. She is an artist whose work ranges from playful illustrations of animals for a series of greeting cards to provocative nature scenes and pressed flower art decoupaged onto various objects, including sho sugi ban “cosmic discs” that she and Derek create together. Rosannah is continually challenging herself. “My family moved often when I was growing up,” she shared, “and when we lived in Oregon we lived in the woods. Being in nature is where I come alive.”

Derek and Rosannah live on a property in Earlton, near Coxsackie, that they say is essentially “the middle of nowhere.” It is where they recharge. “For me,” Rosannah said, “nature is a place to play without pressure. I want to bring that sense of peace and connection that I find in nature to what I create.” 

The pieces they call cosmic discs radiate with Rosannah’s and Derek’s intentions. Sho sugi ban, or yakisugi, is a traditional Japanese method of preserving wood through charring. Interestingly, wood isn’t weakened by fire; rather, it is strengthened when treated this way. During COVID, Derek and Rosannah turned to crafting the cosmic discs, starting with sho sugi ban on pine rounds, and individualizing the discs with pressed flowers, nature scenes, and more. The discs and Rosannah’s other artworks are on view at Constellation. 

A welcoming space

The store itself is a study in looking at life through different lenses. It’s a space that’s calm and comforting while at the same time offering all kinds of things to explore if your curiosity leads you there. For example, a large, round table with two very comfortable and stately chairs invite you to sit and focus. It’s where Derek does the readings. In a corner space is a display of Rosannah’s greeting cards and other artworks on paper. A colorful and comfortable sofa against the wall offers a place to sit and take it all in – the light from the windows facing the street, the discs on the wall, the art, several of Derek’s felted puppets, a set of astral dice and Derek’s divination wheel. The back rooms are where Rosannah displays her pressed flower apothecary bottles and other works, and where Derek conducts the hypnosis.

“It’s a multi-modality space,” Derek said. “We want people to feel safe but also creative here,” he continued. “Sometimes people come in and just want to sit, which is great.”

“People wonder what we’re up to,” he and Rosannah shared. “We have limited resources, but we always find a way. Beauty doesn’t need to translate to wealth,” Derek said. Rosannah added, “We had role models growing up of people who followed their hearts with what they’re called to do, and we saw the kind of impact that can have. That’s especially important for young people to see. It’s a challenge to keep the heart open and not always grab out of fear but instead ask, ‘What if?’”

Exploring to explore

Derek talked more about staying open as it relates to the readings and hypnosis. “The deepest part is that you have a correspondence with the desire of allowing yourself to not be defined. There’s nothing ‘bad’ in what you’ll discover through exploring your subconscious. It’s information, and you can decide for yourself what to do with it.

“Tarot,” he explained, “can give you a lot of information in a short amount of time. With astrology you can look at natal birth charts to see a narrative of what someone is potentially here to learn. It can go a lot of ways,” he said. “It’s more intellectual and in-depth, revealing stories about how the path of one’s life is playing out. I describe hypnosis as a state of ‘alert trance’ where I’m the tour guide through a dream state to access the unconscious. It’s a self-directed journey where I stay relatively uninvolved except as a facilitator. 

“There are so many frequencies,” Derek said. “Our own frequencies. The earth’s frequencies. We can be fully here but in another place. So much of it has to do with our relationship to peace, who it is we’re here to be, and what it is we are here to do.”

Stay tuned

Derek and Rosannah are ready for 2025, which they are describing as their “year of transformation.” They plan to focus more on the shop, be more active in the community so that more people learn about them, and develop a stronger online presence. Rosannah has a children’s book coming out, written by her cousin, that features the elephant and giraffe characters in her greeting cards. Derek will be fresh off giving a talk on Frederic Church’s natal chart and helping others understand astrology at the winter solstice event at Olana in Hudson. And there’s the unknown that a new year brings. Time for a reading! I did one with Derek at the end of our visit, and the insights are ones I think about every day. •

Stop in to Constellation at 358 Main Street in Catskill, NY. Learn more and book appointments with Derek through the website, constellationcatskill.com. Consider sharing Derek’s gifts with a group. Experience the wonder of a “first time” with tarot or astrology or hypnosis. Get to know Derek and Rosannah. January is a great time to start looking through some different lenses. Happy New Year.