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The Gay MARSEiLLE TaroT
A liberating new interpretation of the classic Tarot de Marseille, The Gay Marseille Tarot centers and celebrates LGBTQIA2S+ identity and has fun doing it! With trans Emperors and gender nonconforming Empresses, polyamorous Lovers and a sapphic pool party under The Moon, this playful and cheeky deck celebrates gender diversity, sex positivity, nonbinary beauty, and queer love. With Justice ready for a protest and the Stonewall Inn as The House of God (a.k.a. the Tower), this deck remembers the past and present fight for LGBTQIA2S+ rights and integrates references to queer history and culture throughout. The Gay Marseille (which rhymes if you pronounce it the English way: Mar-say) is a vibrant, joyful, and affirmative tarot deck for reading brighter, liberated queer futures.
The Tarot de Marseille (TdM) is a pattern or style of tarot iconography that developed in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. Where in prior centuries tarot cards had been the province of the rich, who could afford to pay for hand-painted tarot packs, Marseille decks were mass produced using woodblock printing. This made TdM decks more affordable and accessible to the common person for the first time ever, and the game of tarot spread rapidly throughout Europe and beyond, with the Marseille style gaining new spins and variations in each place it ventured.
In a way, its accessibility, versatility, and open-source pattern makes the Tarot de Marseille the deck of the people. The people's deck.
The Gay Marseille hopes to build on the spirit of the people's deck by lovingly re-envisioning the Tarot de Marseille in queer, trans, poly, kinky, liberatory lights for the LGBTQIA2S+ community and other people on today's margins.
The tarot has always been a queer-aligned tool for finding ourselves, shaping our lives, and making meaning outside of the sanctioned paths of dominant culture.
Now, with this deck, it’s written in the cards: the future is queer. The Gay Marseille is a vibrant tarot for a gayer—and, yes, happier—world.
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