Intuitive Tattoos Blends Tarot, Reiki, and Sacred Geometry Into a Four-Stage Process

A client travels from Colorado to a private studio on Vancouver Island. Not for the ferry views. Not for a flash design pulled off the wall. She's here because the tattoo doesn't start until a tarot deck comes out.

That's the entry point at Intuitive Tattoos, a Nanaimo, BC studio built around the practice of artist Lucy Stainsby, a Reiki Master, tarot reader, and tattooist with over a decade of combined experience in fine art and ink. What Stainsby has architected is something genuinely uncommon in the geometric tattoo world: a four-stage workflow where sacred geometry isn't just an aesthetic choice but the culmination of an energetic and collaborative process. The needle, by design, comes last.

Stage One: The Reading

Before any symbol is chosen, any line drawn, any stencil pressed to skin, a tarot reading opens the session. Stainsby uses the cards to surface patterns, challenges, and possibilities in the client's life, with those insights forming the conceptual foundation of the geometric design. The reading isn't decorative to the process; it's load-bearing. The themes and energies that emerge at the table determine which sacred geometry motifs will eventually be committed to skin.

This matters in a discipline where symbols carry serious weight. Sacred geometry works like Metatron's Cube (with its 13 interlaced circles, said to hold the blueprint of creation) and the Flower of Life (one of the oldest known spiritual symbols, associated with the interconnectedness of all life) aren't interchangeable. Each carries a distinct energetic signature. A tarot reading that surfaces themes of divine order and spiritual connection might lead toward Metatron's Cube; one emphasizing cycles, growth, and wholeness might point toward a mandala or the Seed of Life. The reading, in other words, does the symbolic heavy lifting so the design stage can be precise.

Stage Two: The Healing

Once the reading has oriented the session, Stainsby moves into a short reiki or grounding sequence before any design work begins. Drawing on her training as a Reiki Master, she works with the client's energy centers and pathways to release tension, restore balance, and prepare both the body and mind to fully receive the intention behind the work. The goal, as framed in the studio's own language, is to clear the energetic field before it gets permanently marked.

This stage is notable for what it signals about the studio's philosophy: that the client's state at the time of tattooing matters, not just aesthetically but spiritually. Dense sacred geometry, executed over multiple sessions, demands a kind of stillness and commitment from the wearer. Beginning that process with a grounding ritual isn't just client care; it's a form of quality control. A steadied client holds better, breathes better, and arrives at the design stage with clarity rather than anxiety.

Stage Three: The Design

With the reading complete and the client's energy grounded, the collaborative design process begins. Stainsby sketches and tests stencils in real time, working from the themes surfaced in the tarot reading to build compositions that respect both symbolic integrity and body topology. Symmetry is a structural requirement in sacred geometry, and adapting patterns like the Flower of Life or a mandala to the curves and planes of a specific body requires technical fluency that goes beyond pattern tracing.

The studio's signature motifs include mandalas (framed as symbols of wholeness, unity, and the infinite cycle of life), Metatron's Cube, the Flower of Life, and the Seed of Life. Each of these is treated not as a ready-made template but as a starting point for a client-specific composition. The stencil testing phase allows for adjustments in scale, placement, and orientation before the design is finalized, ensuring that what gets tattooed genuinely fits the body wearing it. As Stainsby describes the broader geometric practice at the studio, it "uses shape, pattern and rhythm to explore the interconnectedness of meaning and form."

Stage Four: The Execution

The tattoo itself is executed in precision linework and dotwork, with staged sessions built into the process for pieces involving dense geometry. This is where the technical demands of sacred geometry become unforgiving. Metatron's Cube, for example, requires consistent line weight across 13 overlapping circles and their interlaced connecting lines; a single deviation in pressure or angle registers immediately against the surrounding symmetry. The studio's emphasis on staged sessions reflects an honest reckoning with that complexity: rushing dense geometry into a single sitting risks both the linework quality and the client's endurance.

Aftercare is treated with the same discipline as the execution itself. Preserving crisp lines and clean dotwork in healed geometric pieces requires attentive care during the first weeks, and the studio frames that guidance as an extension of the ritual, not an administrative footnote.

A Model Worth Watching

For the broader geometric tattoo community, what Stainsby has built is as much a service model as a creative practice. The four-stage framework (reading, healing, design, execution) packages consultative and energetic work as core parts of a paid session rather than pre-appointment extras. Studios considering a similar approach should note the practical infrastructure that makes it work: clear pricing for consultative time, informed consent around energetic practices like tarot and reiki, and explicit boundaries around what the session includes.

That the studio draws clients from across Canada and beyond, including the client who made the trip from Colorado and described the experience as "transformative, joyful, balanced, healing," suggests the model is commercially as well as creatively legible. People seeking meaning-driven geometric work, not just technically precise linework, already exist as a client base. Intuitive Tattoos has simply built a process worthy of them.