NO PREVIOUS TAROT KNOWLEDGE/EXPERIENCE REQUIRED.
In Signo Stellae is the first instalment of what we hope to be a continued engagement for those wanting to engage with the tarot as first-timers, as well as those wanting to deepen their existing practice. We aim to create a supportive space for shared learning and discussion, we will broach themes in the tarot that can be universally reflected on, supporting individuals in building a tarot practice that feels congruent to them. Our aim is to enable a community in which to share their diverse perspectives in a supportive space.
We will begin sessions by mutually setting expectations to create a safe, non-hierarchical, and supportive space, we will then lead discussions around one tarot card per session - diving into the many ways in which we can engage with those themes according to our diverse backgrounds and cosmologies.
Overall, our aims are:
To create and develop a network of readers pushing the boundaries of current perspectives on Tarot,
- To engage in non-hierarchical discussions of spiritual and magickal practices in an inclusive and welcoming environment.
- To investigate themes of the Tarot as a reflection of wider political and personal narratives.
- To engage in non-hierarchical discussions of spiritual and magickal practices in an inclusive and welcoming environment.
- To collectively learn and engage with the history of the Tarot, and to creatively reflect on how these histories have developed in relation to global structures.
Who are we?
Jordana Belaiche is a British-Algerian writer, performer, occultist and Londoner. Her work spans a broad interest in Western and non-Western spiritualities, with a current focus on examining early-mid C20th British occultism through a Queer, feminist, decolonial lens. Jordana has been reading tarot for 9 years, and first learned to read as part of Rebecca Beatie’s original U30 Young Urban Witch cohort at Treadwell’s. She co-founded Don’t Tell the Village Elders in 2021, a space for BIPOC practitioners and artists to wrestle practices from legacies of capitalism and colonialism and led new moon rituals on behalf of HeyPriestexx in the same year. She has utilised ritual and magick in performance, as well as work inspired by witchcraft and magickal practice in Blue Eyed Hag, inspired by the Algerian Sycorax at the Almeida Theatre in 2021, Abigail’s Adventures in Boston!, a Queer retelling of Arthur Miller’s The Cruicble at Theatre Deli in 2023 and in her latest work Triumph of Pan, about Queer occultist poet Victor Neuburg.
Emma Tillfors is an Iranian-Swedish former academic now surviving the world of office work. Emma has been reading tarot for 9 years, and did a short stint as a paid tarot reader at various queer markets, with a residency at okspace. Emma’s former anthropological research was on the negotiation of generational trauma and queerness in Iranian fashion design, also exploring alternative transactions based in solidarity and shared values in the Iranian fashion industry. Emma is currently training as a psychotherapist alongside her day job, and wants to work towards rebuilding community spaces in which to share our complex and intersectional stories through the fluid language of the tarot.