Hi friends,

I’m here to reveal some details about the first print edition of The Rebis. But before I do, I wanted to share some of the things I’ve been thinking about over the past 24 hours.

I’ve been thinking a lot about identity. Past, present, and future selves. The roles we try on and cast aside. Roles that are fun, that feel good. Roles that are uncomfortable, itchy, too tight.

I’ve been thinking about how these days, so many of us are stepping into roles that feel heavy, like armor. The Knight of Swords: ready to act, weapon drawn, charging forward.

Two tarot cards side by side: The Knight of Swords is on horeseback, sword drawn, charging forward. The Knight of Cups is also on horseback, but holds out a golden cup instead of a weapon. — Knight of Swords and Knight of Cups from the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck

I’m thinking about what it means to try to create space for art while battle rages around us. About what it means to be a writer, poet, storyteller, or an artist right now. The Knight of Cups: armor on, battle-ready, with a cup in their hands instead of a sword. An offering to the universe. Aching for liberation and beauty all at once. Finding meaning when the universe feels nonsensical. Creating something that fills people with awe, in a world that’s overflowing with violence and inequality.

I’m thinking about what Jessa Crispin has to say about these Knights in her book, The Creative Tarot:

On the Knight of Swords: “It’s about using your ability to put thoughts and words into action, to sway others, and encourage dissent.”
On the Knight of Cups: “What the Knight of Cups wants is for you to dissolve into fantasy, to take an imaginary being for your lover, to find a muse, to dream of worlds that do not exist yet. To commune with the spirits and build castles in the sky. But then learn how to replicate them on solid ground when you’re done.”

I’m thinking about how it’s not about choosing one Knight over the other, but finding a balance between the two.

I’m thinking about these posters I saw from The Slow Factory, which is “developing an understanding of what roles and callings we need to nurture to reach a decolonial collective liberation framework that is good for people and good for the world.”

The contributors who are coming together for the first edition of The Rebis each embody such an important role in our world today. They are talented writers, artists, healers, and meaning-makers who inspire me. Their work is fascinating and wonderful, fills me with curiosity and hope. A beam of sunlight in a dark room. I’m so excited to share their names with you here, and I encourage all of you to explore their work.

This first edition will be entirely focused on The Wheel of Fortune. When I thought about building a publication devoted to tarot and creativity, I was driving. I looked down at my hands, saw the steering wheel, and thought of the tenth Major Arcana card. The Wheel of Fortune had been following me around for the last few months, coming up in spread after spread. Flying out of the deck as I shuffled. Look at me, it seemed to say. Pay attention. So I did.

I started reading about fate, destiny, and chance. Surrender, flow, and acceptance. Cyclical time. Evolution. Changemaking. Dissolution. Liberation. I invited each of the contributors to share writing or art based on their own interpretations of the Wheel of Fortune. The final product of the magazine will feature personal essays, poems, artwork, and interviews. I am so proud of what we’re making!

We’re moving into print layout soon and I’m hoping that the magazine will be in our hands by the autumn equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. I promise to keep you posted on timing as things evolve, and I look forward to sharing some behind-the-scenes moments from production soon!

Thank you for following along. And a huge thank you to the contributors listed below — you are all incredible co-creators.

Until next time,

Hannah

P.S. Have a friend who might be interested in The Rebis? Please forward this their way or share our Instagram with them! It’s been so fun seeing this community grow.

The Rebis: Wheel of Fortune — Contributors

Xaviera López is a Chilean artist and animator, and the creative director of The Rebis. Her linear drawings, animations, and short format looping videos incorporate simplified yet highly contextual self-portraits and images that display the meeting place of the material and the ethereal, and challenge perceived delineations between the felt and seen. Instagram: @xavieralopez

Kim Rashidi is a poet exploring the cosmos through her words. She has a soft spot for capturing love and life in the mundane. Writing about the lives, cities, and timelines that mirror back the romantic, she weaves reality with imagined possibilities. She holds an MA in English literature and has taken to poetry since she was 16. She is the author of Fortunate: Tarot Poetry published by Andrews McMeel. Instagram: @kimrashidi

Anthony Perrotta is an astrologer, artist, poet, designer, and curator. He spends his time running his astrological business where he specializes in making the abstract feel more tangible. He has a background in Fashion and Interior Design and has spent years bridging the gap between his passions. Anthony is also the creator and editor of the Astro Edit, an astrological magazine. He believes that magic is in the mundane, and it moves through even the simplest of gestures. Instagram: @ap_astrology

Eryn Johnson is a queer breathwork facilitator and writer based in Philadelphia. They write to remember, to heal, to process. Her poetry explores the impacts of religious trauma and cisheteropatriarchy, telling stories of survival and of becoming. Instagram @erynj_

Sarah Ann Winn is the author of Alma Almanac (Barrow Street, 2017), and five chapbooks, including the witchy Haunting the Last House on Holland Island (Porkbelly Press, 2016) and Ever After the End Matter (Porkbelly, 2019). Instagram: @blueaisling

Alyssa Polizzi is an educator, speaker, and coach. She lectures and writes about symbolic and archetypal systems of thought via Jungian theory, mythology, the shadow, dreams, tarot, personality typology, and alchemy. Instagram: @alyssa.polizzi

Sanyu Estelle is a claircognizant ("clear knowing") soothsayer ("truth teller") that is also known as "The Word Witch" because of her deep love for word origins (etymology) and word culture (philology). She is known for her straightforward card reading style ("the reading you need, not necessarily the reading you want") and her way with words via both writing and speaking. Instagram: @sanyuestelle

Maria Minnis is a Bay Area-based writer, artist, ritual facilitator, and teacher with Southern roots. She writes and teaches about everyday magic and holographic thinking in the context of social justice and liberation. Sparked by a Kundalini awakening after a near-death experience, her work is inspired by voids, whale songs, Southern ritual, the moon, movement, experience, plant wisdom, and infinite interconnectedness. She is unapologetically Black and wildly intent on living on purpose. Instagram: @feminnis

Helen Shewolfe Tseng is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, witch, and naturalist born to Taiwanese immigrants in the Deep South. Their work is influenced by ancestral and diasporic cosmologies, interspecies collaborations, trickster archetypes, and neurodivergence. Helen was a 2018-2019 YBCA Fellow, 2019 Designer in Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts, illustrator and co-author of The Astrological Grimoire, former co-host of Astral Projection Radio Hour (2014-2020), and co-author of Virgie Tovar’s Body Positive Tarot course. Instagram: @wolfchirp

Joseph Chaplain is a relatively new writer, currently living in the Peak District of the United Kingdom with his wife and their cat. When not writing, he can usually be found ambling around the local countryside or playing weird music in a dark room somewhere. His short fiction has been published by Crystal Peake as part of their Dark Folklore anthology, and his poetry has been published by Coverstory Books in their New Contexts anthologies.

Lorraine Schein is a New York writer and sometimes tarot reader. Her work has appeared in VICE Terraform, Strange Horizons, Witches & Pagans, and Mermaids Monthly, and in the anthology Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana del Rey & Sylvia Plath. The Futurist’s Mistress, her poetry book, is available from Mayapple Press. Her new book of poetry and science fiction The Lady Anarchist Café is out now from Autonomedia.

Nicolas Bruno is a photographer, artist, and the creator of Somnia Tarot. He weaves together his terrifying experiences of sleep paralysis with surreal self-portraiture in a therapeutic translation of night terror to image. His constructed worlds of uncertainty exist on plane between waking and sleeping, where he is tormented by a physical embrace of the subconscious and its perils, all while being paralyzed in bed. Influences of 19th-century Romanticists, historical texts of occultism, and dream symbolism lace each composition with various visual dialogues of the macabre. Instagram: @nicolasbruno

Valentina Alvarez is a visual artist born in Caracas, Venezuela. Her work highlights strength and beauty, motifs linked to the diversity and identity of human beings, through photography and design. She searches for the organic expression of bodies in her subjects throughout movements from the ancestral call, the contemporary, and symbolic world. Instagram: @valentinalv

The Rebis

Announcing the first print edition of The…