The Outro and Conclusion
This is the end, my friend…
Over the course of these writings, I’ve outlined how the tarot has come to resonate deeply with my experience as an ace person. And in some small way, I hope that it’s also come to show you, dear ace or aro reader, how it can come to resonate with yours too. But even though this post represents the end of our sojourn through the tarot, it also represents the potential start of something new, like The World, or the Tens of the Minor Arcana suits. We think we’ve reached the end of the cycle of learning, but as it turns out, we loop back to the beginning as we are presented with new things to learn and discover.
At the time of writing, I am really but a “baby ace”; while I “came out to myself” about three years ago, it’s only really been about a year or so since I started consciously living in the world as both an ace and biromantic person. This past year, I made personal journeys into learning more about the experiences of both black and disabled aces and aros. I finished my rereading of The Invisible Orientation by Julie Sondra Decker, and finished Ace: What Asexual Reveals About Desire, Society and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen. All of that broadened a lot of my notions about what it means to be ace or aro in the world. It felt like I’d been living in a darkened room, peeking out at the world through the slits in a closed set of shutters. And then, suddenly, the shutters were thrown wide open. It’s less blinding now, but my eyes are still adjusting.
Paralleling this has been my new journey into the Tarot de Marseilles, a deck I’d wanting to learn to read but had shied away from due to the intimidation of reading a deck with unillustrated Minor Arcana cards. Spending time with the Marseilles deck has brought me back to the beginning of my own cycle in learning the tarot, giving me a new set of challenges, subtleties, and insights to uncover.
Further Reading
Sir Issac Newton famously quipped to fellow physicist Robert Hooke, “…If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” This sentiment has been reiterated many times in the fields of biology, philosophy and physics, places where I once envisioned making a career for myself, in a past academic and professional life. I strongly believe that the realm of the tarot is no different. We see the cards from the vantage point made for us by people like Pamela Coleman Smith and Arthur Edward Waite, who created the Smith-Waite tarot, and Lady Frieda Harris and Aleister Crowley, who created the Thoth tarot — and before them, the craftsmen and artisans who brought us the Tarot de Marseilles. People like Eden Grey, Rachel Pollack, Mary K. Greer, Yoav ben Dov and Lon Milo DuQuette illuminated the landscape of the tarot for us to see further into its depths. Others like Andrew McGregor, Theresa Reed, Melissa Cynova, and Cassandra Snow gave us the tools to further understand the images that our eyes received, and have helped us to better connect them to our own lives.
The following is a short reading list of books that I believe can go a long way to help further broaden and enrich aro and ace people’s journey into the tarot. This series of personal essays and meditations was written to open up a conversation about how the tarot can be deeply relevant to the ace and aro people, and hopefully these books can help ace and aro tarotists and readers to deepen and continue that conversation further.
Queering the Tarot (Cassandra Snow, Weiser Books, 2019)
Originally a set of blog posts written by Cassandra Snow and posted on littleredtarot.com, Queering The Tarot sought to take the common archetypes of the tarot and view it through a lens that is distinctly both gender and sexually non-normative. As a book to help queer tarot readers claim the tarot’s imagery and symbolism for themselves, it is a powerful resource. It focuses on how the tarot can be deeply connected to the queer experience and the queer community as a whole, bringing marginalized identities like Trans, Bi, Pan, Ace and Non-Binary people into the conversation about the cards. This book is a powerfully affirming and uplifting discussion of queerness in the tarot, and was a huge inspiration for the creation of this blog series. Snow’s book quickly became one of my favourite books on the tarot, and is the first book I recommend to other ace/aro and queer people who are interested in starting a journey into the cards.
The New Tarot Handbook (Rachel Pollack, Llewellyn Publications, 2012)
Legendary tarot author Rachel Pollack — a trans woman who has written extensively on trans issues — was a student of Eden Grey, a 1920s actress who became a publisher of occult books, and later wrote a series of highly popular books about the tarot in the 1960s and 1970s. Pollack’s 2012 book was her attempt at translating Grey’s writings into something a lot more digestible and relatable to a modern audience, and it succeeds brilliantly. This was one of the first books I used to truly learn and internalize the Smith-Waite tarot, on the strength of Pollack’s efficient, yet engaging down-to-earth writing. Her set of individual tarot spreads on each of the Major Arcana was also a powerful way to help me connect with their core themes and energies. It’s a book I enthusiastically recommend to anyone I encounter who’s new to the tarot.
Tarot for Change (Jessica Dore, Penguin, 2021)
I simply wasn’t prepared for what this book was going to be. At first, I thought it was a glitzy, superficial tarot-themed self-help or self-care book, of the kind that, while I’m sure are useful and helpful to some, really weren’t that interesting or engaging to me. Instead, Jessica Dore’s book is a deeply contemplative treatise on the tarot that heavily references work like the Thoth deck and the classic text, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism. She also heavily leverages her extensive background in mental health and psychology, drawing connections that tie the spiritual imagery and philosophy of the tarot to therapy approaches like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT), among many others. Her writing style is vulnerable, and compassionate, with the voice of someone who has shared the struggles and experiences of all who have been drawn to the tarot. Suffice to say, it has become one of my new favourite tarot books.
A Tarot of You (Andrew McGregor, The Hermit’s Lamp Press, 2016)
Many books discuss what the tarot cards all individually mean, albeit through a specific lens: This blog series is one such example. But how many books invite the reader to create their own meanings, their own stories and their own connections to the imagery in the cards? This is one such book. It is a tarot book that is truly spacious, in the sense that instead of being a lecture hall where the wisened expert imparts knowledge to you, you are invited to come up to the podium and create the lecture yourself, for an audience of one — you. This can be an intimidating task, but Andrew McGregor carefully guides the reader through week-long meditations on each of the 22 cards of the Major Arcana. McGregor invites us to sit with the cards and have a mindful encounter with them, and it’s really through exercises like this that we can have an honest encounter with the magic of the cards.
The Marseilles Tarot Revealed (Yoav ben Dov, Llywellyn Publications, 2017) / Untold Tarot (Caitlin Matthews, Red Feather, 2018)
In the spring and summer of 2021, I decided to make good on a long-standing promise to myself to learn the Tarot de Marseilles, the predecessor to the Smith-Waite and the Thoth tarot decks. Its imagery and symbolism crackle and hum with the energy of over 500 years of history. Its cards are a portal to a civilization — Northern Italy and Southern France, from the 1500s to the 1700s — that almost seems alien to us now. With the passage of time, the Marseilles tarot has been linked to a variety of different esoteric and occult systems of knowledge, that often make it deeply intimidating to newcomers. These two books — written by famed scholars Yoav ben Dov and Caitlin Matthews, respectively — seek to take the practice of reading the Marseilles back to its roots by asking readers a very simple question: What do you actually see in the cards? The insights and skills I’ve taken from these two books have also added much to my readings with more modern decks like the Smith-Waite tarot, and have inspired me to start thinking about how the Marseille tarot could be viewed with a queer or ace/aro eye.
Going Beyond the Smith-Waite Tarot
For me, the ace and aro experience is one that is intimately intertwined with the experience of expansion. We are challenged to expand how we relate to our individual sexuality. We are challenged to expand what we know and what we think we know about ourselves. We are challenged to expand how we see our relationship, both with ourselves and with others.
My journey with the tarot has paralleled this experience for me, leading me out of the comfortable and familiar boundaries of the Smith-Waite tarot, and into the incredibly diverse world of the modern tarot scene. The increasing popularity and mainstream awareness of the tarot — combined with a democratization of the creative tools and material resources required to create a tarot deck — has led to an explosion of tarot decks in the last two decades, encompassing every manner of interest and theme, from Abstract Art to Zombies, and everything in between.
Some ace and aro tarotists may feel compelled to seek out a tarot deck that is either not a Smith-Waite deck, or a deck that is derived from it. This can be for a variety of reasons; perhaps they might not connect with the artwork, or perhaps, after an extensive time spent with the Smith-Waite deck, they may feel drawn to other decks that explore its themes in deeper or more esoteric ways. Maybe, like me, they just simply enjoy the challenge of learning a new tarot system.
Selecting a tarot deck is often seen as a very subjective and personal act, and some, like myself, even see it as a personally intimate process. But it’s all too common for people to ask for ideas or opinions on various tarot decks they might encounter. In that spirit, here are some personal recommendations for decks for ace and aro people who might feel drawn to expand their tarot horizons beyond the Smith-Waite tarot:
The Tarot de Marseilles
This is the true “traditional” tarot: The system of cards originally made for gaming, arising in Northern Italy/Southern France in the 1600s and 1700s, which later became used for divination and spiritual purposes in the 1800s. This deck, in its various incarnations went on to heavily influence both the Smith-Waite and Thoth deck. I’ve started to think a lot about how learning a particular tarot deck or system is much like learning a language. So in a lot of ways, learning to read with the Tarot de Marseilles is a lot like learning Latin; much like how Latin yields many linguistic insights into English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, the Marseilles deck yields a lot of insights into the symbolism of more modern tarot decks. In learning the interactions between the numbers and the four suits of the Minor Arcana, a doorway is opened into the nuance and subtlety of what the cards can tell us. The cards fundamentally defy being read in a strictly narrow preset way. They break out of stereotypical definitions, and in doing so challenge us to break out of our own. To me, that deeply resonates with my experience as both an ace and a queer person.
The Thoth Tarot
The third major system of modern tarot is the deck created by Lady Frieda Harris, under the direction of the (in)famous occultist Aleister Crowley in the late 1930s and early 1940s. It is very much a product of its of time, deeply influenced by the collective trauma that the world suffered in World War II. Resplendent with visual symbolism, it can be both a feast for the eyes and an assault on the senses. I had always superficially viewed this deck with a tinge of suspicion (in large part thanks to its association with Crowley, a figure of notoriety to this day), but in spending time with it I’ve been left in awe of the incredible talent and vision of Harris, who created all of the deck’s sumptuous artwork. It is a powerful tarot, that in an uncanny way can speak to the unconscious with remarkable clarity.
The Mystical Dream Tarot
Released in 2019, this tarot deck was draws heavily upon the Tarot de Marseilles, as well as the Thoth, and Smith-Waite decks. Dominated by hues of grey, purples, whites and blacks, it immediately triggers my thoughts of the asexual and demisexual flag. The art and imagery are unique, in that its all taken from the dream images of the author, Janet Piedilato, a professional psychologist. It’s an extremely cerebral deck, in that while the images are familiar to those experienced with the Thoth or Smith-Waite decks, it also accesses a different visual realm of abstract inner knowledge. Like with my first encounters with the Smith-Waite tarot, there is something both familiar and alien about the images in the cards. When I read with this deck, I really get this feeling that I’m in a liminal mental space in my head, existing between the worlds of the conscious and unconscious.
The Next World Tarot
My own ace journey in online and offline spaces has brought into focus the importance of fighting for positive social and political change in the lives of many ace and aro people. In writing this series, the topic of ace, aro and queer activism is a thread that’s wound its way through many of my thoughts on the tarot as an ace person. So it really feels like how I’ve come to see and write about tarot is itself a reflection of my own ace experience. Maybe that’s why I resonate so much with Cristy C. Road’s Next World Tarot. It is a deck that is firmly rooted in both fierce activism and anti-oppression. Disability issues, body positivity, punk queerness, and both racial and climate justice are all brought to the forefront in these cards. For ace and aro activists, this deck reminds us that fighting for change goes beyond ace and aro issues — it extends intersectionally to disability and racial justice, and further still to global issues like income inequality, climate change, and state-sponsored violence. The positive change we want won’t truly happen for any of us, until it happens for all of us.
This Might Hurt Tarot
Over the years, many tarot authors have sought to recontextualize the classic Smith-Waite imagery to match their own specific time, and the This Might Hurt deck is certainly no exception: The suit of cups is represented with coffee mugs, not chalices; the Chariot depicts a defiant young woman balanced on two motorcycles as opposed to two Sphinxes. But what makes this deck stand out from so many others is its subtle and intelligent co-opting of the Smith-Waite deck’s imagery, to create a deck that celebrates racial and body positivity, queerness, and loving inclusivity. Creator Isabella Rotman’s take on the Two of Cups especially stands out to me: the depiction of the two figures holding each other expresses the intimacy of connection that matter the most to ace and aro people — one that goes far beyond normative expectations of sexual relationships.
What Happens Next
In my experiences with other ace and aro people, I’ve come to find that their stories also echo my own narrative of personal evolution and expansion: their journeys outline an broadening of the concept of what it means to be happy and fulfilled with their non-normative sexuality, and an evolution of how we can find meaning in a world that centres sexual and romantic normativity. Now more than ever, I feel like it is so important for ace and aro people to share our own personal journeys with others in healing and in mutual support, both as a wider community and on an individual basis. The tarot continues to play a special role in my own journey as someone who identifies on the Asexual Spectrum as a Biromantic Demisexual, and in sharing my own personal exploration of being ace, I hope I’ve encouraged you to explore how you could make the tarot a part of your journey too.
Whether it is approached as a tool for self-analysis, or spiritual development, or divination, the tarot is a snapshot of who and what we are: it is a picture of our inner selves, frozen in time, in the moment before we decide to take action to get to where we want to be. This brings to important questions that can allow us to examine our behaviours, and the motivations that drive them. What are we really doing, and why? What actions are we going to take? How are we going to take it? And what led us up to that point?
The tarot also holds up a mirror to us, showing us who we really are in our beautiful imperfection. It reminds us to be proud of who are and what we’ve accomplished, but it also points out the places and times in our lives where our fragile ego has distorted our self-image, under the weight of its emotional gravity.
And finally, the tarot is also a place that encourages us to ask questions; to challenge our assumptions and reflect on ourselves.
The revelations that come from these conversations are often seen as the end point in the tarot, the answer to the questions that we as querents carry with us when we first engage with the cards. But in truth, the ending of a reading with tarot cards isn’t the real ending: it’s only but the beginning. What are we going to do with the insights we’ve gleaned in our conversation with the cards? The rest of the journey is up to us. If the tarot opens doors into new possible worlds, or new ways of understanding ourselves, it is still ultimately up to us to walk through.
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