Colorful, lively, and beautiful, the Black Queer Tarot by Kendrick Daye (@blkqueertarot) imagines a divinely inspired landscape where black queer people are thriving. It’s a powerful deck that embraces the cotton-candy sweetness of modern lightworker collage decks and clearly states that Black queer bodies belong in that space as well. I have one or two other decks that fall into that category, but I’ve resisted and gotten rid of others that feel like all surface without much thought, and this deck is a nice change. There is thought and substance, as well as some queer thirst, which I also enjoy. And the thirstiest of the cards—one that made me gasp in all kinds of ways when I first saw it—made a crucial appearance in this initial deck interview. Given how earthy the cards drawn for the interview were, it feels right to draw attention to the bodies.

As usual, I’m using my standard deck interview spread. You can use the spread for yourself as is—many people do!—or read up on how and why I created it and tweak as needed.

Seven cards from the Black Queer Tarot in the deck interview spread by Hermit's Mirror — Interviewing the *Black Queer Tarot*

**What major lesson are you here to help me learn?** *3 of Cups*
**Through which divine energy can we best communicate?** *3 of Coins*
**In what area can you aid me to help others?** *Queen of Coins*
**In what area could your guidance be easily misunderstood?** *Ace of Coins*
**What can I do to keep our communication clear?** *Prince of Coins*
**How can I use your guidance for the highest good?** *The High Priestess*
**How will I know when we’re ready for a new lesson?** *4 of Coins*

This is deck offers me a lesson in pleasure and celebration in community. It is queer and delightfully so. Even though I am not a Black person, I am invited to support the Black queer community where I can as a white queer ally. Queer culture has, in the past, sometimes stemmed from a zero-sum mentality, but it is not. And this deck is here to celebrate our shared community and to call on me to do the work of the ally in supporting a diverse community where we are all thriving without having to assimilate in the melting pot.

That celebration and connection happens through the real and physical. Almost all of the cards in this reading are Coins, the earth element of material reality that signals the body and finances. I see the pleasure in this, especially in the 3 of Coins directing me to divine connection. The 3 of Coins is the card of my first spirit guide, which Vulcan, and in this deck, his forge is very hot indeed. But the spirit connection is not just Vulcan but of shared community and the desire to build together, combining bodies and offering resources for the betterment of all.

Overseeing that is the Queen of Coins, who is absolutely in her element and feeling her body and personal autonomy. Of all the Queens, I find the Queen of Coins to be the most personally meaningful as she is grounded and supportive without losing herself in the process. This Queen celebrates her regal nature and stands firm in who she is as a person of worth. But unlike, say, the Queen of Wands, she is very much about collective power. The Queen here is the personal support to the divine mission of the 3 of Coins: connection in spiritual and physical ways that support and uplift the community. She is the reminder and the bedrock for the purpose of doing this work.

That doesn’t mean that she, and this deck, are meant to manifest individual abundance. There is work involved, as clarified by the Prince of Coins, whose body makes clear that he can put in the work involved. I think that it’s a good reminder that we can try to manifest personal prosperity and find our own personal power to break through chains, but we also need to address broader systems that make it harder for groups to break free from the barriers built around them. That takes actual physical and financial efforts, not just thoughts and prayers. (Those are welcome too, but they are insufficient.)

While this is all very based in the real world, the High Priestess comes in to provide the bigger picture. At the end of the day, this deck is lifting up the spiritual community, making it see the significant gaps of representation and implicit (or explicit) biases those of us in the woo industry, and it’s helping to elevate and invite in a new group of practitioners who might have felt excluded before because they had never seen a deck that invited them in as their full selves. I hope that this is the first of many queer black tarot (and oracle!) decks.

The Black Queer Tarot was created by Kendrick Daye © 2022. All rights reserved. You can purchase the Black Queer Tarot deck and support the project with related swag through the Black Queer Tarot website.

Deck Interview: Black Queer Tarot