A Higher Education: Meet Anastacia, The Spiritual Goth
The former English teacher brings an educator's perspective to spiritual practice, inviting a more thoughtful conversation about tarot and personal growth
By: Amanda Albert
The endlessly curious have a talent for finding new subjects worthy of their fascination. Anastacia Anastascio, The Spiritual Goth, has three Master's degrees and a voracious appetite for exploration that eventually led her beyond the classroom and into the realm of the metaphysical. Her professional journey began teaching English, but a spiritual awakening during the pandemic inspired an unexpected change of course. What started as a personal pursuit soon became a new vocation, giving her academic training fresh purpose in spiritual education.
Today, Anastacia brings an educator's perspective to a subject often surrounded by misconceptions. She encourages people to examine their inner lives with greater honesty, even when the discoveries are uncomfortable. She's also setting the record straight on a few tarot myths, challenging long-held assumptions about the cards and what it actually means to read them.
We caught up with Anastacia to revisit the turning points that shaped her career and explore the philosophy behind her teachings.
Before My Time: My Past-Life Regression Experience With The Spiritual Goth
What happened when I explored a past life under Anastacia's guidance
By: Amanda Albert
I step into the kitchen. It's a small room, sparsely furnished, yet somehow it feels empty. A pot of salty porridge sits on an old-fashioned coal stove, left over from breakfast, but something inside me knows better than to throw it away. We'll need what's left tomorrow.
Faded blues and greens lend this farmhouse a dreary disposition, their colours softened by the grey light filtering through a weathered window above the sink. An old metal milk container stands beside the door. A wooden table occupies the centre of the room, surrounded by five chairs, although only four match. The air smells of damp earth, and my leather work boots feel heavy against the floor.
My body aches and I'm hungry, though neither sensation is unfamiliar. There's a persistent anxiety sitting in the pit of my empty stomach, accompanied by an equally familiar understanding that I must keep it to myself. Lunch needs preparing, and I have five mouths to feed: my husband, our son and two grandsons. There's barely enough food for two.
A calendar hangs on the wall, its lettering written in a language I cannot, today, understand. The illustration tells me it's May, although the chill in the air suggests otherwise. I seem to be somewhere in Eastern Europe, sometime during the 1800s.
I've never seen this kitchen before. I don't recognize the food or understand the language on the calendar. Yet, in this moment, I carry the weight of a life I don't recognize.
Somewhere beyond this farmhouse, in another time and place, Anastacia Anastascio The Spiritual Goth is guiding me through a past-life regression.