Pride spread! I put this together for innerselfnotes spreadcrafting contest. There’s a lot thoughts swirling behind this, so I’ll go through some points and try not to write a novel. Some notes are about identity and diversity work (because that’s what I do), some are about tarot spreads, and some are probably just me spouting off. Lol. It’s not all pretty and fancy looking, but it gets the job done.
I’ve done a couple thrown together spreads before, but this is the first one I purposefully sat down and designed with intent. This spread is informed by my experiences and work facilitating diversity education workshops (I teach and facilitate on the concepts of privilege and oppression, particularly around the identities of race/ethnicty, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and national origin).
And the rainbow flag, because rainbows.
I wanted to do something around the theme of pride, around empowerment, around identities and self reflection. When I say pride, I don’t mean the arrogant, full of myself type pride. When I say pride, I mean the pride I worked so hard to build up and strengthen around those identities that have been torn down, been harmed, and have been a source of agony. This is a pride borne through pain, through finding community after being alone, through taking the parts of myself that are targeted and oppressed by society and turning into the steel of my spine. That pride.
I picked the LGBTQ Pride Flag as my base for the spread because I identify as queer (sexuality, gender, all that). However, I feel would be a good one to use to explore any oppressed/targeted identity, because people tend to more strongly self-identify with those labels and identities that they’ve struggled with or been targeted over.
So, this spread essentially has two levels to it. Each position has a color, keyword, and descriptive question assigned to it. The keywords are based on meanings associated with each color. If you have questions about why I picked specific keywords for the colors, feel free to ask!
- Red: Passion
- Yellow: Expression
- Orange: Strength
- Green: Growth
- Blue: Peace
- Purple: Community
- Black: Protection
Because this is my first go around with it, I’ve written the questions in a “where things currently stand” mode.
- They can be modified to explore the past, such as “how has this identity given me strength in the past?;
- Explore areas of growth, like "how can I come to peace with this identity?”
- Even the shadow side of things, such as “what about this identity makes you vulnerable?"
As long as the position questions are based on some aspect of the keywords, this spread should be good. In fact, I feel like it would be possible to use this spread multiple times to reflect on the same identity, as long as there’s a different focus. It could also be expanded to multiple rows. Basically, it’s flexible. Keywords are the important bit; the questions can change.
I still need to do a test run with this spread. I plan on doing it within the next few days if it doesn’t happen tonight. I’m hesitant at the moment to do it for another person via the web right now; I really feel like this should be done in person or as a personal reading. I do think it would be interesting to see what other people get out of it though! And if someone really wants me to do a reading for them using this thread, I may be willing to discuss it.
Let me know your thoughts on this. Feedback and ideas for improvement are definitely welcome!
