Harriet Beecher Stowe Center
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Hartford, CT 06105
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On October 29, 2022, Dr. Thea Wirsching, an Evolutionary astrologer and literary scholar, lectured about the research behind her American Renaissance Tarot deck during the Stowe Center’s “Spirits at Stowe” weekend. Her project blends American literature and esoteric history, and features over thirty writers (including Harriet Beecher Stowe) cast as the various roles in a traditional Tarot deck. Dr. Wirsching discussed both the intellectual roots of American esotericism in Transcendentalism, and the practical realization of these ideas in the popular movement of Spiritualism. Special for the Stowe Center audience, Dr. Wirsching commented on the astrology of the heady period of the 1850s, when Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published, and how its progressive themes are reflected in our own times.
Dr. Thea Wirsching is an Evolutionary astrologer and scholar based in Long Beach, CA. She received her doctorate in American occult literature at UCLA. Much of the research for that project went into the American Renaissance Tarot, a literary Tarot that weaves together America’s esoteric history with its political history. Thea’s astrological counseling business, “the Pluto Babe,” and her Tarot practice is rooted in the healing power of narrative.