Decolonizing the Tarot with Samara Kasai
On Tuesday, we sat down with Samara Kasai of Kasai Thrive to chat about the Tarot, decolonizing our minds, and the role of gender in Tarot and New Age mysticism. Hit “play” on the video to hear our conversation, or keep scrolling for the highlights.
Samara Kasai (Kasai Thrive)
I'm so happy to be here. Happy that we're both accessing our joy, having a good day.
Michelle Pellizzon (Holisticism)
Yeah, it’s important to make time for joy.
SK
Yes. Yeah, I think that makes this whole thing a lot more sustainable if we can have a little bit of joy every day.
MP
Yes, the whole thing of life and also, yes.
SK
All of that.
MP
I was telling everyone before you popped on that you're teaching a class with us this month in one of our four Tarot classes. I don't know if you've seen the other Tarot classes that are up but holy shit. It is such a spread. I'm so excited about it.
SK
It's a spread. That's definitely a Tarot joke.
MP
We've been planning this class for a while, and it couldn't be a more perfect time to be talking about decolonizing the Tarot. Maybe that was a little bit of witchiness in our hearts to be like, “This is something that needs to happen.”
So can you tell me a little bit more about your introduction to Tarot? And then I love that you wrote a beautiful caption about this workshop about how the Tarot originated in Italy. And you're, “No, we're taking it back. Let's decolonize the Tarot it and talk about it.” So, tell me more about how you ran into it and how you come to that point now in your career.
SK
So my Tarot journey actually started through this whole lens of me trying to get out of an oppressive situation that I was in. I was actually in a pretty abusive relationship and I stumbled onto this YouTuber who was reading Tarot and basically explaining my entire relationship to me and then telling me how to get out of it and I was , “Oh, OK. I guess I can’t ignore this.”
This one YouTuber who kept doing multiple videos talking to me about my own life and I was , “OK, I'm gonna get a Patreon account patronize this lady and get some Tarot cards.”
MP
“OK, I guess I have to start paying attention now.” Were you scared to buy Tarot cards?
SK
I wasn't because I was just so , moved by how powerful the interaction was for me. I also never had any exposure to Tarot until college. I was very sheltered going to church every single Sunday for my whole life. And I didn't even I really didn't know anyone who was into anything besides Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and so my whole spiritual awakening really happened in college. I had no reason from my own life to associate the fear with Tarot.
MP
I hear this question all the time from people, I'm sure you do too, who come from a religious upbringing or background and associate any sort of magic with things the devil and the occult. So I'm happy to hear that that wasn't your experience that you were , stepping to the dark side.
But do you have any recommendations? What's your perspective on that? I guess, as someone who obviously has studied Tarot, are you religious now?
SK
No. So, now I have unsubscribed from Christianity, just because as I've opened my own understanding of how God works. I don't feel I need to put myself kind of into one particular theology. I kind of dabble around in a lot of things.
MP
OK, so you're not religious anymore. Did that kind of come around from about as you were exploring spirituality and things the Tarot?
SK
That actually came about from another decolonization process. I lived in Brazil for six months while I was in college. And the city that I was living in was actually the first stop on the Transatlantic Slave Trade. It was just such a powerful experience, I specifically researched it and started taking Portuguese in college so that I would be able to go do this program for six months. I wanted to go to a place where I know my ancestors traveled through, right? I'm gonna go there.
And so I went, and I learned that in that city, they have really held on to their West African spirituality and they see a direct link between slavery, colonialism, and Christianity. I didn't see any Black people practicing Christianity the whole time I was there. I was like, “Oh, this is interesting.”
So I kind of had my whole mind broken open. And I was like, “OK, I can really see why I need to kind of decolonize my own understanding of why I'm so attached to Christianity.”
MP
Right, because even like, hoodoo, and the American South is very much based on Catholicism and Christianity, and the merging of those two cultures. So that's so fascinating that outside of the US, it’s not the same. Christianity is colonization.
SK
Right. And it was so explicit. I was learning a lot about Black history there and they would take us to these beautiful churches that were built by slaves. They would talk to us about all the exploitation that happened and it was very clear that Christianity was not cool there.
MP
So that was your first sort of decolonization experience?
SK
I would say, so, yeah. Where I started to really have a lot of pieces come together for me all at once. And I made dramatic life changes because of it.
MP
And then, so you were kind of working with Tarot then, because this was in college, right? And as you started to work with it, how did you know the Tarot was for you?
SK
Well, when I started I remember I read somewhere online to just try to pull a card every day. And then as you go through your day, take a couple of notes about what happened for you that day. And that helps you kind of build a relationship between how the cards are trying to talk to you.
So I did that every day for , maybe a month, so not super long, but I started to realize that I would see a card and automatically have deep feelings about how my day was gonna go or you know, that there was something I needed to do. And it just really started to feel like I was playing this fun little game where I could talk to God but not have to read a Bible or something like that. And it just felt really special.
MP
That's cool. Yeah, it's kind of a spiritual dictionary. Remember, when you were learning how to read, you had to write your own dictionary or at least I did. You learn these words and you write them down, you write what the meaning is to you and context of the word.
I recommend for everyone who's like doing any sort of intuition work, create your own spiritual dictionary, don't look up what things mean on the internet. Like, you don't need to look up what a snake means when you walk past a snake on your path. What does it mean to you? Can you call upon yourself instead of just deferring automatically to the wisdom of other people? So, you did that for a month and you're like , “Oh yeah, this hits?”
SK
Yeah. OK, I could keep doing this!
MP
And then did you keep it a secret? Or did you start reading for other people immediately?
SK
No, I went a whole year without ever even telling anyone that I was reading Tarot. I would actually put all my Tarot decks away in a drawer whenever people came over because I was like, I don't want people to think I'm one of those weird off-the-wall people trying to be spiritual.
MP
What do you think made you shy of sharing that about yourself?
SK
Well, I started as I was starting to just learn more about Tarot. I did stumble upon those, blogs on the corner of the internet that are talking about how evil it is and how, you know, you'll be possessed if you read Tarot and all these things. And I was like, oh, OK, well, first of all, I don't want to alienate people if they think I'm trying to do something bad. My parents were still kind of reconciling their own relationship with Christianity after I shared my experiences in Brazil with them. And so I didn't want to be too far off the edge where they were like, “OK, well, you quit Christianity, and now you're evil.”
MP
So you’re slowly unveiling these aspects of yourself, and then when you started reading for other people — was that just for fun? Was it surprising? Were you nervous about reading for others?
SK
Well, actually I started dating a new person whose mom was a Freemason and whose grandma was bruja in Mexico. And so she read Tarot cards all the time in their family. It was so normalized to have Tarot cards all over the place and always be asking the cards question And so when I started to integrate with them, I was like, “Oh, I can also read Tarot with you all and you all can teach me.”
It became such a collaborative process in a way to get to know this new person that is falling in love with so yeah, it was so beautiful.
MP
I love that. So you met this person and that sort of opened up your relationship to the two And then it sounds like, did you have a sort of reckoning with Tarot the same way that you did with Christianity?
SK
Yeah, so that kind of started to happen as I was integrating the Tarot into my life way back in the very beginning. The way I was raised, my parents were very thoughtful. The were like, “We're only going to show you images of people of color as much as we can.”
All of my dolls were Black. All of my doctors were women of color. They were very strategic about the representation aspect. And so when I first want to go even buy my own Tarot deck, I was, “Well, I don't want to only look at white faces.” And so it was such a struggle to just find a deck that I felt comfortable using. Because just the idea that I need to look at these white faces to guide me … it was just something that I was not doing.
So the first deck I ever got, I actually have it right here. It's called Everyday Tarot. And so the people on it are this gold people and then also purple people. And I was like, “OK, this seems neutral and I can't ascribe race to these people if I wanted to.”
MP
Cool. And did you feel you resonated with a dive right off the bat?
SK
I did actually. I was doing my pull every morning. And I really just started to see so many little synchronicities happening in my life just from training my brain to be looking for magic to be happening really.
MP
That's totally what you're doing. You're teaching yourself how to pay attention.
SK
Yeah, exactly.
MP
Can you talk a little bit more about what decolonizing Tarot means to you?
SK
Yeah, so I think about colonization really as a mindset shift. You're kind of decolonizing yourself and the way that you think. And so the way that I incorporate that into my Tarot practice is just thinking about the way that we look at Tarot. A lot of the time we give our power away to this external entity, whatever it is that works behind the cards. And then the cards will tell us, good idea, bad idea, you won't be happy, you will be happy … and all of these things.
Even the concept of fortune telling and how the cards have that whole history of people going and asking, “What should I do with my life?”
And I just consider that to be so colonial because we live in a world where studies have shown us that people who are socioeconomically disenfranchised who are people of color who are queer, live with very little self determined nation, so very little sense that they have control over their own destiny.
So if this whole practice has kind of built itself around being able to tell people what to do and tell people how to live, then how can we just completely detach and unsubscribe from that entirely and start to rethink why we're even using these cards in the first place?
MP
Wow, I love that. That is so true. So many, I think that's a similar relationship to astrology, right? People are looking for the sort of divinatory aspects to it, “How can this tell me my future?”
How do you teach people that when you first get started, because so many people just want answers to the future, right?
SK
Yeah, so one of the things that I do for clients and I'm trying to actually formalize this, so I just have an email that I send out to everyone that works with me, that just explains, “I'm not here to tell you your future.”
You have incredible amounts of freewill, even kind of Actually, I got inspired by your PDF about the Akashic records where you have the kinds of questions that work, the kinds of questions that will work less effectively.
So I've started to build that out from the perspective of, “How can we reinforce that you have free will?” Don't ask me a question that starts with will this ever happen? Should I do this... I really just try to steer people away from any question that is a yes or no question.
MP
I love that. Yeah, it’s the same with the Akashic Records, which also, the name Akashic Records is totally problematic. I love the Akashic Records, but they're not Hindu in origin. Akasha is a Hindu word that was just slapped onto this practice.
SK
I have a fun fact about the Tarot also exoticizing a non-Western culture. There's a lot of mythology around how Tarot came to be and what the cards mean and what they originally meant and all that. You've probably looked into this, but you know, tarrochi is the Italian card game where we got the cards themselves.
And then, hundreds of years later, the French actually started to assign meanings to the cards, relating it back to ancient Egyptian mythology. Archaeologists have actually not been able to determine that there are direct links between what the French were saying the cards meant, and what ancient Egyptian texts actually said. And when I looked further into it, I found out that at the time, Egypt was a French colony.
And so this was just part of a larger system of trying to exoticize the Egyptian people and say , “Oh, look at these mystical people in Africa who know the secrets of these cards,” and it really had no basis in anything that was in ancient Egypt today.
MP
Wow, that's not surprising at all. And also, yeah... what the fuck?
SK
Yeah, it's really insane. I was making a note for myself because as we were talking about how the Akashic records are kind of looking at your trajectory and your most likely outcome.
That reminded me that one of the other things I do to make sure that my readings are super empowering is just that I actually will use a spread that asks, “What's your ideal outcome?”
And then how do you know you're on the right path, and then some actions that you can take to pivot yourself on to the path that's getting you your ideal outcome and that has gone over super well. I tested it out on myself and my sister a bunch of times and then once my sister started getting results, I knew I could reveal it to the world.
MP
You gotta have a guinea pig!
SK
Oh yeah, my sister, my partner, they’re definitely my Tarot guinea pigs.
MP
That's amazing. Yeah, I read Tarot de Marseille which is sort of the original way Tarot was read as you said, which originated in Italy and was brought over to the French courts. And I love it. It's so weird. It's really different from normal Tarot.
Because when you create a spread, when the cards are flipped upside down, it's not read as negative. It's just that this is a possible outcome. And then we say, “Let's see the outcome when we flip all the cards right side up.” And these are the two outcomes that you can choose. So if you don't sort of fix or pay attention to what we talked about in this reading, your life will go the way the first reading goes. And if you decide that you want to change those things, you can pick another outcome.
And I just think, to your point, so much more empowering.
SK
Yes, oh, that's so powerful. And especially with reversals, because I, for some reason, every day, I have multiple decks at this point, I get reversals all the time. I'll pull six cards, and five of them will be in reverse every single time. And I have to give a disclaimer, actually, when I'm reading with other people and just say, “So all of your cards are in reverse. This doesn't mean you should quit your job!”
But the fear around getting reversed cards is so real and for so long. When I was learning how to read the Tarot I had to sit with myself and be like, “OK, the cards cannot always be telling me that I'm being punished.” I really had to sit and think, “Assuming that I can't 100% of the time be fucking off. What else could these cards mean?”
MP
That’s so true. I feel this conversation is moving so beautifully full circle. That's so sort of Puritanical Christianity, right? Good versus bad, wrong versus right, evil versus ... not evil. And it reminds me of masculine versus feminine.
We got a good question yesterday. Someone asked what your perspective on the words masculine and feminine that are used so much in wellness and in mysticism to describe cards or energy. What's your perspective on that? Do you feel those words have meaning?
Or do you feel we need to sort of replace them with something new because we know that the binary doesn't exist, right? We’re trying to create this false binary, that, to me, is the same as good versus evil … I don't know. What do you think?
SK
Oh my God, thank you so much for asking that question. I had so much trouble with that. So I exist outside the gender binary, I don't identify as male or female. And I had so much trouble until very recently, even, feeling comfortable listening to podcasts and kind of immersing myself in this world where everyone's talking about femininity and masculinity. And I was like, “OK, we know there's more than that.”
And also, it's just so it was just so triggering to me. I don't want to have to feel like I'm trying to tap into an energy that's associated with the gender as I'm actively trying not to identify with.
In every other part of my life I am not identified with any kind of gender and now I have to … decide whether I'm out of balance in my divine feminine or out of my divine masculine? Yeah, it's so stressful!
I think about this a lot with the Tarot, too, because right most decks have people on them. So you'll have the Queen of Pentacles and it will be someone we're trained to think as a woman.
I really get really itchy when I see people pulling a card that has an image that we've been trained to call a woman and saying, “Oh, maybe this is a female in your life or maybe this is a you know, you're going to meet a man or something,” because you pulled the King of pentacles this man is good with money and it's just … very surface level.
I mostly will just skip over any reference to gender and say something like, “Oh, it sounds like this person really is deep into their inner world.” I just going straight into the energy that the card is trying to convey. How can we just completely give no reference to the fact that at some point in the past people associated someone's body with how they acted or showed up in the world?
MP
Yeah. And to your point, we even gender the suits, right? Coins, cups, we call them feminine. Wands and swords, we call them masculine.
I always think of them as action versus sort of creative instead of masculine versus feminine. And it's really hard to, to not define things on a binary because that's how we orient around them. But we need to almost create new language or create new ways to describe what we're seeing in what we're pulling in. And I wonder if it would make us more intuitive instead of falling to those sort of tropes of masculine or feminine ways of being.
SK
Yeah. Oh my god, I know nothing about neurology or anything but just from the concept of decision fatigue and the amount of transactions that your mind has to complete in order to get from point A to point B… it’s exhausting.
And so if we can just remove the association that we have to make between cards and gender and the message, and just go straight from card to message … I think that just helps us flow so much easier.