I'm author and tarot reader Maria Minnis. Sparked by a Kundalini awakening after a near-death experience, my musings on tarot, pleasure, healing, and life are inspired by deep love, voids, whale songs, Southern ritual, the moon, movement, radical liberation movements, personal experience, plant wisdom, infinite interconnectedness, and clouds.
👽 the body phantasmagoria issue
I’m deeply exploring, deeply transitioning. This cycle is about my external world, a quest to culminate what’s suggested in my 2026–2027 astrology. I have lots of ideas and even more plans. It’s time to focus, but after throwing discordant ideas at the wall until something special sticks. My writing process is similar: Brainstorm wildly, mind map, outline, write, reorganize, write, edit, rewrite, go, do, make. It’s alluring, this hard-won abundance my chart speaks to. Yet, the distance between present and past is often hazy. The haze aligns with one of my major practices this year, sitting in the discomfort of unknowing and uncertainty, sitting in the questions enough to expand my tolerance of the reality that I cannot know, plan, or prepare for everything that might scare me. I hopped on a few planes to escape the comfortable and spaciously explore potential landscapes where I could build my life’s next abode (literally and beyond). The rearview mirror can be a common antagonist in our evolutionary journeys. Anything could happen tomorrow. Nothing more can happen yesterday. My path feels enchanted, but I’m not immune to memories of what it once looked like. Wherever you go, a memory can follow. Hell can surprise you, even when you’re in paradise. I awoke one recent morning in a panic, sweating beads that smelled like fear. A dream, a flashback. An uncompromising, lonely collection of metaphors for times when no one trusted that I was suffering. Haunting. Haunted. My experience of fear is less often about what’s directly in front of me and more about what is happening in my physical body. My bones know what it’s like to freeze. My throat knows what it’s like to be dying. My chest knows the feeling of a straitjacket. In fright, I transport to the past and resent my common refrain: “Why did I have to be an abuse victim?” The violence happened for a set period of time. Yet, my resulting task is to spend years healing the impact. I sigh and sigh again, wondering why the universe gave me extra homework. I squirm at the discomfort of not knowing its intention. Healing from my mind worked, and it still does. But I haven't fully resolved trauma without my body. My brain is a precise tool, but mental chatter, desperate justifications, overthinking. and self-doubt cast fog on my future truth. When I ask my body what it needs, the answers are simple and direct. I am still learning to work with it, but I’m impressed that it does not lie to me. I’ve devoted myself at the well of somatic practice this year, addressing my physical and emotional trauma by focusing on my body’s sensations to untangle and release tension, emotional pain, and stress. I can process and intellectualize everything in my mind, but until the trauma moves through my body, it feels stuck. Through movement, body awareness, and breathing, I can “move” stuck energy through my body. I find holiness in the moments I tell myself, “Okay, darling. You can put that down now, okay?” The work is long. The work is discomforting. And the work reminds me that my body is no longer where it’s been. My body is always in the present moment with me, and it has felt and survived each of my worst days. Even when I couldn’t take care of myself, trillions of cells persisted to ensure I kept going. Through my body, I’ve finally experienced what it’s like to not just feel safe, but to trust that I am safe. Jaw, relaxed. Breathing, calm. Gaze, soft. My body knows what there looked like, but my body feels what is actually here. And I am here. The Hanged One* often models sitting in discomfort, unafraid to perceive the liminal distance between our lives' moments even when it feels awkward and uneasy. Hanging while watching the world go by from upside-down can be a lot for someone whose feet are always on the ground! The Hanged One gets overlooked, but I think it’s one of the most critical cards in understanding the Major Arcana. As Key 12, it is the World (key 21) prefigured. We don’t arrive at the World’s fulfillment and fresh endings as beginnings without radically shifting our perspectives along the way. We can’t evolve if we’re committed to solely looking at our lives from our favorite, most comfortable viewpoint. The Hanged One tells us to “be here now,” to sit in the discomfort and try to perceive our own stories in evolutionary ways to reveal how we can move through, not around, our very real discomfort. Consider this archetype as Jupiter conjunct Neptune. Jupiter conjures the themes of knowledge and expansion while Neptune illuminates illusions and distortions. In their relationship, we might notice that Neptune’s camouflage is only destroyed when we seek true knowledge that helps us erase blind spots, solve mysteries, and expand our own truths. With the Hanged One, we seek truth so we can see the fuller picture. We seek truth so we can expand our worlds, our landscapes of reality. And that can take us radically pausing, noticing, and accepting truths in fresh ways with heart-led courage. There’s no shame in holding onto expired narratives because that is where we feel safety. A song that feels illustrative of one of my past periods of desperation is Tammy Wynette’s ’Til I Can Make It On My Own, a tune about wanting to lean on a leaving love until they’re strong enough to move on. (“’Til I get used to losing you, let me keep on using you”). We do our best to remain whole in a dangerous world hellbent on fragmenting our self-perceptions. Our drive to protect ourselves is natural and evolutionary. Frankly, keeping myself safe is on my mind quite frequently. But feeling safe in my physical, emotional, and spiritual embodiment quiets my mind, melting the gate between here and there. I know what’s in the rearview mirror. And still, I fully feel what’s right here. And that’s me—protected, whole, surviving, thriving, collaborating, laughing, experimenting, and always dreaming. I really like it here. I thank the universe for the ability to embody the Hanged One's holy patience. *P.S. Want to learn more about the Hanged One? Catch the next Kinky Tarot episode—we'll go upside down—in January! In the meanwhile, you can catch up on each of the previous juicy episodes and marvelous guests! 🆓 SOMETHING FOR TRUE HEARTSThis month, I reveal the Magical Rematriation Mini-Workshop! This resource is a brief six-part guided exploration of how we can use connection to the land, community, and ancestral wisdom to cultivate collective change through individual and group actions. Explore what “home” uniquely means to you and how we can carry our homes in our hearts to cultivate collective change wherever we go. Use the key reverence to dive into it!
🥵 DOWN AT KINKY TAROTHomework: Catch up on Kinky Tarot! As Kinky Tarot slumbers until 2026, explore liberation through pleasure by listening to the provocative episodes so far! From exploring issues about neurodivergence and “enthusiastic” consent to blood play, you’re in possession of a delicious menu of tarot, eroticism, and illuminating conversations. You can start with our latest episode, Justice-Flavored Pleasure Doms, with my pal and powerful reader and practitioner, Al Ballentyne. What a conversation, what a reminder of our responsibility to take care of ourselves and each other.
🌀 ENTER MARIAWORLD☁️ The Cloud Shop is returning, including the beloved empathy beanie! ☁️ Conjure fashion + decor magic by grabbing a talisman from The Cloud Shop early next year! Everything is adorned with a mantra to help you remember your commitment to your intention throughout the day. Exciting: 10% of January sales go to the Black Mamas Matter Alliance! 🌌 MY ASTRO TOOLKITEvery month, I share some of the things, ideas, people, places, and memories that encourage me to be present in each astrological season and its themes. I hope that this list prompts you to create your own "toolkit" that you can reach toward whenever you want to ground in the current season. This is what's in my bag for the last bits of Sagittarius season. What's in yours? When people send me pictures of clouds. Feeling remembered every time I receive an invitation back to a recurring event. Walnut butter. Beis luggage. Banana spiders. Fuzzy Crocs slippers. Weighted blankets. The Portuguese language. Pistachio everything. Pastel de Natas. Travel thrifting. Otters. Finally feeling school flow and motivation. Reading Herzog’s The Future of Truth. Social media hygiene. Funky vases. Romantic walks in the cold winter rain. Locally made paper crafts. Food-shaped pillows. Mid-morning lighting. The Real Housewives of Potomac (yes, really!). Mustard yellow. Literally adventuring in Sag season. Knowing that universes exist in every person. Stimming by semi-dramatic sighing. Bravely doing client practice sessions. The benefit of the doubt. Feeld in a foreign land. Walking arm in arm with friends. Quince jam. “I don’t want to disappoint my dermatologist” as skincare motivation. Being in a time zone where nobody bothers me until noon. 🍒 LINKS FOR BABE ANGELS🧜🏾♀️ Let’s hang out at my friend Hannah Mermaid’s Siren Sanctuary! When works for y'all? 💧 I’ve manually tracked my water intake for years and this exists? 🇳🇬 Wait, what? Igbo flash cards?! 🧯 I hadn't heard of the 18 levels of hell until recently 🤟🏾 Yes, Black ASL exists and we need to preserve it ⏳ Are you also obsessed with how we percieve time? 🗺️ I am Not Excellent™ at time zones… anyone else? 👀 I got back into people watching 🗣️ LANGUAGE 🎭 Cats, artists 🪐 God, god, god, god, god, god, god 🧖🏾♀️ FIVE SENSUAL GRATITUDES👃🏾 The smell of ylang ylang plants on jungle walks 👅 The taste of coconut water, mouth-to-fruit 👀 The sight of sloths at dinner, up close 👂🏾 The sound of rivers flowing in rainy season 🤲🏾 The feel of squishing my feet into deep mud puddles Confess your sensual gratitudes to me at contact@mariaminnis.com! 👯♀️ IN OUR COMMUNITYWhat an honor it was to write the foreword for fortune teller Tom Benjamin’s recent book, The Modern Fortune-Teller’s Field Guide! It’s an essential guide for anyone seeking theory, history, and divinatory knowledge that considers systems of oppression and social responsibility. Adopt your copy! Reveling and re-membering in my beloved early evening darkness, Currently reading: Full of Myself by Austin Channing Brown
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HOLOGRAPHIC SPACE INDEX
I'm author and tarot reader Maria Minnis. Sparked by a Kundalini awakening after a near-death experience, my musings on tarot, pleasure, healing, and life are inspired by deep love, voids, whale songs, Southern ritual, the moon, movement, radical liberation movements, personal experience, plant wisdom, infinite interconnectedness, and clouds.