Designed to be used with any deck, Red Tarot interrogates the images, themes, and power structures that have been read into and onto the cardsโand guides readers to radical and empowering reclamation.
Today, we have a wealth of tarot resources with many goalsโbut few address the historically marginalized.
Red Tarot speaks to anyone who is othered due to their identity, or ways of being or thinkingโLGBTQIA2S+ and BIPOC folks in particularโand presents the tarot as a radical epistemology because of the ways that it shifts the authority of knowing into the hands of the people themselves. Author Chris Marmolejo frames literacy as key to liberation, and an understanding of tarot as radical literacy.
Marmolejo shows how the cards can be used to read into the power dynamics of white supremacist-capitalist-imperialist-patriarchy and then subvert them. They offer a brief history and overview of tarot as well as complementary, non-appropriative spirituality practices, situating tarot imagery within cosmologies outside the typical Hellenistic frame: Death is interpreted through the lens of Hindu goddess Chhinnamasta; the High Priestess through Aztec goddess Coyolxauhqui.
They follow with an interpretation of each card, bolstered by the teachings of Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Josรฉ Esteban Muรฑoz, and othersโnodding to authors who have paved the way to liberation in their respective fields.