About me

My name is Vanya Vuchkova. I have worked with tarot and runes since 2007, palmistry came later, and somewhere along the way I started writing my own spreads, tests and articles, until in the end I built FatedWays — the Game of the Soul. If someone had told me back in 2007 that one day, besides the cards, I would be dealing with code, eight languages, images, subscriptions and buttons that now and then decide to develop a character of their own, I would probably have pulled a few cards for that person too.

How it all began

In the beginning I read the cards for myself and for people I knew. That is lovely, but it has one drawback — you can always wonder whether you know too much about the person and are unconsciously filling in the story yourself. It became genuinely interesting when people started coming to me whom I had never seen and about whom I knew almost nothing. That is when the convenient explanation „maybe I simply guessed it“ began to work less and less, because the cards were saying things I had no way of knowing.

That is exactly what has kept me with tarot all these years. I have no interest in promising that on Tuesday at 16:40 someone will definitely call. What interests me far more is the moment when a person arrives with one question and the cards show the subject underneath it — the one that is actually driving the whole situation.

For me tarot is magic, psychology and philosophy in one. The magic is in that strange coincidence when a card comes up and says something far too precisely, something it has no way of knowing. The psychology is in the way a person recognises themselves in it. The philosophy follows immediately after, because the real question is usually: „All right, I can see it now. What do I do from here?“

Later palmistry joined the cards, and it drew me in a completely different way. The hand is in front of our eyes every day, we carry it from birth, and still it changes. In palmistry I read the lines, the shape of the palm, the mounts, the fingers and the skin pattern, because a hand tells far more than the famous three lines all of us have examined at least once. What I find most interesting is that the palm is not a frozen verdict — over the years some of its marks change along with the way a person lives.

How I work

I read cards, runes and hands, I write personal readings, and I create my own tarot spreads, tests and texts. Over the years I have understood one thing: people rarely come with only the question they wrote down.

„Will he write to me?“ very often means „Is there any point at all in waiting for this person?“. „Will I have more money?“ can reach as far as „Why do I work so much and still never allow myself to ask for more?“. A dream can look like a strange piece of night-time theatre until it turns out to be repeating a subject we manage to avoid beautifully during the day.

So I start from the question, but I also look for what lies beneath it. What repeats, what the person already knows about the situation but does not particularly enjoy admitting, where they make the same choice with different people, and what other possibilities exist. The cards have the inconvenient talent of being very precise exactly when a person would have preferred a little more diplomacy. I prefer precision too.

When I do a palm reading, the approach is different. The hand has a language of its own, and in it I look for the whole picture — character, relationships, money, the periods of a life, changes, and the way the different marks connect to one another. A single line rarely says enough on its own, just as a single card rarely tells a whole life.

Why I built FatedWays

In time I saw one drawback of a single reading — it captures one particular moment. A person receives the answer, reads it, comes back to it once more, then life moves on, and a few months later it is somewhere between the old photographs, the notes in the phone and that familiar „I am certain I saved it somewhere“.

And the most interesting part often begins later. The sign from August acquires meaning after what happened in October. The dream from winter returns in spring with one small change. A question about love turns out to be connected to a family story. The subject of money leads back to a belief learned long before the person started earning any.

I wanted these things to be visible together. That idea gave birth to FatedWays — the Game of the Soul.

FatedWays has different rooms, because life too refuses to fit into a single category. There is love, money, lineage, karma, choices, dreams, signs, people, tarot, astrology, numerology and the hand. You can begin with the question you have today and later see how it connects to something you asked months ago.

That is also why I created the Book of the Soul. It gathers the trail you leave in the game and grows along with it. Nobody can write that book in advance, because its content comes from your own questions, choices, cards, dreams, signs and all those small discoveries that are so easy to forget one by one.

The Spiral looks at the same path from another side. It shows where you stand within your own movement, which subjects keep returning and what has already changed. To me that is often far more interesting than a categorical promise about what will certainly happen in six months.

What I create

Besides the game itself, I create my own tarot spreads, psychological and intuitive tests, articles, themed material and personal written readings. FatedWays works in eight languages, because from the very beginning I wanted the content not to stay closed off to a Bulgarian audience alone.

I also write and develop Imperatrice, where many people have known me for years. There, tarot, palmistry, the articles and my personal work with people existed long before FatedWays had a name. For me both are part of one and the same thing — my curiosity about the person, their choices, and what the cards or the hand can show when you read them carefully.

When you order a written reading from the Empress, I draw the cards myself and I write the text myself. You tell me your situation and I work on it as on a separate story. The same goes for the personal answers from me inside FatedWays. Behind „the Empress“ there is no operator who has taken over the day shift, and nobody who will later retell me what you wrote.

Who stands behind FatedWays

FatedWays is my project, from the idea down to the details. I create the rooms, the logic, the spreads, the texts, the tests, the images and the development of the site, I watch how the different language versions behave, and I keep adding new things. It means that on one day I can be writing about the karma of money and a few hours later arguing with a line of code that clearly has a different concept of how my evening should go.

I have no editorial office my personal texts pass through, no call centre, and no person „from the team“ who conducts the personal conversation instead of me. Naturally it also means I cannot work twenty-four hours a day, however much it may look on some days as though I had decided to test whether it is possible. The advantage is that when you trust me with a personal story, it reaches me.

What you can expect from me

I do not write what a person necessarily wants to read. I write what I see. If the cards show a strong bond, I will say so. If they show someone who appears only when it suits them, I will say that too. If the question is about work and the main subject in the cards turns out to be the fear of asking for the true value of your labour, there is not much point in pretending the problem lies only in the job.

Nor do I believe in a reading that leaves a person with nothing but the thought „fate has decided it this way“. The more important questions, to me, are what is happening, why it repeats, what possibilities exist, and what you can do with your own part of the situation. If after a reading you know a great deal more but have no idea how to use that knowledge, the work is only half done.

What you will not find with me

I will not promise you that on the 14th at 18:20 you will meet the tall dark stranger by the avocado stand. The cards deserve a little more respect, and the avocado is genuinely not to blame. Nor will I promise that a particular person will come back simply because that is what you want to hear, or a ritual that overrides someone else's will.

Tarot, the runes and palmistry can show patterns, relationships, possible directions, strong periods and subjects that deserve attention. They do not override personal choice and they do not replace medicine. For pain, a persistent symptom or a health problem, you see a doctor. The room The Body in FatedWays looks at the emotional and symbolic layer of what you are living through; the medical diagnosis belongs to the physician.

The most meaningful reading, to me, is the one after which you do not merely know more, but see your own situation differently and can decide what you want to do with it.

Why „the Empress“

The name has been with me long before FatedWays. The Empress in tarot is connected with creation, with turning an idea into something real and visible, and that is probably why it stayed so naturally.

I really do find it hard to leave an idea as only an idea. If it can become a text, a spread, a test, an image, a website or an entire game, sooner or later it usually does. FatedWays is so far the largest piece of evidence.

Personally from me

If you want not a game but me — there are two ways.

A Question to the Empress — one question, asked directly. I draw the cards and I write the answer. Once a month, for 3.33 €, with an active subscription.

A written reading — a full written tarot analysis of your situation. You tell me what is happening, you choose the kind of reading, and you receive a text that stays with you.

How to find me

You can start from FatedWays at fatedways.com, where you have 7 trial days without a card, to look around the game and see how it works. On the FatedWays blog I publish articles, tarot spreads, tests and new material in eight languages, and you can see more of my personal work at Imperatrice.

To reach me, you can write to imperatrice.eu@gmail.com.