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.

Some Exercises To Break Down The Court Cards

From The Slow Holler Tarot

I recently put out an open call on social media asking what tarot learners were struggling with. The number one answer is, of course, The Court Cards. If you're SUPER new to tarot, the Court Cards are the cards labeled Pages, Knights, Queens, or Kings. They might be rewritten in your deck, but they most likely have a title and a suit (hence the Architect of Vessels above).

The Court Cards are very often taught or explained as people. Even a lot of otherwise really, really good tarot books can lead you astray here as you try to understand why your spread is giving you random, useless information about a dark haired man with bad intentions when that man is absolutely nowhere in your life. To add to the confusion, the Courts are often needlessly (and kind of hilariously) gendered, and can often equate material wealth with achievement & worth in a way I’m very, very uncomfortable with. 

From The Next World Tarot

All of that being said, I love the court cards. They encourage me to bust my butt or take a break--both messages I hate but frequently need. They don’t usually represent 16 different people most of the time. Instead, they represent 16 different energies or aspects of YOU. The court cards coming up are most likely the energies or aspects within yourself that you need to call on and bring into being right now. Pairing each card with a well-known celebrity may not help you crack the card, understand it, or remember it in the heat of the moment. Instead, I've got some suggestions outlined below for how to connect with these cards in a way that stays true to both the card and your own experiences and journey. 

• If you are Pagan and work with deities, try pairing each court card with a deity that you could call on to inspire you or work with you regarding the energy of the card.

• If you are Pagan and do not work with deities, pairing each court card with a mythological creature or spiritual entity (like a type of faery, a spirit or ghost you’ve worked with, or an animal guide) that you could call on now to inspire or aid that card’s energy allows for a similar clarity as the diety exercise.

• If you are not Pagan, or are but want an alternative exploration, think about times in your life when the energy of this card was easy for you to take on. So one card might be the version of you that started a business that failed, and a different court card might be the version of you that started a successful business. One card could be a version of you that cried over a “B” in high school, and one could be a version of you that cut that college class all the time to have sex with your suitemate. Lock in those actual, living versions of yourself as your "go to" for how to interpret this card.

If this blog post helped you unlock your understanding of the Court Cards, I've got a whole E-Zine for sale chock full of tips and tricks to help New Age Misfits learn tarot in a personalized but true-to-your-deck's-intentions way. You can grab a copy here for just $13.99.

If you're looking for free resources, Siobhan at Radical Tarot has some great thoughts about the Courts here.

Blessed be, y'all!

Your (Apparently Seasonal) Update Featuring: A Brain Injury!

Deck pictured: Christy C. Road's Next World Tarot

Hello All!

Spring has finally sprung in Minnesota and this blog is still on semi-hiatus for totally, totally unexpected reasons. There are some things in life we just can’t prepare for, no matter how hard working, supported, and centered we are. 2018 has not been kind to me or mine. There are a lot of terrible, heartbreaking stories of people very, very close to me that aren’t mine to tell. So I won’t.

What I will tell you is that in late January, I slipped on the ice during a walk down Main Street, and hit my head. It was a pretty big bang and I was immediately sick to my stomach, but decided to just go home and try not to throw up. That sick feeling turned out to be a concussion that I refused to slow down for, so it became post-concussion syndrome. Heck. This is and is treated like a mild TBI. My vision went from “perfect” to “here, have some tinted bifocals.” My energy has been so easy to zap for months. I get headaches like I never have before. The most hilarious problem (because I have a weird sense of humor) is that my eyes no longer properly communicate with my brain. This means they don’t relax and contract the way they’re supposed to without me saying to them “Hey, eyes, do thing.” It’s a mess.

I’m lucky though. I’ve had little to no cognitive impairments outside of that. I’m healing slowly but surely. Healing from a brain injury is weird because you’ll wake up and realize you feel tons better (but still have symptoms) and then nothing for weeks at a time. It comes in fits and starts and I’m not used to that. Healing is never linear but this is such a strange experience.

Two very important members of my care team, even if they don't have medical licenses.

I’m still struggling emotionally regarding this injury. Some of that is because of the nature of the injury itself. My ability to control my emotions was fairly uninhibited at first. That becomes habit after awhile. A lot of it though is that I am different now. It’s hard being in hours of TBI therapy a week (though I am so, so grateful for my care team). It’s hard being dependent on other people. I’ve worked my whole life to be so independent, and then I spent a long time learning to be interdependent due to both my politics and personal/emotional leanings. That was an important process for me, but I was still on it when this happened and I was forced to ask for more care than I could give to others. I know nothing is perfect and we all move in cycles. Already I am back to a huge output of emotional labor for people I love, which I genuinely love doing. This is a sign of healing and a sign that I am still me. I still hate asking for so many rides (among many other things.)

In spite of everything that’s been going on, I have some really wonderful career updates to report!

My Queering the Tarot manuscript is in to Red Wheel/Weiser publishing and I absolutely love the feedback I’ve been getting. I am so, so excited to reveal who is doing the foreword (you won’t be surprised but you’ll still be excited) and which tarot deck is illustrating when the time is right. This whole project has pushed me as a tarot reader, a writer, and a storyteller and I’m really pleased with what is coming together.

In the meantime, you can catch the Queering the Tarot series here and here still. I’m doing a monthly self-care tarot for Take Your Pills, a mental illness blog that is as funny as it is informative. I’m also featured in Northern Lights Witch’s Embodied Tarot e-zine, a really lovely collection of spreads about making peace with your body. I’ve got a Gender Dysphoria spread and a spread for Managing Chronic Pain designed for your. You can grab a copy here!

A pic of Northern Lights Witch, as seen in Embodied Tarot. 

I’ve got some Tarot classes coming up at The Future that I absolutely love doing. Tarot 101 for Creatives is back on the 24th. This one I’ve updated; I mostly get good feedback on it, but I did hear those of you who were concerned that it wasn’t quite a 101 class so we’re starting a little easier but still building to the same place. On the 31st I’ve got a Sex and Tarot class all about using the tarot to find our own sexual story and voice and come into your own joyful sluttiness. Then on June 14th, you can come bring in Pride with me and Queering the Tarot! These classes are all $35, but sliding scale starts at $15. Check this page of my website to find out more about my teaching and how to set up a class at your organization!

I am running normal tarot rates and hours otherwise; e-mail to set up an in person appointment in the Twin Cities from 1-6 Thurs-Saturday, or come down to Eye of Horus Sundays from 11:30-6 or Wednesdays from 3-9! I’ve also got my online tarot store for e-mail readings running on it’s usual schedule.

In the end, I am learning from this brain injury.

In spite of all my woo, I don’t think everything happens for a reason. I think I was being careless in a spot with too much black ice, and well, now here we are. I feel intuitively that there is no greater purpose to what this head injury is. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from bad things. We might as well find growth in the hard times, because they aren’t going to get less hard no matter what we do. We might as well laugh when it’s all falling down, because it’s coming down anyway. So I am still myself, just muted. I am learning to find peace in the quiet. I am learning to listen more than I talk for probably for the first time. I am learning that self-care is a practice and not a buzzword, and that sometimes it is hard, arduous work. I am learning that sometimes self-care is the heartbreak of not being able to do anything else.

All of that being said, I am at a good place with the injury itself, and I am coping emotionally as well as can be expected I think. I have slunk in and out of survivor mode as necessary, but for the most part I am present. I am ready to pick my life up again, but I know it’s going to be a slow and tedious process. I also know that it is going to be so worth it to take my time and really heal. I know I am going to feel stronger than ever, reborn and new. I am just so ready for that now. 

Thank YOU for reading this novel I wrote, and for supporting me in my ongoing tarot journey. I look forward to seeing you,chatting or reading for you soon.

Blessed be y’all!

Cassandra Snow

Where I Am Now: January 2018

Hello all!

If you missed the social media announcements, you probably still figured out that I gave/am giving the blog a little hiatus. Some of it was because I really am not happy with the quality of work I was putting out. I really love the Multi-Passionate Diaries and I really love when I get personal about tarot and spirituality (IE my Reclaiming Hestia post). It's important to me to share links that say things I wish I'd said or are just neat, and important to keep myself accountable with end of month check ins. Everything else I just felt meh about. No inspiration, no drive to complete anything. So I am still on a little bit of a hiatus, but wanted to do a beginning of the year/big news/where to find me check in since there is a lot of buzz happening in my hive.

For starters...I got a book deal!

I'm so ecstatic to turn my Queering the Tarot series into a book, but that does mean things like blogging take a bit of a backburner. I suspect I will be much more present on my own blog once my draft is turned in. I have LOVED finishing up this series and working through re-writes. My book won't be out until early 2019, and I will certainly keep you posted about specific dates and other important info. In the meantime, you can always catch the latest article in the series here or here. 

I also just agreed to be the in house reader at my friend and client Dominique's website about managing bipolar disorder, Take Your Pills! I'll be doing a monthly reading to help you anticipate and handle any mental health quandries that come up throughout the year. There will be a mini interview and bio about me going up in the next couple of weeks, and then right around the first of every month, the reading will drop. I'm sooooo excited to give this series to those who need it. As someone with a laundry list of mental illnesses, this is an area I'm very well-versed in reading cards for and about, and I'm thrilled to share that side of my work with you all. Furthermore, Dominique's writing about self-care and her honesty about her own bipolar disorder are groundbreaking, and I'm THRILLED to be part of it.

That's my BIG news but there's some other cool stuff going on too. As you can see, I updated this website to show off some of the teaching and coaching adventures I've been getting into, as well as encourage other businesses, organizations, and individuals to bring me in to teach tarot or small business/solo entrepreneur/freelance skills. If you want to catch classes already slated, you can head down to The Future tonight for a Sex & Tarot class at 7 or sign up for Tarot 101 for Creatives in February. I LOVE these classes and I love this space, so 10/10 would recommend. You can also catch rare short readings from me at this beautiful, healing event (for queer women and non-binary people only) on the 20th. I adore reading for GirlPond events, and Northern Lights Witch will be reading also if you want ALL the queer readings. 

I am, of course, still reading tarot cards and witching it up all over the Twin Cities. I have in-person appointments available if you e-mail me or go through this website's contact form, or e-mail readings available here. I'm excited to start another year reading at The Eye of Horus too, where you can make even in-person appointments online. I'm also doing some really fulfilling arts journalism over at The Column still. I was so excited to talk about Bi-Lesque, a burlesque show of all bi+ performers most recently, and you'll see a piece about the Minneapolis Art Shanty Project soon too. 

My theatre company is working hard too--our March mainstage play is about trans identity and mental illness and how they overlap. I'm "just" producing and so happy to see my genderqueer business partner work with an all trans and genderqueer cast for this. To raise money for it, Sober Queer History is happening at Steamship Coffee in Minneapolis on January 28th, so if you love queer art, come on down. If you want to support queer art but don't live here or that date doesn't work, check out our GiveMN which allows your donation to be tax deductible. 

Things I'm still looking for this year:

• A regular tarot or witchcraft column at a major publication (online or in print).
• More teaching opportunities!
• Storytelling, other big writing gigs, and miscellaneous arts, writing, and witchy gigs. 
• Cheap adventures! (Or enough money to do regular adventures!) 
• Obviously more Gadfly Theatre donors and audience.

If you've got any idea or thoughts about any of that or have a gig to offer, let me know. I set a lot of big intentions for the year PLUS I already know I have a book getting ready for publication so I'm in for an exciting year and a half no matter what. I'd love to amplify that with more of the work that makes my heart sing though, so here's my open call to speak with me about any appropriate opportunities.

Before I go, here's some quick recommendations of things I've read/seen/gotten into lately:

• Books: My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emily Ferris. Modern Tarot by Michelle Tea. We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby. 
• Movies: The Shape of Water. Ladybird (Yes, I'm among the millions who loved it). Coco. And of course The Last Jedi. This is actually one of my favorite Star Wars movies of all times. 
• Decks: My Next World Tarot by Christy C. Road is one of the only things in the world I really, truly care about at this moment in time. 
• Miscellaneous: I got a SodaStream for secular Christmas and honestly it's such a game changer. I like putting lemonade (which is usually WAY too sweet AND too sour for me) into it with just a small splash of simple syrup. I'm obsessed. It's one of the only other things I care about in the world, truly. Other things that have delighted me lately include the card game Bears Vs. Babies and watching House Hunters International on Hulu and daydreaming about other lives I could live if I really wanted to. 

That's basically it, y'all! This is where I've been and what I've been working on. I'm so grateful you all came along with me in 2017, and am even happier to have a great 2018 full of whimsy, witchcraft, and art with you. To keep up while the blog is on semi-hiatus, check out my Instagram for (almost) daily promotional readings, my Facebook or Twitter for real time updates on where to find me, and my newsletter which sometimes has exclusive offerings and free monthly readings. To support this blog or any of the other tarot or writing I do for free, here's my PayPal.me link.

Until next time then, Blessed be!

Hot Class Alert! Including a MUCH Requested Tarot 101!

Hello tarot lovers and other witches,

Today is basically a dumpster fire. I do have some good news for those looking to learn tarot or advance their own study though: I've got THREE marvelous classes coming to Eye of Horus in Minneapolis, MN over the next three months. They are:

Tarot 101 for Creatives walks you through how to learn and bond over a new deck via your understanding of the images, colors, and symbols decorating them. I'll give you a basic framework and then walk you through exercises to go deeper. October 21st at 1 PM. Nab your seats here. 

Queering the Tarot is coming back to the Eye of Horus and will happen on November 18th at 1 PM. This is my absolute favorite class to teach, so come learn about how to tell if your Queen likes other Queens, what the Hanged Man might really be doing there, and how the Hermit fits in. Purchase a seat in class right here, friends. 

Sex and Tarot is the sauciest of the three (obviously) and goes through all the bad, mixed up, sex-shaming messages we get from society and how we can use tarot to overcome it all and own our own sexuality again. We also talk about bondage and I'll teach a spread for more or better sex. That's on December 9th. Snag a seat! 

That's what I've got today, y'all! Come learn and chat with me. Can't wait. Blessed be.

A Staircase to Nowhere + A VERY Cute Lab Puppy (September Check In)

Autumn along the Mississippi River. <3 

Happy October Everybody!

This is my absolute favorite month of the year, as it is for many witches, and I am ecstatic that fall weather has finally fallen upon my large mid-sized city. I went for a walk along the river starring crunchy leaves yesterday, and I comfortably drank a hot coffee outside today. Bliss.

It is incredibly strange to be writing a “September in review” post when I actually can't talk about a lot of what's going on in my life yet, but rest assured, in the upcoming months I will have beautiful news to share! In the meantime, I have a big announcement post about a series of classes I'm doing at Eye of Horus hitting next week. I can also let all you Pagan art lovers know that my next theatre project includes you! It's a queer, feminist retelling of the Holly King & Oak King myths. We go up in December. Head over to Gadfly's website for more! Other than that...welll...here's the abbreviated info on what I can share about how my September went!

• Tarot Life: My Sex & Tarot class wasn't such a big hit on a Saturday night, but I did get to spend an evening at The Future helping a tarot lover unblock her energy where cards were concerned. I still taught her some spreads on improving her sex life, so it was all around a successful evening. I have been working hard on “fall semester” classes coming up. You can still catch me on Instagram with a nearly daily tarot reading to cut through the muck of your day too. I read for LOTS of really beautiful people this month, especially at the Eye of Horus, where I'm still slinging cards Sundays & Wednesdays.

• Theatre Life: In addition to gearing up for & casting the aforementioned The Crown of the Holly Queen by Eli Effinger-Weintraub, I produced one of my favorite Drunk Queer History events to date. Lisa Marie Brimmer is a beautiful, wonderful soul & storyteller who was more than happy to get on the far end of tipsy and teach us about ball culture, growing up in the Wisconsin Dells, and Bayard Rustin. This was one of my favorite theatre months in recent history. I deeply loved everything I was working on and feel sufficiently amped up about the rest of the year too.

• Writer Life: I wrote some stuff I really love this month, namely this piece on Reclaiming Hestia and this review of local play Ex-Gays. I'm going to be completely honest though. This was a really hard month for someone with Avoidant Personality Disorder to be a writer. I had countless pitches rejected and to be perfectly honest I'm used to shooting and scoring where writing is concerned. I feel really defeated in this moment. I have to remind myself that I have a steady writing gig and big things are on the horizon though, because all of that is true and I am so blessed. Stay tuned for more on that, and know this: it is all worth it. I absolutely love everything I do, even when it feels really, really hard.

Keep reading if you want this photo to make sense

• Non-Work Life: What a fun month otherwise! Since my Two Harbors trip last month I've been intentionally making space for fun and for peace. The outcome has been unbelievable. I planned one hell of a birthday for my favorite person in the world. This was also the month where I decided a fun Instagram game was “How much fast food can I eat on the beach?” and it's been a blast. I generally eat healthy but when I have a craving for junk food, I purposely end up on the beach. I honestly crack myself up about it. My queerplatonic partner and I love empty playgrounds almost as much as beaches and riverfronts, so we ended up at a few of those goofing off. I saw some really awestriking art this month, including two shows by Patrick's Cabaret that took my breathe away. If you are in the Twin Cities, really, really check something out by them if you haven't. I'll end this section on this: Target has the weirdest line of masks this Halloween season. They look and feel like very low budget Furry masks and I am kind of living for it. We acquired this Unicorn one as part of the QPP's birthday, but honestly, the whole line is hilarious and absurd. Go check it out.

Recommendations: I finally read AJ Jacobs The Year of Living Biblically and Allie Brosh's Hyperbole and a Half. I was so surprised by how compassionate and spiritual TYOLB turned out to be. HAAH was what I expected, but what I expected was absolute hilarity. I couldn't stop laughing, and as a mentally ill person a lot of that came from what I related to. I also recommend late night walks with your favorite people, the new It (such good scare moments!) and helping your best friend paint their restaurant. All of these things filled me with immense joy this month. Finally, while everyone is talking about it, I cannot recommend The Good Place enough for sit-com lovers. I've always loved Kristin Bell and Ted Danson, but this “What is good? What is heaven? Oh wait, what is hell?” is brilliant and dark in ways I didn't expect.

I promised you a very cute puppy. This is Vanna. She came to my apartment to meet cats and be in an apartment. She is a service dog in training that a friend is fostering. I. Love. Her.

That's a wrap on September! Hope you are all enjoying the bona fide sweater weather & scary movies we've been waiting for all year.

Blessed be, y'all.

I am the Leslie Knope of Friendship + Here's a bunch of rad links for you!

Hello tarot lovers, witches, and other friends reading!

Yesterday was my queerplatonic partner's birthday. The party is on Saturday and their preferred restaurants had NO dinner reservations available. If you know Parks and Recreation at all, you'll recognize my friendship tendencies if we ever become close. While when it comes to business I relate much more to ambitious, confident yet well-balanced Donna Meagle, when it comes to friendship I get a littttttle too eager when I love you. So I called the restaurant. Twice. Begged to be put on a waiting list. Thought of six different ways we could approach this without reservations. Then managed to find reservations at another one of their favorite restaurants that we haven't been to in awhile, which they are just as happy about. So crisis averted, but this plus present-wrangling is why my link round-up is two days late (because of course there was a bag full of thoughtful presents, a dinner, + we haven't even gotten to "party day" yet). Also I didn't do one last month and I'm sure I had my reasons. I just don't remember them. The good news is that means this one is nice and fat for you!

For Tarot Lovers, Witches, And Other Spiritual Types

• Little Red Tarot posted this "Ring of Fire" spread back in July, and while summer is OFFICIALLY over (WOO HOO!) this spread is still wonderful. 
• Tarot has been around for a loooong time, and this is a really fun piece about the evolution of its' artwork with some funky pictures thrown in. 
• I'm always fascinated by people who create witchy, spiritual lives somewhere totally unexpected, so I was all about this profile of a witchy hairdresser!
• I feel personally called about by this article from Cosmo, actually. How your Sun sign acts as a romantic partner. 
• I love this from headline to final exclamation point: A Thinking Person's Guide to Going With Your Gut. 
• An oil diffuser blend for whatever Mabon wonderfulness you have going on tonight. 
• Now that she's covered the basics of the Celtic Cross spread, Theresa Reed's already amazing "Breaking Down the Celtic Cross" series has really gotten amazing. These are really thrilling things she's talking about if you're a total tarot geek like me. 
• Another amazing spread--this one from Worts and Cunning Apothecary, zeroing in on business success for ya. 
• "In order for full, meaningful healing to take place, we cannot turn a blind eye to the injustices that live in the fabric of our human society. Sure, in the eyes of the universe, all spirits are equal in their love, light, and importance. But we don’t live in the realm of spirit." Such a good post from Bitchy and Witchy about Calling in the New Age on issues of oppression. 
• I was researching for my Sex & Tarot class when I found this gem of a human and article about Sex and Eroticism in Tarot. 

For The Resistance

• Because publicly screening queer porn is resistance in and of itself.
• Have I mentioned how much I love The Bold Type? (Yes, I have. Because I do.) Here's eight great responses to one of the show's most loved characters from queer Muslim women. 
• Oh, in case you didn't know, "history" is incredibly straightwashed in addition to being totally whitewashed. 
• A simple, easy to follow guide to not drawing sexist nonsense in comic books. 
• I Can't Be Your Gay Friend
• Bitter Gertrude's take on the Charlottesville rally as a Jewish person well-versed in intersectionality was really well done. 
• New Hero Alert! This wonderful man runs a queer film festival in Uganda, where homosexuality is illegal. 

For Your Business

• Empathy is actually very, very good for your business. Red Slice has more.
• Also thought to be harmful but maybe not? Procrastination. 
• You're probably working way too hard. I generally agree with anything Susan Hyatt tells me, but this one hit me way too hard. 
• VERY useful article about maximinzing your Patreon, friends. 
• SO somehow I had never heard of the 70% rule, y'all. If you struggle with delegation because it seems easier or better to do it yourself, this one's for you. 
• Relevant to my life right now: Seth Godin on the difference between having fear and being afraid. 

For Theatre Fans and Art Lovers

• Really good work by American Theatre Magazine here, examining an impending leadership vaccuum and what that means for theatre.
• Julia Cameron doubles down on why we should write every day, and y'all. She's not wrong. 
• Not quite theatre but a little too nerdy for casual film and television fans. Here's Ava DuVernay discussing Netflix, artists, and diversity. 
• Antigone in Ferguson examines the divide between law enforcement and the communities they SHOULD be serving. Would absolutely LOVE to see this piece.
• A hecking free book on building arts audiences. I'm only halfway through and have SO MANY IDEAS already. A must read for all producers/creators/etc. 
• There are so many conversations about what type of protests work and which don't. Some of those conversations are crucial. Some are garbage, tone-policing nonsense. Playwright MJ Kauffman's commitment to boycotting certain theatre companies and being willing to talk about why are crucial. 

Just Because

• "I Talked to 1400 Strangers About Their Sex Lives. Here's What I Learned." 
• These Guidelines for a Kinder Life are not what I expected, and are some of the best I've seen:  "Being emotionally uncomfortable won’t kill you.
  It just feels that way sometimes. Like any state of being it will pass. Honor your discomfort. You’re being changed by what you are witnessing. That’s one reason we keep dipping ourselves in the salty experience that is a human life."
• An important reminder from Alexandra Franzen: Hearts Can Change.
• How To Break Up Like A Poet is life guidance, literature, and so much more from Edna St. Vincent Millay.
• Inside the Death Positive Movement. Super great read. 
• A beautiful piece on food, manners, and culture. 
• A CARMILLA MOVIE TRAILER OKAY. 
• A very succint piece for those of us who love self-help books, but, like, not all self-help books. 
• Messy Nessy Chic is always such a fun blog with unique stories--like this one on Women, Warriors, and Wine or this one on trans soldiers during the American Civil War. 
• I absolutely adored this article on Viking culture and living like the women of Viking literature. 
• Do you know that I am both obsessed with high profile unsolved crimes AND a giant Tupac fan? So this article on the upcoming Who Killed Tupac? was perfect!

I'm gonna end on this really moving piece from Danielle LaPorte: The First Step to Take When You're In Hell. 

Blessed be, y'all!

Reclaiming Hestia: For queerdos and weirdos everywhere who still crave home

                            Please ignore my very messy mess on my Hestia altar.

I grew up in a pretty unstable home, and for a long time that seemed to have had polar effects on my sister and I. She wanted to become a wife and mother as quickly as possible. Me? I moved 1,500 miles away and just accepted that in this economy you moved every year. I prefer saving for travel to recarpeting my floors. Queerness, I am sure, played a part of this ambivalence about having a steadfast home too. Every happy family on TV was a mom, dad, some kids they'd had since those kids were babies. None of them looked like me, and I knew family sit-com life would not be mine. This is nothing I was bitter about, but it also meant I had no reason to aspire to those things. I didn't have an aversion, per se, to home, it just didn't resonate. I didn't care.

That is, of course, until I did. My queerplatonic partner and I have been us for weeellll over a decade. Somehow in between all of our romantic break ups with respective partners, toxic roommates coming and going (plus some good ones), and all kinds of art happening within our walls we became family. This was a healing and affirming and beautiful realization but suddenly home meant something. Family wasn't some far off thing I would start building once I found the woman or non-binary person of my dreams, it was something I was already building. It was something I had probably always had.

Then just as this became important to me, we were homeless for a summer. Now, we were staying with very good friends and things could have been a lot worse, and for that, and for them, I am eternally grateful. As I was putting together and practicing some pretty intense witchcraft, desperate for a place to call my own though, it felt different than it ever had before. I didn't just want a space big enough to see clients. I wanted a space where my queerplatonic partner and I (and our family that is right now just cats but won't always be) could stretch out and grow. We want romantic partners. We want foster kids. I really want a rabbit. This latter fact is maybe a point of mild contention. I didn't want a space to sleep at night and keep my stuff. I wanted a home. Once I realized that, everything felt different, including the things in my spiritual practice. Suddenly not only was I, former Queen Vagabond, looking for a home, but I was finding my solace in Hestia.

When I first started studying and learning witchery, I was very attracted to the Greek pantheon, probably because it was the only one I really knew. I hadn't looked at it or touched it in years though, with the exception of Hecate who has remained the primary source of my prayers and devotion. Even when I was working with very Greek energy though, Hestia never hit my soul. Probably for the reasons outlined above: home didn't mean a lot for me, so why would a Goddess charged with keeping homes happy and prosperous and home-oriented? Yet when my life was falling apart just as I realized how important my family having a home was, Hestia came to me. Nothing explicit or overwhelming, and sometimes it was a Celtic or Welsh version of her. Yet there she was, with all her hearth-loving glory, listening to my prayers and flickering in my candlelight, promising that she would find us a home, a very queer one, for our very queer family.

My story ends happily, with my queerplatonic partner and I in a very wonderful three bedroom with two bathrooms and plenty of space. Hestia has her own altar here. She not only keeps us organized and grateful, but she ensures that she's keeping this space as weird and queer and artsy as we need it to be. For us this means:

• On her altar, I light two candles. One for general blessings and prosperity, and one for weirdness and queerness and magick. That one may or may not have Wednesday Addams on it.

• Doing regular love spells to bring us each queer lovers and eventual romantic partners.

• Cooking with intention; what will make us feel good and taste good?

• Being very intentional about who we let into the space. My boundaries have been violated in my own home more times than I'd ever have time to recount. We want to be kind, and generous, and wonderful to people who deserve it. The best way to do that is not to let those don't in.

• We keep it much, much cleaner than we used to. Some of this is because of the way my OCD and anxiety have manifested later in life, but I also do think it honors the construct of home a lot better to respect the space.

                                      My very happy familiars in my very happy home.

If YOU want to reclaim or honor Hestia (or any!) gods of the home, you don't have to think big. The bulk of my spiritual practice revolves around ancestral, environmentally inspired, or spirit work. My primary Goddess is still Hecate. I work with various entities and with specific spells. A home diety practice should be simple, albeit mostly daily. Here's how to get started.

• Build a small altar with a plant, an incense that smells homey to you, and a candle. Small tokens like charms of houses, hearths, hearts, etc. should be added. If you aren't good with plants, get a succulent or a small terrarium instead.

• Add to the altar anything that specifically speaks to whatever you want said Goddess or God to nurture in the space. For example, we keep some things meant to inspire and bring in romantic love and sex for each of us, some charms that symbolize friendship, and some things that represent spirits of our loved ones that have passed. We keep lots of artsy and witchy things too, such as a charm with drama masks and a pen to represent writing opportunities. I keep a small charm of a car to represent my free spirit and traveling soul. Being full of wanderlust and having a safe, warm home base to come back to are not mutually exclusive.

• Keep your windows free from things that block your view outside. (By which I mean remove stacks of books or furniture blocking the window. You can obviously have curtains.)

• Keep your house as clean as you need it to be to feel homey and cozy. Everyone's tolerance for this is different but if your kitchen stresses you out, it's time to start cleaning it often enough that it doesn't get to that point.

• Prep or cook food sometimes! Even if you're like me and the cost analysis for a single pringle such as yourself says it's actually cheaper to eat a Hot Pocket and a cup of yogurt for lunch or even run across the street for a $3 sandwich, the kitchen is very important to most gods of home. You don't have to be a master chef, but taking a few meals a week to put care into what you're eating makes a huge difference where both self and spiritual care are concerned. The idea of family meals at home, even for queerlings like us, is also really important.

• Final addition/starting point for your home diety worship? Something to represent “keep us queer, keep us weird.” We have the aforementioned Wednesday Addams candle and a whole host of other bizarre goodies we keep on or near our workspace for Hestia.

This post won't resonate with everyone. Had I read it five years ago, it wouldn't have resonated with me. In five more years, it may not again, but this is where I am today: staring in the face of the Goddess of Hearth and Home who is trying to help me, love me, and keep me safe, and deciding to reclaim her.

Blessed be y'all.

Multipassion Diaries: The Incredibly Boring Secrets To My Success

In which I take pictures on the river on a day off. 

I am writing this blog at 3:37 PM. By 3:37 PM today I have already seen actors auditioning for my December play, queued up social media for my tarot and theatre business, and pitched three articles. I've e-mailed clients, and now I'm writing this. I'm also seeing a show tonight that I'll wake up in the morning and review. On paper, I pass as fairly productive and successful. Yet I stay relatively chill, which causes a lot of people to ask me how I manage three careers so easily. To which I respond: I don't manage them easily. Ha! I'm stressed out all the time! I have like four different anxiety disorders! Only two are work related but still!

I digress. Easily or not, I do manage those careers and have fun in between. So I do understand why people ask me how I do it or what my secret is. Unfortunately though, when most people ask me that they seem to be looking for magick and wisdom, some miracle or pearl they can hold to. My answers are...um...not the most satisfactory.

• I sleep as close to eight hours a night as my body will let me.

• I don't let myself get distracted during a work session by fun social media or my cats wanting attention, but I do take breaks to nurture those things. I cut my work day down by over 90 minutes a day when I stopped checking Facebook every ten minutes. That's 90 minutes of good cat cuddling time I was wasting every day, y'all.

• I take my meds and drink lots of water.

• I do something for every career every day.

• I also do something fun and something for self-care that isn't just “food and meds” every single day. Every. Single. Day.

• I eat when I'm hungry.

• I keep my apartment fairly orderly for focus reasons.

• I keep a paper planner with to-do lists at my side when working. It's old-fashioned and boring. It also works.

• I take days off. Wild and innovative, I know. But this stack of comic books isn't going to read itself, and what am I supposed to do—NOT go to the beach when it's super nice out?! Psssh.

I can't believe I was losing 90 mins a day with these guys to Facebook. Which, hilariously, is also featured in this photo.

Look, the reality is I don't have kids. I do lose entire days to sickness, but still manage to get a bare minimum done on those days. Not everyone can do that. I also have an incredibly supportive group of friends and family. They are all also part dreamer, part doer who own restaurants, run Reiki businesses, and make lots of of art--so they get it. All of that means that in the grand scheme of things, I'm incredibly blessed in flexible time and having support. My life is probably not manageable with kids, and it certainly was not manageable before I was on proper meds for my 9,000 chronic illnesses. Certainly I have had bad family relationships and incredibly toxic social groups, and you know what? I didn't realize it then but my careers suffered greatly in those times. By sheer stroke of luck, my circumstances allow my careers to flourish and that's the harsh reality of success sometimes. Don't beat yourself up if things take you longer because of other dreams you had, mistakes you made, lack of support in your life, or really anything else.

Regardless of those extenuating factors though, the way I manage multiple careers is by taking care of myself first, my loved ones second, and my careers third. It's not easy and anyone slinging you expensive, magickal surefire tracks to success online is probably lying to you. The path to loving your life, including and especially your work life, isn't easy but it is doable. (Please note: Placing career third doesn't mean you don't do stuff. I work anywhere from a six to a fourteen hour day most days, with my average being around a standard “eight.” Taking care of career third means taking care of it.)

To summarize: If you're juggling multiple careers and a whole life outside of that, how do you ensure success? Allow for it to happen over time. Don't rush. Oh, and take care of yourself first, your loved ones second, and your careers third. You'll get where you need to go.

An Abbreviated Post-August Check In

Hello friends, witches & tarot lovers!

Mercury Retrograde has not been friendly to my apartment's electronic devices today so here's a quick update on where I've been AND an important September announcement!

Also, here's an arbitrary picture of Sir Didymus and Sebastian. Just because. 

Tarot life brought me TWO amazing classes, one on "Queering the Tarot" at The Future and a BRAND NEW course on "Sex & Tarot" at none other than The Smitten Kitten. My big announcement? DO NOT DESPAIR if you missed the first "Sex & Tarot"--it's happening again THIS month on September 16th at The Future. Sign up here--my queering class filled up quite nicely and I don't want you to miss this one too. PLUS if that date DOES NOT work for you, I'll be teaching not one, not two, but THREE classes at my beloved Eye of Horus this fall & winter. One for 101 newbies, a Queering the Tarot, and a Sex & Tarot. Check it out! 

Theatre life was a lot of prep for this month & my December show. Nothing thrilling to report about the work I've already done, but uh, you're not gonna wanna miss Drunk Queer HIstory on the 26th. Grab your tickets NOW! 

Writer life was my safe space this month. I got to review and feature a lot of cool events here, and I'm still going strong over here. I'm sitting on some potential big news, and getting a lot of storytelling pieces done in my free time (so if you like stories about illegal boat hopping or lizard rectums, hit me up). 

From Two Harbors, MN. Over Iona's Beach. 

Non-work life took a hit for most of the month as a re-designed my Queering syllabus, created a Sex & Tarot syllabus, and stayed super, blissfully busy with tarot clients & behind the scenes theatre work. However, I insisted on taking my queerplatonic partner up to Duluth & Two Harbors MN last week and I am so unbelievably relieved to have ended such a busy month this way. We spent 2.5 days eating at some of our favorite restaurants, sitting on beaches, climbing up to cliffs and (literally) crying on said cliffs about how beautiful it all was. We also sipped tea until 3 AM with a darling college friend and got see Northern Lights Witch who gifted us a trip to Vikre Distillery for fancy cocktails.

I also spent a day earlier in August watching bad horror movies, eating Chinese food, and gifted one of my favorite people a fake llama head to decorate her wall with because birthdays are my favorite. 

That's it for me this month! Follow my multipassionate adventures in real time on my Instagram, or "like" my tarot page on Facebook for up to date info on where I'll be.

Blessed be, y'all!

What Do You Owe Yourself in Troubling Times?

I am not a political writer; I struggle a lot with imposter syndrome and feeling like my thoughts are "smart" enough to say publicly and wondering if my sadness comes from empathy or guilt. I have nothing new to say about Charlottesville. I have innovative to say about this administration. I have no idea what my message should be besides the usual ones of anger, horror, and sadness. 

But I do know that I care deeply about the marginalized, none of whom are safe now. While this act of terror was being planned in Charlottesville, local Nazi groups were hanging signs in my so-called "Blue oasis" of a city "warning" white straight men about the homosexual menace and encouraging people to come to a meeting to learn to fight back against us. It was disgusting and terrifying. I cried for a day and a half when I heard. The biggest threat these groups pose is still to people of color and the event in Charlottesville was an attempt to claim white, racist culture as valid and scare black and non-white people into silence. It is revolting, and it requires every ounce of strength we have to fight back. 

Which means that it also requires taking care of ourselves, without excuse, without getting "permission", and without regret. You can not fight if you're about to pass out.  Stop when you feel overwhelmed and ask yourself "What do I owe myself today?"

I absolutely owe my future self the knowledge that I stood on the right side of history and that I fought for my rights and those of people of color and disabled people. I owe myself the better world I am trying to build. But I also owe my current self a full night of rest, a glass of cold water when I'm thirsty, to spend that unexpected tip money on a cold press when I'm dragging. I owe myself the acceptance of the love others give me. I owe myself the peace that comes from saying no sometimes. If I don't give myself those things, who will? Most importantly, if I don't give myself the things I need, I will be useless when directly faced with a fight. Activist burnout is so real, and complete exhaustion is the number one reason my clients who proudly belong to marginalized communities come to see me. As pressing and urgent as creating as much change as quickly as possible is, you absolutely owe it to yourself not to burn out entirely. 

Maybe your needs are different. Maybe you don't sleep well anyway and need downtime instead. Maybe you hate coffee but need soda to keep you going. Regardless, you certainly deserve rest, to eat and drink well, to be loved. 

And then, when you are rested and restored, remember: We do not deserve for bigotry and hatred to win, and most of us will not be able to live with ourselves if we don't do our part. We owe ourselves the things that make us feel renewed.

We also owe ourselves this fight. 

My Pisces Soul Is Awake Now...

Hello friends & tarot lovers,

Back in February I made a promise to myself and set an intention to get back in touch with my Pisces soul. I knew it was still in there, lurking, occasionally forcing up hiccups of emotion but never really screaming to the surface. I am always me to an extent, but too much emotion wasted on the wrong people had buried this most essential part of me and after time to heal and breathe...I missed that me. I missed feeling sensual in my sheets in the morning because it was morning and I was there. I missed feeling truly connected with friends and partners when we snuggled or held each other. I missed being able to cry, sob, and freak out when I was upset. I missed feeling truly happy, joyful, connected during late night conversations or when witnessing brilliant art. 

So I made a water altar, and I've been loyal to it. I've forced myself to start journaling a certain amount of pages every 2-3 days (and they can't be business notes). I've tried to take a deep breathe and really be IN the moment when the time calls for it. I'm a better tarot reader than I was. I'm a more emotional, clingy, weird friend and family member than I was but no one has complained (quite the opposite, in fact). I have ideas for storytelling and personal stories to pitch to various outlets. I have so many ideas for the next show I'm directing. 

And yet...I wasn't prepared for the feelings of overwhelm and sadness that come with bad situations. My empathy guard falling has made me a better friend but I am kind of a mess some days. I know it's time now to strive for balance. What originally made me feel good and inspired and like ME again has made me have several days over the past few weeks of unfocused, scattered energy, irritability, and deep feelings of loss even when no real loss has occurred. Pisces me is here and restored and feelin' stuff. But I have to be able to work and function. 

I didn't take neuroatypicality into account when I set my intention. I didn't expect my Pisces soul floating to the surface to inspire my PTSD and anxiety to have their way with me. This was a magickal error on my part, having missed something I tell clients all the time: make your intentions crystal clear with no room for error. I like being sad, crying, and overanalyzing what went wrong in real time when something is wrong. I don't like a normal day completely knocking me off my feet. I don't like the outrage I felt at a slightly frustrating day yesterday. I don't like feeling completely isolated because the people I love aren't available right at the very moment I thought company might be nice, but I do so love my renewed and deepened love of those relationships.

As usual when at a loss, I turned to the tarot for guidance and answers:

The Slow Holler Tarot essentially confirms everything I just said, but like I tell clients: if this is not new information, it allows you to focus and cut out anything not mentioned here. So if I take the card's advice on enacting my vision more clearly, the problems with empathy and isolation will fall away on their own. My whole spread promises water stuff is good, heart stuff is great. I should be loving and celebrating and rejoicing in my rediscovered Pisces energy. The dissenting card is this Visionary of Knives--a stark and necessry reminder that I am all of the things a Pisces is...but I am also grounded, ambitious, and rooted by a deep need to create something big and bold for my community. Finding balance is about remembering my goals and placing them on the same pedestal as I do my heart and its needs. I love this top row. It is affirming it and just seeing it helps me blend the things I'm going through into something viable. This deck can be verbose and challenging when that is what I need. It can also be succint and affirming when all I need is permission.

It is the outgoing message though that surprised me and that I write all of this to deliver to you: Growth is slow, and takes time. It might hurt in the meantime. It will probably cause a hundred different areas of your life to throb and glow at once. This time will pass, and it will have been worth it. Keep growing.

Blessed be y'all!

Happy August, Kittens!

An example Lammas/Lughnasadh altar

Hey All!

Just a friendly witchcraft reminder: today/tomorrow (it varies per person who celebrates) is Lughnasadh or Lammas, the first of three harvest festivals this year. This sabbat is best used for: showing gratitude for the intentions you set for the year that ARE harvesting, and cutting/breaking old bad habits. With that in mind, I'm especially grateful for my adventures and shenanigans this year, an increased client docket + writing gig docket, an upcoming Gadfly event at one of my fave venues in town, and the two classes I'm teaching this month. What do I want to cut out or break? IMPOSTER SYNDROME. It's been 32 years. It's time to end that shit. I do cool things all the time, and the years I lost where due to PTSD and untreated chronic illness so why am I beating myself up for not hitting my stride at 25?! I've been trying to manifest confidence without ridding myself of the reasons it's blocked, so what a great way to focus my energy this Lammas!

In truth it still feels like it has been a rough year. That is a different post for a different day. Today, as we enter Lammas though, I am grateful for you, your support, and my life in general.

Now, here's where a solid work ethic, a deep lust for life and need for adventure, and witchcraft took me in July (and what they brought back to me!)

Me & my cards at Minnehaha Falls. Photo cred to Taylor Dobson.

TAROT LIFE

• I'm still SO excited in gearing up for my Queering the Tarot class at The Future and my Sex & Tarot class at The Smitten Kitten. Solidifying and prepping for that has been a big chunk of my July but it's so, so worth it.

• I saw a necessary and wonderful spike in e-mail readings in July. I'd love to keep that going, so I'll just politely leave this link here.

• I'm still at the Eye of Horus from 11:30-6 on Sundays and 3-9 on Wednesdays. I've been so happy (and busy) the past couple of months, so I'm strongly suggesting appointments if that's where you prefer to see me. If you prefer coming through just my business, that's great too! I'm reading Thurs-Saturday & Monday 1-6 P.M.

STUFF I WROTE

• The big scary thing was that I once again edited my storytelling piece about getting my period at a fancy, sterile-clean dinner party and performed it at The Big Fat Comedy Hour at Lush! This is one of my favorite shows and venues so I was terrified. I let my Avoidant Personality Disorder “win” a lot, and I'm glad I told it to shove it for this gig.

• New Queering the Tarot stuff as per usual! Here and here.

• I stepped back into my Multi-Passion Diary this month, talking about endings instead of beginnings. A lot of the focus of that Diary is what I'm working on NOW, what's happening NOW, and that's great. Closing an art gallery somewhat unexpectedly left me fairly introspective though.

THEATRE LIFE

• I was a little tired from closing the gallery, so I mostly just answered e-mail and stuff...but in reality that means Gadfly is SO SO close to announcing our fall shows (and maybe already did if you're on our newsletter. Muahaha.)

• I've also been doing this Queer Improv Jam at Huge Theater. It's such a welcoming group of people to play with. I love it so, so much. I definitely recommend a jam in your area or this one if you're queer and in the Twin Cities. No experience necessary, only participation. 

A still from Freeform's "The Bold Type," recommended below.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• My favorite writer is probably Catherynne Valente, and I acquired and gobbled up her Refrigerator Monologues so fast. It combined the prose and general brilliance of Valente with underrated and de-powered female characters from comic books. It's a quick read and holy wowza, it's a good one if you're into comics or fighting tropes like, at all.

• I really thought I would hate the board game Secret Hitler. I don't know why. I love board games. I love secrets. I love dark humor in my fight against fascism. Luckily those things won out--it's really fun if you're a board game person.

• I have The Bold Type fever--it's on Freeform or Hulu, and I'm completely hooked! If you love magazine industry, girl squads, or good old-fashioned relationship and career drama, this one's great. Part of the reason I love Supergirl so much is because it's an optimistic antidote to everything "edgy" right now, and as of now The Bold Type falls into that too.

Beautiful new secret spot near my house that I discovered with my sister.

OTHER SHENANIGANS

• I've always known one of my best friends in Minneapolis has a pool for use at his apartment building, but I don't think I really UNDERSTOOD how beautiful that makes summer until the past couple of weeks.

• Nothing makes you appreciate the large mid-sized city you navigate every day like having someone come from out of town. My siblings are my favorite people on the planet other than my queerplatonic partner. Hands down. Some people identify as a mom or a dad or a loner. I am, and have always been, and will probably always be a Big Sis. Still, life is life and I don't get to see them nearly as often as I'd like. So the best nights of my 18 year old sister and I's week long adventure were her curled up on my couch geeking out about Harry Potter and bonding over deeper stuff with me. Yet the kid got me up hiking, sight seeing, going to the beach, shopping, and eating out every day and I was exhausted by the end but wouldn't trade a second of it. We also went to Milkjam and ordered the “All of Them” so that was pretty great too.

• TINY GOAT ADVENTURE. A farmer's market in Minneapolis had baby goats we could snuggle, so I called up squad and we snuggled SO MANY BABY GOATS. FOR SO LONG. It was the best evening.

Yeah, like I would talk about tiny goats and not show you one.

That's it for me this month friends! I hope your July was sunny and wonderful, and I hope your August is even better. I've got an action packed one that includes press credentials for a major theatre festival, the birthday of one of my dearest friends, another dog-sitting adventure, annoucing half of a theatre season, finishing my next e-book (come hell or high water!), teaching two classes, and a trip to Duluth to sit in or near the lake and actually breathe. I'm hoping and praying it also includes ordering this tarot deck and seeing Stevie Nicks in concert, but we'll see how things play out. Send good vibes for me though, and you'll get lotsa great Instagram pics of both! 

Blessed be y'all!

Better Late Than Never!

Hello all,

I am back for this blog's monthly Link Roundup; admittedly I'm about a week late but it's for a very good reason. My 18 year old sister came into visit from Ohio! She is the cutest, sweetest little human and I cut my workload down to "need this money now" work. I missed doing my other stuff though, so next time I'll get it all queued up before I have a visitor. 

Out adventuring with my Sister. Had to show her my river :)

Before we dive in, TWO quick announcements! People are getting excited about both of the workshops I'm doing in August which is getting me all kinds of excited (but also nervous). The first is a revamp and remount of my Queering the Tarot workshop at The Future on August 17th. The other JUST officially announces is a brand-new (but still totally in my wheelhouse) Sex & Tarot course at The Smitten Kitten! Luckily for you, Queering the Tarot is sliding scale starting at just $15, and Sex & Tarot is FREE to you! Which means you could potentially take two radical tarot classes that weekend for just $15, and that actually seems like a pretty sweet deal to me!

Now, on to radical things OTHER people are writing and doing! 

Politics & Resistance

• If you want a quick breakdown on what's going on with that BS Department of Justice statement that LGB people aren't covered under Title VII, Autostraddle has you covered.
• There's some pretty important legislation being discussed about the non-profit sector too. It's easy to be overwhelmed right now, so this was easy to miss. 
• A Lithub personal essay/book review about being torn between queer and Southern identity, plus the books he covers sound like important reads too.
• Why IS Hyperfemininity Expected of Fat Girls? This one practically garnered applause from me.
• I should probably just have a permalink list somewhere to all of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's writing, and her Bitch articles have been on point lately. I especially loved "A Modest Proposal For a Fair Trade Emotional Labor Economy (Centered By Disabled, Femme of Color, Working Class/Poor Genius)". 
• On Black Lives Matter, Queer Identity, and Appalachia. 
• Lisa Frank Body Positivity is not as cool as it sounds. This is a good read though.
• Prison Reform is one of the most important issues to me that never gets talked about. The way our society dehumanizes and traumatizes inmates, many of whom are in for minor crimes or no real reason at all, physically makes me ill. This piece talks about the juvenile system and why it's reform is a necessary queer issue. 

Tarot & Witchery

• This has been shared around a bit in metaphysical circles, but just in case you missed it: "Astrology of the Stonewall Riots" is as cool as it sounds. 
• Asali Earthwork regularly blows me away with her writing and witchery. This month I bookmarked both her review of The Personal Space Tarot and this so-necessary piece about mental health and witchcraft. The review is a really great example of a review and discusses tarot and the deck in depth. The personal piece spoke to me so deeply and is every bit as brave and beautiful as the title suggests. As a bonus, head over to her shop and snag some tea because it is delicious.
• Dior is making Motherpeace Tarot inspired clothes now, and Vogue has the scoop! I completely nerded out when I saw this. 
• "See the cripple dance" is ALWAYS one of my favorite Little Red Tarot columns, but this one on the Seven of Cups hit really deeply for this PTSD-trodden, chronically ill queer.
• Also from Little Red: a super easy, informative guide to snagging the best crystals for spiritual fatigue.
• I'm never going to stop posting about representation in the spiritual community and why it matters. I'm also never gonna stop linking back to radical writers of color highlighting the issues better than I ever could. 

Writing & Business

• I love peering into people's personal work processes, and Benebell Wen's look at promotional tactics, what worked, and what didn't was great insight with useful information AND things that won't work for everyone but were still fun to read.
• In Minneapolis everyone has a Prince AND a Bob Dylan story; in any case Seth Godin went somewhere I didn't quite expect with this one. 
• This really applies to all types of writing and made me laugh a lot. Here's "How Not To Write A Play."
• Y'all know by now how much I adore Theresa Reed, especially her "Soul Propietor" series. This one on how you want to feel in your business is especially good. 
• A cute cartoon about job and gig hunting that everyone should see. It'll take you four seconds but it's good!
• I talk about "Money Dates" a lot and how they've changed my life and both of my businesses, but it never occurred to me to share this primer from Bari Tessler herself with you. So...here you go!

A picture of Sir Didymus to break up the monotony of text. 

Theatre & Art

• "A Collective Call Against Critical Bias" is a wonderful start to important conversations about arts criticism and where we drawn the line, and features goodies like: "As female artists and academics…we have dedicated our careers…to dismantling discriminatory structures and practices in theater, and the criticism this year is so blatantly prejudicial that we felt compelled to collectively author an editorial that both documents the problem and puts it in an historical context."
• There's a new series at the Twin Cities Arts Reader entitled "The Curmudgeon" about all the ways arts organizations are NOT actually helping the press help them. It sounds heady but it's actually really easy to access information about how to market shows better. 
• I was so happy and surprised when I saw my friend Shannon on one of my favorite blogs today. Shannon runs Uprising Theatre Company, is a fantastic writer in his own right, and oh yeah, is a transgender Priest! 
• Sometimes the title does the talking for us, like in "The Necessity of Diverse Voices in Theatre Regarding Disability and Difference."

All The Other Things I Love and Thought You Might Too

• I was obsessed with Poison Ivy as a child. No, not the Batman character I'm still in love with, the other one. The movie starring Drew Barrymore. I guess I wasn't alone and this revisit from Dazed was written wonderfully. 
• Andi Grace gets real at Little Red Tarot about what she's been through lately, and tells us what she's learned living in a van about boundaries and letting go. This one was truly beautiful.
• One of my biggest flaws is that I'm a jealous friend. I will love you deeply and unconditionally. I will want nothing but the best for you. I will also be unbelievably jealous and feel incredibly stupid voicing that to you. So I was relieved to find an actual good article addressing this jealousy and it's roots.
• An oldie but a goodie came back up in my feed the other day--an absolutely side-splitting teardown of Goodnight Moon. 

That's it for me y'all! Blessed be.

Multi-Passion Diary: Well, I RAN An Art Gallery

Hello all!

I'm still working and hammering out what I want this column to be, but I think for now it's both a good place to find out about other solo entrepreneurs and the balls they're juggling while exploring some personal blogging too. Today felt like a more personal day for one big reason: I just closed an art gallery.

Now, for those just tuning into my blog perhaps for the first time, in addition to doing tarot and writing I run a theatre company called Gadfly Theatre Productions that does queer and feminist work. Sometime last year we started aching for our own space, and it turns out, a good friend of mine decided to buy a restaurant, which means she needed someone to take over her lease at a popular small art gallery. The space was ideal for rehearsals, staged readings, and open mics. It was a wonderful creative found space for our mainstage shows. We got to rent out the space for low cost to other marginalized artist and I always felt so good and aligned handing out the door code to renters. Gadfly made four really stellar events of our own in the space, and we partnered with other creators to make their dreams come true too. Longtime Gadfly fans had an amazing time knowing where to find our provocative work.  Gadfly is meant to be a theatre company that has four walls. (I tried to make a pun here about the fourth wall. It didn't work.) My business partner and I are meant to run a space. 

My cutie pie business partner and favorite human goofing off as we cleaned up the space one day.

So no one was more surprised than us when we decided to shutter it suddenly in late June, with a move out date only two weeks later. The "what happened" isn't important for the purposes of this blog, but the whole sudden move out process moved around a bunch of stuff in my soul, and these are the reminders and lessons I felt fit to share. 

• Holy wow, stop and take stock of your growth once in awhile. Manny (my business partner) and I just kind of decided to get a space, and then one fell into our laps. There's a whole bunch of spiritual sentiment wrapped up in that too (manifesting works y'all), but the main takeaway was this: For eight years Manny and I have worked almost every day creating work for this company. We have worked hard, and we have rarely complained about how hard we work at this for as little money as we do. We don't even really get that exhausted doing it. We love this company. We love theatre itself. We love the love and community our work creates, and we loved moving that into a space. So it never occurred to us that paying bills in the space might be hard (we had one hiccup but it was otherwise totally fine.) It never occurred to us that scheduling snafus, managing events we didn't produce, and a whole list of other things might drag us down (it didn't). We worked hard and steadily, and when it felt right we moved into a space. As I was moving physical objects out of the gallery I realized how silly it was that we never took a moment to be proud of ourselves for such a huge step forward.
  
  It's a big deal to successfully run a space and create the relationships we did. I don't think I ever would have realized that without such a sudden move out, and it's an incredible reminder to look at how I've grown in the other areas of my life. I have two steady writing gigs, a steady tarot gig, and my writing and readings get better every day. I'm teaching tarot now. I mostly buy food I have to cook at the grocery store. I listen when my chronically ill body is screaming for a break. I have open, painful but real conversations with friends and family when they hurt me or I hurt them. There are so, so many ways I have grown exponentially in the past couple of years. Yet I have never fully stopped, looked around, and said "Wow, good job me" until after the gallery move out. Everyone reading--once you're done, think through where you were a year ago and where you are now. I promise you've moved forward. Congratulate yourself on growing. 
   
• Know when an experiment is over. A year ago I was SURE I wanted a space for Gadfly to call their own in. I didn't. What I wanted was to find out if we were capable of running an arts space. I wanted to know what that would look like artistically and fiscally. I wanted an experiment. I figured that out pretty quickly upon moving in after a couple of fiascos with keys and doors being unlocked. Now? I am 1,000% positive that I want a space for Gadfly to call their own--but it took realizing it was time to step away from THIS space at THIS moment in time to realize that A) this experiment was successful, but it's over, and B) I was absolutely right about us needing a space to run. There are lots of reasons to do big, audacious things with your life. Do not convince yourself that each bold step is THE step or is meant to last forever. Sometimes an experiment is just an experiment. Your job is to know when it's done. 
   
• Know when something is and is not for you. I can not stress this enough. While it seems like Manny and I act fast sometimes, we never do anything without at least three in depth conversations and a night or two of sleep between each one. We think through every detail, every pro and con, every possible outcome to our so-called hasty decisions. The biggest thing we weigh is "what about this are we meant to work with, and what are we meant to let go of?" A lot of letting go of the gallery came down to this example (which was one of many factors in the decision): we are a wildly inclusive company, but the bathroom in this building was down a flight of stairs. There were days my arthritis was so bad I would buy a $6 coffee next door so that I could use their bathroom and avoid stairs. If the artistic director of a company can not use it's restroom, that is not acceptible, accessibility-wise. This means people in wheelchairs, with mobility issues, or have to use a restroom urgently and suddenly could not comfortably come to our shows. This was a huge problem, and my guilt over the situation increased as our popularity in the space grew. So running a space is definitely for us. Running a space without easy restroom access is not. 
  
  This lesson can and has been applied over other areas of my life even since shutting down the space. Certain kind of client questions are not for me, and I can refer them to someone else when they come up. That doesn't mean I'm not a superb reader, it just means I know I'm not best suited to some questions. As much as we hate to admit it, a lot of our happiness does come down to the choices we are making. I am in no way shutting down how hard mental and physical illness, societal oppression, or actually toxic situations make our life. Please note I said A LOT of our happiness comes from our decisions, not all of it. My advice for ANY choice is to get super clear on what works for you and what doesn't first.
   
• I would also add to the above note, especially since I did mention external pressures and pain: know when you're making a choice. Full disclosure? We did have some expected funding fall through, and that was a factor in making the decision to close the gallery. It was not, however, THE decision making factor.  Shutting down the space was 100% our choice. We had enough resources and renters to keep going, and it was an incredibly hard decision to reach. One message that keeps coming to me spiritually is one to own my choices, and acknowledge when I am able to make one. In all of my careers it is sometimes easy to feel like things have been thrust upon me, but that isn't the reality nearly as often as I would like it to be. Usually I am given a choice. Figure out what the choice or decision is, and be aware you are making it.
   
• Be grateful. Be grateful. Be grateful. This gallery, started by a dear, dear friend of mine was incredibly special. I met my current group of friends that I see the most and consider the closest there, long before it was mine. I fell desperately in love, and then harshly, quickly, angrily out of love in this space. It has been an unendingly vocal space about shaping my art and my life. I created really magical artwork there, and so did so many other fabulous people. I am sentimental to a fault and I had a three day sadness spiral about the space dissipating. But now I'm just so ecstaticly happy that I got to be a part of it and a curator for it, even for the small space in time that it was. There is a not an area of my life where I can slack off on gratitude right now--and that alone, is more than enough reason for the gratitude itself.
   
• Look ahead. There is so much New Age philosophy about staying present, and it's not wrong. Until you can look around and enjoy where you are, you probably aren't going to move forward in leaps and bounds. However, the way you close an experiment is by looking into your actual future. Gadfly is building a proper, working board of directors and otherwise taking it easy for the year outside of producing events. In approximately one year we'll start looking for a semi-permanent space. If those plans weren't in place before we made this decision, who knows how long we would have waffled or if we would even have made the right decision. There is no use staring into the future and hoping for better without enjoying the work you're doing to get there. There's also no use in pretending the future doesn't exist. 

That's it for me and the Multi-Passion Diary today y'all! Sending so much love and light until next time.

Blessed be.

Radical Readers: An Interview Series (Starting With J. Ryan of Queer Street Tarot)

Deck featured is The Tarot of the Silicon Dawn by Egypt Urnash

Welcome to “Radical Readers”, a (hopefully) ongoing new series where I interview professional tarot card readers (and other metaphysical practitioners who are also activists, advocates, or otherwise living and practicing their craft from the margins.

My first Radical interview was really fun for me; J. Ryan of Queer Street Tarot and I met when I was looking for readers for a Pride event last summer. He was thrilled to step in and read for LGBTQ+ seekers and as a bonus we became fast friends. His frank tarot reading style won me over as a reader, and his unexpected sense of humor has kept us tight as friends. J. Ryan works full-time in the metaphysical publishing field and runs Queer Street Tarot. Though J. is currently taking some time away from content creation to design some tarot decks and build his client base, you can catch the archive of really great personal essays and tarot musings here.

Did you learn tarot or witchcraft with your queer identity and radical politic in mind?

I have been reading for fourteen years. My practice has always revolved around my identity as a gay man since I first used the cards to come out and understand myself. This led me to explore Wicca early on and pursue a practice in witchcraft. I don’t actively use spellwork as something I offer to clients but it plays a pretty serious role in my daily life outside of tarot clientele. That has changed over time and let me to explore both my familial roots and their associations with witchcraft.

We seem to be in a much more tumultous time politically than when you started your practice. Has that affected your attitude towards tarot or your Pagan practice? Do you aim any readings/spells/etc. at collective healing or liberation?

Due to the current times we are now facing, I find myself using the cards to see where we are headed as a nation or what can be done on a personal level to be better to those around me when they need me. A lot of my magical and spiritual practice doesn’t use spellwork without using a practical approach as well. The change has to come internally and so I practice a lot of life coaching techniques that then provide the inspiration for whatever spellwork serves as the follow up. I will focus on giving people tools that they can use either small scale at home or larger scale in their communities. That is something I think will really inspire change; communities acting together as one entity to make the changes they need to thrive in this world.

J. Ryan, The Wild Unkown Tarot and a night out.

Are there other intersections of oppression besides sexual identity that you live with that affect your reading style?

It’s harder for me to enter into a lot discussions with people when it comes to social justice issues because another ongoing aspect of my life that has affected my reads has been mental health. I live with both depression and anxiety and have felt how draining it can be to see so much going on around you and feel unable to affect much change at the time. That being said, I am extremely sensitive to people and often I have found that there are people who come into every situation with a sense of anger, rage, and misplace that emotion onto something small and I’ve seen it in some clients. It can be empowering, it can feel righteous but it’s not going to bring a community together unfortunately. A lot of my practice, both magical and non, tries to address this and diffuse any unproductive emotional responses and deliver tools that can be productive.

Anything else you want us to know about your spiritual or activist life?

In discussions with my partner, he and I often talk about the fact that a lot of universities don’t focus on restorative justice, rather they focus on the other kinds of social justice approaches. This eliminates a lot of conversations that need to take place; not that could take place but that need to take place. It is my hope that the magical/tarot/social justice communities do something to bring the focus to restorative justice rather than anything that is going to make the conversation a continuation of the systemically oppressive us vs. them that it has been, especially on social media.

Thanks so much J. Ryan! You can find him on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook in addition to his website if you want to find out more.

That's A Wrap on June!

Happy July, friends!

This June we saw Litha, a summer Sabbat best used for thanks and resets. My closest friends and I did a simple spell with roses, the lake, and our deepest wishes. The lake was as wonderful as she should be and the city's reflection reminded us we were home. That is my place to reset: a large body of water, still night air, and lots of thanks to give. Before we made our wishes we thanked our dieties and spiritual energies for the gifts we already had that would enable this next phase of our lives. I am so grateful for my friends and loved ones, my own love of love, my work ethic, my careers, and my magick and gods themselves. I needed room and time for thanks as much as I needed the clarity or the energetic reset. One of my friends bought the most beautiful light purple roses to make our wishes on, and we watched them float away in the water as we breathed in hope and renewal. It was perfect for anytime, but the best Litha I think I've ever had.

So...what else was I up to this June? Uh...kind of a lot.

Tarot Stuffs!

• As mentioned in my last end-of-month post, I have not one, but THREE classes lined up for August and September at various venues! I can officially reveal that on August 17th, I will be revamping my Queering the Tarot class at The Future, a really quirky, unique, very Minneapolis witch store and event center. You can reserve your seat here. I'm pumped. The OTHER two classes will both be...Sex & Tarot! I'm so excited to take my joyfully slutty view of the tarot and teach others to read that way. I'm premiering this one at The Smitten Kitten on August 20th (and then moving it to the Future). It's FREE at the Kitten, so definitely save the date!!!

• I'm still at the Eye of Horus from 11:30-6 on Sundays and 3-9 on Wednesdays. I've been so happy (and busy) the past couple of months, so I'm strongly suggesting appointments if that's where you prefer to read for me.

• If you prefer coming through just my business, that's great too! I'm reading Thurs-Sunday 1-6 P.M. And Monday 1-6 P.M. Or, and the reason I'm writing this when it's clearly visible elsewhere on my site, is that I've been working hard to promote my e-mail reading service and I've been doing some really wonderful readings that way. E-mail snow.cassandra@gmail.com if you're interested.

Things I Wrote

• My review of the radical Urban Tarot by Robin Scott is up at Little Red Tarot. I got some great feedback from the deck creator herself and am so tickled with this deck. If you go back a little deeper on the site, you can also get some Queering the Tarot action.

• Over at Thecolu.mn I'm still covering Queer Arts Must Sees in Minneapolis, giving a needed spotlight to worthy artists, and advancing the Queering the Tarot series.

• Right here on my own blog I wrote another handy, easy tip for learning tarot and let my friend Abbie from Northern Lights Witch take over my Multi-Passion Diaries for the month.

Theatre Life

Photo courtesy of Jessi Hiemer/ @gluestickgeek on Instagram

Okay, so this is where most of my life got away from me this month. In fact, it doesn't even deserve separate bullet points because it was a wild ride where Gadfly was concerned and it's all connected. First, we DID very successfully open and close our annual one-act festival. My play was HILARIOUS, and I'm so proud of everyone's work. The tech week process though? Kinda rough tbh. Our air conditioner broke, we had an actor just straight up not show up for tech rehearsals, and we were tech-ing six shows, some of them fairly artsy, with only a week to do it. You know, with no A.C. And a missing actor. Yet the festival was marvelous, all actors were accounted for during performance, and we closed on a very full, happy audience. Then...as a company, we made a tough, sudden decision. We had applied for several major grants for placemaking, and when they all failed to come through, we decided to let the lease on our art gallery run out instead of battling with another rent increase while still having a non-accessible restroom. This decision also meant a very, very fast turnaround to get out, and basically I've spent the last week cleaning an art gallery. This has been a really emotional turn and change in my life. A very good friend used to run the space, and we took over her lease. It's been queer run for six years. It's been magic this whole time. I met my current closest group of friends there. I fell in and out of love incredibly hard each way in this gallery. I created some of the best work of my life. I made some of the most important, notable connections of my personal and professional life in this gallery. It was a heartbreaking decision that we didn't take lightly. I am hopeful for these next steps. We ended on an incredibly high note. The support as we close up the gallery has been almost overwhelming. My business partner and I are more platonically in love than ever before. We will find a new space--the right space, in the right time. In the meantime? Well, season announcements are coming soon and it's going to be a breathtaking season of queer, feminist art. It's going to be one of our most rad seasons to date, and I'm antsy to reveal info soon...not immediately, but soon.

Recommendations

• Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times is the first book in a long time that took me a long time to finish because I wanted to ruminate and absorb it in a way that was as unique as the book is. I can not recommend it enough to activists who love good prose.

• J. Selby's in St. Paul has some of the best vegan food I have ever had in my life. I do eat mostly vegan, but this was truly special. Half comfort food, half gourmet, all delicious.

• Manny and I dealt with our moving day blues for the Gallery by heading to Daddy: A Queer Variety Show and Dance Night, expecting friends and fun. We got those things, but it was also one of the most affirming, queer, warm spaces we've been in in a long time. Normally one of us likes an event more than the other, but we both felt totally at home and totally enthralled. They're doing it again on Thursday, August 10th at the Icehouse. It's so good. Don't miss it if you're a Twin Cities queer!

Other Shenanigans

• My queerplatonic partner and I reached total queerplatonic partner peak this month as we spent our weekly date night on a beach eating pizza and laughing about all the bad sex we've each had with romantic and sexual partners. After a sad day of starting the gallery exit, it was the best thing we could've done for ourselves. Whoever you love or need the most right now, grab a pizza and a beach and hunker down for the night. You'll be transformed.

• Northern Spark, Stone Arch Festival, and in spite of my issues with it this year, Pride all provided what I needed at the time: bonding with friends I already love, some quality solo time, and connecting with people from my community I hadn't seen in awhile, in respective order.

• My darling friend Kate who runs the 318 Cafe did a really sweet gig for charity where she sang with her husband, and then several of our friends joined in for a few songs, and eventually her youngest child took the stage and blew us away with her voice and ukulele skills. It was music and love and giggles all around.

• Goose teenagers at the park. Goose. Teenagers. At. The. Park. I was in love. Until they all started heading towards me at once and then I was kind of scared. But still in love.

That's a wrap for me on a wild, somewhat unpredictable but ultimately beautiful month. This July I'm dog-sitting for a week, then my AMAZING sister is coming down for a week, and in the meantime I've got pieces to write, cards to read, and art to get set on dates and locations. I'm ending the month like I started it: bursting with love and gratitude.

Blessed be, y'all!

My Pride Plans, Litha Spell & Fave Links As Of Late

Happy Pride Month (& weekend for many of us,) y'all!

I started the week on a bit of a downer. My super queer, radical theatre company decided to let our lease go for the art gallery we've been running, primarily because of the disconnect between accessibility and pricing on the space. We've grown a lot in the space though, and having a place where people could find us made our business a million times better so this was a hard decision and is a very sad (although necessary) decision. It does feel empowering to know we could have kept going in the space. We were doing well with renters, and even if we increased rates a little we would have been fine--but there are key issues in the space itself and it just wasn't the best place to pour our resources into anymore. That decision and announcement felt like a rough start to Pride BUT we've got lots of great queer art planned for next season, and it is going to be a fabulous weekend regardless. One of my favorite theatres is running Queertopia 2017 Revolting Bodies * Beyond Flesh. It's always a mind-blowing experience that I'm hoping to catch. I always have very mixed feelings about the actual Pride festival in the park. I have trouble stomaching major corporations that just pulled out of funding major arts events to err on the side of conservatism tabling like they're so radical and queer friendly. This year though, Twin Cities Pride has scaled back on police presence in the wake of the heartbreaking Philando Castile verdict as much as they legally can. Tons of my friends are performing on various stages throughout the festival. I might even be jumping in for a quick improv set on Saturday. On top of that I've got two great shows to see outside of Pride: The Funny by Raw Sugar and Tease by Little Lifeboats. Not Pride related but featuring tons of LGBTQ+ artists and perspectives. I'll be ending the week then on notes that feel exciting and gay and radical as humanly possible, and I am grateful for that. 

I'm feeling even more excited and hopeful after my Litha ritual with my closest friends last night. We had a private spot in a wooded area, a secret beach, and a beautiful bouquet of roses to wish on & with. It was the witchiest I've felt in awhile, and I'm so full of love and thanks for the people in my life and the trajectory my life seems to be on. We created beautiful magick, both aesthetically and spiritually.

I've stayed off the internet more than usual over the past couple of weeks. Some of that was related to being so on-the-go busy as opposed to "I have a lot of clients coming in and deadlines coming up" busy that I couldn't physically stare at the internet a lot. Some of it was to save myself energy. I've been watching the news, reading personal Twitter accounts, and taking part in direct action and creations instead of reading endless thinkpiece about how screwed up everything is. I've been taking friends to lunch to celebrate grad school graduations and birthdays instead of voraciously reading their stuff online (though I do keep up). So we're a little quicker today for the monthly link round-up. I also just felt like the series was a little too lengthy the past couple of times, so I wanted it to be quicker for y'all too. I did read some really fabulous things though, so here are some of my favorite links from the end of May and June.

On Resistance and Transformation
Pollen Midwest has a wonderful piece on successfully confronting white supremacy in the workplace that originated on the Twin Cities Daily Planet. 

Teen Vogue continues to crush it with their take on lack of police accountability. 

Some bittersweet musings on Pride that I relate to a gajillion percent. 

One of the number one ways to create substantial change is to VOTE. AND in these next few elections, there's a couple of candidates worth your attention. Teen Vogue talks to four trans candidates running for office. (Two of them in my city and looking good to win!)

Alternatively, one of the reasons I'm losing even more faith in the system. Democrats don't care as much about pro-life legislation as they used to. Meanwhile I continue screaming into the abyss.

Tarot & Magick
There are a lot of scam "psychics" out there, and I do feel myself defending my field and my craft a lot. But what happens when you, as a tarot reader (or any small entrepreneur) get scammed?

HUGE SOLAR ECLIPSE IS COMING AND I'M BESIDE MYSELF. 

Struggling to learn to read tarot? Jess Carlson has some lovely tips for you.

Similarly, Jessi Huntenberg talks about How to Give Awesome Tarot Readings here.

Over at The Tarot Lady, tarot deck creators delve into their creative processes for us.

If you're having trouble at work, Llewellyn has a great list of protective crystals to utilize.

Another easy to follow list, this time from The Witch of Lupine Hollow, and on starting your first magickal toolkit!

Getting Your Life Together
Zen Habits is a great beginner's guide to simplifying your life and incorporating Eastern philosophy in. This guide to "How to Love Your Dark Side" touched on a lot of recent conversations I've been having lately. 

Sarah Von Bargen has a frank post about the choices you make (and how they create the life you lead) here. 

I love quick quote round-ups and I love business advice from people who. have. been. there. This list of launch lessons from When I Grow Up Coach is both, and features some really high profile bloggers and solopreneurs.

Another great Tarot Lady post, this time on her writing process. This one is pretty juicy and full of tidbits for your own writing process. 

Seth Godin on why you're missing out if you're only hitting greatest hits lists.

Queer Lifestyle (IE Not Politics)
My beloved Wonder Woman's queer history. (Seriously how are constant references to Sappho even considered coded?!)

The Mary Sue pays homage to five great bisexual TV characters from nerd-dom here.

David Sedaris has a new book I haven't bought yet, primarily because I need paperback for big, heavy books. Thanks, arthritis. But here's a lovely Q&A with him leading up to that.

Theatre & Art
If Black Lives Matter, why aren't you disrupting the narrative of white supremacy better? A scathing, important piece from Bitter Gertrude.

I loved this article from Howlround on your basic job as a director: getting out of the way. 

Of Misc. Interest
I adore Halsey not only for her music, but because of her brazen conversations about bipolar disorder, being bisexual, and living an openly feminist life. Here's a great convo between her and complete and utter idol Debbie Harry. 

A thing I relate too way too much from Jenny Lawson: "I'm less sick than before, but I'm also less than I was before."

One of the best things on veganism I've read in awhile. (I identify as "mostly vegan".)

Posters & art for the upcoming Black Panther movie are awe-striking. But some of y'all had the absolute most wrong response to them.

An in-depth history of advice columns and our obsession with them. I loved this!

AND the absolute only piece I read this month that it is fitting or appropriate to end my post today with: Mermaids are Cruel Bloodthirsty Succubbi...and Why That's A Good Thing.

That's it for me y'all! Have a good one! 

Blessed be.

Tarot Learning Tip: Which Way Do Your Faces Face?

Hello loves!

I'm back with another quick tip for learning and bonding with your tarot deck. Admittedly, today's trick is one that only works if some of your cards have faces—but any faces will apply (human, animal, robot).

As I teach and write about tarot, I always emphasize the importance of paying close attention and looking for details in the images in the cards. One such detail: in your cards that have figures who have faces, look for two things. 1) Which way is the face facing? & 2) Which way are the figure's eyes facing?

There's two facets to this. One is in finding the deepest, most detailed information about your tarot cards while you're still learning them. Spread your cards out in order. Most tarot decks that feature faces will have a ton of them in the Major Arcana, so that's our best best for a starting point and the one I'll use as an example, but I do recommend going through by suit and doing the same thing. So, now that they're laid out—which way are the faces and then eyes facing? What does this tell you personally about the cards and their intentions?

For example, in this take on The Fool from Barbara Moore's Book of Shadows As Above, The Summerlands shows someones looking away from the entire rest of the deck. What could that mean? Use your knowledge of The Fool (new ventures, new chapter, stepping into something different but also maybe a little naïve or, ahem, foolish). Is this figure stepping into the Summerlands, the afterlife, the next major karmic chapter in their life turning their back on the deck to keep the surprise alive? To avoid facing the realities coming their way? Or just to truly live and bask in that new vibe and energy? It's probably all three, but look at the eyes too—facing up towards the sky. This card looks up, not down, faces the magic they're creating but not the other stuff about to set in.

Another example is our very next card—the High Priestess is usually looking straight ahead, not towards or away from any of the other cards. This means this card is completely focused on the querent who pulls Her. She's trying to peer into your soul and dig at that deep access. She's completely unconcerned with what's going on around her, she just wants to see YOU, and as such this card is a firm reminder that you have the answers and have what you need, and that maybe you just need to dig deeper to find it. In the picture, we see a slightly different take on her too—the Sorceress from D.J. Conway's Shapeshifter Tarot. She's actually looking slightly to the majority of the rest of the cards. A sorceress is a take on, but is not a direct synonym for a High Priestess. So is this Sorceress casting a spell to make the rest of the Fool's Journey unfold? It sure seems that way.

A final example before we move on comes from later in the Major Arcana. The Star or Stars is a card of renewal and of hope and of faith--but I've also long looked at it as a card of knowing you have enough resources and are contributing resources back to the Universe too. It's a card of reciprocity and universal love and trust. So in the examples below, where are the women in the Star card looking? They're looking right at the water, the symbol of healing, the resource in question. Or perhaps the one from the Book of Shadows So Below is looking at her family and the fun scene they've created together. In short, she's looking at the world and life she's created but that she gets so much back from. Her eyes then too don't leave the scene. In Egypt Urnash's Tarot of the Silicon Dawn we don't see her eyes, per se. But they too are focused on what she's giving and pouring out.

Once you have a handle on how face & eye placement affects your cards overall, it's time to start mixing them into readings. I've moved on to using all of the cards, and let's take a look at the very strong statement made the face and eye placement in the Six and Eight of Wands when pulled together from Siolo Thompson's Linestrider Tarot. The Man or Statue depending on your interpretation in the Six of Wands is looking right at the slightly nervous deer in the Eight of Wands who is trying to look back without being noticed. This deer is trying to move straight along their path but is looking back to a safer or more easily victorious time. Looking further, if the Six of Wands is a card of victory and triumph and the Eight is a card of very excitable but fast, often intimidating energy then it stands to reason that we are seeking triumph and control over our schedules. We might not be comfortable with the fast pace we are moving in, or it could be an assurance that we are in control and the things we're wanting to be triumphant about are happening—just maybe a little quicker than we are comfortable with. In that case the advice might be to look back to another time when you were moving quickly, seemingly too quickly, but ending up conquering something you'd been working towards for a long time.

From the Prisma Visions Tarot pictured above, we have the Tower—a card of disaster, of everything we hold dear being torn down, of things being taken away from us. We also see the Seven of Wands, which can indicate a need to stand up for ourself and, from the image at hand, move forward no matter how rashly and confusingly we must do it. Yet sitting in the middle is the Four of Chalices. This is a card of discontentment and dissatisfaction, of excessive emotions or woolgathering. Yet in this spread, there's no surprise as to the “why!” This little child's face is pointed right at The Tower and all of the things they've lost. Their eyes look right at the building about to topple and refuse to acknowledge that maybe life goes on after, or maybe they should stand up for themselves, or maybe, just maybe, it'll feel more liberating to move about with fewer resources. What a powerful statement and reading, and look how much of it came just because of how the kid's face and eyes are pointed!

There are oodles (a very scientific number) of ways to maximize your time learning your tarot deck—this is just one, but can lead you to others. Thinking about face placement can lead you to think about body language. Thinking about body language can get you to look closer. Looking closer can tell all kinds of new stories with any tarot deck. So go forth, let they “eyes” have it (SORRY FOR THIS PUN. I AM THE WORST), and dig deeper with your tarot deck every chance you get.

Blessed be, y'all!

Multi-Passion Diaries: A Witch Infiltrates the Public Policy Field

Hello all! Welcome back to my ongoing Multi-Passion Diaries where I explore what it's like to be a theatre making, tarot card-slinging, freelance writing entrepreneur and general adventurous but introverted human in today's world. I also host guest blogs, which is what today is! E-mail snow.cassandra@gmail.com if you're interested in contributing.

I'm so, so excited about our guest blogger today. Abbie from Northern Lights Witch is a close friend of mine (she even crashed in my spare bedroom for awhile when her job life got weird) who runs a really great witch business while managing a career in Public Policy.  Read all about how she juggles the two and what she's learning along the way. 

I have always, always been a multipassionate. When I was a child, I wanted to be both a journalist, and an artist, and also I wanted to be a biologist. All at the same time. In high school, I spent my early mornings with the jazz band, worked hard to keep my grades up and my writing top-notch, and spent the evenings in rehearsal as an actress. I almost went to school to become a jazz musician, but decided during my senior year that I would rather be a writer. By the end of my senior year, I had decided that the best way I could make a difference in the world was to become a human rights lawyer.

Spoiler alert: I am none of those things now.

I don’t play in a band, I don’t work for a newspaper, and I don’t have a law degree.

What I DO have is a Master’s in Public Policy, with a part-time job working on water policy and mining in Northern Minnesota, and a tarot business.

I miss the arts. I miss playing music – when I listen to music, I yearn to play, and when I try to play I’m frustrated that it’s not as easy as it once was. I miss performing. But I am able to write in all of my careers. Writing is the constant that holds together all the pieces of me.

Recently, I wrote on my own blog (link to my multipassionate post) about the cycles that you go through as a multipassionate professional. It’s important to recognize that sometimes, when you’re balancing two (or more!) careers, you need to put more energy into one of them than the other. That doesn’t mean that you don’t still have those multiple careers – it just means that the balance has shifted somewhere different for a while.

For the last ten years, I have put almost all of my energy into my career in public policy. To an extent, it’s important to be creative in the field of public policy. It takes a deep level of analysis to take in all the information that you need, and to find new solutions to difficult social and environmental problems. But there isn’t that sense of freedom I crave.

Me with a dear friend at graduation

I started Northern Lights Witch while I was still seeking my Master’s degree, in large part because tarot was (is?) having a Moment and it’s been a part of my personal spiritual practice for over 12 years. But really: I needed an outlet where it was ok to talk about my understanding of the world in terms of intuition, rather than logic. I needed a space where I could deeply explore my identity as a witch, as well as write creatively about witchcraft and the Unseen parts of the world.

It was a rebellion against the strict career positioning necessary in a graduate program.

But as I’ve moved through both careers, I find that they really do inform one another in interesting ways. They are very different, and use different parts of my brain, but there are lessons to be learned that carry through both places.

1. Trust your goddamn intuition. As much as public policy is about logic, it is also about intuition. This is especially critical when communicating with decision makers and those who hold power. It’s more important to read between the lines, to read the body language rather than the words. Now, I am not a mind-reader and it’s important to give people the benefit of the doubt, but it is possible to pick up a lot from nonverbal communication. Those gut instincts? Critical.

2. Do. The. Work. When you’re working on legislative campaigns and issues, things move quickly. Sometimes, you’ll be asked to produce a policy memo in two days that needs to be researched in depth. I once wrote a policy brief that was 10 pages with 160+ individual citations in a week. I need to do a better job of translating this work ethic to my own tarot business, but I know that I have a capacity to produce top-notch work on a short timeline and with few resources.

3. Know when something is outside of your control. Reading tarot has made me keenly aware of forces that are greater than myself. The election of Donald Trump to the presidency, and the subsequent radical alt-right takeover at many other levels of governance, has taught me important lessons about playing defense. And a lot of the time, things are outside of my control – and so I need to know when to use my power and how to use my power to the greatest advantage. Witchcraft and tarot are both ways of exploring the unknown, ways of exploring your own power. It is far easier to influence policy for the better when you know what is and isn’t within your sphere of influence. It’s important to concentrate your energy where you will actually have power, instead of needlessly running into walls. Tarot helps me accept that which is not within my control, and can remind me when I’m not focusing well.

Going deep on a tarot reading

Tarot and public policy hone crossover skills – writing, intuition, communication, analysis – but they also hold particular tensions.

When I accepted my current job, I decided to have my birth chart read for the first time. I knew that I would be moving to a more rural community, and I had concerns about being “out” as a witch. She advised me that it’s important to first establish credibility as a kickass environmentalist, and then to mention that I’m “tarot-interested.” I still haven’t told my boss that I do tarot readings. I’m terrified that I will lose his respect – or fail to gain it.

And so I need to be careful about how open I am. My last name isn’t listed anywhere on my website, nor is my address. This has made it hard for me to fully throw my energy behind marketing, getting myself out there, and pitching podcasts and blogs. Not all positions within the field of public policy come with these politics – but navigating the field as a young person means I need to think critically about this. I need to establish credibility above anything right now.

Soon, I hope to have a position that will allow me to bring my full self to all aspects of my work. Until then, I must keep my witchcraft in shadow. But the lessons I learn from the tarot resonate through all aspects of my life, and make me a stronger advocate. No matter how open I am about them.

More About Abbie here, including bio and tarot info.