for individuals | for groups | tarot for a world on fire

Tarot is the ancestral practice of storytelling and the interpretation of art. It unlocks parts of our present which may be overlooked, nurturing a deeper awareness of the wisdom that is already living inside of our bones. 

My work with tarot was born in moments of sudden transition, where fear and freedom are one and the same, and the recognition of and return to my own power became illuminated in the dark. It was born out of a seeking for spirituality at the intersection of my identities, and a discovery of my voice. It was born out of a cultivation and sharpening of my activism, a deep and continued unpacking of internalized and structural racism, and an orienting toward liberation.  It was born out of death.  It was born out of sitting in quiet by the ocean.  It was born in moments of feeling on fire, and moments of feeling adrift.  It was born out of rebirth in community.  

Tarot provided a space to seek, to interrogate, to intuit, to breathe, to activate, to access ancestral wisdom that already lived within my skin, patiently waiting for release.

I’ve been a student and practitioner of tarot for over a decade. It’s a divination practice that has been endlessly reimagined and woven through, and I carefully choosing the decks I use in my practice.  For example, the cards I use may be designed by women, queer people, trans people, people of color, and/or disabled folks.  The images on the cards might be nature-based, or illuminate our collective histories through a racial and gender justice lens.

what to expect & booking

Individual readings are for you. (For group readings, see more here.)

Please feel free to take notes and/or audio record the session. Readings are currently done virtually via zoom. If you live in Baltimore, readings can also occur in my home or in the public space of your choosing, and we can confirm COVID precautions during booking.

You will be guided to ensure that your space meets your sensory needs and is as comfortable for you as possible. We will discuss how tarot works, engage in a grounding meditation, and intuitively pull the cards together. Five cards will be pulled in a unique spread to provide immersive and detailed guidance, and the reading will last no more than one hour.

Readings are available at a sliding scale of $60 - $100. Please pay what feels good to you. If you prefer, partial payment + exchange or full exchange is welcome and can be discussed during booking.  Various kinds of healing work, tinctures, and hearty houseplants are things I'd currently love. If you are someone who is able to give beyond the sliding scale, you can help to provide a free reading to someone without the funds. And if you’re interested in gifting a reading, please send me an email!

Schedule your tarot reading via my calendly link here.

Black liberation has always been intricately connected to activating our individual and collective spirits.  From the visions and dreams of Harriet Tubman and Nat Turner, to the sermons and poetic spells of the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement, these visionary practices have weaved us toward more connected and abundant futures.  And have been critical to sustaining us in times of overwhelming grief and despair.

In partnership with The Rooted Collective, Tarot for a World on Fire has been one of my seasonal contributions to nourishing our spirit, in hopes to keep us dedicated to the work of liberation while reminding us of the cycles of change, rebirth, and possibility all around us.

an archive of readings for the collective from 2020 to present are below. explore at your own pace, and hopefully you’ll find the reflections are resonant for any given moment.

what should we be paying attention to, collectively, as
we move into the winter?

Winter has arrived. This one feels particularly heavy as we awaken to and witness mass violence in the form of ongoing genocide. Many of us are becoming increasingly aware of entrenched racism, colonization, and imperialism on a global scale.

Winter calls us to go inward.  Use this time to root yourself in rigorous study.  Be in deep inquiry.  Bear witness and remember the ways our struggles are interconnected.  Tune into the needs of your body.  Learn the stories of those who experience the most acute oppression – lack of access to land, to food, to water, to healthcare, to life.  Be in the tumbling of grief.  Open yourself to the transformation and clarity that grief offers.  Tune into the needs of your body.  Take stock of who you are becoming.  Get clear about what your role is in this moment; be in that role.  Tune into the needs of your body. 

Often when we’re deep in movement work, we forget our bodies.  We must be relentless and strategic in the ways we organize AND recover.  Don’t forget to rest.  To lay something down.  To lay yourself down.  To root yourself in your relationships.  This is generations’ work.  We must sustain ourselves for the long term – there’s so much more uncovering, healing, and building left to do.

In this solstice time as the light returns, may it shine light on the atrocities we must uncover to change the world, illuminate our sense of hope, and sharpen our visions for justice.

to liberation, 
Blair

what should we be paying attention to, collectively, as
we move into the autumn?

Happy autumn ya’ll!  And despite the sudden threat of sweat as the month begins, the leaves are and will be settling, blanketing the ground to nourish what will come in the spring.  We’re in a season of both endings and beginnings.

I’ve been sitting with two major concepts recently.  One being the stories, myths and lore of trees through recent travels in Benin and Senegal in West Africa.  The ways that the trees hold the stories of a people.  How can be a place our souls return to.  The second concept being around land stewardship and seed memory.  How the seeds our plants drop to the ground through the growing and harvest seasons actually recall the soil and climate conditions of their parent plants.

Story and memory exists all around us.  And invites us not to reckon with the end of things, but the beauty of what we transition toward. 

So within that framing, consider for yourself and your communities: How are we stewarding ourselves?  What memories and strategies are we leaving behind?  How will we ultimately be remembered?

This reflection might invite us to make peace with someone we love.  To establish a clearer boundary.  To commit to a new practice.  To ensure your words match your actions.  To move more on purpose.  To ensure the legacy you are working to leave us all will foster the bravery, clarity, and connection we need to birth a new world.

to liberation, 
Blair

what should we be paying attention to, collectively, as
we move into the summer?

It’s summertime ya’ll.  And this is a season of multitudes.

The expansive community that forms and grows with more celebrations, events, and reunions.  The extreme violence we continue to experience politically, the upticks in violence we see locally, on top of the air we breathe becoming a place of caution. 

There is so much collective rage that is built up in our bodies.  Legacies of it.  Take a moment to ask yourself, what is your relationship to anger?  Where does it live?  How do you move it?  Create room in it and around it?  Direct it to something meaningful – art, movement, organizing, worldbuilding?  Rage has often been the fuel behind our steps toward freedom, and made care for each other and ourselves a mandate.

At the same time, summer is an invitation to the experience of pleasure.  (Ya’ll heard Janelle Monae’s new album yet?)  Summer shows us that pleasure is more accessible than we think.  In the feel of sunlight on your skin, the song of birds, the invitations to gather.  Pleasure resides inside of us – it takes a little work of noticing to find it.  And the experience of pleasure is a reclamation of our bodies and our autonomy from those who police us.  A homage to the liberation our ancestors fought for.

Seek balance between the flow of rage and pleasure where you can.  And stay open to the lessons of those who have been there before if you feel a little lost on the way.

to liberation, 
Blair

what should we be paying attention to, collectively, as we move into the spring?

A chorus of sound and activity returns.  The world regenerates once again.  It’s spring – and this season is an invitation to transformation. 

Transformation can be beautiful.  We see this mirrored in the natural world around us – as signals move from the sun and sky to the soil, plants, insects and fungi containing messages of safety, danger, medicine, and connection.  The blooming of a flower or the budding on a tree.  Possibility abounds.

Transformation can also be terrifying.  Because it involves a breaking.  An ending.  And there are so many attempts at breaking us.  As we speak, continued effort is being made to erase and end queer and trans existence in a slew of bills across the country.

This is not the first time we’ve walked these paths. Our people know pain, and they know exuberant joy.  We know profound grief, and revelatory love.  After winter, comes spring.  We know transformation. 

So, where in your life are you inviting these lessons?  How are you letting yourself grieve and break, in preparation to forge something new and liberatory?  How are you building relationships grounded in open communication, radical honesty, possibility, and a consistent love ethic?  What medicine are you able to offer to help us all flourish?  By building our collective power we too, like the spring, will be able to regenerate and reorganize ourselves, our communities, and the world.

to liberation, 
Blair

what should we be paying attention to, collectively, as
we move into the winter?

Hey loves.  Here we are in winter – a season of transformation, a transformation that is hidden from view.  It’s the season of what lies beyond and underneath, of quiet and sleep.  Of doing less, of recharging, of paying close attention to your home, your body, your energy.

With the approaching cold, generally seeing less of our neighbors, continued oppression in the world around us, and ongoing waves of folks getting sick, this season is about discernment and the conservation of our energy.  We all have to make more thoughtful decisions about what we commit our energy and time to.  We only have so much energy to give.  It will take a lot of focus, practice, and discipline to retain the commitments you’ve made to yourself and your communities.  To your purpose, and our collective liberation.

We’ve been talking about this for a while now, and perhaps you’ve been making small changes over the past few months toward your purpose work.  Celebrate those shifts.  But now is the time for action.

Winter gives us the spaciousness and time to get really clear, practiced, and focused on what actions you need to take to retain that commitment.  Consider regular self-accountability work.  Did the choices you make today align with who you want to be?  Take some time right now to assess where you focus needs to be this winter season, and how you’ll center rest and care where you can.

to liberation, 
Blair

what should we be paying attention to, collectively, as
we move into the autumn?

Hey loves – welcome once again!  And welcome Autumn.  A time where things end.  Where we get reflective.  Where many of our plants and foliage return to the earth.  Where we begin to let go of what doesn’t serve us and retain only what we need to move forward.  A time where everything slows, and night approaches a little sooner every day.  Stillness is coming.

And what is stillness?  Stillness is the deep rest that the world starts to invite us to.  It keeps us present as meditative practice.  It opens space between our thoughts and actions as breath and grounding.  It helps us retain information and integrate lessons into our lives as journaling and reflection.  And, with enough practice, can get you closely connected to your purpose as it relates to our collective liberation.

So I invite you to think about stillness.  What are practices to help you get more still?  How might that sustain the things you want to move or change in your life?  What are the ways stillness has been robbed from you presently in our capitalist system, or in your family histories/lineages for those of us living at the intersections of multiple forms of oppression?  What are the small and big ways you might reclaim that stillness?

Taking the time to check in on our hearts, bodies, minds, and spirits – and to get connected to our own deep knowing – is a revolutionary act.  Autumn is a beautiful time for it. 

to liberation, 
Blair

what should we be paying attention to, collectively, as
we move into the summer?

Whew.  Ya’ll.  Deep breaths.

We’re in a devastating moment in a long history of moments of attacks on women.  On trans people.  On autonomy, bodies, hope, energy, spirit.  One of the many goals of white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, ableism, homophobia and transphobia, capitalism is to break our spirit.  Destroy our sense of hope.  Reduce our ability to fight.  Decrease our time for rest.  Lose our ability to find joy.  To still dream.

And these moments will continue to come, my loves.

So, how do we sustain?  Resist?  What lessons can we glean from the summer when our hearts are broken over and over again?

It’s leaning into summertime as resource.  The sun, the gardens, the block parties, the community events, the water, the break from school, the cookouts, the green spaces.  Giving yourself permission to see and receive the abundance showing up all around you – in both the small and big ways.

It’s moving slowly.  Shifting your pace.  Tending to your heart.  Grieving with your people.  Channeling your rage.

This moment calls you to root deeper into the resource and abundance all around you AND inside of you.  Getting in touch with your breath, your heartbeat, your skin, your hair follicles, your bones, your cells, your big miraculous life.  Your big miraculous life.

It’s the only way we’ll sustain – and ultimately fully get free.

to liberation, 
Blair

what should we be paying attention to, collectively, as we move into the spring?

Hey my loves.  How you holding up?  Before you keep reading, take a moment to pause.  Deep breaths.  Anyone else still feeling the heaviness from wintertime?  I sure am.

Springtime is upon us, and the increasing daylight couldn’t come soon enough.  Possibility and renewal lies ahead!  And as we enter this new season, it’s critical that as we renew, and the world opens up once again, we renew while also remembering.  Remembering the need to check in with ourselves often.  Remembering the health needs of those around us.  Remembering the care our communities need as news cycles display acts of oppression and imperialism on a daily basis.  Remembering the ways that nature teaches us how to be right relationship with each other.

This season is all about assessing our root systems.  Yes, our ancestors and family lineages – but more specifically our care systems.  The people and places that keep you strong, grounded, and growing – those who you look to through the hard times.

Who are the people you are currently rooted into?  What are the places?  How are you rooted into them?  Are there roots that need to be loosened a bit, so you feel a little more spacious?  Are there people or places that spark joy and growth within you?  Maybe it’s time to deepen your connections or expand your networks a bit.  The key is in the depth and the breadth.  

When we tend to our root systems, we can withstand more than we expect, and flourish beyond our wildest dreams.

to liberation, 
Blair

what should we be paying attention to, collectively, as
we move into the winter?

Whew.  Anyone else feeling the need to hibernate away from it all?

We’re in a time of massive, overwhelming shift.  It feels like the cracks and fissures in every institution around us are showing more clearly than they ever have.  It’s a destabilizing feeling, for sure.  Systems as we know them are in their winter season.  They are actively dying.  Change is hard and necessary, my loves.

It’s okay to mourn change.  How are you grieving?  Who are you grieving with?  It’s so important to have people to witness you in this time – therapists operating from a liberation framework, healing practitioners that speak to you.  

I invite you to see this time as an invitation.

This time is giving us the freedom to try something new.  New systems of care.  New systems of justice.  New ways to be in relationship to one another.  What new system are you willing to co-create?  What tools, skills, and experiences can you bring to that co-creation?

We can’t create without slowing.  Getting still, resting, listening to your intuition, and finding moments of quiet are powerful tools to help us imagine something else.  

When you close your eyes and think of a world that deserves us, what do you see?

to liberation,
Blair

what should we be paying attention to, collectively, as
we move into the autumn?

Welcome to the autumn.  A time where the light begins to wane, and we’re invited lean into mystery and the things that we don’t always see clearly.  To sit with what rests just below the surface of our vision.  Of our knowing.

It’s time for a shedding and letting go of what’s unnecessary.  Assess all of the things you’ve grown this year.  What are you choosing to harvest?  Are you carrying anything with you that you no longer need?  We’ll need to be super discerning around what is for us and what isn’t.

This is season is about preparation.  For the quiet.  For rest.  For reflection.  For understanding what’s needed to nourish our own spirits.  Right in the middle of autumn is Halloween – a time where the veil between the worlds in thinnest – and it’s easier to connect to many mentors and loved ones who came before us and helped get us to this point.  Take some time to reflect and honor those legacies this season.  Learn about the histories of others.  Let their stories nourish you, propel you forward.  Give thanks.  

Begin to intentionally vision your own legacy.  What you’re moving toward. 

October is Baltimore Black Pride month!  There are a number of events coming to celebrate those often erased legacies of Black queer and trans people – and to revision our futures collectively.   Check out bit.ly/bmoreblaqpride2021 for more info.

to liberation,
Blair

what should we be paying attention to, collectively, as we move into the summer?

Summer, summer, summertiiiiiiiiime!

It’s so nice to be outside again, soaking up the sunlight, gathering with people again.  We are back to sharing our world with all kinds of outside creatures.  We made it through the 17-year emergence of Brood X.

Summer is about abundance – growth, expression, becoming, joy, pleasure.  It’s a time to glow up fearlessly, effortlessly.  Celebrate good times, ya’ll!!!

And yet there is tension in the blossoming.  We’re still in a pandemic and taking harm reduction approaches to being in community with each other.  We just celebrated Pride month while anti-trans legislation emerged all through the country.  Juneteenth is now a federal holiday, and still we don't have reparations or affordable housing or equal access to healthcare or equitable employment or education systems that truly recognize our history.  

We know this tension – both inside and out.  

All that we have trialed through has brought us to this moment.  What lessons have you learned in the darkest of winter about who you are?  What in your life were you seeding then that is now ready to blossom?  Are you ready now?  To do thing that scares you – and transform yourself to ensure the world we move into is one where all can celebrate?

The summer is about alignment.  Getting honest.  Getting bold.  Trusting yourself.  Letting go of fear.  And just doing it.

You got this.  We got you.

to liberation,
Blair

what should we be paying attention to, collectively, as we move into the spring?

Spring is here.  And what a season of complexity it is. 

When we think of springtime, we think of rebirth.  Coming out of hibernation to find life again and seek nourishment.  To bear witness to a waking world.  To the possibility of abundance.

And yet, it’s been a year that we've been in this.  An ENTIRE year.  Of COVID.  Of uncertainty.  Of loss.  Of transition and change.

This is a season about reconciling co-occurring truths.  What are you doing to honor and memorialize the year that we’ve had?  How are you grieving the profound loss and change in it?  How are you celebrating your increased self-awareness and those sharpened glimpses of your vision and potential? 

This moment requires your presence in all of it.  It requires your expansiveness.  Your openness.

The insights you’ve gained through the winter are major, and you’re in a unique moment of deep clarity right now.  New and necessary opportunities may be opening all around you right now, perhaps seemingly in direct response to those insights.

Consider what you might need to trust your wisdom, your intuition, your deep knowing right now.  To push self-doubt aside.  To stay focused. 

Take a deep breath, and take a step forward.  Alignment is near.   

to liberation,
blair

what should we be paying attention to, collectively, as we move into the winter?

We’re now in winter.  It’s a time of hibernation, silence, introspection, quiet.  It’s the season where things are let go and released.  It’s the death that comes just before nature is reborn.

We’ve been in massive collective transformation over the past year on multiple levels.  In fighting for a more just world.  In reckoning with impact of the pandemic.  In unlocking our own power, potential and purpose.  And that work is not yet done. 

As it becomes harder to be outside, the energy of this time is calling us back to ourselves.  It’s calling us to keep digging, to keep doing that internal work.  To get more aligned, and to nurture the wellspring of creativity and possibility within us.

In that digging, there are some depths that we might hit this season that we have not seen yet.  Make sure to spend time identifying what you need to feel safe, healthy, and whole.  Call on community (your family, friends, therapists, your body, your words, the trees) for support, as you need it.  Give yourself the grace and permission, when you’re ready, to lean into your hard stuff.  And celebrate your existence!  Honor your heart, your breath, and your massive power and potential. 

Perhaps there is a creative spark you’ve been nurturing over the past year, or an idea that has been nudging at you.  Now is a great time to give that idea the space it deserves.

What would it look like to use this season to invest in yourself in ways you haven't before?  What space can you create to get more aligned?  What boundaries do you need to set?

The work we do now will lay the foundation for our movement forward. Look up the Great Conjunction to learn about the astrology that supports this transformative process.

See the video above for additional info/context and for the tarot cards pulled in this reading.  And take good care of yourselves! 

in deep love and appreciation,
blair

what should we be paying attention to, collectively, as we move into the autumn?

Nature has so much to teach us about loss and letting go.  And the Autumn is one of it’s greatest teachers, as we prepare ourselves for the cold and the quiet.  We’re now in harvest, reaping the many lessons we’ve sown since Spring, the beginning of the COVID pandemic.  How will we prepare those lessons to nourish us through the winter?  What parts of those lessons will we save for planting when the warmth returns?  How will we use those lessons to start anew?  The world is calling us to vision something different.  To get creative.  To get free.

We’re much deeper into this new world and things are continuing to unravel.  We’re in a time of deep deep truth telling in an effort to right wrongs, make justice clear.  We’re also currently in a Mars Retrograde, which amplifies conflict and tension around us.  And with the election right around the corner, the unraveling, the conflict, the truth telling will only get sharper.

Protect your hearts, my loves.

We must be clear and intentional with our words.  And be ready to receive messages that will shake us to our core.  Ready to decipher truth from falsehood.  Ready to uncover wisdom that orients us toward liberation.

Look for what heals you in this time.  Alights your heart, makes you feel safe enough to take a risk and get closer to the person you’re meant to be in this world.  And know that despite everything that tells us otherwise, love abounds.

in deep love and appreciation,
blair