On the Oracular Practice of Sounding the Siren with Christopher Marmolejo

Songbirds: On the Oracular Practice of Sounding the Siren with Christopher Marmolejo

Join Christopher Marmolejo for an illustrated lecture & interactive presentation exploring tarot, divination, and the connections to musical self-questioning in relationship to myths of sirens and mermaids.

"Let us take flight and engage in musical self-questioning, and with enough curiosity we may get free of ourselves. In this interactive presentation, we will wrap rope round ourselves to listen like Odysseus to the Siren song. We will meet mermaids, tempt innocence, and attempt to reconcile a primal animality with a desire for domesticity. Like Orpheus we will be musical oracles and trace divination as a practice of metamorphosis."

This event will be an illustrated lecture punctuated by moments for reflection, journaling, discussion, and even pulling tarot cards. Bring a notebook, pen or pencil, and (if you have one), a tarot deck of your choice!

Christopher Marmolejo is a 2026 Contributing Artist at PRS. They are a wayward writer, scholar and seer, engaging oracular methods of riot and redemption. Their pedagogical practice intertwines queer, feminist and diasporic lineages of divination through discursive interventions within various cultural imaginations that revel in magical thinking, creative risk and close listening. Relevant to their practice of red spirituality is collaborative intertextuality, language, and the ritual regard of aesthetics.

Red Tarot has been featured in the University of Denver’s graduate creative program. Christopher has been a key partner with the University of British Columbia’s Tarot For Decolonization initiative, facilitating several workshops at the University on the intersections of tarot, indigeneity, gender and sexuality, and decolonial storytelling. Christopher has lectured and taught taromancy and decolonial divination for institutions and conferences such as New York University, Arizona State University, the California Institute of Integral Studies, the Invisible College, the Philosophical Research Society, the Occult Humanities Conference, the Los Angeles Festival of Tarot and New Orleans Poetry Festival.

Christopher is currently serving as guest-editor for the Rebis, a literary anthology celebrating tarot, art & creative writing, focusing on arcanum XVIII: the Moon, out later this year. Their practice of red reading shows how a decolonial approach to divination, rooted in queer indigeneity, can unsettle dominant narratives of futurity and enact alternatives grounded in relation, collectivity and the still-possible.

theredread.com

@the.red.read

Ticket price: $12 (in-person event only)

Please email events@prs.org or phone 323-663-2167 with any questions.

Through Mirrors, Webs, & Woods: A Month of Folk & Fairy Tales at PRS

This September, PRS celebrates the many wonders of fairytales and folk stories through a series of illustrated presentations, film screenings, and workshops!