Tarot + Christianity with Selah Saterstrom
About the Episode
I freestyled the intro to this episode because I’m pretty passionate about the topic area. Go ahead and listen to it to hear more, or read below to find out the gist of what Selah and I discuss.
Episode Details
About Selah (she/her)
Brought up in a Southern-family style of card reading and divination, Selah Saterstrom 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.
What We Discuss
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.
And, our bodies—including our teeth—and tarot as “archives.”
Sources Mentioned
I accidentally call Selah’s book, Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics, “Divinatory Poetics” multiple times throughout the conversation, which is sort of half-right, but here’s a link to it online.
Sueyeun Juliette Lee is the brilliant writer/poet/artist/magic human who I mention at the beginning of the episode as the person who introduced Selah’s work to me.
Julieanne Combest comes up a couple of times in this episode. She’s a mutual friend of ours who’s also a healer/diviner living in Richmond, Virginia. Follow her online and book her here.
The Rider-Waite tarot deck is the one Selah uses to pull cards for our conversation. You can buy it from multiple places online, but I encourage supporting independent sellers by buying from them.
Here’s a link to my conversation with Serena Chopra, where I quote Selah and Serena and I talk about Selah at length.
The University of Glasgow, where Selah went to graduate school.
Tina Pippin’s Apocalyptic Bodies: The Biblical End of the World in Text and Image, which appears far more affordable to read on Kindle.
Here’s the work of Rob Bell. Here’s his first book, Velvet Elvis.
Here’s the work of C.D. Wright, who Selah mentions, who once said, “It’s not about writing better; it’s about seeing better.”
Emma Garman for The Paris Review on the life and work of Etty Hillesum, the writer and journalist who died at Auschwitz.
The correct Thoreau quote I get only partially right is actually, “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
Kathleen Stewart is the professor and writer Selah mentions when speaking of “strands of animated potential.”
Here’s a link to my interview with Charles Eisenstein and Lauren Buckley where we speak extensively about dental cavitations and the connection between dental health and chronic illness.
Find where to buy Selah’s new book of essays, called Rancher, here.
adrienne marree brown is the person I mention wanting to have on the podcast in the future around Pleasure + Grief.
I mention Lincoln Carr and Shannon Davies Mancus at the end of our conversation. Both of those links lead to our individual episodes together.
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Four Queens Divination
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Credits
Audio engineering by the team at Upfire Digital.
All of my music is provided by the in-house musicians at Slip.stream.
Episode Transcript
Coming soon, hopefully! Would you be willing to help? Email me at brandi@thisplusthat.com!
