I lost my high-power six-figure magazine job — but now I make just as much money reading tarot cards

The cosmos hasn’t always been kind to Rebecca Szymczak.

In 2014, she was “pushed out of her big dream job” as creative director and vice president of design at Playboy, where she was making six figures, because she wasn’t eager to relocate to Los Angeles. Around the same time, she lost a close friend and mentor to HIV, and then her wife of two years asked for a divorce.

“All of these things were ego deaths, they were a big part of my identity,” Szymczak told The Post. “[I had had this] Carrie Bradshaw-like lifestyle.”

The personal and professional setbacks sent her spiraling into “extreme darkness” and she sought comfort in Xanax and heavy drinking.

“At the lowest point, I had planned suicide,” Szymczak recalled. “But I came through the other side by focusing on what I needed to tap back into the truth of myself.”

Szymczak returned to a hobby she’d had as a kid – tarot card reading – and quickly transformed it into a thriving new career.

Under the moniker Cardsy B, she now pulls in a six-figure salary that’s comparable to what she made at Playboy. She has celeb clients such as folk singer Jewel and actress Abigail Breslin and is currently in residency, through June, at the landmark Algonquin Hotel.

There, she offers private readings for hotel guests, starting at $329. Other truth-seekers can book 60-minute virtual readings for $250 via her website.

“It’s the same as what I made at my peak as a global VP, which blows my dad’s mind,” the Pennsylvania native said. “Like, he still doesn’t understand. He’s like, ‘Do people just come at night? Do they come at Halloween?'”

She bought her first deck of tarot cards at age 11.

“I literally saved my allowance,” Szymczak said. “It was something I was always drawn to. And honestly, it’s something I did in a past life … It feels like something that’s innate.”

But, her interest in tarot waned in her teen years.

“I was trying to fit in with the cool kids,” she said. “It wasn’t cool back then and I was really focused on going to college and getting into fashion design. At that point in my life, it wasn’t a priority and not something I thought I could do as a career.”

Decades later, as her life seemed to be falling apart, Szymczak started pulling cards for herself in an effort to reconnect with her intuition.

“I remembered, ‘Oh, this is something I used to feel really good about and felt I was really connected into my inner knowing.'”

Szymczak then hosted a few close friends for private sessions, which quickly took off.

“I was, like: ‘Whoa, I didn’t know I could get paid to do this,'” she said.

These days, she has income from various tarot-related sources.

In 2021, she launched her Hex and the City podcast. On it, she gives guests and listeners readings from her signature deck, “Badass Bitches Tarot,” which she sells for $40.

In 2022, she published a memoir and spell book, “The Saturn Diaries: A Modern Day Grimoire.”

“I was starting to build [my business] before the pandemic,” she said. “And then, with the pandemic, there was an increase of interest in healing modalities in general and people being more drawn to tap into their intuition.”

Her clients find some of her predictions right on the money — literally.

A few months ago, she told a woman that she’d soon receive a lucrative, unexpected business offer.

Within weeks, the unnamed female executive secured a seven-figure investment for her tech startup, the tarot reader claimed.

“She was like: ‘Everything you predicted is coming in and it’s the exact amount of money you said was coming in,'” Szymczak said. “Things like that do happen.”