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A course in soothsaying with Christopher Marmolejo
Major Arcana intensive
Ongoing Enrollment, Evergreen Access
Live on Zoom, or watch asynchronously
Sliding scale from $780
What do we do with a fate we lament?
There is but a scornful glance at the God you believe in, but immediately abandons you. You distrust a personal will that does not exist for your strength is summoned by attributing all to Destiny.
Faco, Fatum, Fado. All refer, first of all, to a fate that irrupts time, thrusting the fated into the midst of presence. The mouthpiece for Divine decree trumpets an irreversible condition. What is and what will be require no symbolic intermediary. Thus our human language is excessive as it deplores an inexorable death. Fado is more than a melancholic feeling, it is a disposition, a consciousness which recognizes its finitude. Fado is sensible existential weariness and its incumbent aimless flitter.
To read red is to realize the body is a terminal. Again, prophets are also a place. Like the singer uses the whole body as their instrument, the oracle is barefoot with their aria. Both require a delivery of voice. So we are a singing oracle. So it is a somatic prophecy. Bodies reading bodies as God is a gentle whisper. This melancholy is discreet, for only those who allow themselves to frequent such prophetic places accustom its expression.
It is a metaphysical comprehension, a consonant spiritual maturity achieved at the end of empire, at the moment of economic and political decline, as with Portugal. Its overseas empire collapses but its language remains, pluralized, drifting over five continents. FADO is an interlude. It is the episode of interval between Brazilian, North African and Portuguese riding the rhythm of the seas evoking the longing of irreparable loss:
"Com que voz chorarei meu triste fado / With what voice should I lament my sad fate/sing my sad fado."
We become prophet poets. We are Orpheus, beheaded, and bobbing up and downriver. The lyre becomes our body and every song we sing mourns the fate that kills us softly. We practice divination as Fado, strumming our pain knowing that we won't survive the end of empire. We are frail and we falter. Our strong souls are weary. Our Gods are distant.
FADO will continue to develop the red pedagogy I put forth as we gaze into the sky and measure prophecy by parallax. This class series will be like pearls on a necklace, disparate, but connected as well, baroque in psychic insight luminously hidden in our fleshy darkness. A red read aims to realize a divinatory embodiment. It is to raise one hand, prick it, and revel in the realization that beneath the racialization that differently locates and classifies our specific bodies in time and place, red is the blood we will all spill. And the suffering we share means when we call out with our cards in sorrow, the response of divinity will affirm a shared humanity. The blood is on all of our hands. Its haptic. You will feel red. Red reading produces, attunes a synesthestic perceptual phenomenon of psycho-active yearning. Yearning for an answer, a direction amidst our existential drift, we vocally render our query. Images answer. Vision is engaged, colors are heard, shapes have a scent. The augur is a river with many cognitive tributaries.
It is said to be soothsaying because the lyrical sedative we administer keeps dreams euphoric. Our prophecies arouse auroras of an alternate galaxy. It's a meditative head rush on organic hallucinogens of foreseeing. Songs of lamentation are supposed to keep us from cardiac arrest, but even as we blame the sun don't we keep clutching our breasts, gasping for breath. In the nights overwhelmed by God's test have we been left for dead?
So to caress death we contemplate, what will manifest in the meantime, what might we write in the margins to make the dead divinity's verb? The FADO marginalia will be a conversation through conjuring, a fringe consciousness in the shadow reflex of doubt.
To wake us from our petrified thoughts the climate conspires. Revolution is replete with zones of woe, spheres of marvel. Lighting inspires intuition, then thunderclaps of astonishment resound in the cavities of our bodies so there is an echo of intimacy amidst strangers.
In FADO, the God's return, legitimate and listening.
What you’ll learn
A focus on the Major Arcana as interventions and assistance with the fate that has us feeling forsaken. Learn how to loot, how to hang, how to resurrect and dance with the dead.
Who this class is for
Fado is for the lamenting prophets. This series is more lecture oriented and so welcomes beginners and experienced readers, seekers, teachers, and healers who want to study tarot through a decolonial and intersectional lens.
How this course works
“Your work on the tarot is truly revolutionary, unlike anything else out there. So blessed to learn from you💫”
—NAJI T.
Ready to give form to fate?
The Red Read is committed to equitable access and honoring a diversity of lived experiences. A tiered tuition model invites each participant to reflect on their access to resources and choose a price point that feels appropriate — with integrity and without shame.
This model relies on community trust and mutual care. When those with greater financial flexibility choose higher tiers, it helps subsidize access for others. This is one way we practice solidarity and redistribution within our shared learning space.
Abundant Care Rate
$1050 suggested rate
Choose this rate if you have abundant financial resources, access to wealth, or are able to give generously without financial strain. You help keep the work sustainable while honoring your own value! Once you purchase Fado, please make an additional suggested donation of $270 to The Red Read.
Student Care
If needed, for accessibility, reach out by email for special alumni pricing rates.
Alternatively, If you’re experiencing financial hardship, are systematically marginalized, or otherwise please reach out.
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      Faco, Fatum, Fado.- 
      
        
          
          
          Pramaythus: Looting the TowerThe State is on fire because we will burn it down. We are looters, rioters, and rebels. We are children of Pramathyus, we bludgeon the status quo and burn down de big house. 
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          Hang Time: The Hanged Man & the Aesthetics of SuspensionThe body as a site of consumption, spectacle, the hangman’s noose and then some of the Black artists who strive toward suspension. These artists pursue aesthetic modes to delay, unmoor, halt the dominant gaze, the trajectories, and the technologies of surveillance, domination and captivity. Question the automatic association of agency with motility 
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          The GriotHistorian, storyteller, praise singer, poet, musician. Who will preserve our stories from one generation to the next? And how? And what when our existence is actively denied, our memory repressed, our histories undermined, our knowledge ignored? 
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          RevenantIn an apocalyptic presentation of bodiliness, examine the distinctions, implications, consequences of dealing with corporeal resurrection in an imperialist context. Disabled, black, brown, trans bodies bear the brunt of repressive power. So what are we to make of the body as metaphor of the state, when it rises up in Judgement? 
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          TotentanzWhat does it mean to actually dance with death? 
 
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Questions?
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      Our next live class will be announced shortly. The Previous class is Revenant. learn more here Previous classes: The Griot Hang Time: The Hanged Man & the Aesthetics of Suspension. learn more here. This first class was "Pramathyus: Looting The Tower" and you can read more here. Class days and times will be announced about a month before each session as these classes are unfolding. Students will be sent a reminder email a couple days before each class. Please note times may be subject to change to accommodate the various time zones of students. Classes will be recorded in case you ever can’t make a class! You can find these recordings updated in content section above. 
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      Each class will be offered independently to the public for a 2 week playback, while students who enroll in the full FADO course will maintain live and recorded access to each class for the year as it deepens and unfolds. 
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      Payment plans are available! (scroll below to sign up) Feel free to email with any other questions you may have about this course. 
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      There are two primary ways to participate in this container. The first is to enroll by investing for the total course tuition upfront, or set up a payment plan below. This will give you year-long access along with additional resources unique to students who enroll in the full course. The second option is to subscribe to my substack (theredread.substack.com), to hear about each class announcement individually. Students who sign up for any single class, w/o signing up for the full course, will maintain 2-week access to the class recording. Each standalone class will be offered at $80 per class. (vs the $65 class rate for the full course enrollment) 
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      No! You can sign up for FADO at any point in time the year(ish) of its duration. Once you enroll you will gain immediate to any and all of the class playbacks that have been taught up to that point. 
 
        
        
      
    
    Meet your instructor, 
Christopher Marmolejo
I came to tarot as a queer, brown, de-tribalized native from an under-resourced community, already transgressing the status quo. Tarot sharpened that power, and in Thresholds I teach you to do the same.
My background blends training in critical race theory, a Masters in Education, years of classroom teaching, and professional practice as both astrologer and diviner. I do not aim to reform colonial institutions but to cultivate thriving communities outside them.
In this work, education becomes liberation. I build safe, inclusive spaces where the spirit is welcomed. Thresholds expands our reading of tarot and our imagining of freedom, guiding you toward radical self-expression and the practice of liberation.
What my students have to say
Ready to give form to fate?
The Red Read is committed to equitable access and honoring a diversity of lived experiences. A tiered tuition model invites each participant to reflect on their access to resources and choose a price point that feels appropriate — with integrity and without shame.
This model relies on community trust and mutual care. When those with greater financial flexibility choose higher tiers, it helps subsidize access for others. This is one way we practice solidarity and redistribution within our shared learning space.
Abundant Care Rate
$1050 suggested rate
Choose this rate if you have abundant financial resources, access to wealth, or are able to give generously without financial strain. You help keep the work sustainable while honoring your own value! Once you purchase Fado, please make a suggested donation of $350 to The Red Read.
Community Care Rate
40% OFF
Select this tier if you’re experiencing financial hardship, are systematically marginalized, or would not be able to access this offering otherwise. No explanation is needed. This is an invitation to receive with dignity and grace.
If you’d like to access this rate, please use the coupon code COMMUNITY at check out.
 
                       
                       
                      