Yeah it’s actually been pretty handy to my language learning process to have a full series of books written at a child’s reading level that it’s easy to find secondhand or on Anna’s archive etc translated into multiple other languages. They’re mediocre and the author sucks but they’ve had a massive cultural impact worldwide and if you read them as a kid you’ll be able to follow the plot pretty well even while you’re still learning the language. I needed hardcopies because my job benefits from me being as analog as possible but like I said it’s so easy to find translated copies of them for cheap.
As a side note, having gotten into the western esoteric spiritual traditions (tarot, astrology, etc) where she pulled a bunch of her worldbuilding from, idt people realize how deep the TERF roots are in that culture. There’s a huuuge emphasis on a woman’s reproductive status being the source of their power. It’s much easier to separate yourself from that kind of thing with an esoteric religion compared to an institutional one like mainstream Christianity but it does still require being mindful of what outside sources you integrate into your personal philosophy. There’s definitely times I’ve been vibing along reading about somebody’s homebrew ritual practices only to have a record scratch moment when they start talking about their inner mother goddess expressing it’s power through her womb like bitch the only reason I even kept the thing was to maybe donate it some day jeebus.
It does seem like the only tarot books worth a shit are written from an LGBTQ perspective and they work on de-gendering and decolonizing it. I don’t fuck with astrology, because… it’s astrology. Also, at its core, it’s about judging people based upon when they were born, and that makes as much sense as judging people based on their skin color.
Well the thing is that if you get real deep into tarot (which is amazing for introspection and helping others explore their emotions in a spiritual context) you basically have to learn astrology.
As an example, the Thoth vs RWS decks place the major arcana differently because they disagreed on how they should be ordered to best correspond with the orders of the fixed elemental signs. You also see the signs depicted visually especially in the RWS deck, which is what most themed decks are based on (haven’t gotten into Marseille yet, but that’s probably my next step).
And then when you get down to it you realize that the MBTI is literally just astrology with a self deterministic twist (they’re both ultimately based on four humors / temperament theory), so when you layer that, you can usually find a datetime either tropically or sidereally that represents you or an important event in your life that can then use to tell a story about yourself that feels richer spirituality and symbolically. So for instance tropically I’m an earth sign and my chart overall leans very yin, but when calculated sidereally I’m a fire sign with strong Yang elements and it also fits better with MBTI-ENTP (although it’s an air its very fire adjacent).
In the end, all of it is so vague that the whole point of it is to just find something to latch on to give yourself identity and connection to a wider culture, it’s just important to understand that that’s ultimately what you’re doing.
TLDR; astrology glyphs are prettier than MBTI letters
And the TERF thing itself isn’t even really colonialism it’s actually somewhat integral to the original belief systems. Fertility cults ate some of the world’s oldest religions. Especially in the case of something like Easter, colonialism actually reduced the influence of the fertility ideology. The anti TERF sentiment that’s (thankfully) taking hold is more of a modernization than decolonization.
It’s also wild to even talk about decolonization with tarot specifically when the very first tarot decks were literally Italian where it started as a trick-taking table game and a children’s card based RPG and was then adapted into a sellable game by the VERY white order of the golden dawn and printed and sold by a board game company. It’s been the occult /gnostic tails side of Capitalist Institutional Christianity coin basically the entire time it’s existed, there’s nothing to “reclaim.”
Yeah it’s actually been pretty handy to my language learning process to have a full series of books written at a child’s reading level that it’s easy to find secondhand or on Anna’s archive etc translated into multiple other languages. They’re mediocre and the author sucks but they’ve had a massive cultural impact worldwide and if you read them as a kid you’ll be able to follow the plot pretty well even while you’re still learning the language. I needed hardcopies because my job benefits from me being as analog as possible but like I said it’s so easy to find translated copies of them for cheap.
As a side note, having gotten into the western esoteric spiritual traditions (tarot, astrology, etc) where she pulled a bunch of her worldbuilding from, idt people realize how deep the TERF roots are in that culture. There’s a huuuge emphasis on a woman’s reproductive status being the source of their power. It’s much easier to separate yourself from that kind of thing with an esoteric religion compared to an institutional one like mainstream Christianity but it does still require being mindful of what outside sources you integrate into your personal philosophy. There’s definitely times I’ve been vibing along reading about somebody’s homebrew ritual practices only to have a record scratch moment when they start talking about their inner mother goddess expressing it’s power through her womb like bitch the only reason I even kept the thing was to maybe donate it some day jeebus.
It does seem like the only tarot books worth a shit are written from an LGBTQ perspective and they work on de-gendering and decolonizing it. I don’t fuck with astrology, because… it’s astrology. Also, at its core, it’s about judging people based upon when they were born, and that makes as much sense as judging people based on their skin color.
Well the thing is that if you get real deep into tarot (which is amazing for introspection and helping others explore their emotions in a spiritual context) you basically have to learn astrology.
As an example, the Thoth vs RWS decks place the major arcana differently because they disagreed on how they should be ordered to best correspond with the orders of the fixed elemental signs. You also see the signs depicted visually especially in the RWS deck, which is what most themed decks are based on (haven’t gotten into Marseille yet, but that’s probably my next step).
And then when you get down to it you realize that the MBTI is literally just astrology with a self deterministic twist (they’re both ultimately based on four humors / temperament theory), so when you layer that, you can usually find a datetime either tropically or sidereally that represents you or an important event in your life that can then use to tell a story about yourself that feels richer spirituality and symbolically. So for instance tropically I’m an earth sign and my chart overall leans very yin, but when calculated sidereally I’m a fire sign with strong Yang elements and it also fits better with MBTI-ENTP (although it’s an air its very fire adjacent).
In the end, all of it is so vague that the whole point of it is to just find something to latch on to give yourself identity and connection to a wider culture, it’s just important to understand that that’s ultimately what you’re doing.
TLDR; astrology glyphs are prettier than MBTI letters
And the TERF thing itself isn’t even really colonialism it’s actually somewhat integral to the original belief systems. Fertility cults ate some of the world’s oldest religions. Especially in the case of something like Easter, colonialism actually reduced the influence of the fertility ideology. The anti TERF sentiment that’s (thankfully) taking hold is more of a modernization than decolonization.
It’s also wild to even talk about decolonization with tarot specifically when the very first tarot decks were literally Italian where it started as a trick-taking table game and a children’s card based RPG and was then adapted into a sellable game by the VERY white order of the golden dawn and printed and sold by a board game company. It’s been the occult /gnostic tails side of Capitalist Institutional Christianity coin basically the entire time it’s existed, there’s nothing to “reclaim.”