Thea Wirsching is a writer, scholar, and evolutionary astrologer based in Long Beach, California. Her PhD research at UCLA focused on occultism in American literature. Thea's counseling business, The Pluto Babe, is centered in trauma healing and shadow integration. She is passionate about bringing this shadow material forward to re-enchant the national narrative. Thea Wirsching received her doctorate in English literature from UCLA in 2012, one of the nation's top institutions for literary studies. Her dissertation, entitled Occult Americans: Invisible Culture and the Literary Imagination , made adeep dive into the largely unexplored metaphysical history of the United States. The question she sought to answer was, &ldquo What happened to occultism between the Renaissance and the occult revival of the late nineteenth century&rdquo Thea found her answer to this question in the literature of nineteenth-century America: the Transcendentalists and other important writers of the American Renaissance resurrected the ancient philosophies of Hermeticism and NeoPlatonism, the foundational belief systems that underlie the modern New Age movement. Thea's great passion is to connect Americans with their metaphysical history,as a way of healing the alienation and conflicted feelings that so many Americans have about their roots. For that reason she has focused her efforts in recent years on writing and co-creating The American Renaissance Tarot with the graphic artist, Celeste Pille.
Celeste Pille is an illustrator with a talent for portraiture, and a love of art that merges pop culture and iconography. Her degree in both English and art made a literary Tarot deck a natural vehicle for her skills.