In Queering the Tarot, Cassandra Snow takes the most common interpretations and manifestations of the cards and discusses ways you might read them for a LGBTQQIA2SP+ client – or for yourself. Read the whole series here!
Great news, everyone! This series is getting a nice, shiny refinish and heading to book format through RedWheel/Wieser publishing! It’s slated to be out in May 1st, 2019 with a foreword by none other than Beth Maiden herself! You can pre-order at IndieBound right here!
A card of luxury, the Nine of Pentacles shows us rise to a prosperous state and offers us a chance to look around, smell the roses, and be grateful.
This is one of my favorite cards in the deck, as I always need a reminder that “Hey, things are pretty good. Maybe be glad about it.” This Nine of Pentacles, like all of our cards of joy in the tarot, is hard won. We planted the seeds in the Seven, we learned how to weed and nourish it in the Eight, and now everything is blooming beautifully. Our job is to sit back and enjoy the foliage.
“Sit back and enjoy the foliage” is a message a lot of my queer clients struggle with the most.
In my experience marginalized people have no problem being told that their road ahead is long and full of strife. They have no problem being told that it’s time to go deep into their trauma to recover from it. I get little pushback from asking those seekers to do more work or dig deeper. Yet when I say “Hey, look how much work you’ve done! Great job! Now, rest.” I get, at best, blank faces staring back at me. At worst, I end up trying to convince the client that time off is good and that they deserve comfort.
I get it. I struggle with this too. There is always something that needs to be done in my career, in this community project I’m a part of, for my friends, for that queer kid that found my theatre company and wants help getting started in their career. At any given moment, I can list ten things that need done in each of these areas with little thought or prompting. I know that most of you reading this relate. When we talked about the Wands, in the Ten we talked about activist burnout, and ignoring this card is one of the reasons we get there. We all work very, very hard in the queer community, all of us.
Which means we all deserve time to recognize when that work is paying off, and which means we all need to admire what we’ve built sometimes. You started with nothing. That was the lesson of the Seven.
Now, here you are, two short cards later, with a thriving end result.
You did this.
That’s beautiful.
You are beautiful.
Cassandra Snow (they/them/she/her) is a professional tarot card reader & teacher, writer, and theatre maker in Minneapolis, MN. Their tarot practice centers around empowerment of LGBTQ+ seekers, overcoming personal trauma, practical step by step business or creative plans and spiritual guidance. As a writer, tarot is also one of their focuses, and they pens the long running queer journey through the tarot, Queering the Tarot at Thecolu.mn and here at Little Red Tarot. This series is getting a shiny refinish and being turned into a book through Red Wheel/Weiser Publishing and will be released on May 1st, 2019!
