Let’s talk about the Lovers card.
Once upon a time back in the 2010s, I was eager to learn cartomancy. However, when seeking out a deck of my own, every Lovers card I found featured a man with a woman. Over the course of many visits to New Age shops all across New England, I struggled to find a woman with a woman or a man with a man, much less anyone outside of the gender binary. More than two people? Impossible. Fewer than two people? Unheard of.
So I began asking around the witchy community of the internet for tarot decks with non-heteronormative versions of the Lovers card.
First I received a barrage of unhelpful responses about how a Lovers card depicting a man with a woman was not really heteronormative because the card symbolized balancing the innately opposed forces of feminine vs. masculine. To say I found these explanations annoying would be an understatement. While I myself am binary-identified, I am not stupid enough to believe there are only two genders. Nor am I ignorant enough to suppose that femininity and masculinity are innately warring on a cosmic scale. I cast these insufficient explanations aside and continued my search.
Some more well-intentioned responders gave me recommendations for decks that did not depict the Lovers as humans with genders at all. These decks featured woodland creatures, mushrooms, plants, stars, or still more abstracted imagery. While these decks would be very useful for others, they were still not what I wanted. I didn’t want to deny the Lovers as lovers. I just wanted them to resemble the kind of love I had sought and known in my own experience.
Other slightly more helpful responders recommended erotic queer decks. While I myself enjoy queer eroticism very much—one might even argue I’ve built a career on it—I don’t necessarily want to jerk off to my tarot reading. Additionally, a deck with graphic erotic art, while beautiful, is not the sort of thing one can bring to a party of strangers unless it is an extremely specific kind of party. Thus I continued my quest.
I had begun to despair of ever finding what I sought when, at long last, I heard whispers on a wind of a new deck. It had not yet been printed but the artist had shown some of his work-in-progress and, in addition to the exquisite artwork, he had devised a very particular approach to the Lovers.
Namely, there would be multiple Lovers.
Rather than a single Lovers card to bear the burden of representing everything I needed, the artist—Trung Le Nguyen, also known as Trungles, a prolific illustrator and author of graphic novels—would create four cards; one with two men, one with two women, one with a man and a woman, and one with three figures. The diviner need merely choose which Lovers card spoke to them, shuffle it in, and draw as they would from any other deck.
With this perfect answer to my plea in the works, I eagerly awaited the release of what would become The Star Spinner Tarot.
The Star Spinner Tarot came out in March of 2020 and exceeded my astoundingly-high expectations. To describe the art style of the deck as Art Nouveau feels both reductive and insufficient. Le Nguyen has done far more than merely translate the Rider-Waite imagery into an Alphonse Mucha pastiche. While there is an undeniable Art Nouveau influence on the style’s crisp linework and smooth angles, the sheer imagination bursting through the layered imagery is breathtaking to behold, and the skill required to bring this vision to such masterful fruition cannot be overstated. Moreover, Le Nguyen has not fallen into the all-too-common trap of pouring everything into the Major Arcana whilst leaving the Minor Arcana to fend for themselves; every card is given artistic weight, with the result that the Minor Arcana are just as gorgeous and visually rich as the Major Arcana. There is a diversity throughout the deck not only of gender but also of ethnicity and culture.
The deck comes in a magnet-secured box that unfolds with splendid ease. Every corner of it is decorated in still more of Le Nguyen’s art. This box also includes a guidebook authored by Le Nguyen himself, explaining his reasoning behind the chosen imagery and his efforts to remove Orientalism from the iconography, alongside thorough, heartwarming, and gently-encouraging interpretations for each card in the deck.
And the Lovers cards are everything I could’ve hoped for.
Having at last acquired my ideal deck, I could delve into cartomancy in earnest.
One of the results being a particular anthology.
An Outstretched Hand: A Tarot Spread of Queer Stories is a fantasy anthology inspired by the magic of tarot, available now wherever fine books are found. The six tales include…
The Star by Tess Carletta
A lighthouse keeper who influences the fate of her people by wrangling misbehaving stars back into place must remedy her own constellation.
The Hierophant by Carolina Cruz
A knight who was disabled in battle gives up on asking the gods for healing and turns to something dark in the woods for help instead.
The Chariot by RK Ashwick
Two witches vie desperately for a goddess’s blessing—but the fortune they seek might be right in front of them.
Strength by Luna Daye
A warrior is sent to investigate the rumors of a raided village and is forced to face the trauma of his past, and has to battle more than his grief after a terrifying discovery.
Temperance by Noah Hawthorne
A grieving mercenery searches for the tallest mountain to throw himself from, but a mystery and curious folk keep him grounded for a little while longer.
The Devil by Sebastian Nothwell
A repressed Victorian finds fleeting release in a fae courtesan’s arms—until iron chains threaten their growing bond.
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Sebastian Nothwell 