Tarot

Project Idea & Background

I've been reading tarot since I was in college. I had been interested in witchcraft and tarot ever since I was a kid, but knew my Catholic family would freak the hell out if they found a tarot deck in my room, so it wasn't until I went off to school that I was able to buy a deck and start learning. I got a used Smith-Waite deck that has been my primary deck for years. Aside from a single reading for my sisters, and pulling the occasional card for my husband to intrepret together, I have only ever read only for myself. Tarot for me is not in any way about divination, but entirely about connecting with my own subconscious and better understanding the tangled forest of my brain.

I never really felt overly attached to the prescribed meanings of the cards. The Smith-Waite deck I got came with a little booklet with sharp, shallow intrepretations of the cards that didn't seem to do any sort of justice at all to the art. I find the traditional readings of cards interesting and I do reference them when I'm reading, but I really prioritize my personal and intutitive readings because ultimately, for me tarot is a tool for better understanding my own mind.

For this project, I'm using a new deck--Fyodor Pavlov's Tarot (CW: artistic nudity.) It is the most beautiful deck I have ever seen. I am still reading through the booklet, but I am incredibly excited to be working with a deck designed by someone with an understanding of tarot that aligns so much with my own. It preserves what I love about the Smith-Waite tarot--the richness of its symbolism and storytelling--and resolves some of what has increasingly frustrated me about the Smith-Waite deck--that it's so cisheteronormative and white. The Pavlov tarot is gorgeous, rich in thoughtful detail, and fundamentally queer.

I want to take some time to really get to know this deck and have decided to work through it, card by card, starting with the Major Arcana. I've always been a bit haphazard about how I've studied the tarot, just sort of looking stuff up as I need to, and I'm excited to get a little nerdy about studying it more deeply. I plan to study a card a day, more or less, and share my reflections here.