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durandal's review
medium-paced
This book is an engaging yet frustrating read. It’s a much-needed corrective to the countless tarot texts, even recent ones, that engage with the gendered archetypes of mainline tarot systems uncritically, or with tepid “but it can also mean whatever feels right!” disclaimers at best. Queering the Tarot’s attitude toward cishet paradigms also extends to the cultural Christianity that suffuses Western esoteric thought, even (sometimes especially) when thinkers conceptualize themselves as highly radical and irreligious.
Aside from some introductory and closing material, the bulk of the book is an index of card meanings. Needless to say this is not a "starter" text and presupposes familiarity with tarot fundamentals. Snow takes us through their “queered” interpretations of each card in the deck in varying levels of detail, often dealing with pips in groupings of two or three cards at a time (groupings which sometimes felt more intuitive than others.) I deeply appreciate the non-traditional readings of certain cards, especially some that are often taken as wholly negative; the section on XV The Devil suggests the card potentially signifies the ways in which giving in to “temptation” can be a positive experience for queer people, which felt fresh and resonant compared to its treatment in any other text I’ve encountered.
Other positives of the book included its sex positivity and frank treatment of topics like kink and non-monogamy. I also found its approach to the court cards, an area where card meaning encyclopedias often fall flat, to be vibrant and engaging.
On a more critical note… I found the book read as quite dated, despite not being very old, and at times a little corny. The author’s own life experiences loomed large, as did some fairly rote assumptions about the life trajectories of queer (particularly white and LGB) North American people from homo/transphobic Christian backgrounds, who move to urban centres to live as their true selves and participate in local activist groups etc. Far be it from me to dispute the fact that is a common experience, as that’s more or less my experience as well, but I wished that there was a greater sense of self-awareness on the behalf of the author that this is not a universal queer experience. The book is exceptionally USAmerican-centric in ways that felt tiresome.
Some of the cards were treated with more depth than others. I often wished that the suggested card interpretations were less literal and less of the “The swords suit can indicate it’s time to get gender-affirming surgery!” sort.
There’s also little to no attention paid to how a reader might incorporate reversals in their analysis, which struck me as odd, since one way I’ve approached card reversals in my own practice is as a “queering” of the card’s traditional upright meaning; not its direct inverse, as many of the concepts or archetypes in tarot don’t lend themselves easily to a binaristic outlook, but an invitation to read the card’s energy as “bent” or “askew” in some way, and not necessarily negatively so.
More broadly, I wished that the book (which is quite short, at 205 pages) had anything to say about how one might queer their tarot practice beyond approaches to individual card meanings. This would require a more conceptual and less direct approach to what “queering” ones interpretive lenses could look like, and I’m not sure exactly how that would manifest, but this text did leave me hungry for it. In sum, Queering the Tarot left me dissatisfied, despite being a work I return to regularly.
Aside from some introductory and closing material, the bulk of the book is an index of card meanings. Needless to say this is not a "starter" text and presupposes familiarity with tarot fundamentals. Snow takes us through their “queered” interpretations of each card in the deck in varying levels of detail, often dealing with pips in groupings of two or three cards at a time (groupings which sometimes felt more intuitive than others.) I deeply appreciate the non-traditional readings of certain cards, especially some that are often taken as wholly negative; the section on XV The Devil suggests the card potentially signifies the ways in which giving in to “temptation” can be a positive experience for queer people, which felt fresh and resonant compared to its treatment in any other text I’ve encountered.
Other positives of the book included its sex positivity and frank treatment of topics like kink and non-monogamy. I also found its approach to the court cards, an area where card meaning encyclopedias often fall flat, to be vibrant and engaging.
On a more critical note… I found the book read as quite dated, despite not being very old, and at times a little corny. The author’s own life experiences loomed large, as did some fairly rote assumptions about the life trajectories of queer (particularly white and LGB) North American people from homo/transphobic Christian backgrounds, who move to urban centres to live as their true selves and participate in local activist groups etc. Far be it from me to dispute the fact that is a common experience, as that’s more or less my experience as well, but I wished that there was a greater sense of self-awareness on the behalf of the author that this is not a universal queer experience. The book is exceptionally USAmerican-centric in ways that felt tiresome.
Some of the cards were treated with more depth than others. I often wished that the suggested card interpretations were less literal and less of the “The swords suit can indicate it’s time to get gender-affirming surgery!” sort.
There’s also little to no attention paid to how a reader might incorporate reversals in their analysis, which struck me as odd, since one way I’ve approached card reversals in my own practice is as a “queering” of the card’s traditional upright meaning; not its direct inverse, as many of the concepts or archetypes in tarot don’t lend themselves easily to a binaristic outlook, but an invitation to read the card’s energy as “bent” or “askew” in some way, and not necessarily negatively so.
More broadly, I wished that the book (which is quite short, at 205 pages) had anything to say about how one might queer their tarot practice beyond approaches to individual card meanings. This would require a more conceptual and less direct approach to what “queering” ones interpretive lenses could look like, and I’m not sure exactly how that would manifest, but this text did leave me hungry for it. In sum, Queering the Tarot left me dissatisfied, despite being a work I return to regularly.
readingwithstardust's review
2.0
I respect the hell out of Cassandra Snow as a tarot reader/advisor, and deeply enjoy following them on social media. And I respect what they were going for here. Maybe as a series of blog or instagram posts it would've been a little more digestible/interesting to read. But as a book it was just too repetitive. The Major Arcana were very interesting to read about but I think the book lost steam as soon as it hit the minors and skidded to an absolute halt by the time I reached the Court Cards (confession, I straight up skipped the last 20 pages, I couldn't do it anymore, I'm so sorry). Also I hated the deck the author chose to use for the on-page images.
That said, I DO want to acknowledge that this book will almost certainly be a really useful tool when I'm reading for others.. if I can ever bring myself to look at it again.
2.5 stars.
That said, I DO want to acknowledge that this book will almost certainly be a really useful tool when I'm reading for others.. if I can ever bring myself to look at it again.
2.5 stars.
khamz's review
5.0
Really well thought out explanations written in an easy to digest way, this book was great for seeing the ties between tarot and queerness. I think the information is really useful and easy to incorporate into your own tarot practice, maintaining the original idea and making it your own at the same time.