Why I Write and Teach About Sex & Tarot + Get a FREE Copy of My Upcoming E-Zine/Workbook

The first lesbian I ever saw on TV was Genesis from MTV’s Real World: Boston.

I was roughly “third or fourth grade” years old, and I remember staring at her and realizing for the first time that anyone could be gay. I had the good luck to not be brought up in a homophobic household. All of my parents listened to Melissa Etheridge and the Indigo Girls and I knew that they were lesbians. I don’t think I really knew or understood what that meant though until I saw Genesis. She talked openly about her relationships with women, the occasional bout of sexual fluidity, and she was so different than the other lesbians I had seen. I’d known I liked girls from around that age, but for some reason the amalgam of watching Genesis every week and crushing on my childhood friends allowed me to figure out who I was VERY early in life.

I still didn’t come out of the closet until I was in my 20s though. I had been sexually assaulted multiple times, and had this weird irrational fear that if people knew about that AND knew about my sexual identity, they would think they were linked. Furthermore, I primarily lived in the Bible Belt and while my experiences with church were mostly positive, I knew that being gay was not okay. I knew too, from watching too many people I knew and loved get assaulted that little if any care would be given to me in a time when I desperately needed some healing and empathy.

All of this is on top of a few sexual run ins with boys, and later, men that weren’t terrible only led me to a big pile of confusion about who I was AND even more confusion about what sex was or wasn’t. When I started using tarot in Freshman year of college to come to terms with my assaults and come into my own as a human, I knew that my relationships with sex and with tarot would be forever connected.

Fast forward to my 30s.

I’ve had a lot of therapy, but I also have a terrifying and painful sexual dysfunction. My clients are constantly getting terrible messages from a sexphobic world that also idealizes sex and it’s all very confusing. Everyone I know has sexual hang-ups and only a handful of people that I know are consistently and regularly having the sex that they deserve. This might be because of confidence, those societal messages, sexual dysfunction, not knowing who they are, not knowing their own body, or a hundred other reasons.

Yet I’ve had really great sex. I’ve had partners who treated me like royalty and strangers who made me go wild for one night only. So in spite of the myriad of reasons listed above, I know that sex is and can be absolutely stunning and worthwhile. I’m not qualified to be a sex therapist or a gynecologist. I don’t want to be, quite frankly.

What I do know and have always known though, is all of the beautiful and strength-supplying ways tarot can be used as a tool for ownership and transformation. That is why I write and teach about Sex & Tarot: because I want everyone to be able to use this powerful and accessible tool to have better sex. As I develop a new workbook and/or e-zine on the topic of Sex & Tarot I am super interested in what you need and want to know from the cards. I’m obviously including some Tarot 101 info on how and where to even find sex, healing, and fun in the tarot, but I want to help you even more!

That’s where you come in!

Anyone who takes time to answer the question:

“What would you want to learn about in an e-zine or workbook about Sex & Tarot”

will get a FREE copy of it when I’m done! No strings attached, seeking your input only. (Though, if you wanted to @ me on the various social media platforms and tell the world how much you love the workbook once you have it, that’d be amazing.)

How can you offer your input? EASY! Comments are on on this blog, so that’s probably the easiest/quickest way. If you follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram there are posts up looking for input there too. Finally, if you want to be anonymous but ensure you get a copy of the finished product, e-mailing snow.cassandra@gmail.com is the way to go.

In the meantime,

Blessed Be and Happy Tarot-Ing.

Cassandra Snow

Tarot for Healing: An E-Book by ME!

Hello all!

I am involved in a really wonderful, beautiful project to benefit a crucial and timely organization. For it, I wrote a mini e-book (about 8 pages) about Tarot for Healing. It's three spreads, plus some pretty significant backstory about how I came to tarot. I'm really happy with it, and while I wait for the big project to unveil decided to make it available for $10--and because my heart really was in a giving place when I wrote it, 25% of all funds received ($2.50 per e-book) is going to be donated to Standing Rock.

*Deck featured is the Tangled Roots Oracle by Leora Effinger-Weintraub.

How to Know if This is the E-Book for You
I did write this publication with individual trauma and grief in mind, but my life dealing with chronic illness filtered in too. If you have experience or concerns in any of those areas, OR if you have clients, friends, or partners you're always trying to better your readings for, this is definitely, definitely for you. It's also a great book for beginner and intermediate tarot readers looking for some different spreads and thoughts about what tarot can do.

Included in this Mini (but mighty) E-Book

• My own backstory about tarot, trauma, and coming out of the closet and how they all correlate.
• A spread for when you're still in the thick of a bad situation
• A spread for processing grief, trauma, and even physical setbacks
• A spread for when YOU are doing alright, but you're fave loved one? Not so much
• Full color photos and sample readings of each spread

The Catch?
No catch! I will likely take sales of this product down once the major project launches, so you are on a bit of a vague but very real time crunch. Otherwise you'll get a (hopefully) lovely product by me and know that part of the money goes to support the water protectors at Standing Rock.

My technology is in a bit of a weird place, so we're going to use a streamlined by very old-school style of internet sales. To order this Tarot for Healing Mini E-book:

• Send an email to snow.cassandra@gmail.com with the subject line "Tarot for Healing Order".
  • The body of the email should include your name, pronouns, and whether I have your permission to add you to my email newsletter or not.
  • The body of the email should also include how you plan to pay: PayPal, Venmo, and Square are your options. If you live in driving distance of NE Minneapolis, you may swing by my apartment building with cash during the weekday (except Tuesday) but that's not preferred. At all.
• Once I send you my payment details via your preferred method, send your payment. You will receive your copy of the e-book within mere hours! (Give me a full day in case I'm slammed, but otherwise I can hit "attach" and "send" rather quickly.)
• That's it! Enjoy! If you fall super in love with it and want to send a testimonial or review, please do. Otherwise, I leave you to the book's treasures.

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.

Heart and Hands Tarot--Support Now!

Good Afternoon all! I once again feel myself compelled to apologize for a lack of posts but I'm excited to be back, and SO excited to be writing a tarot deck in the works. Liz Blackbird contacted me about her upcoming Heart and Hands Tarot and the IndieGoGo making it all possible. I'm always happy to support queer creators, and I was additionally intrigued by the black and white art. As I watched the video on the campaign's page, I was moved by the unspoken but strong healing energy that went into the deck. I responded and told Liz I was eager to learn more. Here's our Q&A and some info about how you can support this great deck:

Tell us about yourself, first!
My name is Liz Blackbird (she/her/hers). I’m a visual artist, fiction writer, and poet currently based in Brooklyn, but I’m about to move to Ohio to pursue an MFA in creative writing. I’m originally from Michigan, so this will be a bit of a homecoming!

Prior to printing this deck, what was your relationship to tarot?
I’ve been interested in tarot since I was a teenager. I grew up in the suburbs of Flint in the 90s and generally felt a little unsatisfied with the environment around me, like it was kind of a bad fit, like there had to be something better out there. So I think I was predisposed to be attracted to all things magical. I was not raised religious, but my mother’s family was Catholic and evangelical Christianity was a strong (and often oppressive) force many of my friends’ lives, so I’ve also always been resistant to organized religion. A lot of my friends at that time felt similarly and were exploring wicca, neopaganism, and other more open-ended spiritual practices, and I initially learned about tarot through them. Many of us would ultimately come out as queer, and I think that had a lot to do with those initial feelings of discomfort with the status quo and the “bad fit” it seemed to be for us that led us to seek alternative spiritual paths in the first place.

The tarot attracted me as an artist, because I love the way its meanings are conveyed visually through mysterious and evocative images. It also nested nicely with my general agnosticism – whether or not I believe that I am being guided by supernatural forces, I can still trust that what I “read” in the tarot represents my truth on some level, even if it’s just tapping into something I already know about a situation but have been afraid to admit to myself, or giving me a framework to think about a situation in a different way. I generally only read for myself or close friends, so I’m usually pretty intimately acquainted with the lives of people I read for.

What stands out about the Heart and Hands deck? Why did you want to create this deck specifically?
The genesis of this deck was different than most, because it initially began not as a commercial endeavor, but as a personal project that I undertook to help me develop a new artistic direction at a time when I was feeling a little blocked. I had decided not to focus on studio art in college, and was regretting that decision a little bit. I had a really inspiring art professor at the time, Jyung Mee Park at the Maryland Institute College of Art, who essentially told me not to force it, that your art should stem from something you do naturally. In my sketchbooks, I had been doing a lot of casual black-and-white free-associative drawing, so I decided to try to take on a project in that style to see where I could go with it. I was already interested in tarot but didn’t feel that my knowledge of the cards’ meanings was very strong, so I decided to try designing my own deck to both stimulate my creativity and get to know the cards better. This, of course, turned out to be a much bigger project than I expected! It took me ten years to complete the illustrations. Though I had initially expected the project to remain private, as the years went by, so many of my friends saw my drawings and asked about how to get a copy of the deck that I decided I had to print it. I named it the Heart & Hands Tarot as a reminder of the power of our hearts to dream new possibilities and our hands to put those dreams into practice.

Ultimately, I think the black-and-white illustration style I developed is very unique and makes the deck stand out. I also think that my intention to enact a kind of creative “rebirth” through creating these cards really permeates the deck and comes through in the lushness and exuberance of the drawings. I also tried to create images that communicate the meanings of the cards in a direct and relatable way without requiring prior knowledge of other fields, like astrology and Kabbalah. But in general, I think my slow and meditative composition process—the fact that I didn’t force it—is what makes this deck special.

How does your deck speak to marginalized and queer audiences?
Because I identify as queer, and because queerness was so bound up in the way I first became interested in tarot, I tried to design this deck in a way that that avoided presuming heterosexuality or a male perspective, and that included people of color. Many of my figures, especially my Lovers, are very androgynous, and my number cards are all zoomed in to depict only the figures’ hands to avoid ascribing them a fixed identity. For my court cards, I chose to use a Prince and Princess rather than a Knight and Page to have gender equity within the court. There are also two major arcana cards that depict genderqueer figures – Justice and the World. In general, I wanted to create space in the designs for readers to be able to ascribe their own gender and sexuality interpretations to the cards.

Another big element of my work is in helping people heal so they can get to the part where they can be inspired and empowered. How does your deck speak to the healing process?
I think that in a lot of ways, creating this deck was a form of shadow work. Being a visual artist was a strong part of my identity as a teen, but because I did not focus on studio art in college, I found it harder and harder to maintain a creative practice in my 20s. Working on this deck was a big part of what kept me connected to that creative part of myself even as I was trying to make a living in other fields. Also, because the tarot is, among other things, a compendium of archetypal personalities, situations, concepts, and developmental states that we might experience throughout the life cycle, I found that working on parts of the deck that corresponded to issues I was dealing with in my life at the time was a great way to think through those issues in a broader, more distanced, more insightful way. 

Thank you so much for taking time to tell me more about this wonderful new addition to the tarot canon. How can we find out more or support you?
I’m currently running an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds to print the deck, so please visit my campaign page to support the project and to check out the "perks" (including copies of the deck) available for donating. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/heart-hands-tarot-deck/x/14290775#/ The campaign will be live until August 14th! I'm also launching an Etsy shop, ThirteenWaysToLook, so that I can make the deck available there after the campaign ends. It should be active by the winter of this year.

Thanks so much to all of you, especially Liz. Now, go support indie decks!

Blessed Be.