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Whether you’re learning to read tarot for the first time or you’re a pro who's been practicing for many years, tarot books offer an opportunity to dive deeper into the meanings of the cards. While the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck (that's the popular 78-card deck you're probably picturing right now) shows gendered figures like the Emperor and the Empress and male/female couples like the Lovers, there’s no reason you have to interpret cards that way! In fact, many LGBTQ+ tarot readers have worked to expand the way we interpret the tarot.
In the foreword to the 2019 book Queering the Tarot by Cassandra Snow, tarot reader Beth Maiden writes, “A deck of tarot cards in the hands of a young queer is every bit as important and vital as an esteemed text in the queer canon—each and every time the deck is picked up and we lay out those familiar cards, it becomes a new story, its well-known symbols and archetypes ready to be reshaped to reflect our many and diverse lived realities.” And whichever tarot deck you’re working with, these tarot books from LGBTQ+ writers will help you explore new ways to understand the tarot.
Written by tarot card reader and teacher Cassandra Snow and published in 2019, Queering the Tarot explores new ways to see the tarot cards. For example, Snow suggests interpreting the Lovers as a symbol of polyamorous and non-monogamous relationships, or as a relationship where one partner isn’t yet ready to come out.
This in-depth, hardcover guidebook written by Justin Henry accompanies the Black Queer Tarot deck, created by Kendrick Daye, and explores both the meanings of the cards and the creation of the deck itself. As the creators put it, both deck and guidebook “[imagine] worlds where liberation and freedom are alive and well-connected bedfellows. Worlds where Black queer people are not just living—we're thriving.”
Released in 2017, Tabula Idem explores the tarot’s 22 Major Arcana cards in comic form, with one short comic inspired by each card. Featuring a cast of LGBTQ+ characters in sci-fi and fantasy settings, Tabula Idem is a creative way to explore the tarot.
Michelle Tea’s 2018 book Modern Tarot offers an inclusive introduction to the tarot. “[The tarot's] gendered archetypes are more than a bit archaic, and many modern decks mess with them in helpful and illuminating manners. Since this book is using the old-fashioned Rider-Waite deck as its model, let us just remember that any gender can be a King, and any a Queen, and likewise for Knights and Pages,” Tea writes in the introduction.
In the 2015 book She Is Sitting in the Night, community organizer Rima Athar, writer and tarot reader Oliver Pickle, and Thea’s Tarot artist Ruth West re-explore and re-interpret Thea’s Tarot—a feminist tarot deck from the ‘80s. Some cards are re-named, such as the Creator replacing the Empress, and others use different pronouns than you may be familiar with.
In a 2015 review for Autostraddle, Beth Maiden wrote, “I feel like this is a must-have book for anyone who wants to queer up their readings, and especially for anyone who struggles with the normativity in traditional decks and books. But it’s also for anyone who wants to open up their ideas about what each tarot card might represent.”
Silver Sprocket Next World Tarot: Hardcover Art Collection
First released in 2019, Cristy C. Road’s Next World Tarot Deck re-imagines the Fool’s Journey—the story told through the tarot cards—as one about “smashing systematic oppression, owning their truths, being accountable to the people and places that support them, and taking back a connection to their body that may have been lost through trauma or societal brainwashing.”
This oversize gallery-quality hardcover book features the art from the Next World Tarot Deck, along with card descriptions in both Spanish and English, as well as other material, such as sketches.
First published way back in 1980, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom is a tarot classic, inspiring countless tarot decks and books—including many on this list. Although the text doesn’t explicitly discuss LGBTQ+ identity, writer Rachel Pollack has spoken about how her exploration and understanding of tarot is linked to her own coming out.
“I had this realization that in the year 1971, my whole life changed. I discovered the tarot–the tarot discovered me as I like to say–I sold my first professional story, and I came out as trans and lesbian. And all in that one year, so it was just an amazing year. And in some ways, all those things keep reverberating through my life,” Pollack said in an interview with The Comics Journal earlier this year (did I mention she's a comic book writer, too?).
If you're not familiar with it yet, Little Red Tarot is an online tarot shop that spotlights LGBTQ+ and BIPOC creators. Along with offering a way to learn about and purchase self-published tarot decks and books, the website also offers plenty of free educational resources. The ethos of Little Red Tarot is clear in the 2020 guidebook, which offers an “approach to tarot rooted in subjectivity and self-care, one that empowers us to imagine new and different futures for ourselves and our communities.”
Tarot creator Courtney Alexander wrote this guidebook to accompany the stunning Dust II Onyx: A Melnated Tarot deck, which, as she puts it, features “cultural myths, symbolism, history, and icons within the Black Diaspora.” The in-depth guidebook features keyword lists and descriptions of the art included.
Created by queer and trans artists Ashley Molesso and Chess Needham and launched earlier this year, The Queer Tarot deck and guidebook incorporates queer history and iconography throughout, offering LGBTQ+ descriptions of each card.
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