The Pasta Tarot: Where Divination Meets Al Dente
Ahead of our next Queer Aperitivo, I sat down with Rob Truglia, co-creator of The Pasta Tarot, to discuss the delicious intersection of pasta, queerness, and divination.
David: The origin story of The Pasta Tarot starts, as so many good things do, with a handsome stranger on an Italian beach...
Rob: Ha - yes! It all started with a trip to Puglia in 2018. I was sitting on the beach and saw this very thick, muscular man and I was like, "He is so clearly a gnocchi." After that, for the rest of the trip, I'd be walking past people thinking, "That man's a fusilli, that woman's a ravioli" – it just became so clear to me.
When I came back to the States, I started identifying all of my friends as pasta shapes and turned it into this whole thing. Then Jeff Petriello came into my life and we instantly connected over our shared queer Italian-American identity. He's been a tarot witch since his teens, and I brought the pasta knowledge. We realized there were deeper meanings to pasta shapes, so we decided to reinterpret every tarot card from the traditional Rider-Waite-Coleman Smith deck through the lens of pasta, but rooted in our Italian-American identity.
We found our third piece of the puzzle in Lindsay Mound, our illustrator, and spent two years developing the deck. After a successful Kickstarter, we got a publisher and now it's being sold around the world.
David: At Queer Aperitivo, we talk about aperitivo as this beautiful in-between space – between day and night, between work and dinner – where transformation becomes possible. How do you see The Pasta Tarot creating similar spaces for exploration and discovery?
Rob: The tarot is really good at bringing out these unfound or undiscovered feelings that maybe aren't at the surface yet. It's like that moment in aperitivo when the day starts to soften and possibilities open up – the cards create this sacred space where you can explore parts of yourself that might be hiding in the shadows of everyday life.
As queer people, we're inclined to not conform with what society tells us, and we designed The Pasta Tarot to be this place where everyone – the weirdos, the nonnas, the mob boss, the benevolent queens – all live together harmoniously. Like we're all different pasta shapes floating in the same perfect pot of water, you know?
In Italian-American culture, there's a lot of machismo, so we designed what our ideal Italian-American "queertopia" would be. The deck speaks to such a full range of emotions – our desires, our withholdings, our emotional range. Any card is meant to trigger or validate some sort of feeling or desire you might have. It's not just about predicting the future – it's about creating space to explore who you are and who you might become.
David: It sounds like the deck itself becomes a kind of liminal space...
Rob: Exactly! Just like pasta exists in this beautiful transformation from hard to soft in boiling water, The Pasta Tarot invites people to explore their own transformations. Each reading becomes this intimate moment where rigidity can soften, where traditional meanings can take on new forms.
And you know what's really beautiful? The deck works whether you're deeply connected to Italian culture or just love pasta. It's like aperitivo – there's this deep cultural tradition, but at its heart, it's about creating welcoming spaces where people can come as they are and find something that speaks to them.
David: Your former drag persona, Issa Mia Mario, actually appears in the deck. Could you talk about how bringing forth that Italian-American heritage shaped how you approach this deck?
Rob: Yes! She's the Queen of Short Pastas, which is our analog for the Queen of Wands – and she's the only queen in the deck with her legs open! [laughs] The experience of doing drag allowed me to be so much more comfortable in my gender expression, removing any shame around feeling more masculine or feminine at any point.
The traditional tarot has so much gender binary in it, with masculine and feminine energy very present in many cards. In our deck, we included more non-binary characters and played with gender expression. Sometimes we'd take traditionally male cards and make them female. We were really able to lean into the fem energy based on our appreciation for female energy in Italian culture. Doing drag – knowing the drama of it all – helped inform our creative ideas and direction of the deck.
David: Do you have a favorite card in the deck?
Rob: Many of the cards are based on our experiences – there's a card about a dinner I had in Puglia, references to Jeff's family vacation in Cape May, and we included icons like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, SOPHIE the pop star, and trans activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.
But the card that brings me the most joy is the Four of Penne, our analog for the Four of Wands. For this card, we basically told our designer, "Let's take Norman Rockwell's Thanksgiving and make it queer." She did such an amazing job – making it super fem and including non-binary characters. It's like we loosened up all the buttons of that Norman Rockwell painting!
I also love the Eight of Rigatoni (Eight of Cups) which depicts that dinner in Puglia that inspired the whole project. It's about walking away from something fulfilling and knowing when to move on. It represents transition but isn't necessarily sad – it's encouraging you to try something new while taking all your previous experiences with you.
Come to the next Queer Aperitivo on February 26 to have your pasta aura read by Rob and experience The Pasta Tarot for yourself.