Hello beautiful people!
Lately I’ve been reflecting on my time at the Little Red Tarot community blog, which archived in October of 2019. Little Red Tarot was an absolutely breathtaking community of tarotists and witches, mostly queer, writing about tarot and witchcraft from our points of view as marginalized people. Being a columnist for this project meant so much to me. It spawned some of my best friendships (Hi Siri, Hi Asali), and led right to my book deal. Literally- I was contacted by my kind, wonderful editor at Weiser about turning Queering the Tarot into a book. Little Red Tarot, in addition to providing a really important platform, was also a wealth of knowledge about the topics at hand. I have not seen the breadth and diversity of this project in one place before or since. While Little Red Tarot (or LRT as many of us fondly call it) was scaled way back, our articles live forever in this archive.
A question I get from Patrons, social media followers and even friends still is “Hey, do you know if ____” is writing anywhere now? The _____ is almost always an LRT colleague. I decided to do a blog interview series asking THIS VERY question and updating everyone on where we as a team of writers are in our personal and professional practices.
What would this series even be without putting our fearless leader, Beth Maiden up first. Beth is one of the sweetest people I know, and genuinely operates from a place of generosity first & money will sort itself out. She has launched dozens of careers between former LRT writing opportunities and the visibility of her shop which stocks Indie queer, BIPOC & leftist decks. Many of these decks have gone on (or are in the process of going on) to be queer tarot household names like the Numinous Tarot or the Slow Holler Tarot (which is sadly out of print). That’s enough of my raving though - let’s hear from Beth in her own words now.
Beth, you’re our first interview in this series and I am so excited to have you. First tell us your pronouns & where you operate out of if you're comfortable.
Beth Maiden - she/her - Machynlleth, Wales, UK
Can you describe your own writing at LRT in your own words?
LRT began as my personal tarot blog, and I blogged there about my life for seven years. I wrote about the seasons, rituals, politics, friendship, love. I moved house seven times during those years, from northern England to the Scottish Highlands to Mid-Wales... I was sending out newsletters most weeks rounding up all the rad witchy queer and social justice resources I'd been moved by, mingled with new stuff on the LRT blog, info about writers, and stories from my own life. It was an absolute lifeline for me during at least two bouts of depression. Gathering in those stories and writers and devoting all my energy to building this platform for us all to share gave me purpose and helped me feel alive and in love and in community when I was struggling.
For me LRT was a space of community building. I LOVED sharing the platform. As new writers joined and shared their ideas and new readers jumped into the comments, I felt like we were a pioneering club of witchy QT/POC progressive tarot lovers - there weren't many spaces like that in the when LRT was first starting out, though I'm excited that things have changed a lot since then. As the audience grew in the early days, I also began responding to requests for more learning resources, posting lots of tarot tips, spreads, perspectives, tools, eventually creating the Alternative Tarot Course, which is still running and really popular :)
How has your practice or work shifted since the LRT Community Blog?
For all the joy in convening that space, I was also heavily addicted to work and spending allll my time on my laptop. My real life relationships suffered and so did my health (my right shoulder is still pretty fucked up), plus the shop I'd started on the side so I could get paid for this work was growing into its own thing and demanding attention, systems, care. I considered all kinds of things including a writers' co-op, but I could see burnout on the horizon and I knew I didn't have the capacity to hold that process, even though I think it would have been *amazing* and so cool to have done the co-op. Ending the community blog was an incredibly hard decision and I am still grieving it now, but it enabled me to make space for a sustainable livelihood, rooting into a new community where I intend to stay long term, and for deepening my own personal social justice and anti-racism work. Two years on from that, I've just made another set of major shifts in the LRT shop, again focused on working less, creating space for imagination and other kinds of (non-monetary) growth, and also claiming more time for my art practice, which is taking on its own activist life at the moment. I need to nurture it, it is taking me somewhere new that I want to go.
I am inspired by Octavia E Butler's 'Parables' novels, in which the lead character Lauren encourages us to 'pray working', to have a 'positive obsession'. This calms the workaholic in me, reassures her that she still gets to work, act, create, be in service. It's just about getting into right relationship with 'work', what 'work' actually means (we're conditioned to understand the word as having to do with renumeration, but in the Parables, work is everything you do towards liberation, life, justice, community, safety.) I see my work within LRT and outside it as a prayer, an act of devotion, a space of communing with life systems. I can also feel the difference when my work is not a prayer, when I am not in my integrity - when I am performing, or in service of 'shoulds' that do not come from within me. My prayer for this year is "I do less, so I can love more".
My personal practice has shifted a lot. When I was no longer writing for the blog all the time, I had less of a sense of 'performing' my life. The privacy felt both lonely (I'd gotten used to the continual validation that comes with sharing life online) and also super liberating. I hardly share any of my tarot or ritual practice online now. I miss it a lot - it also just felt good to record my life and tarot journey like that, and being in online conversation with others on similar paths. Yet I also like taking that element out of it, losing any sense of 'eyes' on my personal ritual and tarot times, enables me to be more present with myself. And I am still in conversation - offline. Nowadays my tarot, ritual, spiritual, seasonal journey happens in the context of a close-knit neighbourhood, my best friends live on my street and we are all witchy queers. I'm having the deepest conversations I've ever had about radical witchy practices, and I'm also forming the deepest relationships I've ever had.
Those are really beautiful insights, Beth. Thank you so much for sharing. Let’s talk about literally where you are now! Are you open for readings, classes or other types of work? Where can we find you?
Everything I do tarot-wise is at littleredtarot.com, including the Alternative Tarot Course, and my book, All of Our Stories. I don't offer readings online at the moment.
Editor’s Note: The Little Red Tarot Shop is also going strong and you should absolutely check out this beautiful array of decks by queer & BIPOC creators. They are truly some of my absolute favorite decks of all time. The shop is constantly being updated with the best and brightest decks out, so bookmark it too!
So much of the purpose of this interview series is to help readers find the writers where they are now. Do you have other writing we could find online or elsewhere?
I also very occasionally blog at bethmaiden.com, a random collection of posts - art, ritual thoughts about how we might do anticapitalist business.
Thank you so much for your time. This is a beautiful kick off to this series.
Stay tuned in this series, everyone. ! Immediately coming down the hatch in coming weeks, we have interviews with Siri, Asali & Cathou. I might even do this interview myself, then your round two writers will be up. (Hopefully).
Sending so much love to you and yours on this Sunday!
Cassandra Snow
