5 Pillars of Tarot for Liberation

Psst! This Tuesday, September 26th, I’m opening the doors to Tarot in Community, an online space for queers, feminists, and leftists to learn tarot, and merge it with their work in the world. Sign up for the waitlist here!

*image: a person with blond, short cropped hair and painted nails kisses someone with a beard on the cheek over an orange and green background.*

“It’s just a feeling. It’s just a feeling. It’s like how do you tell somebody how it feels to be in love? How are you going to tell anybody who hasn’t been in love how it feels to be in love?

You cannot do it to save your life. You can describe things, but you can’t tell them. But you know it when it happens. That’s what I mean by free.

I've had a couple times on stage when I really felt free. And that’s sumn else. That’s really somethin’ else! Like all, all…Like. I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear! I mean really–no fear. If I could have that half of my life, no fear…

It’s somethin’ to really feel. Like a new way of seeing. A new way of seeing something.”

– Nina Simone

Tarot for liberation is a call to integrate and respect the role of intuition in movements for justice.

It asserts that spiritualists, spirituality, and faith have been part of many movements. It dismisses outmoded ideas about the backwardness of spiritual people and people of faith

Tarot for liberation and x for liberation has been a buzzword for a long time. It's important that I define this phrase for myself here.

To me, tarot for liberation has five pillars: spiritual ethics, community practice, anti-oppressiveness, affirmation without permissiveness, and accountability.

I'm sure there's more to add, but this is my articulation.

I write this mostly in the hopes of being more consistent in the way I use this term. I also write it to add some flesh to the skeleton the phrase itself provides.

I intentionally don't say that tarot is liberating or liberatory. Tarot can be liberatory, but it's not inherently so.

Tarot, like any modality, can be used for oppressive, good, or useful means. This is why it's essential to differentiate the goals and methods that characterize tarot for liberation before it's further alienated from the concept of liberation.

The Nina Simone quote above is illustrative. Freedom is a new way of bearing witness. It's a way of bearing witness to each other. It's a ways of bearing witness to ourselves, and the tools that shape our lives.

The goal of liberation, to me, is that sort of freedom. No fear of our practices. No fear of spiritual practitioners. All because there's no more reason to fear each other or our power.

That world is not yet here. Yet through our work, perhaps we can start to turn the tide.

I welcome questions or concerns in the comments or by email at temperancequeertarot@gmail.com.

Clear Spiritual Ethics

Spiritual ethics are a kind of spiritual hygiene.

Spiritual ethics are personal. Spiritual service providers benefit from sharing their ethics with their clients.

So many readers and practitioners create jump scare moments for their clients. Why not prepare those who come to you in advance.

Spiritual ethics also mean sharing who you learned from, how you learned, how much training you have, and citing your sources.

When a reader doesn't say who they learned from with some specificity, it's hard for me to to know if they're safe to visit.

Our teachers are part of our lineage of knowledge, and we are part of theirs. It's unethical to obscure or omit them while sharing the knowledge they taught you.

There's also the problems that have long characterized spiritual services. We must bring scammers to light collectively. We should drag providers who extort and bankrupt vulnerable clients as well.

Then there are other more personal questions that we all must answer for ourselves.

How often do you need to cleanse, bathe, or otherwise restabilize to be safe for your clients?

What does your tradition say? What does your heart say? What do your dreams say?

Engaged in Community Practice

Tarot for liberation is a practice that happens in communities.

When I say "community," I mean networks of labor, care, and connection. I don't mean identity groups. I don't mean cliques.

I mean we must embed tarot for liberation within other systems of care. I mean that we cannot silo our spiritual lives away from the rest of what we do.

That doesn't mean you pull cards six thousand times per day. It's more than reading for friends and family.

It means taking divination and intuition seriously as a way of knowing.

Viewing tarot and other forms of liberation as reliable sources of information is a community building act. It claims racialized, feminized, and queered ways of knowing as potential sources of wisdom and truth.

This can look like offering services to our community. It can look like making ourselves available to organizations and formations in our movements.

It can be a quiet act of listening to yourself. I can look like being present with others as they share their intuitive knowledge.

Actively Anti-Oppressive

Dog whistles abound in online spiritual spaces.

There are too many to recount here. There is a tide of oppressive, reactionary spirituality rising.

It appropriates Black and Indigenous practices. It's anti-Semitic. It rehabs misogyny and gender-essentialism in the name of new age thought.

What are we going to do about it?

Self-improvement is a start, but it's not enough. My work here at Temperance Queer Tarot is a bid to unite spiritual people and people of faith on the left.

This work is not frivolous. The spirituality to alt-right pipeline is converting like a sweaty preacher at a tent revival.

It's time to make networks. It's time to shape the narrative. It's time to get active.

Spiritualists, spiritual people, and people of faith are as essential to movements for justice as everyone else.

We are not exempt from keeping our side of the street clean. Our work is inherently political.

The stakes are too high to accept neutrality.

Affirming, But Not Permissive

Non-judgement is a practice for navigating differences of opinion and conflict. It's not an end onto itself.

There are plenty of things that go on in queer communities that we shouldn't tolerate. Increasingly people conflate collective correction with cancelation.

It becomes harder and harder to understand what people's ethics are.

One of the reason this happens is because people want to be in spaces that affirm them. This makes sense.

It's essential to affirm members of our communities for existing. It's essential that we believe in their inherent worth and goodness.

And also, we need better systems to stop creating oppressive and harmful spiritual spaces.

I'm frequently surprised with how often misogynist, racist, queer and trans antagonistic, etc spiritualists seem to mingle with those who say they aren't.

Accountable

The willingness to be call to account is essential living in community.

It acknowledges that we are not perfect. It recognizes that when we strive for perfection we will always fall short.

Accountability gives us an opportunity to come back into alignment with our values, and each other. It's a gift sent by those who love us. It's a gift to those we love.

Accountability says "I can be checked." Accountability say "I don't know everything."

A spirit of accountability asks us to be willing to rectify the problems we create, and the harm we cause.

What does that mean for tarot?

It means stopping when a client becomes overwhelmed during a session. It means correcting bias and closed-mindedness when you find it in yourself.

It means revising statements that further marginalized minoritized methods of fortune telling.

It means making space for Black and brown readers and practitioners to create work. It means taking some responsibility for making sure you lift up our work, and recommend us.

For longer than I can say, white readers have been allowed to set the public standard for everyone.

This is simply white supremacy, and it's time for some of yous to wake up to it.

Even the oft-parroted line "tarot isn't fortune telling" shows what I mean.

What's fortune telling, then? Who does it?

Why are you afraid people will conflate the two, if they're so distinct and dissimilar? In whom do you not see your likeness, your equal?

Accountability is an act of community. When you make these broad claims about tarot and divination, it's clear who your spiritual communities exclude.

We cannot build an accountable practice without continuing education and connection.

Tarot has a history among the powerful. Tarot has a history among the oppressed.

We must be present and available to those histories. We must negotiate how we proceed in their light.