Wm. L. Roberts reviewed Radical Tarot by Charlie Claire Burgess
Half a memoir, all interesting.
4 stars
I love tarot as a means of storytelling, or an inspiration; divination isn't really my bag. The readings Charlie presents offer a step outside of the late Edwardian societal standards of the Waite-Smith cards and accompanying book, while also telling us about their path to accepting their queerness and their self-discovery—Charlie's own "Fool's Journey", as it were. These two intertwined stories provide a strong through-narrative for both the way they ground their interpretations of cards, as well as how finding those meanings helped Charlie embrace their self.
The true charm of this text was the amount of research and the additional sources Charlie quotes all over. Audre Lorde's discussion of the erotic as a source of knowledge shows up in discussing The Empress, while James Baldwin and adrienne maree brown are cited throughout as well; I often set aside this book to go hunt down a quote, or paused …
I love tarot as a means of storytelling, or an inspiration; divination isn't really my bag. The readings Charlie presents offer a step outside of the late Edwardian societal standards of the Waite-Smith cards and accompanying book, while also telling us about their path to accepting their queerness and their self-discovery—Charlie's own "Fool's Journey", as it were. These two intertwined stories provide a strong through-narrative for both the way they ground their interpretations of cards, as well as how finding those meanings helped Charlie embrace their self.
The true charm of this text was the amount of research and the additional sources Charlie quotes all over. Audre Lorde's discussion of the erotic as a source of knowledge shows up in discussing The Empress, while James Baldwin and adrienne maree brown are cited throughout as well; I often set aside this book to go hunt down a quote, or paused to read a cited article in full, and it was worth the effort. This book's endnotes and bibliography are a fantastic starting point for other research on gender & sexuality... always a treat.
While I deeply appreciated this text, and I'm sure I'll come back to it again at some point (if only for that bibliography), I have to admit that I'm sometimes less than thrilled with texts which center queerness as an ideal identity—and Radical Tarot has some of the same weaknesses as others I've encountered. As a memoir of embracing a nonbinary identity & finding truth in one's existence outside of the gender norms of cisheteronormative society, I felt like the author is sometimes too quick to reject embracing one's own gender in favor of the idea of the superiority of being an outsider. They've designed an explicitly non-binary deck, and often go out of their way to reject masculinity; I jokingly refer to this sometimes as "the penis is evil & must be punished" as a mentality that some sections of the non-binary & queer space fall into, where any form of representation of the masculine must be rejected to ensure there is no association with dominant power structures.
In all, it's a good book, a solid exploration of tarot's symbology for folks who find the dominant culture repressive, and possibly more insightful about the author than they necessarily intended, but never dull or trite. There's plenty to appreciate here, and plenty to reflect upon.
