My Pride Wish For Your Brave Heart

"Learning to read tarot cards was a transformative experience that fell into my lap when I was struggling with my sexual identity, recovering from sexual assault, and living with a roommate whose manipulations I hadn’t even begun to comprehend. Tarot provided an outside eye, fresh insight, and a look into the future I was headed towards." 

This is what I wrote for The Column on September 2nd of 2014 as I lept, like the tarot's Fool into my Queering the Tarot journey. On March 31st, 2015, Little Red Tarot picked up this ongoing series. From there my humble little posts about reading tarot for queer seekers blossomed into things I never imagined. It has been an outlet, an escape, a processing tool, an education, and a way to connect with world wide community.

It has also been picked up by Weiser/Red Wheel to be published as a book next year. That fact is a miracle that is as much a testament to manifesting and prayer as it is to anything else. Very quickly into the Queering the Tarot article series I remembered how important writing used to be to me, and in spite of the fact that I have a theatre company & tarot career I'm never giving up on I became determined to succeed as a writer too. I started doing some arts journalism at The Column. I started this blog. I started storytelling. In so many ways, I came alive again. Most notably, I got a short, shocking e-mail from my now-editor at Weiser. "Do you have any interest into turning your Queer tarot series into a book?" she asked simply.  

I cried that night, and I wasn't sure why. I shook with fear that this was fake, some kind of set up by a scammer. Once I was sure this was real, I was sure that they would get my manuscript and drop the project. I was so worried something would happen. Hell, we still have half a year to go and I'm still worried something bad will happen. But then I remember that sitting on the shore of Lake Superior during one of our seasonal getaways, I looked at my queerplatonic partner one night in late 2015 and said "I don't know. Maybe I'm crazy. I really feel like this queer tarot series is going to change my life though." They vehemently agreed. Empowered by their faith in me, I made a wish under the Duluth stars for my secret book dreams to come true. 

I am telling you this story on the Monday of Pride week, because I fully believe that my dream is coming true because I sat on a lake and wished upon stars for it. (I also worked my ass off, making sure each post was better than the last and promoting the pieces like hell. Dreams alone get us nowhere, but that's a different post for a different day.) It's easy to lose hope in an ugly, ugly world like ours. It's easy to hate and to become callous and hard. So my wish this Pride week for you and your loved ones is that you take a moment to be in a place you love, with a person you love, and make a wish.

Then, I hope like hell you can wish it into being over time. If you let me know your wish, I'll light a candle and make that wish too, to honor my queerplatonic partner who sat beside me and helped me wish my dream into being. 

MY wish for YOU this Pride is the ability and the gift of wishing itself. You deserve that much, at least. Especially now.

Literary Magic: Two Must-Reads to Snag ASAP

Originally this was going to be two separate posts. I read a lot and I always do a book recommendation or two from the month in my End of Month wrap-up, but occasionally a book stands out so far above and beyond--AND fits right into what I want to do with my tarot practice and this blog that they deserve their own time. Each of these definitively deserve their own time, but between moving and maintaining everything I just don't have the time each deserves.

Nonetheless, I wanted to say SOMETHING about them and push, push, push you to go buy them as soon as humanly possible. The first will be of interest to ANYONE who found their way here via my Queering the Tarot series or by cross searching "queer" and "tarot".

Jailbreaking the Goddess takes critiques every progressive person has about the traditional Maiden, Mother, Crone Goddess path (ugh, virginity! ugh, wombs!) and offers a much-needed alternative. Larissa Firefox Allen's FIVE-FOLD Goddess path gets us away from woman = body and creates a nuanced, full look at Goddess energy and how it potentially applies to our work with this new understanding. Not only is this line of magick much more welcoming to trans Goddess worshippers, but the additional faces of the Goddess offer a whole new world of opportunity and understanding in our spiritual practice.

Firefox Allen also pulls no punches when discussing appropriation and colonization of spirituality. While those of us who have been doing feminist and anti-racist work for awhile may find a few chapters a little "Radicalism 101", for many picking up this book they are a necessity. For the rest of us--well, having some pages we can merely skim makes it all the easier to process our new understanding of our own dieties. My personal favorite part of the book's unique (and so easy to follow!) structure was the sections highlighting examples of dieties--AND REAL HUMANS--who exhibit the characteristics of the Goddess aspect being discussed. My only real critique of Jailbreaking the Goddess is that the journal prompts are almost too frequent. You may pick it up and decide I'm wrong, but since I tend to highlight, take notes, etc. when reading anyway, an additional prompt after basic material introductions threw me off. I complied in the beginning but by the third face, I just read several sections at a time and then journaled my reactions to the questions that came up either in prompts or other thoughts I had. Even with that distraction, this book significantly deepened my relationship with the Divine, helped me heal emotionally in a lot of places, and completely altered how I think about spiritual energy for the better. And even for someone who wears their queerness, their feminism, their radicalism like a second skin, it definitely opened my eyes to new ways to practice my faith in a more conscientious, decolonized way.

This next one may come as a surprise to some of my readers. I am incredibly skeptical about books bordering on self-help, even when disguised as business or finance books, and I keep my relationship with money pretty separate from everything else I do. However, a few people I really respect on the metaphysical blogosphere were pretty excited about it, so I went ahead and ordered Bari Tessler's The Art of Money. Three pages in, I had to put it down because I was crying. Hysterically. This book is about so much more than money, best practices, and spiritual entrepreneurship. It is part self-help but it actually helps. The first third of Tessler's program focuses on healing your emotional relationship with money, and before you roll your eyes, just check out the book. This section of the book literally changed my life. Tessler has us delve into money memories, and it has completely altered my perception of what is and isn't possible in my life in all the best ways. It has also made me more fearless in my business practices. It is intense emotional therapy, and everyone I've had read it had a similar reaction. Yet just when you think you're totally overwhelmed and aren't sure what your next move should be, Tessler introduces you to some incredibly practical measures that changed my life in a much more mundane but prosperous way. I was shocked when I did my first accounting session with myself; first by how much I was making, then by how much I was spending. One of the money stories that was wrong that I have told myself was "you don't have money"--over and over since childhood. Which made me unaccountable as an adult solo entrepreneur to anyone but my landlord (who I always managed to pull it together for). I'm certainly not dining with the Kardashians anytime soon, but getting my spending in a couple of areas under control is JUST as important to me right now as bringing more in after actually seeing the numbers. (Actually, post-move that's not really true, but in general it absolutely is.)

Tessler also takes care to stress that there are very real societal issues that may prevent you from fully reaching your financial potential, and admits she doesn't have solutions for that--instead the practical tips she does offer and her insistence on values-based bookkeeping will help almost anyone, and certainly anyone who does have steady income. Tessler also stresses that this one book is not the permanent solution. You have to keep healing your relationship with money, and you have to keep letting that relationship evolve and begin to affect your other habits. It may take re-reads and years of consistent journaling, but it beyond a doubt turned my relationship with money completely upside down even on this first go-round.

This is an admittedly abrupt end to this blog, but that's what I've got today! Now go, get all well-read and stuff. Until next time,

Blessed Be.