“When rationality runs dry, it’s Red that will reconcile this world, a hue vibrant and vital inside its brown.”

And so opens Chapter 1, Zero, of Red Tarot: A Decolonial Guide to Divinatory Literacy by Christopher Marmolejo. This is going to be a tarot book like no other. I can tell already. :: hearts for eyes ::

“To be born, this work broke open my heart, and so let this reading be opened by my blood offering, a requisite pound of flesh…”

Marmolego’s writing is going to draw out your feels, that’s for sure. Either you will be fully onboard this train or you will be left scratching your head. You’ll see what I mean. Let’s continue.

Red Tarot is not an easy read, but it’s not intended to be. It’s filled with dense layers covering symbolism, mythology, history, present day politics, literature, and so much more. This book is about shedding red light on each card in the tarot to reveal it as a prism of political praxis, inspired after Prof. Sandy Grande’s Red Pedagogy.

Each tarot card entry draws from four key disciplines:

1. literary fiction as political expression,
2. gender studies and theory,
3. anti-colonialist philosophy of education and decolonizing pedagogy, and
4. performance studies, whereby theatrics, divination rituals, ceremonial rites, and social expressions are revelatory of core truths in the human experience.

This is achieved by weaving in the teachings of Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Paulo Freire, and José Esteban Muñoz.

Marmolejo seamlessly navigates different cultural paradigms and even historical epochs, like–

• addressing racial justice and Indigenous American sovereignty in the Justice card, explored through the theme of duality, opposition, and balance found in the numerology of Two;
• or drawing our attention to the Sword of Damocles reference in the Four of Swords;
• or the nod to bloodletting and lavadoras ritual cleansing in the Five of Cups (a card that Marmolejo notes as being “an offspring of the Tower” card), just to name a few.

Note that Marmolejo does diverge from the beaten path of tarot correspondences. For instance, traditionally The Sun card as Key 19 connects to the numerological realm of 10s and 1s (1+9=10, 1+0=1), relative to Key 1: The Magician and Key 10: Wheel of Fortune, but in Red Tarot, Key 19: The Sun connects to the 9s and Key 9: The Hermit. Key 21: The World card in Red Tarot corresponds with 10s (whereas traditionally it ties in to the 3s and The Empress), and so on. See table of contents photos.

The way Marmolejo organized the book contents and card entries is brilliant, and in the spirit of decolonizing the tarot, does go in a progressive and radically new direction when it comes to numerological constellations and tarot correspondences. There’s a lot that makes more sense now, however.

For example, The Hierophant and The Devil cards going together as it does here in Marmolejo’s approach makes more sense to me than the traditional Hierophant and Temperance. As a Life Path 7, I certainly prefer Marmolejo’s approach of my Major cards being Chariot and The Star than the traditional Chariot and The Tower. =) Also, having The World and The Fool cards going together instead of The World, Empress, and The Hanged Man feels more balanced.

Just to help me sort it out, I created a comparison chart:

Even if you’re a purist traditionalist type tarot reader, tell me the Red Read approach doesn’t make more sense than the way we’ve been doing it! Anyway, I just thought it was cool, and am digging what Marmolejo has done here.

Each card entry is also a personal essay with memoir-esque reflections. Marmolejo shares having to “get up and get dressed,” putting on jewelry, makeup, and perfume to write about the Nine of Pentacles, a card that, per Marmolejo, is an invitation for us to invest in beauty.

This is about the personal experience of tarot.

It so happens that I’m reading this book while a related conversation has been trending in the online tarot community, and that is whether politics and political conversations “belong” in tarot spaces.

It has been interesting to hear different perspectives and opinions. For those who land on the side of wanting to weave social justice and subversion of unjust political dynamics with spiritual practice and tarot, Red Tarot is the book you’ve been searching for.

Redesigning the tarot as a rich tapestry of LGBTQIA2S+ and BIPOC perspectives to instruct on how divination can be used to empower these communities, there is a lot to appreciate about this book. It goes where I haven’t yet seen a tarot text go before. The words on these pages do bleed red. They move you. This is rubedo, the final stage of achieving the Great Work.

In terms of how to work with this book, it’s more along the lines of Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom than it is a practical guide to card meanings with a set of spreads to test drive and obligatory introductory material. While the book description notes that you can use this book with any tarot deck at all, per the imagery descriptions, it’s unequivocally keyed to the RWS.

My favorite way to work with this book is to shuffle my deck, pull a card, and then read the corresponding pages in the text. That becomes my learning and nuggets of instructive dharma for the day. For instance, this morning I pulled Key 9: The Erudite from my SKT deck, then turned to Chapter Nine.

Red Tarot isn’t necessarily a practical guide to card meanings or learning how to read a deck of tarot cards. What it is is a series of thoughtful narrative essays edifying on the lived experiences of marginalized peoples, and thoughts on how we might subvert white supremacy, capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy through spiritual practice with the tarot.

Marmolejo is a gifted writer and the prose in this book is exquisite. I can turn to any page at random, drop my finger down, and land on just one of the most beautiful gemstone of a line of text I’ve read in a while.

Case in point the Eight of Cups entry above: “The language of freedom has a taste and texture that we cannot know till it is discovered.”

Or this line from the last page: “Tarot is the obsidian mirror, the dark divinatory light that allows me to psychically see the soul, the inner process, the hidden connections between all things.”

If you’re not used to reading academic writing in the social sciences, humanities, and interdisciplinary studies, then Marmolejo’s erudite prose may be a challenging read.

If you’ve been hungry for exactly that type of tarot book, a meaty text with judicious use of citations and a deep respect for intellectual rigor, which we do tend to lack in the marketplace, then you’re going to love Red Tarot.

FTC Disclosure: In accordance with Title 16 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations Part 255, “Guides Concerning Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising,” I received this book from the publisher for prospective review, who also happens to be the publisher of my books! =) Everything I’ve said here is sincere and accurately reflects my opinion of the book.