tarot
Fifth Spirit Tarot
Queer and trans-nonbinary reimagining of the RWS that degenders the court cards, a landmark inclusive deck from a major publisher.
by Charlie Claire Burgess · Hay House · 2022
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The Canon's read
Tarot Canon's own assessment, written for this catalog.
Charlie Claire Burgess's Fifth Spirit Tarot is the landmark its record calls it: a queer and trans-nonbinary reimagining of the RWS that degenders the court cards, published not by an indie press but by Hay House in 2022, the mainstream oracle industry's flagship carrying gender-expansive tarot into every chain bookstore. The court redesign is the structural heart; tarot's Page-Knight-Queen-King gender grid is where the tradition hard-codes binary assumptions, and Burgess rebuilds it on role and energy instead.
The deck stands on the inclusive lineage this catalog tracks from the eighties round decks through This Might Hurt and the Modern Witch, and marks the moment the current reached major-publisher scale. Burgess's accompanying writing gives the redesign its theory. It suits queer and trans readers finding the courts finally habitable, teachers of tarot's living evolution, collectors of the tradition's structural reforms, and RWS readers curious what the grid looks like unlocked. The courts survived; they just stopped checking identification.
Provenance
Cataloged from a published source. No archive review is carried for this deck.
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