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Notes
1 CDC Newsroom, “Racial and Ethnic Disparities Continue in Pregnancy-Related Deaths,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, September 5, 2019, https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2019/p0905-racial-ethnic-disparities-pregnancy-deaths.html.
2 “Querent” is a term used in tarot to describe the person who is asking the question.
3 Christian theological research advocates paying attention to theology as an interpretive category in approaching ethnography. John Swinton argues that a philosophical and epistemological positioning already implies a theological position. This choice impacts how data is analyzed, how research is constructed, how it is presented, and which audiences are interested in the work. In efforts to dissolve the scholar’s biases, phenomenology was developed to help the researcher bracket personal beliefs in order to describe the phenomenon itself. To this methodology, Swinton critically asks, “But how and why would a Christian ethnographer desire to bracket off her beliefs? Why would she be comfortable with a phenomenological worldview that excludes theology as an interpretative category?” See John Swinton, “Where Is Your Church?,” in Perspectives on Ecclesiology and Ethnography (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2012), 79.
4 Before each reading, I disclosed that my extended family is from Louisiana, is of Black creole ancestry, and that my mother is a practitioner of tarot and African-derived religions. I also discussed my work with the Yoruba Orisa and my overall approach to magic. Immediately after sharing this information with the querents, they became much more comfortable, and the dynamic shifted from interrogation to conversation. The combination of my belief in tarot, my ancestral lineage, and overall expertise in the practice made respondents more trusting and open to my research.
5 In 1939, archaeologist L.A. Mayer found a pack of cards from the Egyptian ManLuk Empire in the Topkapi Saraya Museum in Istanbul, Turkey, dating from the fifteenth century. The deck had four suits similar to what we know today: swords, polo sticks, cups, and coins with ten numerical cards and three court cards. The highest of the suit was the king. This deck, however, was not understood to be tarot used as a divinatory device but was perceived to be playing cards. Occultists in Europe in the 1700s were fascinated by all things Egyptian, associating it with mysticism and antiquity. One French occultist believed that the tarot deck was initially meant to be written in hieroglyphs. They also mistakenly thought that Roma people or “gypsies” had migrated from Egypt even though they had been residents of Europe for over 400 years. In 1781 Court de Gébelin proclaimed that tarot was from Egypt, and then people linked tarot with the Roma. They believed that “gypsy” was an abbreviation for Egyptian. See Helen Farley, A Cultural History of Tarot: From Entertainment to Esotericism (London: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 13–36; Helen S. Farley, “Out of Africa: Tarot’s Fascination with Egypt,” Literature & Aesthetics 21, no. 1 (June 2011): 175.
6 Helen Farley, A Cultural History, 36.
7 Many scholars and tarot enthusiasts have written extensively about Pamela Colman Smith and her role in shaping the Waite-Smith deck. Smith’s contribution is beyond the scope of this work, which is primarily interested in contemporary practices, but her exposure to Obeah is interesting for a discussion on Black tarot. For more information about Smith see, Stuart R. Kaplan, Mary K. Greer, Elizabeth Foley O’Connor, and Melinda Boyd Parsons, Pamela Colman Smith: The Untold Story (Stamford, CT: U.S. Games Systems, 2018); Dawn Robinson, Pamela Colman Smith, Tarot Artist: The Pious Pixie (Stroud, UK: Fonthill Media, 2020); and K. Frank Jensen, The Story of the Waite-Smith Tarot (Melbourne: Association for Tarot Studies, 2006).
8 Katrina Hazzard-Donald, Mojo Workin’: The Old African American Hoodoo System (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 40.
9 Yvonne Patricia Chireau, Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 37.
10 Hazzard-Donald, Mojo Workin’ (see note 8 above).
11 See Yvonne Patricia Chireau, Black Magic: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Hazzard-Donald, Mojo Workin’.
12 Practitioner, interview by author, April 22, 2018.
13 Practitioner interview, April 22, 2018.
14 Some practitioners believe the most important ancestors are connected by blood while others without close familial relationships (such as those ostracized by their family for sexuality or gender) stress the importance of ancestors from one’s chosen community.
15 Tayannah Lee McQuillar, The Hoodoo Tarot: 78-card Deck and Book for Rootworkers (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 2020), 55. Purchase at: https://bookshop.org/books/the-hoodoo-tarot-78-card-deck-and-book-for-rootworkers/9781620558737.
16 McQuillar, The Hoodoo Tarot, 12–15.
17 Emma Colon, “Announcing the 2021 Create Change Cohort and Radical Imagination Fellow,” The Laundromat Project, DreamSeed Collective – DreamSeed Oracle Tarot Deck, January 22, 2021, https://www.laundromatproject.org/project/dreamseed-oracle-tarot-deck/.
18 Courtney Alexander, “A Melanated Tarot,” Dust II Onyx, https://dust2onyx.com/.
19 By closed traditional divination systems, Alexander refers to modalities employed in longstanding religions existing across the African continent and diaspora. For example, in Yoruba Ifá, the divination system by the same name is relegated to babalawos and iyanifas—practitioners initiated into the tradition. Many practitioners of African traditional religions are rightfully concerned about outsiders taking their practices without respect to their cultural, cosmological, philosophical, and ancestral lineages. This concern is primarily due to European exploitation and appropriation of African descended religious beliefs and practices.
20 Alexander, Courtney. “SeedTable Talks: Tarot and the Black Experience.” Panel discussion presented by the Dreamseed Collective and the Laundromat Project, online event, May 21, 2021.
21 Stephanie Y. Mitchem, African American Folk Healing (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 87.
22 Arthur Edward Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite Tarot Deck, 1909, https://www.tarot.com/tarot/decks/rider. Image from: ©bigjom/123RF.COM.
23 Courtney Alexander, Dust II Onyx: A Melanated Tarot, 2018, https://dust2onyx.com/. Used by permission of Courtney Alexander.
24 For a discussion on Black women and heterosexual marriage, see Dianne M. Stewart, Black Women, Black Love: Americas War on African American Marriage (New York: Seal Press, Hachette Book Group, 2020). On emotional labor in universities, see Chavella T. Pittman, “Racial Microaggressions: The Narratives of African American Faculty at a Predominantly White University,” The Journal of Negro Education 81, no. 1 (2012): 82–92, doi:10.7709/jnegroeducation.81.1.0082.
25 Regina Conway-Phillips, Helena Dagadu, Darnell Motley, Lamise Shawahin, Linda Witek Janusek, Stephanie Klonowski, and Karen L. Saban, “Qualitative Evidence for Resilience, Stress, and Ethnicity (RiSE): A Program to Address Race-based Stress among Black Women at Risk for Cardiovascular Disease,” Complementary Therapies in Medicine 48 (2020): 102277, doi:10.1016/j.ctim.2019.102277.
26 Celia R. S. Prestes, and Vera S. F. Paiva, “Psychosocial Approach and Health of Black Women: Vulnerabilities, Rights and Resilience,” Saude Sociedade 25, no. 3 (2016): 681, doi:10.1590/S0104-129020162901.
27 See Roderick A. Ferguson, Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004); Alice OConnor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant, Behind the Mask of the Strong Black Woman: Voice and the Embodiment of a Costly Performance (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009)
28 Prestes and Paiva, “Psychosocial Approach and Health.”
29 Radical acceptance is a term coined by psychologist Marsha M. Linehan, and used in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, which helps treat several mental health concerns such as borderline personality disorder and anxiety. Radical acceptance is a distress tolerance skill that encourages the practitioner to accept reality, becoming fully present in their thoughts and feelings surrounding a situation. See Marsha M. Linehan, Cognitive-behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder (Enskede: TPB, 2008); Steven C. Hayes, Victoria M. Follette, and Marsha M. Linehan, eds., Mindfulness and Acceptance Expanding the Cognitive-behavioral Tradition (New York: Guilford, 2011).
30 Ifa Abeyo, in discussion with the author, April 2021.
31 Abeyo discussion.
32 Practitioner, interview with author, April 14, 2018.
33 Practitioner, interview with author, March 15, 2018.
34 Studies around belonging and race have been most prominent within research on mixed-race identity. See Silvia Cristina Bettez, “Mixed-Race Women and Epistemologies of Belonging,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 31, no. 1 (2010): 142, doi:10.5250/fronjwomestud.31.1.142; Leah Donnella, “‘Racial Impostor Syndrome’: Here Are Your Stories,” National Public Radio, June 8, 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/06/08/462395722/racial-impostor-syndrome-here-are-your-stories; Andrea Thompson, and Adebe DeRango-Adem, Other Tongues Mixed-race Women Speakout (Toronto: INANNA Publications and Education, 2010).
35 For a discussion of African ancestral pride among African Americans, see Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998); William L. VanDeburg, New Day in Babylon the Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Hakim Adi, Pan-Africanism: A History (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).
36 John Eligon, “A Question of Environmental Racism in Flint,” New York Times, January 22, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/us/a-question-of-environmental-racism-in-flint.html.
37 Practitioner, interview with author, March 22, 2018.
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Notes on contributors
Marcelitte Failla
Marcelitte Failla is a PhD candidate at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. See www.MarcelitteTheThird.com.