ZORA

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How Black and Brown Mystical Artists Are Tapping Into Our Ancestral Power

Generational wounds prevented Black and Brown women from using their magic in public. But today, women of color are reclaiming their spaces in mystic arts like tarot and astrology.

Tiffany Walden
ZORA
Published in
8 min readNov 28, 2019

TThe ancestors called on Tatianna Tarot at an early age. She couldn’t have been any older than six or seven when it happened. While browsing a bookstore in Brooklyn with her dad, a deck of tarot cards caught Tatianna’s eye. She wanted to take the cards home with her, but, of course, her dad wouldn’t buy them. What would a child do with a deck of tarot cards anyway? But Tatianna’s juju wasn’t the type to lay low. Once she got to her grandmother’s house, she found a deck of playing cards in the kitchen. They became her entryway into the metaphysical world.

She had a system back then. Hearts meant love. The good luck club, as she calls it, meant just that: Good luck was on the way. And the mighty spades card, a trump in the game of its namesake, indicated something bad was in the works. She used card and palm readings to bargain for ice cream and cookies with the other kids at the lunch table.

Little did the Bed-Stuy-born Afro Latina know that the juju ran deep in her bloodline…

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ZORA
ZORA

Published in ZORA

A publication from Medium that centers the stories, poetry, essays and thoughts of women of color.

Tiffany Walden
Tiffany Walden

Written by Tiffany Walden

Editor-in-Chief of thetriibe.com | 2024 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow | Award-winning journalist | Chicago girl

Responses (3)

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This is an interesting take, but although divination in traditional African societies can take many forms, astrology and tarot cards are not among them. Even though astrology was initially developed in the ancient Middle East, the version practiced…

1

Really well written article, grateful!! It’s so sad how native people in the Americas, Africa, and really all around the world have been brainwashed by Christianity. I have been in South America for the past two years and it’s really obvious how…

1

It’s going to look a little different because we all have some sort of indigenous magic within us, so it’s really contingent on whether or not the individual is open to it, whether they...

Hmmm…interesting