Charis welcomes Christopher Marmolejo in conversation with Alice Sparkly Kat for a discussion of Red Tarot: A Decolonial Guide to Divinatory Literacy. Designed to be used with any deck, Red Tarot is a radical praxis and decolonized oracle that moves beyond self-help and divination to reclaim tarot for liberation, self-determination, and collective healing.

Red Tarot speaks to anyone othered for their identity or ways of being or thinking—LGBTQIA2S+ and BIPOC folks in particular—presenting the tarot as a radical epistemology that shifts the authority of knowing into the hands of the people themselves.

Author Christopher Marmolejo frames literacy as key to liberation, and explores an understanding of tarot as critical literacy. They show how the cards can be read to subvert the dynamics of white supremacist-capitalist-imperialist-patriarchy, weaving historical context and spiritual practice into a comprehensive overview of tarot.

Situating tarot imagery within cosmologies outside the Hellenistic frame—Death, as interpreted through the lens of Hindu goddess Chhinnamasta, the High Priestess through Aztec goddess Coyolxauhqui—Marmolejo’s Red Tarot, is a profound act of native reclamation and liberation. Each card’s interpretation is further bolstered by the teachings of Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Paulo Freire, José Esteban Muñoz, and others, in an offering that integrates intersectional wisdom with the author’s divination practice—and reveals tarot as an essential language for liberation.

CHRISTOPHER MARMOLEJO, MA, is a Brown, queer, and trans writer, diviner, and educator. They use divination to promote a literacy of liberation. They are the author of Red Tarot: A Decolonial Guide to Divinatory Literacy, published by North Atlantic Books. They were born and raised in San Bernardino, California, among the pines, in community with the Yuhaaviatam clan of the Maara’yam (Serrano). With nine-plus years of experience as trained educator focused on cultivating classrooms of emancipatory possibility, they work with students around the world to plant and nurture the seed of a divinatory practice, finely weaving tarot, astrology, and curanderismo with critical, decolonial Black queer feminist epistemology. They are available for readings, and they are enrolling students in ongoing divination classes at www.theredread.com. Follow them on Substack (substack.com/@theredread) for more writing.

Alice Sparkly Kat is an astrologer. Their goal is to bring reconstruction and historicism back into astrology and to bring mysticism back into storytelling. Their astrological work has inhabited MoMA, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Brooklyn Museum. They're the author of Postcolonial Astrology (May 2021). Their website is alicesparklykat.com.

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Red Tarot: A Decolonial Guide to Divinatory Literacy--Christopher Marmolejo in conversation with Alice Sparkly Kat