Tarot + Christianity with Selah Saterstrom

Brought up in a Southern-family style of card reading and divination, Selah Saterstrom (she/her) has been offering divinatory support and guidance to her communities for over thirty years. Founder of Apotheca, a social-justice-centered apothecary, she also specializes in prescriptive magic. She is the author of the novels Slab, The Meat and Spirit Plan, and The Pink Institution, all published by Coffee House Press. She is also the author of two collections of essays: Rancher, and the award-winning Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics. She teaches and lectures across the United States and abroad, and is the director of creative writing at the University of Denver.

In this episode, Selah and Brandi talk about the intersections of Tarot + Christianity, including:

• Not allying with any person, belief system, or institution that would require us to diminish ourselves.
• How writing helps give context to each “rupture” of our identity.
• Writing as a way to be “in the question.”
• Letting go of what we believed we knew and crafting a relationship with uncertainty and discomfort instead.
• Being a femme-identifying queer as a form of contradiction Selah feels like she inhabits every day.
• What “divining” means to Selah, along with her long family history of divination.
• Southern tarot and divination not as separate from God, but as a tool to engage with God.
• Where Christianity does and does not fit into Selah’s current practice.
• The gnostic experience vs. the institution of Christianity.
• How each of us claiming our wholeness gives others permission to do the same.
• Curiosity, bibliomancy, prophecy, and aliveness all as a quality of presence and awareness you practice in the world.
• Our bodies—including our teeth—and tarot as “archives.”
• And much more.

Listeners can find Selah online, at selahsaterstrom.org, and on Instagram and Twitter. Four Queens Divination can be found online at fourqueens.org, as well as on Twitter.

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Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: The team at Upfire Digital