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
