Red Tarot: A Decolonial Guide to Divinatory Literacy

Designed to be used with any deck, Red Tarot is a radical praxis and decolonized oracle that moves beyond self-help and divination to reclaim tarot for liberation, self-determination, and collective healing.

For readers of Postcolonial Astrology and Tarot for Change

Red Tarot speaks to anyone othered for their identity or ways of being or thinking--LGBTQIA2S+ and BIPOC folks in particular--presenting the tarot as a radical epistemology that shifts the authority of knowing into the hands of the people themselves.

Author Christopher Marmolejo frames literacy as key to liberation, and explores an understanding of tarot as critical literacy. They show how the cards can be read to subvert the dynamics of white supremacist-capitalist-imperialist-patriarchy, weaving historical context and spiritual practice into a comprehensive overview of tarot.

Situating tarot imagery within cosmologies outside the Hellenistic frame--Death as interpreted through the lens of Hindu goddess Chhinnamasta, the High Priestess through Aztec goddess Coyolxauhqui--Marmolejo’s Red Tarot is a profound act of native reclamation and liberation. Each card’s interpretation is further bolstered by the teachings of Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Paulo Freire, José Esteban Muñoz, and others, in an offering that integrates intersectional wisdom with the author’s divination practice--and reveals tarot as an essential language for liberation.

Christopher Marmolejo is a queer Indigenous teacher committed to radical community healing and building. They bring traditional teaching experience as an English teacher, intensive study as an astrologer, and their personal articulation of the tarot archetypes to their classes, workshops, and consultations as they seek to liberate through critical pedagogy and transgressive truth-telling. Marmolejo has facilitated emotional wellness programs with the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice for the Inland Empire, and has worked with the organization Artists in Solidarity to offer their services to raise money for migrant families and children.