meet brenda
Brenda Peregrine is a person whose hands hold
both the darkness and the light.
She is a tarot reader, an esoteric illustrator, a product architect and the founder of Applied Arcana.
Sensitive to the sublime and sacred nature of our human experience from a young age, she is fiercely committed to understanding the subtle and unseen realms, scaffolding others’ explorations of their own inner and intuitive spaces, and applying the insights generated there to healing the patterns that keep us stuck and separated from our own spiritual sovereignty.
Born and raised in Berwyn, Illinois, Brenda’s inborn intuitive gifts and analytical aptitude were tempered and grounded by the inescapable pragmatism of the Midwest, the working-class essentialism of her community, and the sprawling tangibility of the concrete biome that was unavoidable coming of age in the shadow of Chicago.
Drawn to both people and natural places, her childhood experiences instilled an appreciation for solitude and the opportunities of scale. Caught between worlds, she learned to navigate both subway systems and hiking trails and to identify both helpful plants and cultural patterns. This needful paradigm switching gave her confidence in her gut sense, allowed her to hone her gifts, and gave her an awareness of the complexity inherent in all things.
As an obligate truthseeker and and (often reluctant) agent of necessary change, she found herself deeply disillusioned by the precepts of the “real world.” The disconnect she felt between her internal reality and the way everyone else seemed to function drove her both into and away from many fields of work without any sense of lingering satisfaction.
It wasn’t until she settled in the Pacific Northwest, started exploring the cards that she’d been carrying since childhood, surrendered to the wisdom of her guides, nature, and her higher self, and confronted the truth of her own experience that she understood her calling and began to build the business that would become Applied Arcana.
Today, driven by a deep desire to heal the cultural divide that has been imposed between our intuition and our intellect, she has dedicated herself to developing and distributing accessible and tangible services and solutions that support us in recentering our inborn transcendental awareness.
Whether it takes the form of tarot, herbalism, intuitive counseling, or art, her work is offered with the hope that our collective remembering will empower us to step into our individual gifts and inspire us to do the the work necessary to make ourselves whole.
Brenda’s Favorite Decks
Brenda’s Tips & Hot Takes
Our intuition about a thing emerges in the instant between input and analysis. The more space we can curate in those circumstances, the more we can access our own essential wisdom. (In other words, give yourself a second to think about the tarot card you just pulled before you reach for that book!)
All interpretations of the tarot are valid. Some interpretations are more effective, resonant, accurate, or applicable than others. The skill emerges in each of our ability to connect the interpretation to the inquiry.
If we want things to be different, we have to be different.
Our bodies, our brains, and our souls are all integral to our personal illumination, and the conflict that is generated by their confluence isn’t a problem but rather the pathway to clarity. If you’re not sure where to start, always start with the body. Bodies were not built to lie.
The soul is not optional.
Our minds are not a threat to be neutralized, a tool to be mastered, or the sole arbiters of truth. Our minds are multitudinous, multivariate, and collective; when we can understand, empathize, and integrate our inner narratives without being controlled by them, we achieve our greatest capacity and no longer have to fear being alone.
It is only when your head, your heart, and your hands are all in alignment that things start to change.