[Jasper] This episode of the Queer Conjure Podcast is another Substack Roundup, featuring the content we have created over the past few weeks. In this roundup, Ava explores the importance of showing up as activists, decolonizing minds and bodies, and dreaming of a liberated world, while Jasper shares personal emotional healing, spiritual shifts and awakenings, and the subversive nature of tarot reversals.
We explore non duality, connections to nature, what it means to love deeply, and, as always, challenge societal norms. You can subscribe to our sub stack for free, and the link is in the show notes.
[Music]: Don't fear the mystery. Don't fear the mystery. Don't fear the mystery. Don't fear the mystery. Mystery. Mystery.
[Jasper]: Hey, queer witches. My name is Jasper Joy. I am a neuroqueer poet, tarot professional, and Buddhist witch. My pronouns are they and he.
[Ava]: And this is Ava Raven. My pronouns are they, he, and she, and I'm an artist, channel, and spiritual realmist, who pulls from the experience of gender fluidity and neuro divergence.
Within Queer Conjure We flow with the rhythm of change, go against the grain of capitalism, and root down into animistic connection.
[Jasper]: Listeners can expect interviews, deep dives into our passions and intuitions, witchy practices, and more. To stay up to date with all of the magical connections we have to offer, click the Substack link in our shownotes.
[Ava]: Before we begin, a content notification. We are going to be sharing a wide spectrum of experiences, ranging from community pleasure and personal joy, to structural harm and interpersonal suffering. We are embracing the shadows as well as the light.
We will include specific trigger warnings in the episode descriptions for the heavier topics.
[Jasper]: So get your cauldron, baby, cause here we go.
[Ava]: Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do
[Music] mystery
[Ava] Conjuring the Dream by Ava Raven. Queer Witches,
Often the activist is portrayed as the warrior. Leading the battle against an enemy through the eternal struggle between good and evil. While I don't subscribe to the binaural ‘divide and conquer’ mentality, a big part of activism is showing up to say ‘no’ to regulations imposed upon the masses. However, there is much more to be said about embodying the autonomous and liberated person.
This person chooses awareness in all of their interactions. They decolonize their own mind and body and pay attention to how their interactions need to be decolonized as well. There can not be a hierarchy of judgment upon people, they must choose the path of healing and integration over banishment and punishing. The most noble of responsibilities is perhaps that to dream. They must fiercely hold the vision of a liberated world. They must dare to believe in their planet's destiny as the ‘impossible’ and punch through the urge to solely focus on survival.
Here one may benefit from the spiritual anchor. The skills of meditation help to stop, observe the thoughts and feelings arising mid altercation, and to choose to not label anyone as bad and tossed aside. I will add that this is not the same as discerning a system as a dysfunctional one. Patience and complacency are not the same. The spiritual anchor also trains us to deeply feel what utopia could be like and will be like, without allowing the fantasy world to become a delusion that blinds you to the reality of now.
These are actionable practices that one constantly improves upon and develops. One might Journal about the perspective of global freedom for all beings. What would it look like if your dreams went beyond solely living another day in a system that threatens your existence? And in what ways can you make small choices in your day to day life that soften a harsh reality?
This mission is one that requires forgiving yourself and others constantly, though slowly. When it is enacted, one may feel their power flowing back to them from anyone who they believed held it out of their reach.
To conjure is to create from the immaterial and to queer is to do so fiercely and uniquely.
We wish you joy along the journey of queering the path towards magical liberation. Blessed be!
Ava Raven
[Music] mystery
[Ava]
Loving Deeply So My Grief Has Company by Ava Raven. Today I was thinking of the myriad of creatures, from palms to people to pelicans, living in the fear and shock of a world set ablaze. I was reminded of the mantra by Adrienne (of yoga with Adrienne) “I am connected to all things, with love and kindness,” how Earth is a body of which we are the cells. We see our individual actions reflected in Earth's responses and reactions all the time. When we protest industry and exploitation, yet our cries are steam rolled and suffocated, Earth protests too. Her cries take out whole towns, their rage burns down major cities, his frustration shakes countries. It doesn't matter how much money or prestige one has, Earth’s message will be heard, and will be felt. There is no “over seas” in Earth’s eyes, they can not and will not look away as we torture and kill each other. The people of Gaza, Sudan, The DRC, Tigray, LA, and the Appalachians, are Earth's children, are our siblings.
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So many of us have held this knowledge in our hearts for a long time, and as we continue to push Earth’s boundaries, their “No” becomes louder. It hurts. It hurts so much that we constantly ignore our own pleads, but my sorrow is not just mine to hold. Not only does my grief have company with millions of human souls, striving to dethrone the greed of a few, but it has my full heart too. I realized this through the heartbreak of losing my great friend, Mr. Winkie.
Mr. Winkie was my cat for 14 years. He passed in December of 2023, a little over a year ago now. He was my brother, my greatest teacher, my muse, and my best friend. He would look at you and blink slowly, somehow communicating everything you needed to hear at any given moment. I love him so much, and when he was alive I would have moments where I remembered he would die as all things would. It would break me, just the thought of him not being there, so I’d hug him extra tight and give him a few more forehead kisses. Now that he has passed, and it's been a year of missing his purr, I find that my heart doesn't hurt the same way I thought it would. It’s as if there's someone sitting next to me with their hand on my shoulder, consoling me every time he comes to mind. This invisible comfort is familiar, and I soon recognized it to be the same energy as those forehead kisses and tight squeezes. It’s as though I loved that boy so deeply, that my love has grown a soul of its own.
I've had a fear for sometime now of loving deeply. I've given my full heart to people only to watch them crush it in their palm, or throw it out a moving car window. I knew that Mr. Winkie could never hurt me like that, so I poured pure love into him, only to find that it is not something that can ever be destroyed. What I’m trying to say is this: please be brave, please keep loving and fighting for love. Loving with the condition that the recipient stays the same forever isn't sustainable, and it doesn't mean that you give up. The manifestation of that energy will give you hope and power that can not be taken away by anyone. Especially not billionaires or politicians.
If we can witness our planet harnessing our rage and sorrow, what will Earth look like when we fight with and for all the love we have to give?
[Music] mystery
[Ava] When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo. An experiment in doubling down on my oddity. By Ava Raven
Dear Reader,
Let's take a deep breath before getting into this piece.
I’ve been resisting the voice of fear and turning up the volume of hope for a while now. Barricading out any feeling is a dam waiting to break, throwing you into the whims of emotional overload. So I've been trying to let fear move through me. This is a delicate balancing act, not letting fear consume you while not giving into the fantasy of denial. Not to mention a huge privilege to perceive a threat as far away enough to not maintain fear as my authority. I want to write about my excitement and follow what inspires me. But it feels icky to shove my whimsical aspirations down the throat of a planet, choking on oligarchical rule. I’ve pivoted to meet this challenge, trying to follow the web interconnecting all things, finding the space between.
On one end, I had an identity epiphany in the wake of David Lynch’s death. The surge of quotes and media honoring his life filling my timeline was incredibly inspiring. He reminded me of the planet I want to be a part of, saying
“ Have you ever seen a little rotted animal? I love looking at those things, just as much as I like to look at a close-up of some tree bark, or a small bug, or a cup of coffee, or a piece of pie. You get in close and the textures are wonderful.” David Lynch
I outlined this piece following that motivational influx, guided by the light of the weird, odd, and absurd, sobered up hard by the literal platforming of white supremacists. I am not one to rant about doom or to give more air time to xenophobes on an ego high, but I am writing for a queer mystic platform. I have a duty to you, reader, to acknowledge the space that we’re in, as targets in a historically genocidal system. We’re not about spiritual bypassing here at QC! And, I won't wade in victimhood.
Queer’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
If your brain keeps murmuring to itself “But, what do we do?” I implore you to seek out local mutual aid and community organizing. Authors like Margaret Killjoy, Aalia Mauro, Adrienne Marie Brown and plenty of others go into great detail on action steps you can take in the face of authoritarian regimes. I am huge on the understanding that everyone has a role in embodying the new world as it struggles to be born, and one of my roles is illustrating our queer future. As the pull of history repeating itself swells up, I'm reminded of Newton's first law of motion, stating an object will stay in motion unless met with an unbalanced force. I want to beef up that force by egging on your queer audacity!
On their instagram, Michael J Morris, faced with the denial of the existence of non-binary and non-cisgender folks, asks
“Are there things we could accomplish as myth or fantasy that we could not accomplish when our existence was affirmed as a matter of federal policy?”Michael J. Morris
A question that sparkles across my heart in accordance with being submerged in David Lynch media. I saw, for a moment, a glimpse of a post income driven society. A space built on connecting with like minded individuals based on pure authentic expression. I remembered the realization I had a week prior, little me finally found an answer to that common query: what do you want to be when you grow up?
“When I grow up I want to be a weirdo.” Ava Raven
Confined by the temporary and unsustainable box of capitalism, I’d always struggled with that question. All the parts of life that I love weren’t gonna bring in the big bucks! I gave up on figuring out who I was or trying to be myself a long time ago. I’d been told enough times that I was too emotional, or annoying, or just plain strange! I had learned that if I want to ‘make it’ (survive in a man made construct that forces you to work in order to live in one of the millions of empty houses or eat one of the hundreds of meals that go to waste every year,) that I better be useful to one of the ten or so companies that own the means of production. Sorry! Imagine my surprise to watch little Ava peel off that programming in the midst of The Unprecedented Times. This permission to embody a new way of being as the old one dies allowed me to experiment with the idea of not being a role in a company or community. Rather, I can be a complex creature with individual desires and interests that might not be liked by everyone! What a concept!
It’s the fear summoned from the queers, the weirdos, that keeps us hiding and therefore controlled by little men with lots of pieces of paper with presidents' faces on them. I'm terrified to do so, and incredibly privileged to suggest, but what if I double down in my oddity? What if I refuse to conform? What if we can extinguish the illusion that we are the minority? One of my favorite things to happen in media is when everyone just decides to stop supporting the evil mastermind. Mastermind confidently declares that they have the power and will now end all hope! Only for their cabinet of employees, that actually know what all the buttons do, to just walk over and stand with the victimized. I find this happens when it is undeniably evident that life following that kind of leader will be utterly devoid of any fun or meaning. The probability of this happening could be low, and I am comfortable with being called naive for even suggesting this possibility. However, I’m going to keep being a weirdo, and I am happy to ignite any embers of hope with the sparks flying off my fantasy. I sincerely hope you can join me.
I love you, and don't forget to breathe!
Ava Raven
[music] mystery
[Jasper]: Here at Queer Conjure we strive to build community with other organizations in alignment with our liberation focused values. Firestorm Books is a queer, feminist, collectively owned radical bookstore that features books and events tailored to the interests and needs of marginalized communities. When you buy books from Firestorm using the referral code Queer Conjure you contribute 10 percent of your purchase to Queer Conjure's work and you get 10 percent off your order at checkout.
Click the link in our show notes to browse our recommended reading list and make sure to add ‘Tarot for the Hard Work’ by my dear friend, Maria Minnis, to your cart. You can thank me later.
[Maria Minnis]: Hi, I'm Maria Minnis, author of ‘Tarot for the Hard Work.’ I wrote this book because tarot has always been a powerful guide for introspection and inner work. So, what better tool to use when we're ready to do the really hard work? I provide actionable exercises in this tarot workbook, giving you a unique, personal understanding of what systemic racism is and what steps we can take to begin to dismantle it.
This is a book for anyone who has been overwhelmed, outraged, or frustrated and asked, but what can I do? When you buy my book through Queer Conjure's affiliate link, you support my biggest spell with the intention of creating a more equitable and loving world. Plus, you support an independent bookstore and this awesome podcast.
Bye!
[Music] Mystery
[Jasper] You are always capable of deep emotional healing. By Jasper.
My Dear Queer Witches,
We are always capable of deep emotional healing. You are always capable of deep emotional healing. I am always capable of deep emotional healing.
I made this affirmation as part of a series that is taking much longer to create than anticipated, so I share this message now, as an “early release”.
I went to the Creating Change conference last week. It was in Vegas. I would like to state for the record that I never want to go back to Vegas!!! (Except to revisit the art at Meow Wolf, and the jaw-dropping burlesque clowns at Maverick’s.)
I had an amazing time learning, meditating, laughing, crying, and networking with community from across the “country” at Creating Change. Despite the fact that it was in Vegas. And I hope to write about it more, here, very soon. The experience affirmed this message for me: I am always capable of deep emotional healing. Because, while I was there in a professional capacity, I experienced a deeply spiritual shift within my emotional waters.
I was in a workshop about mapping desire, when I experienced a crashing wave of grief. My desire had recently pulled me into a very painful experience, and the consequences are still reverberating inside of my soul. I sat, staring at my paper without seeing it, and focused on my breath until the wave receded. Once it did, I found wise messages from my ancestors, waiting for me, in the depth of my own fresh heartbreak. It was a key for something I didn’t realize was locked within myself, and the opening revealed even more depth, within the parts of my heart that had already learned how to heal.
Sitting there with a hundred other people, my eyes scanning over letters but not noticing words, I was reminded that I’m capable of profound compassion and forgiveness for someone who harms me. Even if they never apologize. Even if they never make repair. I have moved through very similar waters before, and I know what it took to recover from damage that someone else caused. I am always capable of deep emotional healing. No matter what.
Blessed be, mwah!
~Jasper.
[Music] Mystery
[Ava] The end is a threshold, what Venus retrograde has taught me about death, by Ava Raven
In case you haven’t heard, Venus is retrograde in Aries. Plenty of astrologers will pounce at the opportunity to sensationalize retrogrades and eclipses for views and clicks, just as many tarot readers do with Death, Tower, and “Is your crush thinking of you?” love readings. I find that when my nervous system is set ablaze by anyone, but especially people luring in engagement, it helps to take some space and explore the target topics on your own terms. Following this rule, I peered into where Aries resides in my own chart, and saw it tucked snug into the 8th house. The 8th house is associated with sexuality, death, sharing resources, intimacy, and exchange. Under the context that I could see revision in any of these themes throughout the retrograde process, I became increasingly curious of the looming presence of Death.
Death is a curious subject to most beings, a double sided mirror between us and potential oblivion. My spiritual practice has, however, deterred me from associating death with the beginning of an infinite nothingness. Rather, I am inclined to feel it as an ever present friend and a guide to the next step. I have no attachment to having the one correct relationship with this transition, but as I stared into the 8th house, I couldn’t help but see my belief reflected like infinite mirrors throughout astrology and tarot.
Both spiritual self-reflection modalities move in spirals, suggesting continuity from their inception. Additionally, even within the simplified symbology best suited for our human brains, Death does not sit at any perceived ‘End’. The ‘last’ house in astrology is the 12th, symbolizing karma, past lives, dreams, and the underworld. These themes pull us past the physical cycle of death and rebirth, and through to the ever present soul essence in the beyond.
Leo roars from my 12th house, flanked by my natal mars and moon. I heard this placement begging for me to illustrate the theater of my subconscious. This space is vast and fertile. It’s from here that new realities are born and I pivot to begin again. I find myself always coming back to stare into its depths, (that’s Leo for you!) and this time I saw the 8th house shining through it like light reflecting off of a shallow pool. The 12th an 8th house are ruled by pisces and scorpio respectively. These two thirds of the watery astro trio build a bridge between worlds, accompanied by cancer in the 4th house-grounding into one’s home life. While I am no astrology expert, I can reflect this interlocking wheel into the modality of tarot, which I have more familiarity with.
Pictured above is the Major Arcana, splayed out in the three lines of seven. Similar to the way the elements hold each other in astrology, the three lines pull and tug at the relationship between the conscious, subconscious, and super conscious. They depict a story where time is not linear and even if it were, Death is not the end of it. Tarot suggests that if one wanted to tell themselves “we walk a one way plank into a void from which we never return,” that this plank does not appear because of hardships. These hardships, rather, are portals towards finding your identity in The World.
Recently I heard podcasters Jessa Reed and Mark Potinus suggest that perhaps we do not fantasize about apocalypse as preparation for impending doom, instead a comfort from the possibility of infinity. The more I develop my relationship with spiritual modalities, tools for self reflection, the more I see the infinite contained in it all. So, amidst the youtube astrologers offering the possibility that my exes will make appearances and apologies, what have I learned about this Venus retrograde? The lesson that: symbols and archetypes passed on from our ancestors only have meaning because of their relationships to each other. Each zodiac sign, a new character to build a greater perspective of the whole. There is no point in self preservation or accomplishment with out the complex and diverse relationships we build with each other. Part of what makes these connections so meaningful on this planet is their perceived ephemeral nature; we must be incredibly concentrated with emotion and ideas to manage such brief encounters. Also, I may meet the love of my life this month. Fingers crossed!
Ava Raven
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[Music] Mystery
[Jasper]
Within Queer Conjure is a flourishing grove of crisp and juicy rebellion. We welcome you to dance with us through the shade of its boughs and delight in their low-hanging fruit. Let us collaborate in horizontal learning, spellcrafting, and divining. Queering every step we take towards the liberated world we dream about. Welcome to a Grove that is just a Grove, without any inner elite circles or elevated positions of power.
My magic was polished against the grain of my first witchcraft tradition; a temple that confined itself to euro-centric circles of cis/het hierarchy. The high priestess and high priest were central, having accomplished three degrees of initiation and granted permission from their fore-elders to create a coven. The maiden and the acolyte hovered closest to that innermost circle, apprenticed to the high priestess and high priest. Surrounding them was the coven of second-degree initiates, navigating big responsibilities and high expectations. Their dedication was rewarded with access to gate-kept forms of coveted magic. The third circle was the grove, the first-degree neophytes with hopeful hearts. Grove members devoted to their year-and-a-day lessons that oriented them towards the authority of the center.
I entered the grove as a teenager and began studying the intricacies of that tradition’s practice. Grove members met once a week, scrunched up together on the living room floor of our high priestess’s apartment, fidgeting for the best way to use our legs as writing desks. The high priestess would have us present our assignments from the week before, lead us through that week’s lesson, and assign more work to finish before we met again the following week. I was only able to meet those demands because I was a highschool dropout. I was a child trying to act like an adult, wandering through life without the guidance of actual grownups. Grove gave me the sense of stability I wouldn’t admit I was starving for. I had no awareness of the ableism, imbalanced power structures, transphobia, and white supremacy I was being indoctrinated into.
As years went by, I was elevated to the position of temple maiden and served as the high priestess’s apprentice and assistant. By my late twenties, I began to notice patterns that didn’t sit right with me. If I discussed my pronouns and my genderqueerness, I was half-jokingly sent back to the closet. My disillusionment began with the coven’s response to one of our members coming out as a transwoman, and solidified when an indigenous community called some of our members out for being disrespectful.
Eventually, the discordance between my inner truth, my position as temple maiden, and the high priestess’s harsh expectations combusted. It burned away the sense of belonging that brought me there in the first place. I couldn’t even reconcile myself with the triple goddess. Her ever-changing form seemed to reject who I was, beyond the sum of my parts. (I have since connected with her queerness, but that story is for a future post.)
That silo of a temple was my family for over a decade. I sometimes feel ravenously nostalgic for its old-school rituals, fables, and songs. But, the wounds outweighed the welfare it provided. So I left, took a break from spirituality for a couple years, then began a search for a tradition that kept the close-knit community but took the -isms to the compost pile. What I discovered were various such traditions beginning to take root, seed by seed, in hundreds of queerly liberated ways that draw from the wisdom of the past and the possibilities of the future.
Ava and I are inviting you to a Grove that is just a Grove, liberated from elite circles and elevated positions of power. When you first enter the Grove, you will find our Lunar Rites workbook and a video about queering reversals. We will regularly offer “apples”, creative resources ethically harvested from our explorations of queer magic, as well as pages and videos from our Unfurling Tarot series. There will be gifts of intuition, earth omens, and spiritual cycles. This is a collaborative space, where we can build upon our magical reality with the power of union rather than attempting to lead you through a prefabricated agenda. The grove grows with us rather than for us, hallowing a sacred ground for our practice. Let this be another queer step upon the path of magical liberation. See you there!
Blessed be! Mwah! ~Jasper
[Music] mystery
[Jasper] When I queer tarot, or anything else for that matter, I take a concept, flip it upside down, and shake out its pockets. Then I have to sort everything out again, and perhaps discover little trinkets I wasn't even aware that concept was carrying around. That's what I've come to love about reversals. They take what I think I understand about a card and challenge those definitions, assumptions, and binaries.
We've got two audio segments about queering reversals for you today. One is an essay from our free substack, and the other is a clip from a video on our paid substack. The video is a deeper dive into the Unfurling Tarot series, and very much worth the 5 it takes to be a member, if I do say so myself.
Happy listening!
[Jasper] Queering reversals. The subversive queerness of reversals.
I’ve been teaching tarot professionally for five years and have yet to include “reversals” into the course work, until now. A reversal is when a tarot card presents itself upside down. How to read a reversal is one of the more uncertain pieces of the tarot puzzle. A common way to interpret a reversal is to view the card as taking on a negative meaning, with the more shadowy aspect of that card being emphasized. For example, the queen of cups is an emotionally intune and compassionate archetype, but reversed, they might become untrustworthy and emotionally manipulative. But what about the Tower or the Devil, which are challenging cards to see in an optimistic way no matter which direction they appear?
I’ve never been able to stick to one practice when it comes to interpreting tarot reversals. The more I work with them, the more I discover layers of possibilities for how to interpret them. It’s an ever evolving process with surprise turns, loops, and switchbacks. The same is true for how I experience my gender, or lack thereof. One true answer isn’t possible because the experience of questioning is the answer.
If you’ve ever taken an Unfurling Tarot class, then you’ve heard me yammer about the book ‘78 Degrees of Wisdom’, by trans ancestor Rachel Pollack. It was the textbook for the very first tarot class I ever attended a zillion years ago, and it’s still my daily go-to reference. When explaining the ten of wands reversed, Pollack suggests that more than one meaning is often available and reading reversals only becomes effective through a dedicated practice of intuition. The meaning and process is more intuitive than definitive and, once you feel like you’ve figured it out, a new possibility emerges and requires exploration once more. This is true for all of the cards, whether reversed or rightside up, but the reversal requires extra attention to detail.
When you overturn a stone, you discover a whole world of bugs and worms that were hiding beneath it. They go through a flurry of motion, guided by instinct to seek new depth, adjusting to their unearthing. A reversed tarot card is the equivalent of an overturned stone. The strange world beneath exists when the card is upright, but the reversal is where the complex networks of a micro ecosystem come into the light of awareness.
A reversal offers the opportunity to challenge common notions of what is normal or true and subvert the power those notions claim over our lives. It is through subversion that possibilities expand. I experience my genderqueerness as a universe of curiosity beneath a continually upended stone. One day, I am focused on the pill bug’s ability to wrap itself up in a protective embrace. The next day, I am drawn in by a worm’s gracefully fluid movement. The pillbug could be a symbol of the ways I sometimes disguise myself as a cis male; a way to keep myself safe from the potential violence of other people’s fear and bigotry. The worm could represent how I move through spaces that feel safe, expanding the shape of my being and alchemizing my environment in nutrient rich ways.
So, what symbols does one uncover when overturning the stone of the Tower and the Devil?
The Devil, upright, represents the power that materialism, instant gratification, and systems of oppression can have over an individual's life. Reversed and queered, the card offers an opportunity to befriend (not vanquish) the devils within. To offer oneself compassion, achieving new wisdom and healing. This is a revelation of just how fragile of a hold external forces have on one’s true personhood. Queerness requires acknowledging that one’s liberation must include all parts of the self, defy erasure, and claim sovereignty.
The Tower is a card that creates mandatory change in one's life. The more the change is resisted, the more earth shattering it becomes. It’s a forceful and often painful disillusionment. Reversed and queered, the Tower becomes a symbol of the painful ways heteronormativity restricts self expression, reinforcing isolation from community and a fully expressed self.
The chaos and fascism of the current American government is a perfect example of how the stubborn clinging to transphobia, white supremacy, and toxic individualism are harmful even to those who benefit from them. This is what the Tower reversed looks like, as it plays out on the grand stage of denial.
Ava and I will be posting a more indepth video on this topic for our paid subscribers! If you have specific questions, please comment below and we will do our best to cover them.
Blessed be, mwah!
Jasper
[music] mystery
[Jasper] Swords have a reputation for being like a bunch of anxiety and stress and like, you know, even depression and anxiety, things like that. And that's just kind of like the, the binary way of thinking with the swords because our, our intellectual mental sphere is like a whole other cosmos, right? And it's very, very much attached to air.
And then reversed, we could say that, like, if upright, this is somebody who's communicating succinctly, then reversed, this is someone who's communicating in a way that I just learned this word called, I think it's paltering. And I'm going to have to look that up in a second and make sure I'm using the right word.
I'm going to do that now. But basically, paltering means you are technically telling the truth, but you are telling the truth in a way that is misleading. Yeah, it's called paltering. Actively telling selective truth in order to mislead or dodge a question. So that could be, like, a typical, a typical way to read the reversal.
But why We're doing this video is we want to talk about how reversals aren't binary. It's not about taking a card that has a good message and turning it into a card that has a negative message. It's not about a card that represents a good person and then, you know, talking about the bad qualities of that person.
So with that in mind, we, you know, this way we have the sword pointing up and the queen of swords is also. Very similar to Justice, which is the very center of the Major Arcana. So it's very grounded in I would say that Justice could be reframed as the accountability card. Of like, this is the consequences of your actions, no matter what the action was.
Um, and with that in mind, when we turn this into a reverse, Um, this can be about grounding down that intellectual energy and putting it into rather than like a rationalizing way we start communicating with the earth or our body or our shadows like we're looking into the kinds of ideas and thoughts and mental narratives we tell each other or ourselves about the world we're like looking down into that stuff.
So the stuff that it can't be succinct because it's so nuanced and that abstract and like, we can get a sense of it, but we can't put it to words.
[Ava] Yeah, yeah, that perfectly like segues to my, my first intuition when it comes to the Queen of Swords in reverse, which we talked about the other day because I was building an unfurling tarot, um, PowerPoint and I had to pull up an image of the Queen of Swords and then I accidentally just wrote the Queen of Stories and I was like, wait, yeah.
And I think that's a huge way that reversals function, especially for like me as a reader is like. I, I trained in like a mediumship circle for a bit, about a year and learned a lot about like clearing, like holding my energy spaces in front of me and like letting the mind kind of step aside and just like watching what appears or listening to what appears and trusting that that's a symbol that I can then learn from and like a lot of my spiritual like process is understanding why certain symbols Or, like, being a synchronicity in my existence right now.
And so, the, the reversal, like, pull for the Queen of Swords is immediately, like, Oh, Queen of Stories, what stories do I have that perhaps are, like, are becoming the reality rather than what I'm actually perceiving? Like, for example, If I believe that I'm an unlucky person and like, you know, I'm like somebody who's like, Oh, everything never, never, nothing ever goes my way.
I always, I'm always the kind of person who I always slip up, but I'm always spilling all my coffee. I think then pulling the queen of swords would be like, Hey. Where is it that your story that nothing ever goes your way is like not allowing you to see the things that are going your way or not allowing you to see beautiful things in your life?
And it's like kind of yeah asking you to pay attention to that specific Symbol.
[Jasper] Yeah, yes, and this is oh my gosh I forget the title of the book But I think it's called it's something about like open reading tarot or tarot open reading or something like that It's kind of geared towards the the French decks and way of reading things, but it's like, when you pull a card, whatever your eye lands on first is where you start.
So, for example, with this card, what if my eye landed on the butterfly first?
[Ava]That's exactly what I was thinking.
[Jasper] And that would bring Yeah, yeah, what if it lands on the butterfly first, and then I can start kind of seeing where that leads me, and I think about how, you know, butterflies have this cycle where they start out as a larva, they go into a chrysalis, they become the butterfly, they have that whole period of having to be still while their wings dry.
But then what happens, right? That's not the end of the cycle. It's kind of like death being like kind of towards to the end, but not the end. So I would think about how like the element of air. Also exists deep in the ground, is kind of where that would bring me. Yeah. Yeah. So like, what sort of, what sort of like, like what sort of enmeshment is there?
In our and this gets into semantics, right, which I know is super trendy right now, but like, what sorts of thoughts are embedded in our bones? Yeah, that's where it would bring me.
[Ava] I love that. This is such a fun kind of, like, way to, to talk about reversals, I think, because it's, like, just chatting with you about one card is like, we can see all these different things that reading can pull, and it's like, I think it shows how, I don't know, I often think about, you know, When folks aren't familiar with Tarot, oh, Cat has come into camera now.
Dandelion has made an appearance. Hi Cat! Hello! Another star of the show.
[Music]: Don't fear the mystery. Don't fear the mystery. Don't fear the mystery. Don't fear the mystery. Mystery. Mystery.
[Jasper]
Goodbye Instagram, we're moving to Substack and YouTube. After five years of sharing beautiful images and offerings on Instagram, we are calling it quits. You can still enjoy our Instagram posts of the past, but we will no longer be creating new posts, stories, or checking our DMs. Being a queer witch requires a dedicated practice of adaptability.
The systems and people that uphold violence and oppression are deeply enmeshed within social media. Queer Conjure is a vessel in which to ground, center, and nurture an ecosystem that queers the path of magical liberation through creativity nature based magic, and social justice. These are the values that guide us as we adapt in response to the chaotic whims of those who attempt to erase the diverse brilliance of anything existing outside of their comfort zone.
Our substack and YouTube explore magic, tarot, spirituality, and gender expansion as ingredients for the spell work of justice and spiritual healing. It is free to subscribe. Subscribers who choose the paid option on our sub stack will have access to bonus content and an invitation to enter the grove, a community engaged space for the study of queer and nature based magic.
The Queer Contra podcast will still be available on Apple and Spotify. We are aware that the platforms we continue to engage with are not perfect. They're problematic. Nothing and everything is. Therefore, we will continue a practice of adaptability, resilience, and joy. Changing as we need to, and doing better when we know better.
XOXO Jasper and Ava
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