What is Queerly Devoted?
Queer devotion is the act of being devoted to queerness—queer people, queer art, queer spirituality, queer rights, your own queer heart—and it is the practice of being devoted queerly, in queer ways. Here, we believe that there is a vibrant spiritual dimension to queerness and that, as Audre Lorde said, the spiritual is political. It is certainly true that existing as an LGBTQIA2S+ person in this timeline is political, whether we’d like it to be or not. So here we will explore the spiritual and the secular, the magical and the mundane, the personal and the political threads of queer devotion. We will look to tarot, myth, prayer, and ritual, and to history, philosophy, poetry, and activism. We will commit ourselves to becoming queerly devoted in ways that do not appropriate from marginalized communities and that do seek to overthrow colonial white supremacist systems of oppression. We will dream, wander, imagine, theorize, and hopefully act in the pursuit of living a life steeped in the praxis of queer devotion.
About Charlie
Charlie Claire Burgess (they/them) is a queer and trans-nonbinary tarot reader, deck creator, writer, and witch. They are the author of Radical Tarot: Queer the Cards, Liberate Your Practice, and Create the Future (Hay House, 2023), a guide to reading tarot for personal and collective liberation. They are also the creator of two tarot decks (so far): Fifth Spirit Tarot (indie 2020, Hay House 2022), a queer and inclusive deck for a world beyond binaries; and The Gay Marseille Tarot (indie 2024), a cheeky queer update on the classic Tarot de Marseille. Charlie is currently at work on their next book, Queer Devotion (Hay House 2025), an exploration of the queer divine in figures of myth and legend that opens pathways for LGBTQIA2S+ people to revere the sacred in themselves. Born and raised in the Deep South, Charlie has made their home in Portland, Oregon, with their spouse Aaron and their one-eyed pug Apollo.
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Queerly Devoted is written for queer folks, who are more likely to live in poverty than their cis-het counterparts, so I want my writing here to be free and accessible to anyone who wants to access it. At the same time, I am a queer and trans person married to a queer and trans spouse, so those who are able to support this work with a paid subscription are much appreciated.
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