By Sharanya Gopinathan
It feels like witches are coming up with just the best ideas these days. Late last month, we found that witches all over the world, including Lana Del Ray, had decided to get together to hex Trump and all his supporters on every “waning crescent moon” until he’s removed from office. A little less alarmingly, Slutist, a sex positive website that aims to reclaim words like ‘slut’ and ‘witch’, and artist Morgan Claire Sirene, have decided to create a deck of sex-positive and inclusive tarot cards.
Bust says that tarot cards, used commonly by witches for a variety of activities, contain huge amounts of racist and misogynistic imagery. This new deck of tarot cards aims to beat those stereotypes, and the creators seem to have all the right ideas about how to do it. The first deck of cards focuses on women located at numerous intersections of exclusion: women in sex work, disabled people, non-heterosexual people, trans people and gender non-conforming people. It attempts to show that eroticism and mysticism aren’t just for one particular type of person, but for everyone who wants in. The creators also hope to create an environment where all kinds of young witches will be able to pick up a card from a deck and see people who look like them, because representation matters everywhere, including in magical spaces.
Whether you believe in things like this or not, it’s still always cool and interesting to see the queering and opening up of a misogynistic space by women, especially when it’s through art. Take a look at The Slutist Tarot Kickstarter page here.
Image courtesy The Slutist Tarot Kickstarter page.