00:00:56.780Welcome back to the Missing Witches podcast. Listeners, sunlight, big winds, birds singing in the morning, your 10,000 ancestors reminding you that we've defeated fascists before. Welcome, you know, whoever shows up today.0.59
00:01:12.700And welcome especially to label mate and dear friend of the pod and sunshiny, gorgeous human, Christopher Marmolejo, author of Red Tarot and wonderful teacher in the arts of Liberatory Tarot and just like nice person to get to hang out with.
00:02:07.180Honestly, it's like I have one pinnacle, like whether I'm researching for something that I'm writing, I'm developing a class and then I'm teaching a class or I'm giving a talk or I'm able to sit in space with y'all.
00:02:17.260And it's the sense of the manifold expression from the same root has been, I don't know, it's just so sustainable and enduring for me.
00:02:28.660I'm loving the feedback that I'm getting, but also paying attention to certain critiques that I've just always gotten as being an intelligent, vocal, brown person.
00:02:41.160And so, yeah, anyways, I just love having a craft.
00:02:44.520Can we backtrack a second for our listeners who maybe haven't heard you on the podcast before, have somehow never heard of Red Tarot or the Red Reed?
00:02:55.900like who are you what do you do what are you doing yes yes yes yes the author of red tarot
00:03:04.680i mean i am who am i oh my gosh an existential big question now i am my mother's child my
00:03:11.480grandmother's child i am a christopher marmalejo i am in community with the serrano people the
00:03:19.800The Pines. I teach tarot. I have a background in education. My master's in education taught
00:03:27.020seventh and eighth grade English. And then the pandemic happened. I always say I had a pre-pandemic
00:03:32.100in 2019 where I was like, where am I going with my life? You know, tarot and astrology
00:03:39.160emerged. I wrote Red Tarot, A Decolonial Guide to Divinatory Literacy, which was released last
00:03:46.340March 2024, and teach a variety of classes just kind of under that aim. Thankfully,1.00
00:03:55.020decolonization is a lifelong project, a generational lifelong project, and spacious0.90
00:03:59.640enough to continue working under or have that as an aim or a goal, a methodology, and using
00:04:10.380the cards as a prism for archiving so much knowledge and catharsis, but also bringing
00:04:16.940the notion of divination of sacred spirituality into the mix. I teach students, I give readings,
00:04:22.240I write, I'm on Substack. Your Substack is fantastic. The Tina Turner.
00:04:28.340Thank you. I'll say it was so wonderful. I appreciate that. That one was like,
00:04:33.920certain things get cute. I'm sure y'all know being creatives yourselves. I was like,
00:04:37.720that one was in me for so long when I finally had that expression I was like yes yeah and the visual
00:04:43.480element of seeing Tina drawn as the strength card battling the lion I was like oh this is just for
00:04:50.520me Christopher made this just for me I know you didn't but it felt like it no I did I'm glad yes
00:04:57.900I'm like what's your favorite Tina Turner song for me it really depends I think Tina's prayer
00:05:03.840I'm talking to the priest, the high priest, and all of y'all out there in the universe.
00:05:10.380But lately, it's been, you better be good to me.
00:05:32.780I was so proud to write that in of only I'm always trying to like, like, that's not for not that anyone's forgetting about her, but just newer generations or younger people who I'm like, she is mythological.
00:06:42.640I was talking with Zoe Flowers, who has a wonderful podcast, Come to the Brink, about divination, especially astrology, after the U.S. election.
00:06:54.260watching some people sort of implode like you know like some astrologers going so hard on
00:07:00.980whatever their predictions were and then getting called out for being wrong and then blowing up
00:07:07.040their communities and going to hide behind hay walls or you know like there's just like a lot
00:07:13.300of really adamant predictions and not a lot of accountability after I wonder how you feel
00:07:20.680about divination these days like when everything changes every two minutes we're drawn more to
00:07:27.120divination and these chaos times out of control times but then yeah what do we actually use it
00:07:33.060for that is useful that's grounding that's community building instead of just a way to sell
00:07:39.940more to people who are afraid you know that is a whole word right there like you just said
00:07:45.620so much that is so characteristic of how people engage and how it gets commodified right it's like
00:07:53.780it is to sell this sense of peace or whatnot and i think that's where i've had i mean diviners are
00:08:01.140like nothing is 100 right even the best studied like discipline diviner you know has margin of
00:08:11.300error of course right we everything has a margin of error so there's that and i think that maybe
00:08:15.920sometimes people put but but that sense of ego where someone's like this is you know word of
00:08:21.760god like here is what's gonna happen you know is one that it's always like okay i approach it with
00:08:28.000so much humility because it's like we may just be getting sometimes like a a people through
00:08:36.060of what may happen right or i think of on a funny sense like that from that's so raven where you'd
00:08:41.820get like a glimpse into the future but then it's like chaotic and totally decontextualized and like
00:08:46.860you know what i mean it ends up causing it inevitably but it's this crazy scenario that
00:08:51.100gets there i've definitely had ups and downs with divination and especially with prediction like in
00:08:56.000terms of that sense of prediction as well like being disappointed by astrologers and their
00:09:02.460predictions you know feeling locked into fate and studying my own birth chart being like buck0.91
00:09:08.860you know like goddamn I think that there is a real reckoning with scale in a real sense of0.88
00:09:14.820that that also humbles us against our notion that that man or human is the creator in the0.97
00:09:23.020center of the universe that they're all powerful and that we can just shape our will to be whatever
00:09:26.800we want if we just pull our bootstraps up high enough that's not how I approach it I have a
00:09:32.100certain container and I would say the red reed as a whole is like in that mode but this sense of like
00:09:36.780what do we do with the fate that we lament and bringing that to the notion of fado which is
00:09:42.560this Portuguese folk music in the intersection between all of the colonial history and this
00:09:49.640musical catharsis where they were like man we're going to be washed away in this tidal wave or
00:09:57.360whatnot, but we're not faltering in a faith either, necessarily. There is some surrender,
00:10:03.560some sense of spiritual maturity that develops at the end of empire, at the end of decline,
00:10:08.360as empire is collapsing, as language is pluralizing, you know? And so, like, I think of
00:10:14.480so much of fate and stories of divination myths are tragic. What do you do with that? No one wants
00:10:22.080to hear that. How do you handle that? In the eights class, one of the eights cards, of course,
00:10:26.320eight of sorts right and i'm telling my students i'm preparing them and it's complex because we're
00:10:32.100not licensed therapists or practitioners but at the same time this type of therapeutic work and
00:10:36.780working with people it's like that card comes up and absolutely like testifiably shows a history
00:10:42.620of abuse in particular sexual abuse if that's coming up for for a client i tell them i have
00:10:47.840to broach this with a client i'm not going to not touch that and or talk about that or venture into
00:10:54.300that space and of course me too right like we all know someone or no who knows someone it's not many
00:11:00.900degrees of separation to find that kind of history of abuse then where do you approach that how do
00:11:06.180you talk about that and inviting my students to share the student that drew that card in particular
00:11:11.540hadn't been as disclosing in the class space as much so i let that of course i wasn't gonna trigger
00:11:18.340them but like i'm like you know i broach this with clients and so obviously in this class space we're
00:11:22.380talking about it like anything that this brings up for you is welcome like we can hear it you can
00:11:26.560bring it in that that card is about shame that card is about silencing so just even the shared
00:11:31.620witness of being able to express it I think is sometimes it's also the divination is great for
00:11:36.640processing things that have happened and that uh that confound our mind like why did this have to
00:11:45.140happen and that's really complex but it's a lot that's a big question you reminded me that once
00:11:50.660in my 20s I saw a tarot reader who told me that my mom had abused me and she hadn't so that was
00:11:58.460sort of strange yeah and it sort of became a avenue for them to talk about their own experience
00:12:05.640and they felt like I was a safe person as a 22 year old to share that with which I think speaks
00:12:13.160to where both of us were at that time in our lives but you reminded me yeah like of the
00:12:18.240the sort of tricky relationship we can have with divination you know like i i was also i i was
00:12:26.500playing cards for myself after i was diagnosed with cancer and they were so dark it was all
00:12:32.700tower and death and devil and i was like well i'm done with this for a while
00:12:37.740right not gonna play this game for a little bit it's too hard and i understood what it was
00:12:45.640objectively. I was only at the beginning of going on an underworld walk and that's what was showing
00:12:51.300me, but I really wasn't up for the symbols of it. What do you think about how, for example,
00:12:58.640astrology is one that's troubling me more these days. How do we use astrology in empowering and
00:13:07.480not ways that, as you say, can make us feel kind of trapped in our destinies?
00:13:12.300yeah i mean i will say that the language that a diviner tarot reader or what have you like use
00:13:19.600it's there's so much power in that i will never tell a person like you've been assaulted i would
00:13:24.420never say that to a person i would reflect with the card what we're seeing clearly in the card
00:13:29.660and like does that bring up anything you know like where do you see that maybe it's about the
00:13:34.020restriction of voice you know maybe it's right and there's like other things happening but
00:13:38.320But but but it's that that boldness to be like, so like this is I don't tell people about themselves like that, you know, I'll bring things up and ask questions and make it a conversation.
00:13:52.620But with such an empowering way to do it, I feel like we could have had a really interesting conversation if that reader had said that to me, because there are a lot of ways I could have engaged with that story.
00:14:04.220Like you say, we all do have histories of abuse in our families.
00:14:07.180but yeah sorry for interrupting no absolutely there are big shifts in language in terms of
00:14:12.460like how that's gonna that's gonna go with approaching that same perhaps like subject
00:14:16.820matter right and so you know so much of that how to use astrology i mean i think that if folks are
00:14:23.960having anxiety around what's going to come there is like like check it like don't don't engage it
00:14:32.340like paying attention to your own response and your capacity for handling the prophecy prediction
00:14:37.700or weather that you see coming. You know, and it's always contextualized. I think sometimes people
00:14:42.080also would try and take it as like waiting for the savior, the saving grace or like this. And
00:14:49.660I'm for miracles. Don't get me wrong. They're certainly miracles. I'm pro-miracle too.
00:14:55.120I'm pro-miracle. Absolutely. But in terms of being ungrounded or like, I don't know, it's a fine
00:15:02.280line. It really is. It really does take experience. It takes falling flat on your ass and being
00:15:07.540disappointed. It takes being so surprised where you're like, wow. Similar to the card or the1.00
00:15:13.420manifestation of a transit, you see the energies, but there's still the surprise of all these
00:15:18.380different ways they can take expression. So being so sure that it's going to happen in this like
00:15:22.940one particular avenue or this specific expression is egoic or, you know, it's hubristic. You still
00:15:30.200don't know the sun went into taurus my first house squaring mars this is a heavy week
00:15:35.840astrologically i had an allergic reaction and inflammation i was anticipating some family
00:15:40.240tension and some family like potential arguments or things like that wasn't like stressed about it
00:15:45.900i was just like okay right i was readying myself for that and then my whole body's inflamed and
00:15:50.160that makes so much sense i see that in the astrology like you know what you know what i
00:15:54.140mean um so i think one having a good relationship with an astrologer like that you trust knowing
00:16:02.120that astrology it's knowing again that astrologers are human and that they have margins of error and
00:16:09.300that you should know the tradition from which they're coming from that you should have an
00:16:13.460ongoing relationship with them that sometimes the timing may be off and then at the same time
00:16:18.680I personally love working with my Jyotish astrologer because they give remediation,
00:16:24.740you know, and so there's a lot of Jyotish as a whole is oriented towards remediation.
00:16:29.820I question how efficacious some of these remediations are because I'm like,
00:16:33.300I've been doing this and you've been telling me, you know, but that giving someone something like,
00:16:39.880and that's what I teach my students with cards as well, like one card for prognostication,
00:16:43.800what's going on in one card for remediation, for discerning where the sphere of our agency
00:16:49.920and our control to change as much as we can change for the better, while also learning
00:16:55.940how to surrender circumstances that are far beyond our control.
00:16:58.860And I think divination helps us to cope and process with what is traumatic.
00:17:06.460Can you continue that thread into how divination can be useful for people who don't like quote
00:17:12.560unquote, believe in magic? I would say from client experience, client work and client testimonials.
00:17:19.040It is somewhat of a heightened therapeutic container, distinct from therapy, for sure.
00:17:25.560I give suggestions, advice, or make certain predictions about things for clients that
00:17:31.460they're asking me for. And I have ongoing relationships with clients, but not in the
00:17:36.520frequency that one would meet with a therapist, right? But there's ways that we can unearth
00:17:41.100certain dynamics via the cards or via the chart that family trauma that separation from mother
00:17:48.040that thing with a partner or the potential for the career we can get there so much faster that
00:17:52.580would take a lot of time that you can then take to your therapist right so i think in a therapeutic
00:17:57.120dialogic um kind of like psychic x-ray way that the divination can help and i do think again that's
00:18:05.420where you want to make sure that you're you're seeing who you're working with in their background
00:18:08.680Because a lot of people try and manipulate power and fuck you up with saying certain predictions or how you are and doing this kind of characterology, you know, again, rather than looking at them as circumstantial, like how this person's circumstances are embedded in like a manifold expression that can be brought forth.
00:18:28.860And also having like a stance of like, and it's hard, don't get me wrong, but there's not a Pollyanna stance at all, but just the sense of like a real deep spiritual rooting for the history of suffering and trauma that we've all endured, like that there is an arc of spiritual evolution.
00:18:47.220There is an arc of soul development that we've all agreed to on some fundamental level to incarnate here.
00:18:52.680people come at crossroads to divination. People come when their doctors are not seeing their
00:18:58.520humanity, when their church has failed them, when they're all alone. And so in that vulnerable space
00:19:03.520when you're cracked open, I think is also when you open a bit more.
00:19:09.820And in terms of you use the phrase unearthing dynamics, and I think that really relates to
00:19:14.820this question I want to ask you about, how does divination relate to decolonization?
00:19:20.940how are those two things enmeshed beyond or as part of the unearthing of dynamics oh my gosh so
00:19:30.180it's that's that's you know the the thrust of my work it's like i'm going you know what i mean i'm
00:19:35.300just like it's always each card has so much um is well being able to locate and so you know with
00:19:44.480what i teach my students there's knowing this how to visually read the symbolism of a card or of the
00:19:49.640chart, right? There's just like that simple, like strong visual reading skills that we have to have
00:19:54.240first, right? And then adding significations. And for what the red read does, like shining the red
00:20:01.740light onto it, which is reading, like we can apply any interpretive lens to any text. And so I think
00:20:08.080thinking as well, for people aren't magical, this is an art exercise. This is reading art critically,
00:20:14.340right? You can apply a feminist lens, you can apply a queer lens, you can apply all different
00:20:19.260lenses. And so applying that lens of colonization or decolonization to the text that is tarot or
00:20:26.140the chart unearths all these possibilities where when you're reading for a client, you can have
00:20:29.760the social critique where you're seeing like, that is misogyny. That is misogynoir. That is
00:20:35.460classism. That's internalized ableism. Where are these things rooted from? Where's the history of
00:20:39.740these things? Of course, goes to colonization. They become regionally contextualized with like
00:20:44.280my clients. I think about the two of wands or the three of wands is always one where I think of as
00:20:50.060cultural embassy and how it's important for clients to understand their own cultural background so as
00:20:57.820to not be ethnocentric. I have students and clients all over the world. So of course that
00:21:03.280expression of colonization, the histories of white supremacy are going to differently shape their0.99
00:21:10.040experience, but we can still understand a larger grouping under that fucked up umbrella of white0.97
00:21:15.840supremacy and colonization. And so the cards can help show that. We all have the same transits.0.98
00:21:21.240It's like the weather, not we all have, but you know what I mean? The trends are happening to us
00:21:25.140all. And I'm like, in the way I can see, oh, there's that white man in you. And it's showing
00:21:29.980up in this part of your life. And that's what I work on. A part of decolonization is also
00:21:36.420decolonizing our spiritual tools, reconnecting to our relationship to the earth, reconnecting
00:21:41.600to our ability to conjure, to commune, to fortify a faith that is revolutionary.
00:22:58.280I would say having a strong community, a practice of self-reflexivity, having a therapist or a reader, a diviner that you are in relationship with, me having my friends that I'm intentionally cultivating, that I feel so inspired to be friends with is a big part of that.
00:23:17.460when you connect to your roots and our complicated inheritances, that's not something that we can
00:23:27.080just escape. Either way, you're going to be pulled back into it. So I think that there is that sense
00:23:31.660of not being in denial or avoidance about what the work needs to do and not trying to solve it
00:23:39.580all. Like Tina Turner, we don't need another hero. We just need you to be a person among persons.
00:23:44.860We need you to reclaim some sense of humanity and we need you to at least grieve.
00:23:48.640I think so much of the work is grieving, processing and grieving and releasing so that you can open yourself to some new perspective, some new relationship.
00:24:01.440You mentioned strong community, you mentioned grief, and this is the year of the hermit.
00:24:07.320I've been asking a lot of tarot readers about their interpretation of the hermit.
00:24:12.500But almost every single one of them, for them, The Hermit has been about building a strong community, which is kind of the opposite of what you would think of The Hermit Year.
00:24:23.300Do you have Red Tarot in front of you?
00:24:27.140Because I was going to read a couple paragraphs, and I'm so glad that you got to do your own narration for your audiobook.
00:24:34.940It's so wonderful to hear your voice reading these words.
00:24:38.360So instead of me doing it, if you could please flip to page 335 and start with the last paragraph, The Path of Redemption, and just read as much as you want to at this sort of ironic hermit.
00:26:33.220From having an ability to commune when you've been in the room when someone has died, you know there is a real faith that permeates, a real sense of more than the mundane, material, hard world.
00:27:59.200Hmm. It's being enveloped. I think like hermit with that. Yes, people have, I don't know, like the common connotation of that word is like this envelopment into God or the divine or the goddess or the mystery or what have you.
00:28:13.940And I think it makes so much sense again is like just circling back like in total darkness when there's no sense of a way forward or no clarity and there's just confusion and you feel alone or you feel disconnected that the hermit emerges and is it's like the darkness being evidence of being so intimately close to the divine.
00:28:38.180And I do quote across a book like Father Ian Matthew, who I love.
00:28:42.360They're writing about not shoving light into your face in this spiritual bypassing way.
00:28:46.520Like, if you just book with me, we're going to be fantastic and you'll be rich and find love.
00:39:10.280Y'all can, any listener can find me at theredread.com, R-E-D-R-E-A-D, theredread.substack.com,
00:39:19.500which I really, like, I'm on Instagram as well, but, like, you know, shadowbanned and, like, get, like, 2% of, like, people seeing whatever I post there.
00:39:34.160So y'all should support authors by subscribing to their newsletter list.
00:39:38.580I write there. I have my class announcements there. You'll see a whole host of offerings
00:39:43.340and classes. You can buy Red Tarot anywhere you get books. There's an audio version as well. In my
00:39:49.740biased opinion, there is a real fullness to having both the hard copy and the audiobook version. I
00:39:56.760get that feedback a lot from people who do have both versions. It felt like the full artistic
00:40:00.460expression for me, having the visual alongside the music. You know what I mean? When I recorded
00:40:05.320the audio it felt full like it needed this as well lyrics and music yes yes and your reading is
00:40:13.020fantastic you are such an excellent narrator it's really beautiful to hear the words in your voice
00:40:19.380instead of the voice that voice conjured in my head when i'm reading your words in text thank
00:40:23.880you it's always been a dream of mine since watching mrs doubtfire to be a voice actor
00:40:27.400we're like he opens up and i was like i want to do that one day so if anyone's listening you know
00:40:33.760wants to hire me to be I'm down you want me to narrate your book I'm down but uh no but thank
00:40:40.460you so much thank y'all so much it's an honor and a gift to just spend any time and space with you
00:40:45.660and to be on a label I'm humbled together so y'all yeah thank you so fun to be together again
00:40:54.740I really appreciate your time and the way the universe tricked us into hanging out
00:41:00.020I'm really into it and I felt what you said about getting policed for that language I can imagine
00:41:09.800how that would happen I have seen versions of that in different spaces where a friend gets1.00
00:41:17.620shot down for asking the same question that I could have asked because she's black and so it1.00
00:41:22.720seems like she's troublemaking for you to be able to write in that high theory incantatory1.00
00:41:28.940prose that is very much in the same lyrical stream as Deleuze and Guattari and the really
00:41:36.980advanced theorists and for you to be critiqued for that because someone doesn't see the world
00:41:43.480that you're writing in I just want to witness that how wrong and infuriating that is because
00:41:49.940you do some real good work my friend thank you I was always that thing of like just make the work
00:41:55.700The right audience will find it evidently. And knowing that sometimes work takes however long to get its reception and not even like I don't feel entitled about it being received away. It's just the sense of like, I also write. That's a paradoxical thing, writing and sharing. I write for me against histories of policing language and also want it to reach the humanity of my reader as I explore my own.
00:42:17.760yeah it's a very rare combination extremely clever and extremely kind and i think you
00:42:26.900christopher are just emblematic of that meeting place of kindness and intelligence
00:42:32.160so folks go get in on these offerings yeah i'll give me guys i'm honored i'm humbled i'm hearing
00:42:38.200together again by jenna jackson that's playing in my mind now the perfect outro that video and
00:42:46.560everything too i was like so good and please get missing witches come on the missing witches deck
00:42:51.820like make it a full set you see how they communicate together do yourself a justice0.97
00:42:56.780and be led into our re-indigenized future join the mythologizing and blessed fucking me blessed0.97
00:43:04.400it back in me. You don't have to know if you're a witch. You just have to be curious1.00
00:43:17.080and ready to share in wonder. Come find us at missingwitches.com.