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Tuesday 12pm - 6:30pm Wednesday 12pm - 6:30pm Thursday 12pm - 6:30pm Friday 12pm - 6:30pm Saturday 12pm - 6:30pm

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René Aceves Tarot and Astrology

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René Aceves Tarot and Astrology

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I am an astrologer and tarot card reader with 30 years of professional experience. Please feel free to make an appointment or drop in.

My approach is intuitive, while informed by research, and experience with my clientele of over 800 people. I employ an intuitive, yet well-researched approach. I read tarot
with the Universal Waite deck, but have studied all the major traditions.I essentially use modern western astrology, informed by the classical tradition. My down-to-earth insights are accessible and specific. HOURS AND LOCATION

You can find me Tuesday through Saturday at Gargoyles Statuary on the Ave (near 47th St.) in Seattle's University District. I get in at noon, take a break somewhere around 2:30, and leave at 6:30 or 7:00. If the above hours don't fit with your schedule, an appointment can be made for as early as 11:00 am, or on one of my days off. PRICES
During regular hours at Gargoyles:
Tarot readings:

20 minutes $20
half an hour $30
I charge $10 for every additional fifteen minutes on top of that. Astrology readings:

half hour $30
45 minutes $45
hour $60
hour and a half $80

I accept cash, checks and (with a small charge) plastic. Readings over the phone, or at my house cost $40 for half an hour, and $80 for an hour. I am also available to do readings at parties and events for $100 an hour

09/07/2026

Yesterday this was among the many striking paintings i saw at the Chicago Art Institute. By complete chance, today it was in one of the slides in a talk about the Eighth House at the conference I’m attending. Nobody else in the room had been to the museum. It’s by Gustave Caillebotte.

09/06/2026

DUMB QUESTIONS I USED TO GET ASKED WHEN I WORKED AT GARGOYLES STATUARY FIVE DAYS A WEEK

I spent many a day occupying my corner at Gargoyles Statuary doing readings, but also answering questions posed by curious passersby. Below are some of them, along with brief versions of my answers. I’ll start with the ridiculous before proceeding to the sublime in a later post.

First question: Do I ever deliberately do bad readings to see if I can get away with it (always asked with a conspiratorial smile)?
answer: What would be the point of that, so I could take the least amount of pride in my abilities? Do architects and contractors try to make the worse house possible for laughs? (Though I admit, it sometimes looks like it). Do musicians and artists try to create the most insultingly bad tune or art just to pull the wool over people’s eyes?

question: When doing readings for attractive women do I try to skew the cards or planets to make it seem like they are going to get together with me in the future?
answer: Even way before the Me Too era the appropriate reply to this is obviously no! How could anybody trust what I was telling them if I did this? Not only that, about 85 percent of my client is female. In order to maintain their business, they have to feel confident and trusting around me. What I say has to be creditable.
The guy who did readings at the store immediately before I started in 1997 had a notorious reputation for trying to scam on younger female clients during his tenure. I heard creepy testimonials from these ladies who showed up hoping my standards of professionalism were of a higher caliber.

question: Do I actually believe in this stuff?
answer: Where to begin with this? Leaving aside the implicit presumption that I’m some kind of con man, there is no need to have faith in Tarot, Astrology, Palmistry, etc. the way you would believe in a religious tradition or credo. The proof is in the proverbial pudding. I realize that isn’t necessarily obvious to everybody, but the fact is, nobody should have to “believe” in “this stuff” in order for it to work. I actually enjoy reading for skeptics and agnostics who are willing to give me a fair chance to say something relevant and helplful. In every such instance they leave with a more open mind.

question: Why aren’t I dressed up as a gypsy or something, so I can look more exotic?
answer: If they only knew how differently I’m wired inside, they’d realize how redundant this would be. More importantly, I’m a professional for whom doing readings is my day job. A costume makes more sense for practitioners who work primarily at street fairs, parties and other events.

question/statement: I’ll bet you get a lot of weirdos in here, right?
answer: Actually, no. My repeat clientele is somewhere in the mid hundreds. With extremely few exceptions, they are wonderfully intelligent and interesting people. The exceptions are those who are just plain difficult to read for, or who have some odd notions about reality. A very tiny percentage have distracting mannerisms and tics. I try to do the best job I can for them, but it can be an uphill struggle. These exceptions I refer to consitute no more than 1 percent of my business.

05/25/2026

WHERE I STAND AS A TAROT READER

It seems there are as many ways to read the cards as there are Tarot readers. Compared to astrology and palmistry the barriers to learning Tarot well enough to do readings for people are relatively low.

As an example, a couple of years ago I was rehired to read for guests at a party in downtown Seattle. When I learned there was another reader there I went to introduce myself before things got busy. Said reader was a friendly woman in her thirties who gamely suggested we trade readings. Our styles couldn’t have been more different. She had me draw one card which turned out to be the Empress. The woman recited some general attributes about the card, all of which were correctly in line with tradition. So I’ll give her that, but that’s as far as it went.

When it was my turn I asked her to state a topic or question she’d like to have some guidance about. The photo will give you an idea of what my spreads look like: basically a Celtic Cross with added cards in some positions where additional information is called for. There are cards for past, present and future; cards representing the subject, outside influences, obstacles and the client’s concerns. Every card is read in context, nothing in isolation. What’s not in the reading is important. If there are no cards symbolizing, say, endings then there is no need to fear being let go from a job or having a relationship crash and burn.

The lady was stunned by the reading. Believe me when I say I wasn’t trying to impress her. That’s just how I figured out how to read over many years of experience, study and, most important, feedback from repeat clients. I’m willing to guess that Miss one-card charged more money than me because she showed signs of being a smart self-promoter. Good for her, but I care more about creating confidence in my interpretations and developing relationships over time with clients.

Sometimes after a Tarot spread is interpreted, the querent (that’s what we call the person with the question) will ask about one or two additional things that don’t require yet another reshuffling of the deck. In that case I’ll have them pick three cards after the rest of the deck has been spread out on the table face down. Those three cards will be the answer. If three is not enough, then I’ll tell them to pick two more.

There are plenty of good tarot readers out there with the skill, intuition and integrity to back up their interpretations. Of course we’re not a hundred percent literally correct all the time, but our track records are solid enough to enlighten those who seek us out.

05/01/2026

CHANGES I'VE SEEN SINCE I GOT INTO ASTROLOGY

In the 1980’s, when I got into this field, it was alive with discovery, variety and a feeling that a “new astrology” was coming into being. What this new astrology would be depended on who you were talking to. Would it be “scientific” by doing away with houses, “soft” aspects like trines and sextiles or even signs of the zodiac, in favor of harmonics, midpoints, statistics, and a plethora of minor aspects? Would it be determined primarily by myth and Jungian archetypes? This was all very exciting, but after a while it almost started to feel like people were making stuff up as they went along.

For me, three things provided antidotes to this “anything goes” atmosphere. One was a mid-eighties talk at a conference in Berkeley by British astrologer Dennis Elwell. The second was my introduction to horary in 1991. The third was Robert Hand’s talks about traditional astrology at a UAC in Monterey in 1995. Collectively, the effect of these events was to reveal that one could go back to an earlier time when astrology was more grounded, more reliable and less subject to the whims of multiple or changing trends. After thirty years absorbing medieval and classical astrology I’m convinced that astrology would be much worse off without its rediscovery.

And yet, unless I’m maybe interpreting a horary or finding an auspicious election chart, I have a problem with blindly relying on every single rule from the middle ages or classical antiquity. Frankly, some of them don’t make any sense to me. There should be room for coming up with one’s own insights, and things should be open to question in both traditional and modern astrology.

All that said and done, I don’t have the luxury of branding myself as this or that type of astrologer. Nor would I want to, having Jupiter as my only angular planet with Sagittarius rising and Pisces Moon. In the end my clients, especially the regular ones, are my best teachers.

03/27/2026

Photos from October's No Kings march in downtown Seattle to get you excited to demonstrate tomorrow.

11/14/2025

HOW I GOT INTO ASTROLOGY

My last year of school at a Catholic college I had to take one of two religious classes. The one I picked had something to do with spirituality and psychology. We studied people like St. Augustine, William James, the transcendentalists, Kierkegaard, Freud and Jung. It was all good but I was particularly struck by Carl Jung. In the couple of years after graduation I read three books by the man himself, with some difficulty. One of them, "Synchronicity: an Acausal Connecting Principal", featured an astrological experiment involving married couples to see if the classic indicators of compatibility according to synastry actually bore out in reality. Jung made no attempt to translate the language or symbolism of astrology, so I had find a basic introduction to the subject. I found one at a used bookstore and was immediately sucked in.

I got a reading from a man who wrote a little column in a free bi-weekly I’d pick up at coffeehouses around San Francisco. The reading was a revelation. The only thing that didn’t ring true to me at the time was his assertion that my natal chart showed distinct indications of aptitude as an astrologer and/or psychic. After week or two of letting all of this settle in my brain I contacted him to ask how I could learn astrology. He recommended books for learning the calculations and interpretation. I remember one of them being The Horoscope, the Road and the Traveler by Alan Oken. I showed the astrologer my first tries at interpolating the planetary positions and Placidus house cusps (this was 1982, before most people had computers). He approved, then said “now comes the hard part: figuring out what it all means.”

So began the work of the next decade and beyond by doing charts for relatives, friends and acquaintances and reading as many books as I could get my hands on. Studying the nativities of notable and famous people in the two books of charts collected by Lois Rodden kept me absorbed in the mysterious ways of planets and how they manifest in life. I got my first astrology software when I finally got a computer in 1992. That allowed me to leave behind the time consuming task of doing the calculations, but honing the skills of interpretation and forecasting is an ongoing pursuit. Astrology and music (my other passion) are alike in that there is always more to learn.

07/10/2021

WHAT TO ASK WHEN GETTING A TAROT READING

Last month a guy and his dad came by for a card reading appointment they’d scheduled weeks before. I asked the son for him and his dad to think of questions or topics to ask about. “Oh definitely, we will” he assured me eagerly. When the day of the reading arrived I asked each man in turn to state any questions or areas of inquiry they’d like guidance with. You’d think I’d asked them what the circumferance of the moon was in centimeters. Big shrugs, followed by “what do people usually ask about?” I suggested some possible topics that people generally ask about, and they ended up getting a lot out of their respective readings.

With astrology, it’s strictly optional for clients to come equipped with specific areas of concern. Some people barely say anything while I read for them, others have a laundry list of questions. The horoscope (the chart, not the newspaper column) is so multi-faceted that it can reveal information regarding just about anything. Tarot is different. A given layout of the cards by necessity yields a helpful, but limited amount of information If you want to cover more than one topic then there’s going to be more than one shuffle of the deck. I’ve heard of some readers dealing out all 78 cards in the course of one reading. Whatever works, but to me, what’s missing from the layout speaks volumes.

Here’s the thing: just about all the cards are open-ended enough so that the context affects their meaning.

If a client wants to know about their job, a card like The Lovers will have a different meaning than if relationships is the topic being discussed. At work The Lovers could indicate an ally or perhaps some particularly harmonious collaboration or teamwork.

Here’s a sampling of the types of queries I get:

“I’m at a crossroads in my life and I don’t know which direction I’ll end up going in. Whatever it is, will it make me happy?”

“When will I be happy again?”

“When will things stabilize, and how?”

“Is my boyfriend thinking about cheating on me?”

“What’s happening between me and my friend? Things have felt weird between us lately.”

“Should I move out of state, or is there a good reason for me to stay?”

“Stay at my job or try to find something better?”

When people ask about their health I always remind them that I’m not a doctor, and then ask if they’ve been feeling basically fine or not so much. The extent of what I can tell them is fairly limited: will their health stabilize or is the worst yet to come? If their present condition restricts their mobility or activity, will they regain full capacity, and how soon roughly? Will they be able to enjoy the things that gave them pleasure again? How soon can they go back to work? Should they get a second opinion from a different doctor? Is their immediate environment making things worse?

When a client asks whether or not they should stay in a relationship, I avoid automatically assuming that the absent person is at fault. After all, they aren’t there to defend themselves. If I see really bad cards, that’s obviously not a positive indication, but it’s important to ask how strong or flimsy the relationship is to begin with. If positions indicating the past contain excellent cards, maybe the foundation is good and, therefore, maybe there’s hope. Less so if they’ve been together only a few months or weeks. One bad future card isn’t enough to make me give up on them. It can be complicated, but so is love and life.

09/24/2020

3D geocentric view of yesterday's equinox using the Cosmic Watch app on my iPad. The faint horizontal circle is the celestial equator. The slightly tilted one is the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun's orbit. Even more tilted is the horizon for Seattle. That bright blur over Australia is the Sun at the intersection of the celestial equator and ecliptic (the definition of an equinox) and almost right at the horizon because of the closeness to sunset.

03/19/2020

A HORARY CHART FOR THE VIRUS

Last Friday my wife Jessica walked over to the bakery/cafe to get some coffee and something to eat. The barista there asked her “so has your husband been able to get any insight into how long we’ll be affected by the corona virus here?” When Jessica conveyed the question to me I was at first surprised that my reputation had spread as far as two blocks away, and then protested that mundane (world events) astrology wasn’t my forte. What the hell, though, why not do a horary chart for the question.

What is a horary chart? Horary is a time honored tradition involving a chart for the exact time the astrologer gets word of a question. The question could be about a lost item, whether or not to take decisive action, how anything of concern will turn out, etc. Usually it involves personal, rather than topical matters, but there are standout examples of using horary to resolve inquiries of worldly import.

Included here is the chart for the question. I decided it would apply only to Seattle, not the whole country. Also, I want to make what should be the obvious disclaimer that I am not an epidemiologist or any sort of health professional, nor am I one of the top horary practitioners in the world today. All I can do is humbly see if things pan out in the way I interpret the chart.

To start with, the person asking the question is shown by the first house which has Leo rising on the cusp. The sun rules Leo so it represents the seeker elsewhere in the horoscope. It’s in the ninth house. Being the house of higher education this could mean the barista is, in the back of her mind, concerned about the suspension of classes at UW or some other local college. We don’t care about that, though, since the query is posed on behalf of all of us in the area. Next, I look at the sixth house, under which falls all diseases. It’s loaded with all the “bad” planets: Mars, Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn, indicating the seriousness of the epidemic. Jupiter, a benefic, is there but it’s outgunned by the other three, and unhappy in Capricorn to boot. Capricorn being on the sixth house cusp, Saturn is the ruler and fortified in the last degree of its own sign. Saturn is happy, but we’re miserable.

So, how long will this last for us in the hard-hit Seattle area? That’s where the moon, at the time in Scorpio, comes in. Because it moves the fastest of the “planets” it plays the role of timer of events. Therefore we look to its next aspect. That happens to be a trine (120 degrees) to the sun, which represents the collective “I” asking the question. Also worth mentioning is the fact that the sun symbolizes vitality and the life force. An aspect that divides the circle of the zodiac by three (trine) or six (sextile) is considered harmonious. So therefore, we can see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. How long depends on how many degrees the moon has to travel to be exactly trine the sun, in this case one and a half degrees. Are we talking days, weeks, months? I say months, because the moon is in a fixed sign, Scorpio. The fixed signs have the greatest amount of inertia, therefore a longer unit of time: one and a half months. Hopefully that means the worst of this is behind us by at the end of April.

I could talk about a bunch of other things in this chart. Such as: the sun’s next aspect is a sextile to Pluto, and, Chiron is ninety degrees away from the axis of the lunar nodes. Unlike with natal astrology, though, with horary you have to screen out anything that doesn’t provide an answer to the question, with as little padding as possible.

03/14/2020

To any customers who were thinking of coming into Gargoyles to get a reading: I'm getting over a cold, so I'll be staying warm at home for today (Saturday) at least. Plus, I don't want to catch the dreaded corona virus. I apologize if this causes any inconvenience, but know that astrology (and even tarot) readings are easily done over the phone or FaceTime. If you're a regular who sees me at Gargoyles I'll still charge the normal cheap rate you would pay in the store. I can take plastic or PayPal. 206-979-2457

Address

Seattle, WA
98105

Opening Hours

Tuesday	12pm - 6:30pm
Wednesday	12pm - 6:30pm
Thursday	12pm - 6:30pm
Friday	12pm - 6:30pm
Saturday	12pm - 6:30pm

Telephone

(206)9792457

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