The Story of Dove & Serpent Tarot
The Story of Dove & Serpent Tarot
The story of Dove & Serpent Tarot did not begin with a YouTube channel. It began much earlier, with a question.
From an early age Paul Thomas found himself drawn toward the mystery of consciousness and the unseen forces that shape human life. Growing up in an environment that was often difficult and isolating, he spent long periods of time alone. During childhood he experienced vivid dreams and visions that felt prophetic, along with moments in waking life where he sensed presences or entities that seemed to exist just beyond ordinary perception.
Whether these experiences were spiritual, psychological, or something else entirely, they left him with a lasting impression: reality seemed deeper and stranger than most people realized.
By his teenage years that curiosity had become a search.
At fifteen, after a turbulent period involving bullying, violence, and legal trouble, Paul was moved into the care of his grandmother. The change removed him from much of the chaos surrounding his earlier life, but it also left him with long stretches of solitude. With few friends and little distraction, he began reading.
One of the first books that opened the door was Magick in Theory and Practice by Aleister Crowley. The book introduced him to a symbolic worldview where consciousness, ritual, and the structure of the universe were connected in ways that ordinary culture rarely discussed.
From there his studies expanded rapidly. Tarot became a central focus, but it was not the only system he explored. He studied Qabalah, Hermetic philosophy, Vedanta, astrology, and other traditions that attempt to map the hidden patterns underlying human life.
Tarot quickly became more than a curiosity. It became a language.
Rather than using the cards simply to predict events, Paul began using them as a symbolic mirror of the psyche, a way of understanding motivations, fears, transformations, and the strange timing that often appears in life.
Nature also played an important role during this time. He frequently traveled alone to Santa Cruz, California, where he would sit beside the Pacific Ocean to meditate and reflect. The ocean became a powerful symbol in his life: immense, mysterious, and constantly moving. In many ways it reflected the inner world he was trying to understand.
As adulthood arrived, however, the path became less clear.
Like many people searching for direction, Paul moved through a series of ordinary jobs over the years. He worked in offices, drove trucks, moved furniture, and delivered mail. The responsibilities of daily life took center stage, and the spiritual practices that had once been central to his life gradually faded into the background.
By the late 2000s he found himself caught in work that felt unfulfilling and a period of heavy drinking that slowly distanced him from the deeper questions that had once guided him.
Then everything changed.
In 2010, around the time of his Saturn return, Paul experienced sudden liver failure that nearly ended his life. The crisis led to a liver transplant and a profound near-death experience. Surviving that ordeal became the defining turning point of his life.
For him, the experience felt like a call back to the spiritual path he had once abandoned. In many ways it resembled the ancient story of the prodigal son; someone who wanders far from home and is suddenly brought back by circumstances beyond his control.
After recovering, he gradually returned to the symbolic traditions that had shaped his early years. Tarot once again became a central practice, not as fortune telling but as a way of exploring meaning, transformation, and the deeper patterns that seem to guide human experience.
More than a decade later another unexpected turning point arrived.
In 2022 Paul and his wife were living in the basement of a rented home with their young daughter while he worked remotely for a data-entry company. During this time he had resumed practicing tarot regularly and had begun offering readings for strangers on Reddit simply to improve his craft.
Then his wife lost her income.
Suddenly the family found themselves struggling to make ends meet. Faced with the possibility of not being able to pay the rent, Paul made a simple decision: instead of keeping his tarot practice private, he would begin sharing the readings publicly on YouTube.
The first videos were recorded in the basement of the house they were renting.
At the time it was simply an experiment. Perhaps the videos might earn a little money to help support the family.
He had no expectation that anything larger would happen.
Then one video began to move.
It was a Taurus reading titled “The Fight of Your Life Is Coming!”
At first the view count climbed slowly. Then it passed one hundred views. Then five hundred. Soon it crossed one thousand views, something none of the previous videos had done.
For the first time, it became clear that people were listening.
From that moment the audience began to grow.
The channel eventually became known as Dove & Serpent Tarot, a name that emerged later in an unexpected moment while Paul and his wife were shopping for clothes for their daughter.
What began as a desperate attempt to help pay the rent slowly evolved into something far larger: a global audience drawn to the calm voice, symbolic depth, and reflective nature of the readings.
Today Dove & Serpent Tarot has grown into a thriving community of listeners who return daily to reflect on the messages of the cards and the patterns unfolding in their lives.
For Paul, tarot remains what it has always been: not a tool for predicting the future, but a symbolic language for exploring the deeper journey of human life.
In that sense, the channel is simply an extension of a question that began many years earlier:
What hidden patterns are guiding the story of our lives?
About the Author
Paul Thomas is the creator of Dove & Serpent Tarot, a YouTube channel and media project exploring tarot, symbolism, and spiritual philosophy.