An Excerpt from my Sex & Tarot E-Zine (On Sale Now!)

Hello Tarot Lovers!

It is under twenty degrees here in Minneapolis, MN all day but I’ve been warming up by staying in my chaise right across from the heating vent while I put the finishing touches on Sex & Tarot: An E-Zine Designed to Help You Have More and Better Sex Through Healing, Self-Awareness, and Tarot Spreads. It is ready to go, in my tarot shop, and on sale for $9.99 this week only!

From Sex & Tarot:

Tarot is traditionally said to be comprised of Four Suits plus the Major Arcana. Each suit represents one of the four natural elements (fire, water, air, earth). Given my history and practice with witchcraft, I actually work with the tarot as if it’s a set of Five suits, with the Major Arcana representing the fifth element, which is spirit. Spirit is written about totally differently though, so we will start with the four Minor Arcana suits, often called the pips.

The Suits & Sex

Wands/Rods/Fire
Wands are the suit of Fire. Fire is passion, excitement and fast movement. Wands are very often sex or sexual attraction itself in its raw and powerful form. Expect a lot of flings, experiments, and partners if you get a ton of Wands in a reading about sex.

Swords/Knives/Air
This suit of logic and action frames the analytical part of our mind as the most important and is excellent at communication as well as logistics. It’s also a suit where we see a lot of trauma and oppression. It stands to reason then that this is a suit of sexual trauma or oppression because of sexual or gender identity. It also stands to reason that even for cisgender straight people, the white heteropatriarchy can REALLLLY screw up our expectations and experiences of sex. That’s all indicated here in the Swords.

When we’re talking about sex in the positive, Swords are sometimes our (occasionally rude) reminder to keep a cool head and not give in to our basest lust. Alternatively, if we’re reading the cards strictly by artwork there’s frequently a lot of bondage in this suit so it could be encouraging us to try new things and get a little kinky. As a suit of communication, Swords also remind us that stating your sexual desires is the first step to getting what you want. Sex writing or therapy as a career option is well-aspected in a number of the Swords cards too.

Pentacles/Discs/Earth
Earth energy is all about stability and growth. It’s also about your actual physical body. Because of that we see sexual desire for the feeling of sex and touch in this suit, or the sensations of sex. We also see how our needs change and grow as relationships and bodies develop with age. Pentacles can often be sex within a committed relationship, but look for the pieces I mentioned first before assuming this is the case.

Sex work is positively indicated in the Pentacles and can guide a sex work career the same way it would guide any other career.

Chalices/Cups/Water
Chalices are normally my favorite group of cards but when they come up in a reading about sex I tend to groan. That’s because they are all about emotions, and that’s not always what I want when it comes to sex. It’s not a bad thing though, obviously. For a lot of people the best sex is riddled with feelings and aspiring towards emotional satisfaction. The Chalices are sex that is primarily about intimacy, not physical sensation. It’s sex when in love, or at least when feeling romantic.

Chalices also deal with emotional healing, so when we’re looking at our journey as a human, especially if we have sexual trauma, a positive Cups card is a solid indicator that we’re on the right track. All of the Chalices/Cups are here to remind us that we are emotional creatures first and we need to be ready and prepared to have the kind of sex we’re considering--even for the most happily non-monogamous and sexually active people among us. Sex still carries weird or surprising emotions sometimes, and this watery suit won’t let us forget that.

Major Arcana/Spirit
The Majors normally indicate fate/coincidence/higher power/Divine energy. If you or the seeker you’re reading for are not super spiritual, a lot of times these cards represent things you have no control over or that the ball is already rolling on. Sometimes the Majors are just the cards that didn’t fit in to the suits but bring important messages to you.

In a reading about sex, the interpretation of the Major Arcana varies dramatically depending on the question or situation. Cards like The Hierophant can show a discomfort with sex thanks to a strict religious upbringing or societal trappings. Cards like The Sun can show the innocent joy of good sex with a good person that perhaps blooms into a lasting relationship. Cards like The Star or The Devil can indicate the spiritual side of sex, namely tantra or ritual sex acts.

Overall, when we’re talking about sex I think the Major Arcana’s goal is to move us from a place of being scared and fearful when we think about, talk about, or even have sex to a place of empowerment and bed-breaking lust when the situation calls for it.

If you want to see where this leads and let the tarot take you on a journey towards your best sexual self, hop over and grab a copy for only $9.99 through the end of the week (which I do define as Sunday). Happy Cyber Monday!

Blessed be, y’all!

We Are All Fledglings Now

Some of this you've already seen if you follow me on Instagram, but as I continue on my path learning the Slow Holler tarot, and as things around us seemingly dissolve into Chaos, I am pulling the Fledgling much more than I ever pull the Fool, and much more than I did when I first got the deck.

First though, about the Slow Holler: this is a deeply spiritual tarot deck, rooted in Southern and queer identity, and I've truly relished my time getting to know it. It was collaboratively drawn and written by several different artists, and it takes me right back to my early days of tarot and witchery when there was this constant sense of spiritual power right underneath my feet. It's also deeply concerned and enlightening regarding two other things that have shaped the very core of who I am: trauma, and the fight for the collective. Grab your copy here. It's so, so worth it.

As this card starting coming up with unusual frequency for me, my initial thoughts were as such: the Fledgling is the Slow Holler's take on the classic Fool card, but a fledgling is not the same as a fool. They are both starting journeys, but whereas the Fool's optimism comes from a sense of naivety or a childlike fearlessness, the Fledgling's cautious optimism comes because they know that while now is a time for bravery, it doesn't mean you won't fail. It simply means you will find your feet again if you do and grow from there. The Fledgling does a lot more feeling for firm ground and a lot less running towards cliffs, but they still charge ahead into the unknown. The Fool is starting a journey and the Fledgling is starting something more. We don't know what yet. The Fledgling doesn't know what yet. But as the events of this week plunge us equally into determination and uncertainty, there is no clearer metaphor for the role of an activist right now. You will flounder, and you will not be sure, and you may lose. But you will regroup, and you will get your land legs back, and you will do great things again.

It feels like the lessons of the Fledgling were clear to me. Take chances. I am learning the lay of a new land, so be careful, but be brave. The card keeps coming up and keeps coming back to me though, and today as I pulled it even for my daily draw on my Instagram it finally hit me. The world at large is the priority right now, but it's not the only thing that exists. Our microcosms are still here, supporting us, loving us, empowering us. Yet in our daily lives, we still hold back. If there was ever a time to not though--this is it. What if instead of keeping your creative power tightly wrapped around your intellect you completely unfurled it and let it take over your current project? What if instead of finishing your routine to-do list you took two days a week to scrap it to work the big, scary projects instead? What if instead of keeping our heart so tightly in your chest you said "screw what everyone else thinks," ripped it out and let it bleed your power and love all over everyone you care about? We don't know what tomorrow's going to look like anymore--and maybe there's a lesson here in how we never really did. So why wait? Why hold back? Why sit and wonder and wish instead of doing? We are coming back from marches and meetings so on fire--use that. Use it. Use it. Use it.

The Fledgling wants us to be an activist, an advocate, an ally, to be as queer and brazen as we have it in us to be right now, but everyone I know is doing that. I have seen an outpour of collective action that I never anticipated, people who argued with me about marches inviting me to them now, and that's amazing. That's wonderful.  The Fledgling has more to say though, because this is a new world, and everything we know is upside down. Yet, for now, at least, life still goes on. What does it mean to work and create in this new world? And my god, can you imagine what love could be in this new world? The Fledgling is screaming at us to let go, let loose, right now, and find out. Because if we let go and spread these wings we think are so small, we just might find out how close we are to flying.

Blessed be.

Election Anxiety and Beyond-A Reading for Hope and Healing

I've had nightmares about this upcoming Tuesday all week and my chest tightens at the mention of election anything. Living with PTSD is never a cakewalk but this election cycle is another monster entirely. For so many of us living with anxiety, trauma, and mental illness it seems like there's a new trigger at every turn, a new reason to be fearful every time we check into Facebook, a new person in our lives we learn we can not trust because of the levity with which they treat these triggers.

Tarot will probably not save the world--but as a spiritual person I serve liberation and empowerment, and with most things in life that starts in our homes and in our hearts. So while I did a not-quite-cheerful reading about the election with the intention to share it with you all, I ultimately decided against it.

Because we KNOW Tuesday is going to be a living nightmare of anxiety and we KNOW that many will take their anxiety out on others, creating a dreamscape Stephen King himself couldn't have dreamt of, and we KNOW that equity and compassion might lose. Big time. And ONE function if tarot is to warn us of what's to come or give us the truth about where we are right now--but it's not it's only function.

Because like the bulk of my spiritual work, tarot is also about healing and empowerment. It's about learning how to move on even when we don't want to or don't think we can. It's not about the Death card, it's about how we learn to live again after the fact. So here's a simple spread, and a simple reading for all of us to hold on to until Tuesday about how to cope and rebuild.

This is a three card spread--an overarching energy to show what we're actually dealing with.

A card for how to cope and find balance in the meantime

and a card for healing and rebuilding. Even if the worst doesn't happen, this is taking a lot out of us. The initial high of defeating our worst fears will give way to exhaustion and allowing ourselves to feel and live in our spent-ness. And of course, the worst could happen. So this card is how to grow from there.

As for our universal reading (which I did with the Cosmos Tarot and Oracle), we show that we're not wrong--there is definitely an aggressive energy permeating through everything in American society (and those societies closely linked to and affected by it) right now. And Mars is a card of war which is why even those of us who live in magick and whimsy are so prone to pick up pitchforks and begin yet another speech with "OKAY, first of all..." right now. But Mars is also a card of action and vitality--there is good life left in our fight yet. Applied correctly, we could still turn this mess around with Mars looming so closely.

Our "immediate coping mechanism" shows us digging deep down for those last reserves of strength. For better or worse, it's only 2.5 more days. Repeat that to yourself ad nauseum. For better or worse, it's only 2.5 more days. Don't stop fighting for what you believe in for this election because even when it doesn't seem like it, some hearts will still open and some people will still "get it" last minute. But also remember that Hercules has a weakness, as we all do, which forces us to rest and retreat from time to time. Do everything you would normally do for self-care in times of duress. Sleep more. Do less. Love just as hard as you do in good times and hold them all tightly. Remind yourself that you are not how you reacted to this election season. And as a side note, sometimes the cards make a more surface level metaphor. For those physically able to do so, pouring our emotions into exercise and physical activity may be your saving grace right now. Get outside. Eat lots of protein. Put your remaining energy reserves into the things you've been working hard for all month/year/life-long. They will still be here tomorrow and you need the outlet now.

Finally we see the Page of Air. We don't know what things are going to look like from Wednesday on, but we do know we'll have new insight and ideas into how to rebuild. It is important to have a plan for healing and regrowth in your mind, but leave room for freshness and flexibility. Again, lean to those you love and as for help when you need it. Plan a day trip with one or two you hold dear to blow off steam. Remember, there's no shame in hiding until the fury dies down if your life allows you to do so. And hilariously, this card does allow for what we've all be threatening--moving out of the country if we just really can not.

As a final note, while Fire oversees us, the other cards were Swords/Air. So use logic--you know there is an end to this and a next step. Try to get some clarity--meditate, vent to a friend, exercise your brute strength with some rad kickboxing classes--whatever you need to do to just clear your mind and escape the inundation of poll reports and internet fights. Wednesday will come. And there will be one the week after that. And the week after that. Hold on to the GOOD that you know is real--not just the bad that we are swimming in.

Hope this was helpful, lovelies. Blessed be.