A month off the fifth anniversary of this blog, big changes are afoot.
What started as a humble personal journal back in 2011 has grown into such a diverse, beautiful, supportive tarot community I sometimes just sit here scratching my head and thinking ‘how on earth did this amazing thing happen?’
It happened because we found common ground here. You liked what I wrote, I liked what you wrote, and we all ended up hanging out online together and geeking out about tarot. It’s a joy and it just keeps getting more joyful. I’m so happy to be here doing this, so happy that you’re all here with me!
As this blog has grown and become a platform for community voices, more and more of you have shared guest posts, telling our readers about your own experiences with tarot, herbs, astrology and miscellaneous woo. At the end of 2015, I had two goals in mind for Little Red Tarot. One is to create a follow-up to my ridiculously popular Alternative Tarot Course. The other is to open up this platform still further, to regular columnists.
I want Little Red Tarot to be more than just ‘my personal blog’. I want it to be a home for the ‘alternative’ voices within tarot, those we don’t hear enough in the mainstream. Queer voices, people of colour, trans folks. The experiences of people with disabilities, mental health difficulties. People living different kinds of lives. This will be a work in progress! The team will grow as my budget grows. The more financial support LRT can get, the more regular columnists I can afford to take on. But it begins here. Just as my own life takes a new turn, tugging me away from the computer, it’s time to let others carry some of the work, taking those steps towards the alternative tarot community we so badly need.
So! Without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to the new team!
Siobhan Rene and Andi Grace will be regular columnists, sharing their own tarot journeys each week. You may already know them as guest writers – both have written thoughtful and inspiring pieces here before. And Tango Batelli! Ah, Tango. A fellow boat-dweller, a sea-faring lady of the Alaskan ocean, Autostraddle commenter extraordinaire, a mercurial communicator, eternal student and now, our guest post editor!
Please give these wonderful people a really warm welcome!
Siobhan Rene
My name is Siobhan. Two decades ago I was a devout solitary witch. I loved the formality of high magick and spells. I tirelessly studied complicated metaphysics and aspired to give to-the-minute predictions. I felt successful at this. I impressed folks and knew all-the-things and yet I felt disconnected and I was not physically or mentally well. Then in 2009 I moved from New York to Austin and experienced a spiritual homecoming of sorts with the help of eclectic shamanism. I remembered that my intuition preceded my beliefs in Gods and Goddesses. Many of my tried and true spiritual beliefs crumbled in the face of deep spiritual practice and TONS of connection. The lack of spiritual affiliation created the void in which I could hear the quiet voice of my own inner knowing. Predictive skill, complicated mysticism, and knowing all-the-things took a back seat to affirming, holding space for, and connecting with people. I believe these things are what heal us. Especially folks like me that need a lot of healing.
My column will explore two ways I’m learning to use the tarot to affirm, to hold space for, and to facilitate connection. It may include anything from personal essays, spread creation, energetic practice, to esoteric geekery. Here are the two topics:
Face Up Tarot | A series about how consciously choosing tarot cards allows you, in your own words, to both own and seek your own truth. This practice uses the tarot to empower you to tap into the infinite resource of your own intuition.
Light & Shadow – A Fresh Look at the Difficult Cards | A series about how the cards that represent our edges are closely related to our self care, transformation, healing, and affirmation. This series will explore what it might look like to turn a compassionate and conscious eye towards the parts of ourselves which dwell in darkness.
What’s your favourite tarot deck and why?
My current favorite deck is the Tarot de St. Croix by Lisa de St. Croix. It’s a vibrant patchwork of painted stories, personal ones and cultural ones. These stories span across multicultural themes: shamanism, buddhism, hinduism, everyday life and so on. Since my current spiritual practice blends all these things, I can relate to this deck on a few levels. Especially important since, as a black queer woman, there are a great many decks I won’t relate to and also because one of the main things I use the tarot for is to tell (and retell) personal stories.
Which tarot card best represents you?
The Osho seven of rainbows is beautiful despite its heavy associations. According to “Book T,” the foundational document of all Golden Dawn based decks [Smith- Waite, BOTA, Crowley-Harris], the seven of pentacles has buzzwords like misery, slavery, and unfulfilled success. This is the chaos of the number seven paired with the practicality of the earth suit of pentacles. Astrologically, it’s Saturn in Taurus. Nobody wants to be the farmer toiling away without payment or gain. Nobody wants to be the slow chaotic work in progress. And yet the world is made up of tons of people who are just that. Actually most of us are like that. It could be said that everything is like that, especially at first. Awkward. Vulnerable. Some of us busy as all get out avoiding the discomfort of it. This is also what creativity looks like. An authentic struggle. That’s where I’m at now. Honest about the struggle, trying not to identify with it, and at the same time hoping it makes for some juicy intimacy with a bunch of other regular folks struggling like me.
How would you sum up your tarot philosophy?
I believe the tarot are a mirror just like reality is a mirror. The more we notice this, the more we know our relationship with reality. The more we learn to recognize the potential for peace and suffering everywhere all the time and, hopefully, we recognize our choice of how to experience life. I believe the tarot can create safe spaces to encounter the wisest parts of the self, to be enchanted, to become aware, to process emotions fully, to be heard. I believe these spaces are created when we connect with all that is, with ourselves, and each other. The medicine is in connecting.
Find Siobhan at… Siobhan’s Mirror | Twitter | Instagram
On Little Red Tarot: Mental illness and entrepreneurship: Owning nonstandard narratives
Andi Grace
Hi Little Red Tarot readers! I am so excited to share my writing with you over the coming months. I’ve been a huge fan of Beth’s work since I discovered her on Autostraddle and read everything she had written on the site in one sitting.
And the rest of this team. Wow! I feel so grateful to be part of this team and able to share my work with you.
I live rurally with my partner on a small homesteading project with goats, chickens, pigs, kittens and a witch’s garden. My writing is very much inspired by the plants, forest, river and animals I live with. As we get to know each other I’ll be sharing my thoughts on boundaries, plant medicine (including herbal contraception and flying ointments), walking and milking goats, radical magic making, connecting to queer and magical resistance ancestry, barn building and of course tarot too. I have tonnes of card readers and magic makers I’m excited to interview and introduce you too. Plus I love crones so you’ll probably see me waxing poetic about the many incredible crones in my life.
What’s your favourite tarot deck and why?
My favourite tarot decks are the Collective Tarot and The Wild Unknown. That being said I have a Slow Holler deck and a Next World Tarot deck heading to me in the mail this year and I have a feeling they may also become fast favourites. I appreciate decks that either directly address social justice, or that represent gender in diverse and creative ways. I love the Wild Unknown because it is largely animal and nature based and that jives with my lifestyle of living in a tiny house that backs onto a forest.
I like tarot that breaks binaries and helps set people free.
Which tarot card best represents you?
I have many favourite tarot cards, though I guess the hermit has an extra special place in my heart since I am getting a hermit tattooed to my upper arm at the end of this month! I’ll be sure to share a photo of the tattoo with you once it’s on my body. The hermit tattoo I’m getting is a femme hermit personally designed by my friend who is a brilliant gender queer witchy tattoo artist. Details to come soon I promise!
What’s your tarot philosophy in three sentences?
My tarot philosophy is to walk with grace into the darkness. Dance in the shadows and embrace the sweetness and liberation we can find there. AND that tarot is a story telling tool and through reading the tarot we can decide: what do we want our stories to be?
So excited to tell stories with all of you!!
Find Andi at… Andi Grace | Facebook
On Little Red Tarot: On boundaries: Why every wild rose needs thorns
Tango Batelli
Hello, weird & wondrous readers of LRT! Beth has oh so graciously granted me the title of Guest Post Editor, which means I’ll be working with our new contributors and facilitating guest submissions (from you!). I’m a Scorpio Rising/Gemini Sun/Capricorn moon, meaning I’m a witch, I’m a nerd, and I don’t [let anyone see me] cry. I currently live with my lady love and two meows on a sailboat in Southeast Alaska. And I’ll be sure to share pictures with you of tide pools & shoulder cats (along with links!) in some Weekend Reading.
What’s your favourite tarot deck and why?
A forever RWS fan, my favorite deck is Julia A. Turk’s Navigator’s Tarot of the Mystic SEA. It has a heavy Scorpio vibe that deeply resonates with me. Scorpio as in, it’s highly aware of power dynamics and is overly serious. But instead dishing hard truths, it’s been this eerie, wonderful underworld guide. And I swear we make each other laugh..
Which tarot card best represents you?
In general, I’d pick the World. Partly because I tend to think in systems & cycles, but mostly because we’re both dancers. As for my role with LRT, I would pick the 3 of Wands from the Navigator’s Tarot. I’m here to facilitate the incubation leading to the cohesion of our community.
What’s your tarot philosophy in three sentences?
(3 sentences?!) We are perceiving subjects incapable of absolute objectivity. Everything is both a wave and a particle. Human beings are unique creatures in their ability to predict, and I promise all of that applies to tarot.
Find Tango at… How Now Mercurial Cow | Twitter
The post BIG NEWS: Meet our amazing new team – Siobhan, Andi and Tango! appeared first on Little Red Tarot by Beth