Can I interest you in something Red?
Thresholds: The Decolonial Divination Course Open For Enrollment, beginning Aug. 11
Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise. In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of rural prophets is the source of much amusement. - Toni Morrison
Dear reader,
In this world where all is known and nothing understood, where are the quiet ones who remember when there were secrets? The discerning ones, knowing exactly which to hold, which to say. Where is that quiet influence that can encourage you to drift into the deep? Or can you hear the hum of an old woman making music in her mouth in this hot, humid country that sets the atmosphere to the story of a innocent child uncurling?
I remember these women conjuring at the kitchen table, set with a stack of cards, a glass of iced tea with a clove in it, a smoking cigarette and young eyes gathered round dreaming wide awake.
Thunderclouds clap together. Salt air swirls in the futures foretold these young souls. Lulled drowsy by starlit water they all of a sudden wake up forgetful. Has anyone drowned in the night? Listen closely and the hum that’s mostly below range can all of a sudden float a quarter note above the wind and shift your memory entirely.
For those who can hear, or hunger to remember, the soft music that washes ashore in the words of a wise woman holding the odd silence of a card, of cards on a table that mean much by saying little, I’m writing to tell you that my signature course, Thresholds, is now open for enrollment.
This course, like my cards, is truly my cast-iron skillet. The more its worn-in, the more richly seasoned are its meals. It can handle the high-heat. There are no toxic chemicals or heavy metals, and its deliciously versatile.
Thresholds is a cornerstone of my teaching for a reason. Made for folkx who want a comprehensive tarot education in red reading that moves toward the invention of the decolonized self, against a pitiful, reckless white-washed new-age spirituality. This course will cover all of the cards yes, but moreso supply an ethic of divination that is grounded, historicized and primed toward the postcolonial potentialities that any reader worth her salt reads toward.
While not every student who enrolls has an existing client practice, we work weekly to consider the cards in a consultation space. Our tongues will untuck as we trace the brave melody of divination. But of course if you do have an existing client practice, as a diviner, a therapist, a mental health practitioner, a curandera, an herbalist or the such, this course and the cards will fold in exquisitely.
This course will vivify your tarot cards and your divinatory reading so that your experience within the course, and thereafter your cartomancy, can heal the psychic wounds inflicted by assault from the forces of imperialist, racist, classist, sexist, domination.
I am committed to both providing a technical proficiency with the structure, varied meanings and uses of the tarot, in reading for self and others, while also using the cards as a tool for critical self-inquiry as a byproduct of a communal process. I offer this course as a humanizing education, through which you become conscious about your presence in the world, to then transform the world. You will leave humming.
Having Red Tarot: A Decolonial Guide to Divinatory Literacy to accompany the course only means we will swim farther still. So if you’ve got Red Tarot in your shelves this is your time to put that reading into praxis.
In the cards the lost reflections of your love, your strength and resiliency are conjured. In the spread cards you confront your fear, your pain, your potential. This is a course in transformation, magic, manifestation, healing, ritual and decolonization.
But it is so much more than a course.
It is a classroom, it is a revelation, a vehicle, an incubator, a threshold through tarot towards transformation. It is a space of emancipatory possibility, designed and facilitated by the love and passion I have for my craft and my community. It is a witches garden in the 3 of cups, and a safe haven in the 3 of pentacles. You will learn tarot differently because this classroom will teach you how to think through the tarot, rather than rely on memorized meanings to spout.
Thresholds will catalyze your divinatory relationships because it engages the cards as cyphers for decolonizing consciousness. The cards will be made real as we catalogue the wisdom distilled from our experience with them. Thresholds is for you if you want to create an authentic, organic, empowering and revelatory relationship with SPIRIT through tarot. It is for you if you are Black, Red, Brown and or White and want to unlearn anti-blackness and deject the internalized white supremacy. It is for you if you want to use tarot as a prothesis to mend the ruptures of colonialism upon our birthright to richly intuitive, animate, multivalent divinatory psychic faculty.
As my style of teaching is socratic and dialogic, I will be the psychopomp facilitating the soul journey in our time together. Live classes are focused on application and skill development in reading. This live time is for digging deeper into the week's material, sharing perspectives, conducting group readings and sharing space.
COURSE SCHEDULE
Aug 11 - Oct 20 / Mondays, 3pm pst / *certain dates subject to change based on student’s timezones & availability* tiered tuition & payment plans available
Week 0 - August 11, 3pm, Zoom
Introductions, Orientations & Entry points - Ritual Relationships, Interpretation Tools, The Fool, Personal Cards
Reading: Red Tarot: A Decolonial Guide to Divinatory Literacy Introduction, The Red Read
Week 1 - August 18, 3pm, Zoom
Lecture:The Magician, The Wheel of Fortune, Pages, Elemental Ace’s
Seminar: Visual readings, Significators, the Question
Reading: Red Tarot ‘One” chapter; Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women Writers, by Gloria Anzaldúa
Week 2 - Monday August 25, 3pm, Zoom
Lecture :The High Priestess, Justice, Judgment, the Hanged One, Elemental Two’s
Seminar: Magnifiers, Bottom of the Deck, Reversals, Critical Questioning exercise
Reading: Red Tarot ‘Two” chapter; The Esoteric Meaning of the Twin Pillars Boaz & Joachin / audio of Toni Morrison’s Nobel Lecture in Literature
Week 3 - Monday Sept 1, 3pm, Zoom
Lecture: The Empress, Death, Queens, Elemental Threes
Seminar: Cards of the Natal Chart/ Decanic organization of the minors.
Reading: Red Tarot ‘Three” chapter; Learning the Grammar of Animacy, Robin Wall Kimmerer/ The Colonization of Women excerpt by Marie Mies and Vandana Shiva
Week 4 - Monday Sept 8, 3pm, Zoom
Lecture: The Emperor, Temperance, Kings, Elemental Fours
Seminar: The Four Aces Spread
Reading: Red Tarot ‘Four” chapter; “the Closet as Myth” Excerpt from De-colonizing Trans/Gender 101 by B. Binaohan
Week 5 - Monday, Sept 15, 3pm, Zoom
Lecture: The Hierophant, The Devil, Elemental Fives
Seminar: Timing & Tarot, the Structure of a Safe & Powerful Reading
Reading: Red Tarot ‘Five” chapter; The Wounded Word: The Phenomenology of Prayer by Jean-Louis Chrétien
Week 6 - Monday, Sept 22, 3pm, Zoom
Lecture: The Lovers, the Tower, Elemental Sixes
Seminar: Lauren’s Love Spread
Reading: Red Tarot ‘Six” chapter; World Traveling and Loving Perception by María Lugones
“Remaking Human Being: Loving Kaleidoscopic Consciousness in Helena Maria Viramontes’ Their Dogs Came with Them” By Paula M.L. Moya
Week 7 - Monday, Sept 29, 3pm, Zoom
Lecture: The Chariot, The Star, Kings, Elemental Sevens
Seminar: Star Guides Series & Shadow Keys part 1*
Reading: Red Tarot ‘Seven” chapter; Toward a Pedagogy of Acompañamiento: Mexican Migrant Youth Writing from the Underside of Modernity by Enrique Sepulveda III
Week 8 - Monday, Oct 6, 3pm, Zoom
Lecture: Strength, The Moon, Elemental Eights
Seminar: Star Guides & Shadow keys part 2*
Reading: Red Tarot ‘Eight” chapter; Bi bell: Spirituality and the Sexual Intellectual
Week 9 - Monday, Oct 13, 3pm, Zoom
Lecture: The Hermit, The Sun, Elemental Nines
Seminar: Star Guides & Shadow Keys part 3*
Reading: Red Tarot ‘Nine” chapter; Audre Lorde: Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
Week 10 - Monday, Oct 20, 3pm, Zoom
Lecture: The World, The Fool review, Elemental Tens
Seminar: Collective Threshold Spread
Reading: Red Tarot ‘Ten” chapter
This will be the last Thresholds cohort for 2025, so now is your chance to end the year with a truly transformative tarot study. There are various enrollment options, including payment plans and limited scholarships as well!
I hope to see you across the Threshold darling reader. Reach out if you have any questions.
x,
Christopher
This is an incredible course & journey! Highly recommend!
Omg this sounds amazing! How long are the zoom sessions?