About me

Mijn naam is Nathalie Kriek. Leuk dat u interesse heeft in mijn werk. Ik ben niet helderziend, wel ‘helder kijkend’. Daarbij denk ik niet in hokjes en kleur ik graag buiten de lijntjes. Dit is de ‘over mij’ pagina. Volgens zeggen de meest belangrijke pagina van de website, omdat deze pagina het gezicht achter het bedrijf prijsgeeft.

Who am I, what do I do, why do I do what I do and how did this come about? And most importantly, what sets me apart from the rest in this industry?

Ik hoop u hier de komende vijf minuten antwoord op te kunnen geven.

Behalve meer info over mijzelf, leest u hier ook hoe mijn bedrijf Open Kaart Producties is ontstaan en waarmee ik u wellicht van dienst zou kunnen zijn.

Copywriter

Over the years, as a copywriter, I have specialised mainly in astrological content and spiritual entertainment.

Given the requests in my mailbox, there is a need for authors or copywriters who are knowledgeable about astrology and spirituality.

Hieruit maak ik op dat er kennelijk (op een aantal uitzonderingen na) veel astrologen zijn die niet kunnen schrijven en veel schrijvers die niets weten van astrologie.

Hierin dacht ik dus het welbekende gat in de markt ontdekt te hebben; bij Open Kaart Producties speelt dit probleem namelijk niet!

Apparently, every now and then there is still doubt about my abilities. A question I regularly get is: 'Can you really read tarot cards and calculate horoscopes or are you just sucking something out of your head?'

Astrologer

No. Nothing is being pulled out of any thumb; I do master these disciplines. I come from a very spiritual family that held the paranormal in high regard and was also seriously into spiritualism.

My paternal grandparents had been affiliated with a large spiritual society (Harmonia) since the 1950s, where it was a coming and going of psychics, mediums, trance mediums, psychometrists and other clairvoyants.

When, as a child, I visited them every Saturday afternoon with my father and mother, they would frequently talk about what went on at 'the spiritualists'. Seances, ghosts, out of body experiences, the afterlife; by the age of five, I already knew about the clairvoyant hat and the spiritist edge. My grandmother told me I was also mediumistic; clairvoyant. So I just took that from her too. After all, my grandmother could know.

When I was 15, I learned from her the carding. Eerst met de gewone huis, tuin en keuken speelkaarten, later met de door mij zo geliefde tarot.

Zelf hield ik me al een poosje bezig met de Chinese astrology. I also liked Western astrology, but only superficially. My divorce ten years later changed this.

The lawyer who assisted me during the trial placed enormous importance on the influence of stars and planets. He was the one who inspired me To learning western astrology.

Besides my job as a teaching assistant, I took an intuitive development course in the evenings and did home studies in astrology, gemology and dream psychology.

Tarotist

Het jaar 2000. Inmiddels was ik 28 jaar, alleenstaande moeder van twee kinderen met een full time baan op een basisschool. Toen mijn oudste kind (destijds 7 jaar) veel last bleek te hebben van de echtscheiding en aangaf het naar te vinden dat ik zo vaak buitenshuis werkte, nam ik dit uiterst serieus.

When his teacher invited me for an interview and it turned out that he wasn't enjoying himself at the day-care centre either, I decided to quit my job immediately. After discussing this at work, the director gave me an 'honourable discharge'.

Suddenly, I was a stay-at-home mother and had all the time and space to work on a new career at home. This was the time to start doing what I had actually wanted to do since childhood; open my own practice. A home-based practice seemed ideal in this case.

Within weeks, my tarot practice was a reality. For twelve years (2001-2013), I worked here as a tarotist/astrologist/paragnost/spiritual therapist.

I also gave tarot courses and readings at spiritual associations, organised spiritual group evenings at people's homes, cleansed homes of negative energies and counselled psychic children and children with behavioural problems.

Having had years of intensive and personal contact with people from all walks of life and also of all ages in my practice, I can empathise with a range of audiences while writing, doing readings and providing spiritual entertainment.

Author

Writing has always been my passion. From the age of nine to 16, I wrote faithfully in my diary every day, invariably illustrating my experiences with colourful drawings. In the third grade of primary school (now group 5) I actually got my first 'fan'; teacher.

When I was 14, I wrote my first real horoscope for the school newspaper with the help of a stack of astrology books from the library. I found out what the constellations of the teachers were and made an astro-caricature of the corresponding master or teacher for each horoscope.

So I knew at quite a young age what I wanted to do later on. 'Something creative with writing or spirituality'. That you could also combine these things didn't occur to me at the time.

I did not start my actual career as an author until 2004 at the age of 32, when I had launched my first tarot website after opening my living room practice. Meanwhile, I had also had my third child.

Hoewel ik graag wilde blijven werken, vond ik het ook heerlijk om zelf thuis voor mijn kinderen te zorgen. De website bood mij de mogelijkheid om vanuit huis ook online consulten aan te bieden waardoor mijn klantenkring zich in rap tempo uitbreidde.

Daarbij had ik onder het mom ‘waarom moeilijk doen als het makkelijk kan’ een tarot cursus ontwikkeld die ik voor de liefhebber kosteloos online had gezet.

Toen ik hier enorm veel positieve reacties op ontving, ging er een lichtje bij me branden. Dit was misschien wel mijn kans om mijn passie voor het schrijven met mijn liefde voor tarot te combineren.

Ik verwijderde de cursus van mijn website en stuurde het als manuscript naar uitgeverij Schors. Direct de volgende dag al belde David Schors mij op met de mededeling dat hij het een ontzettend leuk idee vond en er graag een boekje van wilde drukken.

Een schot in de roos; met De Tarot in het Kort was mijn eerste gepubliceerde werk een feit.

After the publication of my second book 'Numerology and Tarot in a jiffy', David asked me if I felt like revising the now somewhat dated Tarot Agenda at my own discretion, which of course I was delighted to do.

For publisher Bark, I ended up nine books written and six tarot agendas created. My book "Hoezo ADHD?" (a practical guide to learning to cope with this behavioural problem without medication), to my amazement, won the 2010 Paravisie Award for the "most inspiring book in the national category".

This resulted in me being asked to work both in front of and behind the scenes on the Zembla documentary 'the ADHD hype' and to give an interview for the Nieuwsuur item 'Toddlers on Ritalin'. Around the same period, I was approached to write an article for 'Brainquest (the brain central)'.

Having immersed myself in psychology for some time, I happened to find in it various explanations for so-called 'paranormal' matters. Especially with regard to my own work as a psychic, several pennies suddenly dropped! Partly thanks to these new insights, I stepped into the psychology business in 2012 definitively of my faith.

In a large box on my practice's website, I made it clear to my clients that I had discovered that, instead of possessing psychic abilities, I had been acting mainly in a more spiritual and psychological way during my consultations.

That I psychic ability had mistaken life experience, people skills and empathy and that from now on I would also like to continue my work on this basis. Nothing else would change about my consultations, I only gave another explanation to my methods. As a result, three-quarters of the practice completely ran out of...

Nevertheless, I stood my ground. I either do my job honestly or I don't. More or less by necessity, I lifted the practice.

I did, however, continue to engage in astrology and tarot, disciplines that still fascinated me after all these years and which I 'rediscovered', as it were, as a creative psychology after my faith fell, spiritual tools.

VIP

By now it was 2013 and I had disbanded the tarot practice. Fortunately, not long after that, I was approached by WOMAN/Telegraph asking if I could be their house astrologer would like to become. Nothing more, of course!

Step by step, more websites and magazines followed. On the homepage of Open Card Productions you will find the names of some of the companies I have had the pleasure of working with so far.

It was very special to see that, over the years, I did receive more and more requests from people who were open to a less floaty approach to spirituality and would like a psychological tarot consultation.

In 2020, I responded to this and opened the VIP Tarot Salon in the village where I live; a cosy tarot practice where everyone got the attention they deserved. After all, everyone is a Very Important Person.

Drie jaar later kreeg ik het steeds drukker met schrijven en heb ik de keuze gemaakt om de Tarot Salon definitief te sluiten en mij alleen nog te focussen op mijn tekstbureau.

Of course, I still like to keep myself busy with tarot.

Naast het schrijven van spirituele artikelen en het verzorgen van horoscopen ontwikkel ik voor diverse mediabedrijven zowel gratis als betaalde online kaartleggingen. 

Nathalie Kriek >HOME.