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McALLEN — Hundreds of believers gathered in the historic Cine El Ray, draped in silk and saturated in colorful light, to celebrate the great, great grandson of a curandero, as he keeps his family’s magic alive through the release of his debut book: “The Joy of Tarot.”
Wrestlers dueled, drag queens slayed, and mystical enchantment energized the air.
The celebrated grandson, Fernie Salinas, a South Texan fortune teller, distilled the lavishness of his book release party on Tuesday into perfumed opulence, adorned in laughter and anticipation, with love for his close-knit community at its heart.
The sentiment is the core of his book. The beginner-friendly instructional guide to learning and using tarot incorporates Salinas’ own experiences, and those of other Rio Grande Valley residents who played a special part in his tarot journey.
“This book is just really a love letter to tarot and to all of the people who helped me fall in love with tarot,” Salinas explained.
Within over 300 pages, Salinas, a former school principal, reflects on the stories that shaped him as a tarot reader and sets forth a straightforward guide to tarot reading.
His goal was simple: to demystify tarot, making it accessible and less intimidating. The book provides explanations behind all 78 cards, positive and negative meanings, fortune reading advice, and a plethora of immersive exercises.
The inspiration came from a reading with his mentor.
Six months before the book was born, Salinas was giving Teresa Reed, a guiding light in his life who also wrote the book’s foreword, a tarot reading. She met his gaze, and told him, “You have a book in you.” And though he initially doubted himself, he ended the reading by promising he would at least work on a proposal.
As he embarked on the project, he was hit with a realization of love for those that accompanied him throughout his tarot journey.
“How would I want them to learn tarot?,” Salinas asked himself in recollection. “How would I want them to feel that tarot is something that is joyful for them?”
It took only six months for the concept, crystallized around joy, to come into complete fruition.
“I never grew up thinking that like magic didn’t exist,” Salinas said. “I never thought that there was a way in which the world wasn’t more than just what we could see.”
The Valley, being an intrinsic aspect of Salinas’ identity, plays a formative role in the book’s existence. Salinas says his great-great grandfather was a curandero, a traditional folk healer, in Rio Grande City.
“People would go to him whenever they had problems,” Salinas retold the stories from his childhood. “And he would give them potions and teach them the herbs that were around. He was someone people in the community could go to for help. Because of that, my family has always known magic existed.”
Salinas grew up recognizing there was more to the world than what could physically be seen, but also was instilled with a deep passion for serving and supporting others in his community. He said writing the 21 stories within the guide helped him recognize the size and strength of the people in his life and wants others to find that kind of chosen family for themselves.
In a world full of stigma and judgment, as he worked through completing “The Joy of Tarot,” Salinas struggled with how much of himself to reveal. Ultimately, the fortune teller opted to be explicitly himself.
“I’m very loudly queer, Latino, and an educator, and that comes through so clearly in this book,” he said.
The decision to shine through unfiltered and raw was motivated by memories of what seeing figures such as Walter Mercado, RuPaul and Diana Ross meant to him growing up, as he discovered himself.
“We need to make sure that we are exactly who we are, and that we show up exactly as we are,” Salinas said.
Tuesday night, the night of “The Joy of Tarot’s” official release, embodied Salinas’ efforts to understand his community in magical ways. Underneath each memoir and card explanation is a simple tie: understanding one’s self and understanding those around, exactly as they are.
“I want the community to know that,” he said. “And I want for everybody who picks up this book to be able to see me, but then be able to know that it’s OK to be them too.”
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