“We are–all of creation–equally a part of the divine,” says Charlie Claire Burgess, author of the new book Queer Devotion, “and so there’s infinite ways to relate to the divine and every single one of us can find that thread of our own sacredness.” Burgess, a queer, trans, and nonbinary writer and illustrator, knows this personally. Raised in Protestant Christianity, they have spent their life leaving queerphobic religious traditions and finding their way back to the power of queer spirituality in order to share it with others through tarot and courses at the Seagrape Apothecary.
Queer Devotion was born out of a 2023 course they taught at the Portland-based shop. They wrote a 25-page take home packet for participants dedicated to exploring queer divinity through their research, and the event coordinator suggested they transform it into a book. Now expanded beyond that brief packet, Burgess explores the rich tradition of queer and trans divine figures within folklore and mythology, paganism, and Christianity, ranging from a diverse, interfaith collection of Sir Gawain, Aphrodite, Joan of Arc, and, of course, queer Jesus.
Burgess is quick to note that this book is not a spiritual encyclopedia but rather a workbook. It’s a queer interactive youth Bible of sorts that grounds its exploration of queer and trans figures in Burgess’ research, leaning away from religious appropriation and into their lived experience.
Queer, trans, nonbinary, and intersex divine figures are especially central to many religious traditions, including those native to South Asia, the Pacific Islands, Africa, and South America, but this book specifically focuses on western history and mythology. Burgess’ research focuses on the very religious traditions and morals that have been leveraged against queer people’s survival.
As Burgess shared with me, “I think there’s a real hunger and need amongst LGBTQ+ people for a connection with something more than us, especially when we’re being told all the time that we’re wrong and sinful and going to hell.” The book is a starting place with activities, devotionals, and contemplation prompts, alongside history and spiritual essays, following a rich tradition of queer magic explored in books like Ariana Serpentine’s Sacred Gender and Enfys Book’s Queer Rites: A Magickal Grimoire to Honor Our Milestones with Pride.
A book on and of the margins
In essence, Queer Devotion is a book for spirituality on and of the margins. This is nowhere clearer than on the cover, which Burgess illustrated themself. It’s inspired by medieval illuminated manuscripts, specifically the marginalia — the illustrations drawn into the margins of the Bible and other holy texts copied by monks. Even within this Christian marginalia, there’s historically a lot of queer spirituality. It is a space for sacred diversity to coexist with the regimented text of the Bible.
This cover art was specifically inspired by a page from Leah DeVun’s The Shape of Sex, an exploration of nonbinary sex from Genesis through the Renaissance which features illuminated manuscript pages.
“It’s the literal margins, and so much of what we’re talking about when we’re talking about queer devotion are people who have been marginalized and sacred stories that have been marginalized,” Burgess says. “There’s so much erasure that has happened when it comes to LGBTQ+ history, when it comes to LGBTQ+ spirituality. Sacred stories.” Their art mirrors a number of other queer and trans artists reimagining divinity in their own image; Burgess stands out as tethering queerness and trans identity to historical divinity and religious cultures.
Reclaiming queer sacred history
At the heart of Queer Devotion is the idea of finding and reclaiming these queer spiritual histories, which are often destroyed through queerphobic violence, erasure, or to protect community members who would face violence if they were outed. Burgess’ book is a love letter to these found histories, specifically employing scholar José Esteban Muñoz’s framework of queer evidence.
In his 1996 article, “Ephemera as evidence; Introductory Notes to Queer Acts,” Muñoz argues that it’s important to look for the whispers, the traces, of our histories in the archives and, in Burgess’ case, in sacred storytelling.
“When we’re looking for LGBTQ+ sacred stories, so often what we have to go on is hints and subtext because what has been recorded has been recorded by patriarchy,” Burgess says. With Muñoz’s framework, Burgess utilizes the lens of queer evidence to affirm the queer, trans, and intersex identities of many divine figures, and to assert that these identities can be multifaceted. For example, while Artemis may carry deep sapphic symbolism for Burgess, she is also significant to many asexual individuals for her rejection of heterosexual relationships.
As Burgess says, “connecting with the deep past of queer divinity can provide roots for us in the modern day. There’s so much messaging surrounding queer people around, especially trans people, being new, which is absolutely not the case. Trans people have always existed, although by different terms. This is really an argument about terminology more than it is about actual lived experience.”
Connecting to transcestors
At its very heart, the act of queering — or rather acknowledging the queer dimensions to — divine figures is itself a sacred one. It connects modern queer and trans people to divinity in the deep and recent past, from historical figures like Joan of Arc to mythical ones like Kybele, an intersex deity tricked into castrating herself, whose transfeminine followers continued worshipping her for centuries despite Roman persecution.
It’s strikingly similar to queer and trans grassroots archiving that records and celebrates queer and trans ancestors, whose histories are often lost or forgotten. These initiatives affirm not only that queer and trans people have existed throughout history, but that we will collectively survive current queerphobic legislation and Christian nationalism just as we have collectively survived before. Modern queer and trans people facing systemic violence can draw strength from the perseverance of ancestors in the past while honoring those whose lives were taken too soon.
Working with trans ancestors is the central devotion in chapter five, which features the queer devotion of Joan of Arc. It connects to modern exploration and veneration of trans ancestors, including well known people like Sylvia Rivera and Cecilia Gentili, as well as ancestors whose names are lost to history or whose identities remain closeted even in death. Texts like Contagion Press’ First Protocols of the Queer Goetia are dedicated to the many queer people who were murdered or died without living authentically.
Like Contagion Press’ booklet, modeled after those historically distributed to mourners, Burgess’ text provides a framework to heal both the queer and trans people who wander the Earth after death and the people who live in their stead. As Burgess says, “looking into the past and connecting to these stories, to these spirits, these energies can be really grounding and fortifying for LGBTQ+ people, and provide us the assurance to keep going and respect the sacredness of ourselves and our realities and our stories even through the very challenging times that we’re in right now.”
It’s a living book
The power of this book is that alongside historical deep dives into queer divine erotica, trans divinity, and sacred drag are devotionals, contemplative prompts, and activities that invite readers to participate in and determine their own relationships with these figures. But Burgess acknowledges that not everyone is in the space to create and foster these relationships — many queer and trans people have been harmed by people and institutions who leverage religion against the existence and survival of LGBTQ+ individuals.
Burgess intentionally also includes rituals inviting readers to unlearn sin (Chapter 10), release internalized homophobia, transphobia, and queerphobia (Chapter 4), and rewild gender (Chapter 3). Raised in Birmingham, Alabama in conservative Protestant Christianity, they signed a purity culture pledge and sat through Bible studies where they were told that homosexuality was a sin. Burgess is clear that even if people do not believe in or were not part of these systems, the constant messaging and conditioning hurts everyone.
In the final chapter, they write about their first memory, when they were first aware that their body didn’t belong to them. “It had been defined by everyone else since before I was making memories that came with rules and roles and commandments,” Burgess writes. And so Queer Devotion begins with self devotion and initiating people into queer spiritual traditions that affirm who people are and hold space for them to live authentically. Burgess was an atheist in their early to mid 20s, before dipping back into spirituality in their late 20s. It was through this spirituality they found the license to live as their true self.
Gender affirming care is spiritual care
“When I started exploring spirituality, that’s when I rediscovered my queerness,” Burgess says. And vice versa. Gender affirming care further opened up avenues for them to engage with a whole spectrum of figures that were previously inaccessible. For example, top surgery opened up avenues for them to work closely with deities that they traditionally viewed as too feminine because work with these figures felt dysphoric in their body. After top surgery, this dissonance between their body and the gendered dimensions of the deity — which Burgess themselves admits is often limited by patriarchal frameworks — was no longer a problem.
Just as Burgess’ relationship with their body evolved over time, they affirm that devotion must do the same. “Devotion, especially when we’re doing it queerly, of necessity has to be relational and open to change,” they say. “It’s a constant choosing to be in relationship with the divine, and that can and will change as you grow.” And just as devotion evolves over time so do rituals. In Queer Devotion, Burgess joins a robust tradition of queer and trans people reclaiming religious symbolism for ourselves.
As an icon of Catholicism, the rosary often appears to many queer and trans people as a symbol of a deeply queerphobic church but to many queer Catholics, folk Catholics, and Catholic witches, it’s a symbol of divine love for all people. Following in the model of Jonah Welch who developed a queer rosary practice and Michael Thérèse McQueen who developed the Five Mysteries of the Queer Madonna, Burgess connects with their Catholic ancestry and discovers queerness at the heart of Catholic tradition.
“Rewriting and queering our prayers,” they write, “can be a devotional act of reclamation, or asserting our sacred space and our rightful belonging.” Their reimagination of the rosary reminded me of the queer rosary circle that Sev Munro currently hosts. The queer, independent Celtic historian centers kinship, gender, and religion, and they hosted a queer rosary event for Gŵyl Fair y Canhwyllau this past January, acknowledging the importance of Candlemas and the Virgin Mary herself to many queer people.
Burgess ends with a question
Burgess’ book aims to center this evolution and heterodoxy at the heart of queer devotionality. “I’m not just talking about being devoted to queerness but being devoted in ways that are queer,” Burgess argues. It’s about “queer as a verb that means not only sexual orientation or gender identity but an approach to the world that is curious, expansive, thinking outside of the box, oriented towards teasing things open, destabilizing things, asking questions, not just taking the common mainstream for fact or for gospel truth, and really prioritizing gnosis, so personal, subjective, experiential knowledge and relationship with spirituality or the divine.”
Experimentation and individuality is at the nexus of Burgess’ book. Burgess themself is wary of institutionalized religion, or any tradition that sets strict parameters on who a divine figure is and how to engage with them. Instead, Queer Devotion follows their previous book and tarot deck Radical Tarot (2023) and Fifth Spirit Tarot (2022) which involved “reading tarot through a queer and liberatory lens oriented towards creating your future instead of fatalistically determining the future.”
Burgess is hopeful that this book is an invitation to all queer and trans people navigating and forging their relationship with the divine, including those who have religious trauma and are looking for a gentle space to grow and unlearn and those who are new to a world with spiritual dimensions and seeking out knowledge for the first time. In time for Pride, however, their book is an important reminder that all queer and trans people deserve access to (and have a rich ancestry of) divine representation. It’s about reconnecting with stories that affirm not only their identities but their spiritual legacies.
Queer Devotion is currently available from Hay House.
