March 2025 - March 2026 [Thursdays} 3-5 Pm PST

Class Starts March 29th, 2025

“What are these celestial expressions and words? The words are the stars, the expressions are their composition, their order, their harmony, and their course. Consider how the way of preaching in the heavens is in accord with the style that Christ taught on earth. In both cases, it is a matter of sowing: the earth sown with wheat, the sky sown with stars. One must preach is if one were sowing, not as if one were paving or tilling. Ordered, but like the stars: Stellae manentes in ordine suo. All the stars are in order, but it is an order that inspires, not a laborious order. God did not make the heavens in the form of a checkerboard of stars, as preachers make a sermon a checkerboard of words.” - António Vieira

TENZ is a facilitated decan walk through the minor arcana of the tarot. This is a year-long guide into the minor arcana, using the tarot images as doorways into a depth understanding of the zodiac. This will deeply expand your consideration, regard and application of the minor arca, the decans and the major arcana “parents” of each the minor arcana / pip cards.

As is the tradition with decanic imagery, this course is an inspired re-interpretation of historical meaning through modern application. Decan history and application is ongoing. Here we’ll study a rich ritual calendar with four-millenia long collection of spirits and symbols to walk a peripatetic path toward individual determination, a path toward dignity that is queer in its self-determination. TENZ is tarot as a movement practice, whereby as we walk together with agency we reclaim dignity lost at the intersections of white supremacy, capitalism and imperialism.

TENZ teaches tarot a system of syncretization, connecting the decanic history in live classes, to the critical co-investigation of the new cultural terrain we walk on, done with lectures for each class which are interpreted through various queer, and critical theory. This course is an unveiling of tarot, a summoning of wisdom distilled from the Sun’s serpentine journey through the zodiac, and an extending our tarot reading into an expanded critical literacy informed by the indigenous, feminist, and decolonial texts curated for this course.

This is a borderlands course. It aims to fuse relationships by honoring a narrative tradition which creates poetic coherence out of a life of movement and fragmentation, as is the case when modern readers traverse dissociative linguistic, colonial, cultural, psychic and physical borders.

Class Format

TENZ teaches how the tarot can be used in a multidisciplinary mode, as well as an astrological calendar connecting the histories of our bodies in space and time. The critical texts accompanying the course inspire transformation of the cultural sites and societal institutions we interact with, inform and are informed by, by doing so in a collaborative community space. The lectures are meant to supply a critical terminology through the conceptual apparatus of the tarot. The live classes encourage a dialogue, contestation and coherence. The recorded lectures provide a modern application and reading, while the live classes will lean on the decanic history, student’s natal charts, traditional application and overall blended exploration.

The class is cut into 12 monthly units, following the cards / decans of the current zodiacal season, which cuts the zodiac down to a finer grain (36 distinct faces versus 12).

Each month consists of a pre-recorded lesson ( about 1.5 hours each), and 2 live class (each approx. 2 hours each) to focus on integration and application. The lecture is accompanied by a downloadable presentation, which includes a summarized critical reading of the decans, journal / tarot prompts and tarot spreads for personal inquiry. Also provided are ancient translations of the decans for a well-rounded exploration and learning. There is an additional introductory live lecture on defining and explore decanic history and dignity. This is a primer to start our journey together. In total there are 37 (12 recorded, 25 (!) live) classes here offered.

Live sessions will take place on Thursdays (sometimes Fridays), twice a zodiac season, from 3-5 pm PT (though subject to change based upon the collective availability). These will be held via Zoom and are recorded for future reference, and to ensure students who can’t make it live, are kept current. Once enrolled you will gain access to the monthly lectures and presentations, and invitations to live classes, exclusive texts, and a private discord channel.

Texts

All About Love & Belonging: A Culture of Place by bell hooks ~ Eros and Civilization by Herbert Marcuse ~ Feminism Without Borders by Chandra Talpade Mohanty ~ Red Skin White Masks by Glen Sean Coulthard ~ The Fantasy Bond by Robert W. Firestone ~ Theories of the Flesh by Julie Avril Minich ~ Making Face, Making Soul, Haciendo Caras edited by Gloria Anzaldúa ~ The Inner Reaches of Outer Space by Joseph Campbell ~ And The Category Is…Inside New York’s Vogue House, and Ballroom Community by Rick Tucker ~36 Faces by Austin Coppock ~ 36 Secrets by T. Susan Chang and more!