My Name Is Kate

One revolved around my degree in economics, my banking career, numbers, documents, and a clear professional path. The other was filled with dreams, recurring symbols, strange coincidences, candles, cards, coffee grounds, and wax—and a desire to understand things I couldn’t always explain rationally.

For years, those two sides of my life existed in parallel. Today, I see that they weren’t as far apart as they seemed. Working in banking taught me to analyze information, make comparisons, and check the details. I brought those habits with me when I began studying symbols and divination practices more seriously.

An elegant interpretation has never been enough for me on its own. I want to know why a particular image appears, what details surround it, and how its meaning changes when I consider the whole picture instead of a single sign. It took me years to develop that approach.

Early Observations

I was born on March 14, 1987, in Ukraine. Some of my earliest memories are of dreams so vivid that I would tell my mother about them the next morning as though they had really happened. Sometimes, something remarkably similar to what I had dreamed would happen later.

As a child, I didn’t try to explain any of it. I simply paid attention to people, picked up on subtle changes in their moods, and noticed details others might have missed. At times, I had a strong feeling about something without being able to explain why.

Only later did I learn that divination had a history in my family. My great-grandmother practiced black-mirror scrying, while my grandmother made wax castings and interpreted the shapes they formed.

I don’t think my family history alone explains the choices I’ve made. But looking back, I realize that some of the practices I would eventually study on my own were already familiar to me from home.

Banking and an Interest That Never Faded

As a teenager, I became less interested in simply remembering unusual dreams or coincidences and more interested in understanding them. Why do some images stay with us for years? Why do certain symbols keep appearing? And why can the same image evoke completely different associations for different people?

I read about dreams, cards, symbolism, religious traditions, and ways of interpreting signs. But I chose a different profession: I earned a degree in economics and spent many years working in banking.

That experience turned out to be more valuable than I could have imagined. Banking taught me to work with large amounts of information, distinguish assumptions from facts, spot inconsistencies, and take responsibility for my decisions. It also taught me to talk with—and really listen to—people from all walks of life.

Around age twenty, I began keeping regular notes on my dreams and observations. I tracked recurring images, revisited old entries, and compared them with events that happened later. Over time, I built a personal archive.

Meanwhile, I continued to study and practice. I completed courses and kept the certificates from some of them. Eventually, though, I realized that no course or book could replace firsthand observation. A symbol’s conventional meaning was a starting point for me, not the final answer.

Learning Beyond Books

Travel became an important part of my education. I wanted to see more than descriptions of traditions. I wanted to visit the places where they had taken root and survived: sacred sites, temples, historic landmarks, and places where people still observed those customs in everyday life.

I was interested in the roles that fire, water, light, prayer, purification, and ritual objects played in different cultures. As I traveled, I noticed similar motifs among people with very different histories and beliefs. I was just as interested in the differences.

This wasn’t academic research in the formal sense. I read, traveled, took notes, compared what I saw with what I had studied, and returned to familiar subjects years later with a new perspective. Slowly, I began gathering the material that would shape my own writing.

Candles and the Symbolism of Fire

Working with candles became one of the subjects I devoted the most time to. I was interested not just in the ritual itself but in how people perceive a flame: the candle’s color and shape, the way it burns, the symbolism of fire, and the intention behind the act.

I collected material, observed, took notes, and compared my own practice with what I learned from books and traditions in different countries. That research eventually became the foundation for my work The Power of the Flame: Candle Magic.

Istanbul: Reading Coffee Grounds

I had been interested in reading coffee grounds long before I traveled to Turkey. What drew me to the practice was how tangible the patterns were. After the coffee is gone, something visible remains in the cup: lines, shapes, open spaces, clusters. Turn the cup slightly, and you may notice a detail you missed just a moment earlier.

I kept records of my interpretations and compared recurring shapes. Eventually, I realized I wanted to learn in a place where coffee-ground reading was part of a living tradition. So I made a trip to Istanbul specifically for that purpose.

There, I met a woman who taught me for three intensive weeks. We spent that time talking, practicing, and paying close attention to details. I began to see certain things differently, and the knowledge I had gathered over the years started to come together into a more consistent approach.

After returning home, I spent a long time comparing what I had learned with my earlier notes. That experience became the starting point for Coffee Ground Reading eBook | Learn Coffee Fortune Telling.

Of all my practices, reading a coffee cup may be the best way to explain how I work. I don’t want to see a bird in a mark simply because I’d like one to be there. First, I look at its shape, size, position, and relationship to the other elements. Only then do I offer an interpretation.

For me, intuition doesn’t replace observation. It builds on it.

Wax: A Shape You Can’t Predict

I first encountered wax casting through my grandmother, but I began studying the practice independently as an adult.

What interests me about wax casting is its unpredictability. You can’t know in advance what shape the wax will take. You have to look carefully at what emerges: the lines, volume, open spaces, raised areas, repeating features, and the ways they fit together. I try not to label a shape too quickly or force it to fit an explanation I already have in mind.

Over time, my notes and hands-on experience developed into a separate area of study and became the foundation for The Art of Wax Casting: The Complete Guide to Wax Reading.

2020: Choosing a New Career

By 2020, I had spent years balancing my banking career with my personal research and practice. The work I did after hours was taking more and more of my time and attention.

That year, I left banking for good. It wasn’t a sudden decision. I had been moving toward it for years. I wanted to devote my professional life—not just my evenings—to this work.

Egypt: Ancient Symbols, New Perspectives

In February 2022, the full-scale war in Ukraine began, and my family had to leave the country. We spent some time living in Egypt. It was a difficult period, but it gave me the chance to explore the country’s history and spiritual traditions firsthand after years of reading about them.

I visited Luxor, the site of ancient Thebes, the Sinai Peninsula, and Saint Catherine’s Monastery. I was especially struck by Luxor’s temples and ancient imagery, along with the many layers of history and religious tradition found in these places.

After years of studying candles, I also began to see fire in a different light. In Egypt’s Christian traditions, the candle took on a different meaning for me—not as an object used in esoteric practice, but as a symbol of prayer, remembrance, and light. These experiences broadened my understanding of how differently people can relate to the same object.

Later, my reflections on the trip and the materials I studied inspired an article titled “Egypt and Its Place in Esotericism.” Egypt remains an important chapter in both my personal life and my research.

Copenhagen and The Code of Desire

Later, I spent a period of my life in Copenhagen. A different country, a different pace, and the opportunity to look at my life from a distance brought me back to a question that had been growing more important: What does a person truly want?

Not what other people consider right or expect of them, but what they want for themselves. For me, this wasn’t an abstract question. I had spent years following a familiar path—education, career, stability—before choosing a different one.

Those reflections grew into The Code of Desire: Manifestation Guide for Dream Life. It became one of my most personal works, exploring desire, personal choice, and how people come to understand their own goals.

How It All Comes Together

When people ask when my practice began, I can’t point to a single date. As a child, I observed. Around age twenty, I started keeping notes. Then came books, courses, travel, independent practice, and writing. In 2020, it became my full-time work, but the story had started much earlier.

Over time, I came to see coffee grounds, wax, candles, cards, and dreams as different ways of exploring images and the questions people bring to them. I don’t see any single practice as an answer to everything.

I care less about finding a dramatic meaning than about studying the details, tracing connections, and separating what’s actually there from what I might want to see. My first career still helps me do that. It taught me patience, close attention, and the habit of questioning my own conclusions.

Fatidica

I continue to write books, study symbolic systems, and create practical materials. Some of that work takes place through my own project, Magic Coffee / Magikcoffee, which brings together books and resources related to divination practices.

I’m also developing Fatidica, a space for exploring symbols, personal questions, and different ways of making sense of them. It brings together practices I’ve studied for many years and an approach shaped by observation, learning, and personal experience.

I’d rather explore a question than offer an appealing answer before looking closely. I’d rather consider the whole picture than focus on a single sign. And I believe it’s important to admit when one symbol simply isn’t enough to draw a conclusion.

It all began with a little girl telling her mother about unusual dreams. Then came banking, travel, education, moving to new places, people I met, and books I wrote. Today, I no longer see these experiences as two incompatible lives. I see one story: how paying attention gradually became my work.