The Power to Read Minds with Peter Antoniou

In this Episode

• [00:30]Stephan introduces Peter Antoniou, a highly sought variety artist who reads the minds of his audience. He’s a divination and tarot teacher, showing people how to use it for creative thinking, personal progress, and achievement.
• [05:04]Peter shares how he mastered reading minds.
• [10:37]What Peter’s main goal is during his performances.
• [15:01]Peter shares one of his driving forces during mind-reading shows.
• [20:02]Stephan and Peter discuss why it’s essential to still follow your intuition when it comes to divination and tarot reading.
• [25:05]How failure can be a learning point and why you should keep going.
• [30:33]Peter shares how he turns newspapers into a tarot deck.
• [35:00]Peter explains what the Queen of cups could mean for readers who get it.
• [39:45]Why Peter offers a coin in his online store for divination.
• [44:10]Peter talks about his ADHD being both a superpower and a disability.
• [49:33]Peter talks about Ghosts of Enfield.
• [56:08]Visit Peter Antoniou’s website and learn more about his products and services. Follow him on TikTok and Instagram to stay updated.

Jump to Links and Resources

Thank you, Peter, for joining us. 

Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here. 

I loved your performance on America’s Got Talent audition. I just thought you were phenomenal. I would love to start with something that you mentioned at the beginning of your audition, which was that you started with tarot at age 9 or 11 (something like that), and it blossomed from there. Could you share a little bit about your origin story? 

I remember as a kid, we were on holiday in the South of France. I was in the aisle of the supermarket where they had magazines, newspapers, and stuff, and I saw a tarot deck. I didn’t really know what it was, but I knew that I wanted it. I just felt really drawn to it. I ended up getting it and learning a lot about that. My auntie, she’s a traditional old Greek lady, so she was reading tea leaves, coffee grounds around us, and predicting futures and stuff. 

It was always around me. I became fascinated with that at the same time that I was super into comic books and always wanted to superpower myself and thought like, oh reading minds, that would be cool. Those two points ended up driving me towards yes, that mindset of like, oh, well, I guess it is possible. Let’s just learn how. 

I ended up learning a lot from psychics, psychologists, hypnotists, and magicians. Just trying to understand how they all approach figuring out what people were thinking. I’ve stolen a lot of that and it built into doing stage shows where I’m demonstrating those skills. It’s been a fun ride.

When did you do your first stage show? Did you do anything as a child?

I showed friends a lot of weird things I was working on. In retrospect, thinking back to it, I was a pretty weird kid. I was the one in the playground, just think of something and I’ll try and tell you what it is. Then I did my first proper stand-up show when I was 16, 17. It was towards the end of high school. We were doing a fundraiser for Red Nose Day and I said, “Oh, I’ll do a 40-minute show, no problem.” Thinking back, it was incredibly ambitious, given that I had never performed on stage in that way with mind-reading before. 

I felt comfortable being on stage.

I felt comfortable being on stage because I’d played the cello since I was 10. I was used to performing in that way, but not with mind-reading. The first stage show went really well, and then it built from there. I went to university to study music. Because I came from quite a working-class background, being a professional performer never really seemed like an option to me. It just wasn’t something that occurred to me as an occupation.

It was while I was at university that I was getting paid to do shows, and they were covering my bills that it suddenly dawned on me like, oh, this could be a career. It built from there.

I saw a few of your videos where you had just strangers on video for a few minutes and you were reading their minds, essentially. You’re telling them things that blew their minds and they were so flabbergasted. I remember some of the reactions were pretty phenomenal. How do you access what’s going on in somebody’s head?

It’s a lot of different techniques. Partly for me, now at this point in my career, it’s a little bit like when you learn to drive stick. When you first learn, it’s like so much thought. There’s push the clutch down and move the gear stick. Once you’ve done it for a while, it’s just automatic. 

Now I’m at the point where it just feels like an automatic feeling. I ask someone to think something, and I get a gut feeling about it, but it’s a combination of just pure intuition, just getting a feeling inside. Often in my shows, I’ll say stuff, and I don’t know where it’s coming from, I just got a gut feeling like, say this to this person. More often than not it’s right, and if it isn’t, that’s fine too. I’ve built-in safety nets in the show that I’m not infallible, I’m not perfect. Sometimes things go wonky.

I’ve learned a lot about psychology, understanding tails, and all that stuff. I’m very interested in that science bit of it, but I have a lot of friends who are clinical psychologists who despair. When I talk to them about things, I just get a feeling to say, oh, you lost your cat recently. People lose their minds and they say, yeah, but why did you say that? I’m like, I don’t know, it just occurred to me. 

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It’s like a hunch. It was in the background. Some people have clairaudience. They hear voices, things being said to them. Others have clairvoyance, where they see pictures or movies playing out. Some people have claircognizance where they have this gut feeling, this hunch that turns out being right most of the time. It sounds like that’s what you’re getting.

Occasionally, there will be pictures that pop into my head and stuff, but it’s just a feeling. When you describe it to people, it can all seem very woowoo and very out there because intuition seems like a woowoo concept. I often think of it as our brain is like a supercomputer just constantly processing all this data. What intuition is, is our brain giving us the final answer. We’re not showing you the working out, just here’s the thing. 

It’s about trusting that because if you were consciously aware of all that thought process, your brain would explode. It’d be too much to handle. It’s just about me trusting a lot of that. Especially in my theater shows, I’m not afraid to cheat a little bit if I have to or figure out ways to bolster it. I often think it’s for entertainment purposes. I just want to give the greatest response that I can. 

If I need to set up the environment in a way that I know who’s going to suggest a thought to someone’s head, if I can control the playing music as people come in, I can lay thoughts into people’s heads as well. It just helps that hunch a little bit. I’m building it up from all angles.

How did you come up with the idea to draw a cat? I watched this video where you drew a cat and you asked the person that you were talking to to guess what the thing was that you were drawing. I guessed it was a cat. He guessed it was a cat. You went on this whole thing about it was your dog. You’re more of a dog person than a cat person. I don’t remember how you came to this point where you’re leading them off the track. Before you even said anything, I knew it was a cat. How does that work? 

A lot of that is like me working with the person. I did a series of videos for TikTok where I downloaded Tinder. Because obviously, with theater shows not happening, I thought, oh, let’s try this remotely. I downloaded Tinder and matched with people that said, oh, you know what, my bio is very clear. I’m not here for dating. I’m here to do psychic experiments, give you an experience. 

Then we talked on Zoom with people and people seemed really up for it. That dude, we talked for a couple of minutes before, and I just got a sense of like, if I ask him to think of a picture, I think he’s going to think of a cat. It was again, just that gut feeling. I drew it and went for it. As I was describing, I drew a picture. There was that thought in my head of like, he’s not a cat person. He’s not a cat person, but I’m stuck with it.

I think that that’s something that I’ve learned to be better at in my career as well is sticking with those first gut instincts and not letting the anxious voice say, this is a bad idea, panic. Just thought I’d share that thought of you’re not a cat person, are you? You’re a dog person, and he was. I had an image of him with the smaller dogs like dachshunds, French bulldogs, and stuff and shared that with him. That resonated with him as well. I’ve got two bites of the apple there. 

It’s a lot about just getting a vibe of someone and I quite like that experience of giving someone the feeling of being psychic as well. Whether it’s me projecting it to them or whether it’s me figuring out what I think they’re going to say and then letting them walk into that situation. I think sometimes it’s a bit of both. I’m sending it to him and hopefully, he’s picking up on it. I’ve got a good read of him and it’s a balancing act. I often think of it as spinning plates. I’ve got a few approaches going at once, and hopefully, he walks into one of them. It was a really great reaction from him.

It’s a lot about getting a vibe of someone and giving someone the feeling of being psychic as well.

That’s really cool. I like the way that you’re not a purist about like, this got to be only from the psychic channels, otherwise, I’m not using it. No, you work in cold reading, the whole magician techniques, setting up the room, making suggestions subliminally, and that sort of thing as well. It becomes much more of a show, of a performance and not like this purist thing like, I’m not going to mess with the message that I’m receiving.

Especially for my entertainment shows, my main goal is to give you the most fun experience possible. If I need to build in suggestions or stuff, or whether it’s just purely picking stuff up, I’m willing to use all of that to give the end goal of like, you’ve had a great time and experienced something that previously you thought was impossible. 

For my entertainment shows, I’m not trying to convert anyone to a new way of approaching life or anything. I want you to have a laugh and go like, wow, that was strange, and then go about your life, have a fun memory from that, and get involved in the show. 

I think it’s interesting splitting the two schools because I also teach a lot about tarot, divination, and that sort of thing, and trying to explain the two sorts of approaches there. In the shows, I’m throwing everything at the wall and just giving you fun. When I’m teaching about divination, tarot, and stuff, it’s a slightly purer approach to like, all right, let’s look at the cards, let’s understand. I’m leading in that way.

You could see or somehow sense that in America’s Got Talent audition, Sofia Vergara had a rainbow in her mind’s eye. She was recalling the experience of being proposed to and there was this beautiful rainbow that she saw as it was happening. She clearly, from her reaction, didn’t share that information publicly anywhere, and yet you accessed it. That wasn’t cold reading, that was psychic, right?

It was a real struggle because I knew I wanted to do something really personal with one of the judges. Obviously, they’re all giant celebrities and they’ve given hundreds of interviews. I’m trying to narrow down on getting them to think of something that you’ve never shared with anyone like, this is just for you. Because obviously, the pressures on at that point. In my theater show, I’m with people for an hour, an hour and a half. If one or two things go slightly wonky, that’s fine. 

The pressure is on if they’re like, this is your one chance to get this right. Then just having her imagine there and it just popped into my head just straight away, super clearly. There’s still that nervousness of like, what if I’m on the wrong track? What if it’s something else? I just went with it and it hit really strongly. I was as relieved as everyone watching at home that it was right at that time. 

I think she was picturing it so clearly as well. You can see in the footage where she’s clearly got that memory in mind. I often find that when I’m doing the mind-reading shows, the clearer someone can picture it in their mind, the easier it is for me then to pick out from them.

That makes sense. Are there other experiences where you maybe blew the minds of family members or longtime friends telling them something that you couldn’t possibly have known like that?

It’s weird because the longer I know someone, the harder it is for me to pick stuff up. I think that’s partly because you stop being objective then. What you want to be true, the information they’ve told you and that you’ve picked up in normal channels starts to cloud that pureness of connection. Whereas when I meet someone new for the first time, it’s much easier to have an objective view of them. I tend to, much to their joy, leave my family and friends’ minds alone most of the time. I think my partner’s very glad that I’m constantly not reading their mind. 

The longer I know someone, the harder it is for me to pick stuff up.

That’s awesome. That can be intimidating or a little bit nerve-wracking to think the person I’m just randomly chatting with here, having coffee with could be reading my innermost private thoughts. This is actually something I learned recently, is that there is no such thing as a private thought. I did not know this until this year, but everything that we think, that we think of as being private is being broadcast out. Not just for the world of the living, but for the unseen world as well. That was a bit discombobulating. I’m like, okay, well, I better keep my mind really clean.

I think that’s one of my driving forces with the mind-reading show as well. I know it can seem really scary and invasive. I try to inject as much comedy as I can and reassure people that before I jump into anyone’s brain, I’m getting permission and making sure that we’re not tipping into areas they don’t want to. 

In my main theater show, a large focus of the second half is I have everyone think of a question they wish they could ask a psychic. Then I go around the room, read their mind, try and figure out what the question is they’re thinking of, and then provide an answer. Occasionally, I’ll pick up on details and stuff. If I’m not sure that they want me to tell them out loud, then I could quietly confer with them with a microphone off so that they can say, yeah, that is correct. It’s not for everyone’s ears. It’s a nice balance, I think. 

I did a show a couple of years ago. Something always sticks in my mind, where I was giving a woman a reading on stage. I just suddenly had this flash that she was pregnant with twins, but she’d not told anyone she was with. Obviously, I don’t want to be the one to burst into an important family moment and be like, I’m making it all about me. There was a lot of checking of like, can I say this, are you okay? She was fine with it. 

I revealed this thought that I picked up and she confirmed it was true. Her family had a big hug afterward, and it was an incredible moment and wild to me that I got to be part of that incredible family moment. I think of it often.

That is so cool. Did you keep in touch with this person? 

No. Sadly, not. That’s one of the downsides to doing big theater shows. We have these incredibly intimate moments, and then they’re off into the night and we never speak again.

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You don’t have a testimonial either to show. That’s a shame, but what a great story. What a great experience that you were able to provide for those people. Cool. What would be the first bits of information or ideas that we want to convey to our listeners in regards to starting to develop their psychic abilities? If they wanted to develop clairvoyance, claircognizance, if they wanted to work on divination, what would be some easy first steps for them to take?

I always think a really good way to start, maybe partly because it’s how I started, but tarot is a really easy entry route into divination. I think people can often be quite scared of it because it seems like a lot of information to learn. There are all these cards and there are whole books that describe what one card means. It seems like a lot of data. Whereas actually, the way that I always teach approaching tarot is a lot about tapping into your intuition and stuff. 

In life, we tell ourselves stories. If you’re in a car accident, you might say, I’m really unlucky because that happened. You might say, I’m really lucky because it could have been worse, and actually, I turned out okay. Those stories surround us all the time. What tarot does is it presents us in picture form with stories that we can inject ourselves into. Then we challenge the story we’re telling ourselves about the life around us. 

Rather than learning from a book what this card means, I encourage people to get tarot cards and just look at the picture like it’s a frame in a comic book but without any text and say, what’s the story that’s happening here? They tell themselves that story and often, that intuitive approach to it combined with our own intuition starts bringing out things that we’ve been ignoring or stuff that we’ve picked up and been pushed away. 

You put yourself into that and it’s a lot about re-engaging with that sense of intuition. As we were saying earlier, I think often people can be a bit afraid of it. It’s a bit woo, we should ignore it. This is a really good way of getting back in touch with listening to what your body is telling you and what you’re picking up. It builds up that confidence. You build more into understanding the tarot and picking up those pictures.

It’s a lot about re-engaging with that sense of intuition.

I often encourage people not to pick up the guide books at all, at least for a while because I think your personal understanding of what the story the picture is telling you is so much more important than what someone who wrote a book has decided it is. Things have different meanings and different contexts. 

Wearing a bikini in the supermarket is different from wearing it on the beach. Why shouldn’t a tarot card mean something different to you with your life experience than it does to someone who lives 6000 miles away and lives a completely different life? I find that that approach is really useful for building up and starting that journey of tapping into yourself and your understanding more.

Something similar that I’ve experienced is, I’ve been getting a lot of angel numbers. 333, I got today. I got 1111 three times this morning. I’ll check the Angel Numbers 101 book by Doreen Virtue, but oftentimes, I’ll also just google it. Whatever pops for me, there are going to be so many results. I can look at the image results, I could look at just the text results. I’ll just go wherever I feel drawn to, and then that will be the message for me. 

That’s very personal and it’s tapping into my intuition, but being prompted to do that too. It’s like I’m getting a little nudge, a little tap on the shoulder from the higher realms, and then I’m following that. Just being guided to whatever I intuit is the message from that.

I think that’s a really powerful approach forward as well to take those now. Also, sometimes people tend to tarot expecting that it’s going to say, “You’ll meet the love of your life next Tuesday, he will be called Terry, and it will be at 5 PM.” I actually think intuition and the universe don’t work like that. 

Being more open to those gentle nudges of the universe saying, pay attention now. Stop, think now. Taking that action to be like, what resonates with me is so much more powerful. It’s so much more empowering as well because you’re not then surrendering the control of your life over to some pieces of paper. You’re saying, I’m listening and now taking full reins and going to lead this forward.

Something you said a few minutes ago reminded me of a Chinese proverb. You’re talking about like, you get in a car accident, you break a bone, or something, that can be seen as unfortunate. Maybe it’s lucky or it’s fortunate in this aspect that you didn’t get more seriously hurt, but everything that happens to us is actually for us and for our soul’s highest good. 

That can be hard for somebody to accept if they’ve had a lot of tragedy in their life in particular. Let’s say it would have led to something much worse happening, but it didn’t happen because they had that car accident. They don’t get to see that until after they pass and then their whole life review and everything. 

It reminds me of this Chinese proverb and it goes something like this. You may have heard this before, I happen to love this. A farmer and his son had a beloved stallion who helped the family earn a living. One day the horse ran away and their neighbors exclaimed, “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck?” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”  

A few days later the horse returned home leading a few wild horses, mares back to the farm as well. The neighbor shouted out, “Your horses returned and brought several horses home with him. What great luck.” Farmer answers, “Maybe so, maybe not, we’ll see.” It goes on.

His son gets thrown off the horse and breaks his leg. “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck,” “Maybe so, maybe not.” Then he ends up not getting recruited into the army because he had a broken bone. What tremendous luck, et cetera. It goes on.

I just think there are so many instances of that happening in our lives, but we don’t see it. We don’t see that the road actually split. There are two paths and we hit a crossroad. We went down one path that if we’d gone the other path, we’d be dead by now. It seems unfortunate because we broke a bone in the process, but it was actually quite fortunate. What are your thoughts on that?

I think a lot of it is about what’s going to serve you at this moment. Looking at the stories that you’re telling yourself and saying, no, this terrible thing has happened. I can think of it as a terrible thing and it should be a reason that I give up and stuff, but is that serving you? Is that giving you the fulfillment and the joy that you want in your life? If it isn’t, and there’s a different way of approaching it, then you get to this point where you say, okay, that happened. Saying, oh, you were in a car accident, and actually, I’m really lucky that it wasn’t worse. It doesn’t erase. 

I think this is something that sometimes people get caught upon. It doesn’t erase your right to be upset or to be hurt by that incident. Those feelings are still valid. What it is, is saying, okay, is there a way of approaching this that now means that you can go forward from this, as opposed to where it is a roadblock that’s going to stop you moving forward.

You often see this when you’re talking to people about failure and stuff, and they say, “Oh, well, it failed so I shouldn’t keep trying because that was painful” and stuff. You say, “Well, that failure is painful and that doesn’t invalidate that. Maybe that failure is just a learning point. You can see it as actually really useful. That was good data and you can move forward so that you’re not going to fail at that again.”  

Rather than it being evidence of why you should stop, it’s evidence of why you should keep going. How does that resonate with you? Again, just always bringing it back to, how do I feel inside? How does my intuition feel? Just trying to differentiate that from how the anxiousness feels or those maladaptive behaviors that you’ve approached that serve you. Being nervous and being anxious serve good purposes, but sometimes they can be hyper-aware and they’re not serving you in the same way. 

You’re finding that route forward, but still honoring. When things are bad, you’re allowed to say that they’re bad. I’m always very careful. I think it can be quite prevalent in the new age of the toxic positivity of like, “Oh, just see it as a good thing.” I’m still making that space to say like, “Oh, no, actually, it was terrible, but we can find a way forward that this serves me.”

One thing I’ve understood recently about intuition is that it tends to come in just unexpected and out of nowhere. It tends to come in really fast. Whereas if you’re overthinking things, you’re ruminating, that’s your subconscious mind. That’s your stinking thinking and so forth. That’s usually not the whispers from the higher realms. How do you increase your signal, the ability to receive the intuition so it comes in hard and fast all the time?

Being nervous and anxious serve good purposes, but sometimes they can be hyper-aware, and they’re not serving you in the same way.

It’s a lot about practicing that approach and accepting it in small doses. My partner teaches self-defense and this is something they talk about a lot. You sometimes are at a party and you’ll get that the vibe is weird, “I should leave.” There’s an event happening and you get a vibe like, “I don’t know if I should go or not.” It’s about testing that a little bit and saying, “Okay, you don’t know if you should go or not, but you end up going and actually ends up being a terrible party.” 

That was intuition and then you acknowledge what that feeling was like. Okay, pat on my back, intuition tried, I didn’t listen, notice it again. The next time that you have like, oh, I should go, but I don’t know. Then you go, and actually, it turns out to be a great party. Okay, that was the stinking thinking, as you said. It’s about just listening, exploring, and finding that difference because I think it’s easy to lump it into one feeling. 

Often, it’s different feelings. As you say, it feels different in your body. Either it comes fast or there’s that creeping feeling. Just building that up and being willing to explore safe environments like, oh, yeah, that was my intuition and I should have listened. The more you get used to differentiating those feelings, the clearer those signals become. Then it becomes much easier to just say, no, okay, that feels wrong and I know that this is a feeling I should trust.

That’s a great scientific approach. It’s like the scientific method. I like that. Going back to tarot. If someone has a negative reaction to hearing the word tarot, they think that it’s satanic. They think it’s dark or black magic, what do you say in response to that?

Often there are two approaches to this. One is I will explain that there’s a lot of myths that surround tarot. People say, “Oh, they were created by the ancient Egyptians,” or “Maybe they’re cursed.” There’s a lot of understanding, but actually, they’re just pictures on a piece of paper with the same explanation as today. They give us stories, we can tell stories, and it’s no different. 

If people are still unsure, I do a lot of corporate work. I found that that was an objection from corporate bookers as well. Not necessarily they thought the cards were the devil’s work or stuff, but they were worried that if a client thinks that and then there’s an awkward moment, so I designed my own version of the tarot that is just random symbols.

Intuition feels different in your body. Either it comes fast, or there’s that creeping feeling.

Sometimes even if I’m in a social situation, I’ll grab a newspaper and tear it up because newspapers are full of pictures and still all tell our stories. Just showing someone away that is separate from the Hollywood image of someone holding a tarot deck telling them when they’re going to die and just giving someone that experience. I think often, that can break down the understanding of saying, “No, Hollywood tells you one thing, but this is actually the reality. It’s probably not as spooky or as sexy as Hollywood wants you to think, but it can be a lot more insightful in giving people that space.“

As I say, if they’re very set against it, I entirely respect those views and I have different divination methods. If they’re into exploring something that is tarot adjacent that they feel more comfortable with. It’s a process of education.

You mentioned it can tear up a newspaper and use that as a tarot deck. How does that work exactly? Are you doing this on stage and you just tear it into thirds and then thirds again, or you clip the pictures out with scissors? How does that work?

I’d often do it in more casual environments where someone says, “Oh, I’d love tarot, but it’s cursed and I don’t want to get in that.” In a method of explaining it, I just grab a newspaper and just randomly tear it up. Just tear it into quarters, into eighths, or whatever, and just throw the pieces out. I’ll grab three and if there’s a quarter of a picture on there, cool, that’s fine. Extrapolate, look at what we’ve got from that picture. 

What do you imagine in the rest of the picture? Let’s build up an imaginary tarot card from that. If there are no pictures but there are a few words like, all right, let’s take those words. What story could those words be? Independent of what you think the article is, whether you’ve read the news for that day and you know what that’s from, if you just took those words, what story would you make up? That’s the same as a tarot card. 

Just because someone didn’t draw it a few 100 years ago, doesn’t mean that it’s not as valid. Let’s go from there. Just find a way of building divination into that. I’m big into finding those ways. In my show, I often use just random things for divination. We might start with tarot, but I might say, just grab an object out of your bag. Get the first thing that comes to hand and we’ll use that as if it was a tarot card. 

There’s a lot of myths that surround tarot.

You’ve got a packet of tissues. Let’s say this is a journey of sadness, but maybe also healing. Maybe you were crying and there’s a story of being sad about something, but also acknowledging that sadness can be a release and you build from there. It’s giving that experience of divination can come from anything. Just because we’re used to the idea of tarot, doesn’t mean that it needs to stop there. It’s not a walled-off thing.

Let’s hypothetically say that one of the tarot-type pieces of the newspaper has a picture of a racehorse on it, or maybe a mention of a horse race. What’s the meaning of that for the person, potentially?

Okay, we’re looking at races there. It’s about moving forward and charging forward, but I think often, it’s very easy in a race to know where the endpoint is because someone’s marked it for us. In life, it can feel like we’re constantly in a race, but we’re either racing towards an endpoint that someone else has decided for us or we’ve not even looked at the endpoint. We’re just so caught up in the moment of the race. If you’re looking at dog racing, they’re just chasing that fake rabbit. 

They’re not thinking about what comes next. I remember having a picnic with a friend of mine a couple of years ago. She was there with her kid, and there was a pigeon. They were both just chasing the pigeon-like kids like to do. Then my friend caught the pigeon. That was a great moment where she turned to me holding this pigeon and said, I don’t know what to do next because that had never occurred. I think taking that meaning from the race of saying, maybe slow down a little bit. You don’t need to be caught in this race.

Maybe what you should be looking at is what’s the endpoint? Is that endpoint something that someone else has decided for you? Should you be pausing a moment to think, what is the endpoint I want, and then racing towards that as opposed to just blindly moving forward as fast as you can.

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I like that. That’s really cool. I don’t know much about tarot, but I believe that there’s something like Queen of Cups or something like that, that’s one of the cards. 

That is, indeed.

What does that mean?

I have my teaching deck here, actually. I’ll grab it and we can talk through it. Cups are often a suite of fulfillment. It’s feeling content and happy. The court cards are often seen as the end of the journey. I like to see all of the suits as journeys from the beginning and set out in a search of something to a level of attainment. They also come with a warning. 

With the Queen of Cups, it’s a journey towards fulfillment with an air of compassion. I think often when people start going after things for their own pleasure, it’s easy to forget about those around us. When we look at the queen of cups there, you can see that the queen is sitting and she’s contemplating really looking at the cup that she’s got that’s quite ornate. It’s a feeling of understanding that this cup comes from everyone else around you. The queen’s often a very caring and compassionate figure.

It’s an approach to dealing with fulfillment in a community-based approach. Taking that compassionately and also taking the fourth in the same way we were talking about with the race earlier. That this queen is looking at what’s made her fulfilled, really contemplating it, and not just saying, I’m going to go after lots of things because that seems like what I want. She sat down and thought, what is it exactly that I want? How can it benefit me and also my community and lead forward like that?

The cards have lots of different meanings depending on how you look at them.

As I say, the cards have lots of different meanings depending on how you look at them. I think a good example I used for a while and it became relevant again is the Philip Pullman books, His Dark Materials. HBO and BBC made a series. There’s The Golden Compass. In that, the girl learns to read. I have to think that’s a really good way of explaining to people how tarot works as well. When she’s divining with the compass, there’s a moon and it might mean cycle, it might mean darkness, or it might mean this. It’s about her feelings. 

When I pull the Queen of Cups, it may be for someone that I’m sitting in front of. My intuition says this is more about community and maybe you should be looking more at that. Whereas for another person, I might say, this feels for me more about looking inwards and really evaluating what’s making you happy. It’s amorphous in that way. I think that’s a really nice way of getting to connect with someone as well. 

Sometimes sharing both of those meanings and saying, which speaks to you at this moment? Then they tell me. For tarot readings, I really like it to be a two-way street. It’s not me giving a lecture because I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in you being involved in the process of getting that ownership.

It sounds like there’s intuition involved in deciding which of the multiple meanings is the one that’s most relevant for the person you’re reading for. I’m curious, did you know that I was going to bring up the queen of cups before I did?

No. No idea at all. I think for a lot of the intuition and the mind-reading stuff, I have to be tuned in for it. Whereas for the divination, once I’m in the moment, it just flows. I’d listen to my intuition and I’m just going with what feels right.

Got it. I was at a family reunion a couple of weeks ago. I learned one of my family members—surprisingly to me—has been playing around with tarot and was able to pick the winner of the Kentucky Derby because of her use of tarot. She didn’t bet nearly enough. In other words, she bet very little. She wasn’t certain that that was the thing that she should do, so she just made a small bet. 

In retrospect, she could have made a much larger one and made a lot of money. I’m curious, how does that work to actually figure out the winner of a horse race or whatever the thing is through the use of tarot.

I’ve never been as lucky to have that connection. Otherwise, I’d have much nicer suits, I think. For different people, it’s tapping into different things. Occasionally, while I’m giving readings to people, the cards tell me who’s winning the Super Bowl. In part as well because that’s not something that I have any knowledge of, so it’s hard to tap into an intuition based on something that I’m not connected to in that way.

It’s an often nice question like, oh, if you’re psychic, why haven’t you won the lottery? That’s not quite the approach. I often think as well, with my approach to reading and stuff, it’s so much about looking at the part people are on at this moment with full knowledge that everything’s changing all the time. If someone decides to act slightly differently, then those insights change. I’ve never quite been able to have a prediction like that, but I would like to get in with your family member and hopefully, we can win next year.

Awesome. You have a coin that you have in your online store for divination. What’s the purpose of that versus using a tarot deck or something that has many more options like oracle cards or whatever you call it? Why a coin? 

It was an outgrowth of what we were talking about earlier about me having to deal with corporate clients being concerned about the mysticism of tarot and stuff. It started off like, I built my own oracle deck in 2015 that I used a lot. Then partly it was because I was on the road so much that I was going through so many decks. I give cards away to people when it really resonates with them or they get lost. 

I have ADHD, so I’m a terrible fidgeter. Trying to combine all of those requirements that would last longer. Something that still carried all those meanings meant that I ended up building this coin, which is something that’s very tactile. You can play with it. Also, it’s got a whole selection of symbols on it. It’s something that I think I found a lot, especially in the corporate space. Yes-no coins or lucky coins were a real thing that people engage in. While they would be saying like, tarot’s too woo for me but I do have a lucky coin that if I don’t bring it to meetings, then the deal won’t go through. Just taking that approach. 

You get to a point where there’s a whole collection of symbols on both sides and a yes-no, so it’s got all of the approaches of the Major Arcana of tarot, but combined in one thing that fits in your pocket. You can just pop in your wallet because I understand not everyone’s as comfortable as ripping up a newspaper and giving a reading from that. 

Just having a tactile thing that rather than shuffling up and pulling one card, you just throw it up in the air and catch it. Whatever symbol my eyes are drawn to first, that’s the symbol I will go with. Then I give a reading from that. It’s a nice tactile, fun, and long-lasting thing that people can use. That has become the backbone of my shows now. Rather than using tarot in my theater shows, I use the coin because it’s fun. Again, just great to give away to people as well. Here’s your new lucky coin.

That’s cool. Now, how does that compare to the pendulum as a way to get yes-no answers to whatever questions you’re asking?

I think it’s a slightly different approach. I think for the pendulum, I often feel the pendulum’s tapping into our own inner understanding, and often, we can surprise ourselves with the pendulum if we’re asking a yes or no question. At some level, we know the answer, but consciously we’re ignoring it. The pendulum reveals those inner thoughts. 

Whereas I find with the Icon, the yes-no response, a lot about your reaction to the yes-no as well. There’s that old flip a coin and in the air, you will know what the right answer is. I find that as well when I get people to flip the coin. We get the answer like yes and you instantly see them have a reaction to that. Once they’re forced to face a decision, then instantly things become clearer. 

I think we’ve all been in that experience where we stop at someone or we say something that’s been bubbling in our head. The moment it leaves our mouth, we think, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m glad that that’s finally out in the air. I think getting people to that point, often it’s the fear of making a decision that means that we procrastinate.

Rather than using tarot in my theater shows, I use the coin because it’s fun.

Let’s just assume that decision is made. You’ve not made it, the coins made it. Yes, you’re doing nothing. Now, all of those barriers of having good insight and clarity have moved out of the way because the decision is made. Now, how does your intuition feel about it? You get a different approach to it.

I got that, okay. Now, you mentioned a few minutes ago that you have ADHD. Is that something that you see as a benefit or a detriment? Is that a superpower or is that a disability?

I think it can be a bit of both really. I’ve come to it late in life with the realization because definitely, as a child, I was especially much more hyper-focused as opposed to the can’t focus end of the spectrum. It was never really picked up in school. I think that it can be really useful when I’m in a hyper-focused mode and I can get lots done. But when my focus wanes, it can be a challenge.

I think I’ve always learned to deal with it and am constantly learning new ways. I’m often big on talking about it freely because I think people may worry about if I say it, will people think that they can’t trust me to focus on tasks? Whether they’ll see it as a disability and be worried about it. I’m often wary as well to say like, it’s a superpower because that does discount the very hard days and the days where it’s a struggle. It has an impact on your mood and there’s comorbidity with depression and anxiety, struggling in that way.

I’m often just very open about it, especially if I’m giving readings to people and we’re getting into their really personal details in their lives, it’s only fair that I’m open about my life and my approach to things as well. It can be both a struggle and a superpower I think. You take the good and you take the bad.

It makes you more relatable, especially if you’re somebody who has ADD or ADHD. It also can be distracting if you’re fidgeting and stuff. But personally, I think of it as a superpower. The way I see it is that back in the stone-age days, there were the hunters, there were the gatherers, but there were also the spotters. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of spotters. They were the folks in the tribe who kept the tribe alive because they would be first to notice that the herd is on the move, there goes our food supply. They’re leaving.

I've learned to be better at my career by sticking with those first gut instincts and not letting the anxious voice say, 'this is a bad idea,' and panic. Click To Tweet

There’s the neighboring tribe sneaking upon us. They’re the first to notice that so nobody gets murdered. That was an essential part of our survival as a species having those spotters. Now, they’re labeled with this disability or disorder of ADD and ADHD. For one, that label doesn’t serve and two, it doesn’t recognize the value evolutionarily of the spotters, of the ADD and ADHD-labeled folks. What are your thoughts on that?

I think it’s definitely like it is. As I said, I came to it later in life, it’s still something that I’m learning a lot about and exploring. It’s the same with glasses as well. I didn’t realize I needed glasses until I was about 17 because I just assumed everyone saw a bit blurry. The way that I could see what the teacher was writing on the board was because of the shapes our hand was making as opposed to what was on the board. That was just my default assumption.

It’s interesting at this point to be challenging my default assumptions of not everyone’s brain works this way. Understanding the benefits and the challenges. It’s just been really interesting to see those benefits, the evolutionary benefits. Also, the challenges that come with it, things I assumed everyone experienced and then to discover, no, that’s just you and a small group of people. It’s been a fun journey. It’s challenging but it’s a good journey to explore. I think it’s less scary than I thought. 

I’ve had a few friends who identified with a lot of what I’ve talked about and said, I’d love to go and talk to my doctor but I’m scared. If it’s some benefit and if it’s things like getting in the way of you living your life to your level of fulfillment, reaching out and seeing. Because I’ve definitely learned coping techniques that previously like, yeah, I have really bad focus days and am learning new ways of approaching that as well. I’m a functioning human being, I can be more productive. Then I can also share those and everything that I learn. It goes into my readings and so I can pass that information on to others as well

Do you meditate?

I’ve started doing a lot more of it. I was never very good at the consistency of meditating. I do bits and bobs, I do it for a week, and then fall off. I’m getting better at building up the practice of meditating. I’ve got much more into—back in the pandemic—doing yoga as well and approaching that as a daily task. Often, a physical task as well. I struggled especially at the start with the slower, more meditative yoga because I was used to being at the gym—run, lift heavy things, and being active. It was a nice route forward and I ended up doing a brand of yoga that was much more upbeat and stuff and finding that meditative.

I'm not trying to convert anyone to a new way of approaching life or anything. I want you to have a laugh and go like, wow, that was strange, go about your life, have a fun memory from that, and then get involved in the show. Click To Tweet

This is something that I’ve learned approaching ADHD as well is that I often sometimes think meditation—what people imagine—is sitting very still, thinking nothing, doing nothing. You can approach that meditative state in a lot of different ways. Actually dealing through tarot cards and being active in that is still meditation and still fulfilling that mindset. It’s in a much more active way than sometimes people assume that you have to be sitting in a lotus position in a dark room.

Right. You don’t have to do 20 minutes. It doesn’t have to be at this particular time of the day and in a particular mode, etcetera. It’s good. A couple more questions before we close out this interview. Tell us about Ghosts of Enfield, what is that? Do you communicate with ghosts? How does that all work?

In 2013, I was working with a friend of mine who was an immersive theater director. He creates and directs shows where rather than going into a theater and just watching a show, you’re in the show, you’re playing a character, and you’re swept up in that. I designed a séance version of that.

Rather than actually doing a séance with the media who are going to talk to the departed spirits of the people in the room, I thought, what’s a Hollywood experience of a séance? What can I bring that is authentic of what séance is like? How can we find the nexus of those two experiences to give someone a theatrical experience of seeing things go bump in the night and having that experience?

That grew into me doing this immersive theater experience of séance. During the lockdown, because I grew up in north London in a place called Enfield, it was very famous for the Enfield haunting, which is the basis of The Conjuring 2. It’s one of the most well-documented haunting cases. I became really interested in that story. My parents have lived in Enfield since the ‘70s since all that was going on. Asking them about it and hearing all these other ghost stories that were happening.

I thought it would be fun to try and bring that immersive theater experience into the digital realm and have everyone join in with an online séance from their own home. I was back in Enfield so it was a great experience to explore that. It walks that line and I have a mindset of an experience that I want to guide people through. But also, stuff does crop up and we’ve had all sorts of things happen in the immersive theater séance that aren’t under my control. People have visions. People have experiences that are beyond explanation. It’s a nice combination of things. It’s a safe space as well to explore because I think that it can be very heavy.

I don’t think that format is often the best way to approach dealing with grief or wanting to talk to spirits in that way. It follows along the mindset I have with the entertainment shows of I want to give you this experience that gives you space to question what you think about the world. But I’m not trying to convert you in any way. It’s just meant to be fun, spooky, or interactive. That’s what the Ghosts of Enfield was, this experience of grabbing a whole bunch of people and we had a play-along contingent. We had people watching on a YouTube stream.

Then we had six people that have been randomly chosen from the people who bought tickets to fully take pop on the screen and see what they could pick up about the spirit. It was a really interesting and fun experiment to do with people.

Do you talk to ghosts?

No. I’ve never had any medium skills. There are a few friends that are mediums and it’s always fascinating to get to watch them work. I think that’s the other thing as well, when people hear of psychics, they instantly think medium and that’s where they go. I often describe it like a psychic is like a musician. All guitarists are musicians but not all musicians play guitar. That’s the same for me saying psychic, some are mediums, but not all psychics are mediums.

That’s never been my bag and I love seeing it done and I love seeing that connection, but it’s not one of my skill sets, unfortunately.

Did you ever get readings from mediums?

People have visions. People have experiences that are beyond explanation.

I’ve had a few. It’s always an enlightening experience and I think it’s fun to explore. Some are more accurate than others and some are a ponder. You go home and ponder what that connection meant or what was being said. Anytime when I’m on tour, if there’s a local tarot shop wherever and I can get in for a reading, I’m straight in there. I love experiencing it all and seeing how other people work. As much as it’s my career, I’m still a fan as well and getting to do that being an enthusiast.

Awesome. Have you had any past life memories or glimpses?

No. I have become more interested in past lives recently. I’ve got a friend who is very into it. We have plans to do a past life thing there in the UK and then lockdown happened. Then I moved to the States so we never got the opportunity. It’s interesting hearing her stories of exploration and I’m intrigued to hear more about it because it is the further end of my explorations.

In my head, reading someone’s mind seems much more normal than being able to dive into a past life. I’m intrigued by it, but still bringing that healthy skepticism and curiosity about it.

Okay, fair enough. I mean I only just recently did my first past life regression.

Awesome. How was it?

It was interesting. I had a past life memory relating to my fear of water. Apparently, I was dared to jump off a bridge by some teenage friends. I was a teenager myself and I drowned. That would also explain my fear of heights too. It was interesting and it felt really real, very real and I look nothing like I did in this life. It’s out there.

It’s interesting how those glimpses connect with how we are now. It’s an area that I’m interested in seeing more and approaching with that out there skepticism. We’ve just started watching the X-Files, I’d never seen it before.

You’re a little late.

I just skipped past it. It was just never something on my radar. My partner couldn’t believe I’d never seen it, so we started watching it. I want to believe but also that skepticism and combining those two really speak to me.

That’s funny. You’d like the show Manifest as well on Netflix.

Awesome, I’m going to check it out.

There’s some fun psychic stuff in there. All right. Well, thank you so much. This was a lot of fun, Peter. If our listeners or viewers want to learn more from you, work with you, maybe hire you for a corporate gig or something, how do they get in touch?

You can just head over to my website peterantoniou.com and all the information is there. Find me on all of the social media. I’m posting regularly on those. You can follow me on TikTok because I’m cool and down with the kids, @peterantoniou or Instagram Peter Antoniou. Just google and I’ll pop up. I’d love to get to work with all of you.

All right. Well, thank you, Peter. You also have an online store. You can get your tarot decks, the coin, and all that fun stuff from your online store.

The coin comes with a full book that explains my whole approach to reading. I’m currently filming a lecture on how to get into tarot reading. It’s taking longer than I’d like because filming commitments with AGT and stuff slowed everything down. But hopefully, all those resources will be available soon as well.

Okay, awesome. I’m really, really excited to see what happens with AGT. You deserve to be in their show, in the Vegas show for sure.

Thank you so much.

All right. Well, thank you and thank you, listeners. I think it’s really something to explore to try to divine something, see if you can get an answer, and see where it leads. We’ll catch on in the next episode. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

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About Peter Antoniou

At age nine, Peter decided he wanted superpowers. So, in a way only a child can, he set out to learn the impossible: how to read people’s minds. Twenty years later, Peter is now a highly sought variety artist, performing for blue-chip companies and sold-out theatre crowds. His theatre shows are interactive experiences where audiences have their mind read as Peter tells jokes and fortunes live on stage. Peter also now uses his wealth of knowledge in divination and tarot to show individuals and business how this ancient skill can be the difference-maker in creative thinking, personal progress, and achievement.