It has come to my attention that there has been some confusion about the intent and political stance behind the American Renaissance Tarot. Some of these concerns are legitimate, others are off-base. Ninety percent of what people are concerned about is addressed in the lengthy book that accompanies the Tarot deck. I address the legitimate concerns below.
“American Renaissance”
There is a white supremacist hate group with the name “American Renaissance.” We have absolutely no affiliation or sympathy with them. I didn’t even know of their existence until after I’d copyrighted the manuscript and title for the project in 2015. By the time I did, they were small enough that I felt we might safely ignore their existence. Then Donald Trump was elected, and his Presidency emboldened the activity of extremist hate groups, and their presence grew.
So, why not just change the title? Seems like an easy thing, right? “American Renaissance” was a literary term before it was the name of a hate group. It was coined by F.O. Matthiessen in a book of literary criticism, and originally referred to the writers Emerson, Hawthorne, Whitman, Melville, and Thoreau, and the explosion of literary greatness in America in the 1850s. The original application of the term was not white supremacist, though it did celebrate five white male authors. As literary professionals have worked to expand the canon in the last fifty years, the term “American Renaissance” has grown to include women writers and African-American writers. My project only includes writers active in the broad American Renaissance period of 1825-1875.
But still I could change the title, right? “American Renaissance” also has a particularly apt application to this project because it is an exploration of 19th century American occultism. The 15th century Italian Renaissance was driven by the translation of ancient texts by the NeoPlatonists and the Corpus Hermeticum into the modern language of Latin. The American Renaissance was driven by the translation of these same texts into the modern language of English. Neat, huh? In other words, the American occult resurgence was literally a “rebirth” of ancient occult ideas (just like the Florentine Renaissance), and so the concept of American Renaissance is woven deeply into the project.
I imagine that if you worked for ten years getting your PhD in a topic, only to have the name of that topic appropriated by a hate group, you’d also be reluctant to relinquish the term to white racists. I keep thinking of the unfortunately-named character Michael Bolton in the film Office Space, who says, “Why should I change [my name]? He’s the one who sucks.” That pretty much sums up how I feel. I haven’t known how to make it clear that this project is not affiliated with the hate group, without inadvertently boosting that hate group’s signal. For my ineptness there, I apologize.
“Slaves” vs. “Enslaved people”
Apparently, some people have interpreted my political attitudes through my use of the outdated term “slave” instead of the more sensitive and accurate term, “enslaved person.” I apologize for the harm and confusion this has caused. I was educated about the change in language recently while appearing on a podcast, and I happily made the change.
My formal academic career ended in 2014. At that time, the term “enslaved person” instead of “slave” was not in common use. I have a PhD in American literature from UCLA, and toward completion of that degree, I specialized in three areas: Colonial American literature, African American literature, and 19th century American literature. That meant I had to read about 100 texts in each genre and be tested on my knowledge of them in an oral exam. So I would say I was pretty conversant with appropriate and sensitive language through the time I left academia in 2014.
Changes in language can happen very rapidly, and publisher timelines are slow. The manuscript for the American Renaissance Tarot was turned in exactly two years ago, and in two years’ time, “enslaved person” has come to replace the outdated term “slave,” for reasons which I support. I consulted with a professor friend over the weekend who writes about slavery professionally, and he confirmed that only in the past few years have editors asked that the term “slave” not be used at all.
Though I intend to use the more accurate and appropriate term “enslaved person” moving forward, the text for the American Renaissance Tarot retains the outdated term “slave.” The AP’s decision to capitalize Black as a marker of ethnic identity (which I fully support) also happened after my manuscript was submitted to Schiffer. So though the text for the American Renaissance Tarot does not reflect these very recent changes in appropriate and sensitive language, I believe that its overall mission of promoting empathy, understanding, and discussion around difficult history remains clear.
The legacy of slavery is painful, why put images of slavery in a Tarot deck?
This question has a very complicated answer, and I will start out by saying that the American Renaissance Tarot as a whole answers this better than I will here.
In the same way that the term “enslaved” shifts focus to the humanity of the person being subjugated, I wanted this project to engage with the real-life stories of enslaved people who wrote their narratives for a nineteenth-century audience. My sense is that the term “slave” conjures up so much horror in most people, that they simply shut down and avoid further inquiry. The term “slave” represents America’s shame, and people avoid looking at things that will make them feel upset, ashamed, or guilty.
I wanted to get past the horror that slavery carries as a symbol, and honor the writers who shared their stories of enslavement with the American public. Of course, all you have to do to experience the humanity of Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, or Harriet Jacobs is to read the biographies they wrote. But many people will not do that, because they don’t have the inclination, ability, or privilege to read 19th century primary texts. My sense is that my elite education was a huge privilege, and I wanted to find a way to share that education in a bite-size, “Reader’s Digest” format with people who have the interest but not the time or ability to read these texts for themselves.
Story-telling as a healing tool is a big theme in the American Renaissance Tarot. One way to educate white people about the realities of racism is to represent the feelings and attitudes of people of color to them in a sort of rule-based format that lists behavior protocols. While I deeply appreciate all the work that is currently happening around mitigating racial harm, it’s clear that many people are not getting the message, and also don’t want to get it. So part of what the American Renaissance Tarot was designed to do is evoke empathy for the enslaved person’s plight, through the more accessible medium of story-telling. The unreflective person who does not want to endure direct confrontation, educate themselves, or be told what to think, might have their mind or heart changed by actually reading the words and hearing the tale of the enslaved person when it’s presented as “American literature.”
The time period was meant to evoke the period of our 2x, 3x, or 4x great-grandparents, depending on what age you are now. There was no intent to use slavery as an “edgy” visual content for the sake of being edgy. The reality is that many of the ancestors of African Americans were enslaved in the 1850s, though this project also features two African American writers who were born free in the North, Martin Delany and Paschal Beverly Randolph.
I wanted the project to highlight the psychological legacy of slavery, and not use images that would reify the violence done to Black people. The only image of chains and subjugation you will find is on the Devil card, and our Devil is literally “racism.” The Devil in Tarot is supposed to make you a little queasy, and to refer to situations defined by bondage and oppression. The Devil in this project is represented by the pseudo-science that attempted to legitimize racism and justify the commodification of Black people.
“Isn’t the psychological impact of racism also damaging - why depict it?” Another way to phrase the question would be, “Is this deck suitable for people of color, or is it too triggering?” I can’t answer that, because I think it depends on the individual. I will say however that I believe all of the images that represent Black experience roughly 170 years ago also describe scenarios endured by people of color in the present day. The Two of Coins is a painful and poignant illustration of the state that W.E.B. DuBois would later describe as “double consciousness,” in which one’s experience as a human is at variance with the awareness that others perceive you as a racial stereotype. The Four of Coins highlights Harriet Jacobs’ experience of both racial and sexual oppression as a Black woman. The Five of Coins calls out racialized and institutionalized poverty, which is still very much a problem in America today.
I use Tarot to reckon with my life in the real world. I have been working with my draft copy of the American Renaissance Tarot for over a year, and in my experience reading for both myself and clients, it can be used to identify unconscious racial bias in yourself, in others, and in the world that you live in. It acknowledges the lasting psychological and material impact of slavery instead of censoring it or making excuses for the times. In a world in which many people still deny the extent of the trauma caused by the forced enslavement of millions of people, or imagine that the problem was solved by the Civil War, acknowledgement is a small but powerful act that we can make.
However, I understand that the depiction of enslavement in this deck might be too triggering for some Tarot users, and I accept that. This project is not for everyone. It is for those of you who are at least somewhat interested in how African Americans in history navigated and survived a violently racist culture. We balance the painful scene of William Wells Brown’s double consciousness with an image of him finding employment as a free man in the Pioneer (Page) of Coins. We balance Harriet Jacobs’ self-imposed imprisonment with scenes of her later freedom in the North on the Nine of Coins and the Queen of Coins. We balance the reality of institutionalized poverty with an image of Frederick Douglass as the King of Coins; he was the 19th century equivalent of a millionaire and one of the most prosperous writers of his times.
Both the artist for the project and myself are white women. If you believe that white people should not comment on Black history or literature, then there’s no way I can justify the existence of this project to you, and I accept that.
It seems like your project doesn’t represent America’s racial diversity beyond African Americans, and the Tarot assignments of the African American writers has me concerned.
The American Renaissance Tarot is my personal, creative representation of the literature that flourished in the years 1825-1875 in the Northeastern United States, with very few exceptions. Even Southern-born writers like Edgar Allan Poe and Harriet Jacobs later lived and published in the Northeast, and their texts were shaped by the literary cultures and audiences there. In other words, the American Renaissance Tarot is only one of many possible Tarots that might be made about American history and literature.
In retrospect, I wish I’d named it something like the “Abolition Tarot” to make it clear that much of it is about the fight to abolish slavery in the 1850s. Celebrating the abolition movement that led to the Civil War in no way implies that the Civil War solved the nation’s inequality problem. Rather, the success of the joint efforts of Black and white Americans in a common cause in our nation’s past gives me hope; we have drastically altered the structure of society before, and we can do so again. Our Tower card depicting secession eerily reflects the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, though that was unintentional, since the image was completed years before that reprehensible act of sedition. The polarized reactions to the attack tell me that our nation remains as divided as it was during the Civil War.
But the other main theme of the project is occult history and alternative spirituality, and so I went with the title “American Renaissance.” These two histories, of the rise of progressive politics and the rise of the spiritual subculture, are deeply intertwined. I noticed that Mitch Horowitz, who wrote the Foreword to this project, is giving a talk on this very topic tonight called “Radical Spirits.” I encourage you to try and catch the replay.
One-third of the card images in the American Renaissance Tarot feature people of color. I struggled to find a Native-authored text to include in the project, and ultimately failed to do so. This has partly to do with the fact that Native American culture at the time was largely oral, not written, and so there are only a small number of Native-authored texts that date to 1825-1875. I also could not figure out how to represent a Native-authored text as a Tarot card without detracting from my primary themes of abolition and alternative spirituality, since most of the Native American biographies from that period are about Christian conversion. Finally, I’m not as educated or informed about Native American literature as I am about my deck’s primary themes, and I am sorry that that has led to a gap in inclusivity in my deck.
I would absolutely welcome and celebrate a Tarot that attempted to do justice to the incredible diversity of tribes and multiplicity of experience that define Native America. Some other recent Tarot decks which engage American history are the HooDoo Tarot, which focuses on HooDoo history in the Southeastern United States, and the California Tarot, which focuses on the rich cultural diversity that shaped California history. These texts are similar in spirit to my own in aligning historical figures with Tarot archetypes.
I have waffled over whether it makes sense to explain my choices in how I assigned each writer to each card, because these choices are explained at length in the book. One of my primary guidelines in assigning figures to cards was being faithful to the Tarot archetypes. I thought of the Major Arcana as a “fifth suit” that would weave together the story of progressive politics and alternative spirituality in nineteenth century America. The Lover, Sun, Strength, Death, and Judgement cards depict people of color. The Major Arcana was the most challenging suit to put together, since it felt like each card and chapter had to be chock full of symbols and data in order to do justice to the 22 different authors I represent there. In the Minor Arcana, conversely, I felt like I could really stretch out and develop stories over the arc of the numbered cards. For example, Frederick Douglass’s several autobiographies are represented over the Ace, Three, Six, Seven, Ten, and King of Coins. This was preferable to me to trying to sum up his long and impressive career in just one card like I do in the Majors.
African American authors are represented in the Coins cards, simply because Coins are concerned with concrete issues like work, money, and basic survival needs. The social position of African Americans as second class citizens or enslaved people in the 19th century necessarily made them more concerned with these things than white authors. The Coins designation of several African American authors was intended as an acknowledgement of the material impact of structural racism and not as some kind of statement about their racial difference. This is not just a convenient explanation, but something I cover in detail in the Ace of Coins chapter.
Paschal Beverly Randolph, this deck’s Lover, was an African American occultist who exerted a major influence on later 19th and 20th century occultism, and that spiritual legacy is the reason he’s in the Major Arcana as opposed to the Coins. The Swords, the suit of troubles, are represented by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. The Wands represent scenes of sexual passion and high adventure. The Cups have to do with symbol and allegory. It just made sense to me to assign the genre of autobiography to the Coins suit because it has the most to do with “real life” and its vicissitudes. The woman who wrote the nineteenth century’s best-selling book (Harriet Beecher Stowe) does not appear in the Majors, nor does the most famous American author from that time, Edgar Allan Poe. I arranged the 36 writers into suits based on the themes they share in their works, and never imagined that I was ranking them by value.
As an experienced Tarot reader, I think of all the cards as equal in importance, because there is an equal likelihood of drawing any of the cards. Sure, the Majors have some fascinating history and extra symbolic punch behind them, but I don’t think of them as somehow “superior” to the Minors. I personally would rather see the Ace, Nine, Ten, or King of Coins in my spread over any of the Major Arcana excepting the World! I hope I have given you some insight into my choices. While I really do understand the concerns people have, and empathize with the urge to be vigilant and ask questions, I’d ask that you not judge my choices before you’ve read the book. I apologize for any harm or confusion I’ve caused by sharing the images divorced from their explanatory texts.
Your King of Wands is a depiction of cultural appropriation.
Our King of Wands was inspired by Herman Melville’s most popular novel, Typee (1846), a fictionalized account of Melville’s own experience “going native” at Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas Islands. The King of Wands is not an endorsement of cultural appropriation, but rather a symbolic depiction of Melville trying on a native identity. We also feature Typee on the Seven of Wands, and illustrate the moment that main character Tommo declines to become an initiated member of the tribe, by refusing to submit to a face tattoo.
Let me be abundantly clear here. I reject acts of cultural appropriation. I have lost friends over the issue, and expect to cause more controversy in an upcoming essay about a popular Tarot artist’s adoption of an ethnic costume. I am deeply sorry that the image of Herman Melville in the costume of a Marquesan warrior has upset some of you. My intent was to inspire conversation about the issue, not cause harm or endorse it. At the time that I created the image with the artist, my sense was that cultural appropriation was not taken seriously enough in the broader American culture. I thought that I was drawing attention to the issue by making it so explicit, and I see now that it has caused harm and confusion.
My suggestion moving forward (since the deck is already in print) is that you may simply see the King of Wands as a symbol of cultural appropriation when you read with the deck. Of course, that’s not all the card symbolizes, but Tarot card readings tend to conform to the attitudes of the person using the deck. The issues that this card raises are similar to issues raised by other cards in the Wands suit. The Eight of Wands is about unconscious racial bias in Benito Cereno. The Ten of Wands is about how the quest for whiteness in Moby-Dick (symbolized by the white whale) causes the whole expedition to fail. I firmly believe that the American Renaissance Tarot can be used to confront our painful history around cultural appropriation and its legacy in the present day.
In closing …
I know that if you’ve read this far, it’s because you’re a conscientious person interested in calling out injustice and insensitivity when you see it. The American Renaissance Tarot will not be for everyone, and I accept that. I do however believe that it is (and will be) productive of good, by functioning as a tool that can inspire reflection about American history, and by starting the conversations we need to have in order not to repeat it. Thank you for your interest in my project.