Deck Review: Ever Ahead Tarot

The Ever Ahead Tarot is a road-trip themed deck created by artist and folk musician Joey O’Neill. O’Neill lives off-grid in Canada, and when she tours her music it’s just her and her dog, Oblio, out on the open road. A companion to her album Ever Ahead, the deck was created (alongside the music) as a lovesong to highway life – an “ode to the road” as O’Neill puts it. Each card draws on nostalgic objects and roadside fragments gathered from her travels, all seen from behind the wheel of her trusty steed: a 1989 Jeep Wagoneer XJ (argh, it’s so cute! I’m not really a ‘Car Person’, but I just love it!)

“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road”

Jack Kerouac, ‘On The Road’

The deck consists of simple, dainty watercolour illustrations of still-life objects, all loosely orbiting cars and road trips. One of the first things you notice when you flip through the cards is the sheer amount of white space. It gives the whole deck a kind of quiet sparseness – which, I think, mirrors the solitude of travelling across a continent as vast as North America. My sister and I road-tripped around the southern US back in 2016, and it’s genuinely wild how big it feels when you’re used to lil’ old UK proportions and the relative cosiness of Europe. Out there, distances stretch, time stretches, everything does.

And in a landscape that vast, you’re so reliant on your car in a way that just isn’t true here. I’m a non-driver and get by perfectly well with cycling, walking, and public transport, but in rural Canada I realise I’d stand no chance, lol. So it makes sense that the car becomes more than just transport; it’s an essential part of the rhythm of daily life. You can really feel that in this deck; it gives something that might, at first glance, seem a bit flimsy – “car stuff” – the emotional and symbolic weight it needs to actually function as a Tarot system.

As y’all know, I don’t really vibe with gimmicky decks – no shade, they’re just not for me. I LOVE cats, for example, but cute cat decks hold pretty much zero appeal for me. And yet… this one does. It has a kind of heft and complexity behind it, despite its relative simplicity and prosaic subject matter.

When I first visited Canada and the US – many, many years ago now – I stayed with my Canadian friend Leah for a bit. I remember telling her I was super excited about catching a Greyhound, picking up a hitchhiker, and eating at Wendy’s, and she just looked at me and said, “Dude, you are so weird. Those are all objectively terrible things” 😂. I tried to explain that to twenty-something me, these things felt impossibly romantic, the kind of moments you absorb through novels and poems, through songs. From Simon & Garfunkel (We boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh… “Kathy, I’m lost”, I said, / though I knew she was sleeping / I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why / Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike / They’ve all come to look for America) through to Roger Miller (I’m a man of means, by no means / King of the Road). This whole mythology of movement, of drifting, of being always and perpetually en route.

To me, those things always carried a slightly otherworldly glamour, the social, liminal aspects of long-distance car travel that you just don’t really get in the UK. And alongside that, this sense of endless possibility: the idea that you can just get in your car and drive, and drive, and drive. That feeling, that horizon-line pull, is exactly what this deck taps into: as with Tarot, the future is ever ahead.

“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it… The evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old…”

– Jack Kerouac, ‘On The Road’

The Deck: Look, Feel, and Finish

Right, onto the deck itself.

It’s a full 78-card set, following the standard RWS structure. The cards are 350 GSM with matte gold-gilded edges, and come nestled in a sturdy two-piece rigid box. They feel satisfyingly thick without being clunky, and have that slightly-slippy-yet-almost-powdery finish that, for me, is ideal for shuffling.

There’s no guidebook, which I’m a bit ehhhh about – you guys know how much I love me a guidebook. O’Neill’s reasoning (in short) is that the deck sticks closely to the standard RWS system, using familiar card titles and simplified, recognisable visual metaphors. The idea is that readers, including beginners, can rely on existing Tarot knowledge or pair the deck with any guidebook they already own, while also drawing on their own associations with these everyday, road-based objects. Which: fair enough, I can see the logic. But I do always love seeing a creator’s own thought process, how they’re mapping their chosen symbols onto traditional meanings, what connections they see, what nuances they’re bringing in. That’s part of the fun for me, and part of what makes a deck feel really interesting and unique and helps to deepen my own practice. So I mourn the unreached stretch goal that was the guidebook 😥.

O’Neill explains that the card backs emulate the iconic “tarotee” of the 1970s Rider Waite Smith. There’s also something very cosy about the plaid itself, it reads less as “pattern design” and more as a woollen car blanket, which fits the whole roadtrip aesthetic perfectly.

The main departure from tradition comes in the Minor Arcana, where the suits are reimagined. Wands, traditionally tied to inspiration, energy, and forward movement, become Road Signs, charting the journey from open road to busy city, each one marking a shift in direction or momentum. Cups, associated with emotion and connection, are reimagined as Coffees. Their staging captures everything from solitary reflection to social exchange – the small, intimate moments that punctuate a long journey. Swords, linked to intellect and problem-solving, take the form of Keys. They both unlock and lock tight, appearing as symbols of access, blockage, and mental clarity (or lack thereof). And finally Pentacles, representing the material world, become Loose Change: the everyday currency that quite literally fuels the trip, from lucky finds to budgeting.

Also, while the cards from Ace through to Ten do reflect their number through repeated, minimalist objects, this isn’t a true pip deck. There’s still symbolism at play, with each arrangement carrying its own mood and meaning beyond simple counting, as you can see in this selection from Wands/Road Signs.

Greatest Hits: My Favourite Cards from the Ever Ahead Tarot

First up, the Fool, here depicted as one of those rear-view mirror air freshener thingies, in the classic “new car scent.” It’s fresh, it’s clean… I love it. Very Fool.

The Empress is a seatbelt – awwwww. She’s that steady, stabilising force that protects us, holding us close but not too tight – just enough to keep us safe as we head out into the world. And if things do go wrong, she’s there: ready to catch us, to soften the blow, a kind of built-in safety net.

Given that, like the Emperor (we’ll get to him in a minute), the Empress can carry some more complicated or even negative connotations – empires, after all, aren’t exactly viewed as benign these days – I really like this reframing of her as a welcome source of safety and care. Seeing her as a seatbelt also made me think of Jen Cownie and Fiona Lensvelt’s lovely take on the Emperor:

“The Emperor is not ‘The Man’, or even necessarily a man. It’s anyone or anything that offers you protection and direction when you need it. At its best, it’s something to which you submit with relief: a doctor’s coat, a pilot’s licence, a steady, calm voice when you’re panicking — even just ‘mind the gap’ on a train platform… The Emperor represents individual leaders and figures of authority, but also: seatbelts.”

Then we have the Emperor and the Hierophant, cards that can sometimes feel a bit stuffy or old-fashioned, with their emphasis on rules, authority, and doing things by the book – so I really like how O’Neill softens them here.

The Emperor becomes a sat nav – genuinely useful, offering the kind of guidance we all crave. It’s benevolent, in a way… but also still carries those slightly sinister Big Tech / Big Brother the-internet-of-things-is-always-watching-you undertones that also feel very Emperor-coded. Helpful, for sure (in fact I don’t know if I could cope without it now, I LOVE paper maps but I SUCK at navigating), but always monitoring, always directing.

And the Hierophant is reimagined as the radio: the voices of our community, past and present, coming through to help us make sense of the world. From traffic updates to Woody Guthrie singing about life on the road, it’s that shared cultural current – tradition, storytelling, collective wisdom – transmitted across time and space.

Justice is a parking ticket – hahahaHA, perfect. The systems we impose to redress the balance and stop people flagrantly breaking the social contract.

Death, meanwhile, is a majestic stag, seemingly killed in a collision with a car – now becoming carrion, food for the two crows that circle and peck at it. The full, unsentimental cycle of life, right there on the roadside.

And God
please let the deer
on the highway
get some kind of heaven.
Something with tall soft grass
and sweet reunion.
Let the moths in porch lights
go someplace
with a thousand suns,
that taste like sugar
and get swallowed whole.
May the mice
in oil and glue
have forever dry, warm fur
and full bellies.
If I am killed
for simply living,
let death be kinder
than man.

‘Kinder Than Man’ by Althea Davis

The Devil is a car cigarette lighter, which is just brilliant for a card so often linked to addiction and destructive patterns – things we know are bad for us but feel good in the moment, so we keep going back, again and again. (I’d almost forgotten onboard cigarette lighters were even a thing! I remember being fascinated by them as a kid.)

The Moon shows a pair of almost disembodied headlights, drifting ghost-like through the dark, illuminating only two small puddles of vision while everything else stays hidden.

Judgement is the road in the rear-view mirror – very drôle! We can always see 20:20 with hindsight. To me, this version leans less into the classic “reawakening” or following-our-true-calling Judgement trope, and speaks more to how we evaluate our past selves – often with a clarity (and harshness) that wasn’t available to us at the time. It’s only once the road is behind you that you get that sweeping, panoramic sense of all the other paths you could have taken. There’s also something about distance here: the further something recedes, the easier it is to shape into a coherent narrative – to tidy it up to decide what it all meant. And the past also shrinks things (‘objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear’) – things in our past can feel safely distant sometimes, even when they’re still closer to us that we think.

The World is a map of Canada, which I absolutely love (“On the back of a cartoon coaster / in the blue TV screen light / I drew a map of Canada, OH CANADAAAAAAAAA…”) There’s something really fitting about ending the journey here, with the land itself laid out in full. The destination, the whole picture – not just the road, but everything it connects.

The Ace of Wands is a green traffic light, which really captures that go, go, GO! energy of the card.

Google reliably tells me that the highest posted speed limit in Canada is 120 km/h, found on the Coquihalla Highway and stretches of Highway 2 in Alberta. So I love this road sign for the Knight of Wands. He isn’t just fast, he’s at the upper edge of what’s legally allowed. Which is quite Knight of Wandsy: technically within bounds… but only just – pushing right up against the limit, fast, energetic, a bit reckless. He’s not the King of Wands (steady control) or the Chariot (disciplined direction), he’s that slightly chaotic “foot down, let’s go” energy.

The Seven of Cups keeps it pretty traditional with a menu of different hot drink options you must choose from, but it’s super cute. And then, for the Ten of Cups, we get the joy of a shared roadside snack: a cluster of coffee cups, a whole box of donuts. Simple, communal, and abundant, in its own little everyday way.

Regular readers of this blog will know I struggle a bit with the Knight of Cups. I know he can be romantic, poetic, dreamy, almost ridiculously generous. But my brain is just like: FUCKBOY. IT’S THE FUCKBOY CARD. 🚨 warning, warning 🚨 lol. Anyway… this fluffy little cappuccino, with the heart drawn in the foam, really captures that head-in-the-clouds, intense-but-dreamy energy perfectly.

The Four of Swords, the classic rest-and-recuperation card, is reimagined as a cluster of four motel room keys. It’s so smart and amusing. Every journey needs its pauses: time to pull over, get your head down, and take a bit of respite from the battle of the road. Tarot numerology experts are gonna have to help me out here – do those numbers on the keyrings have any particular meaning?

The Eight of Swords is the keys dropped down the back of the car seat – arghhhh! Now we really are in a prison of our own making, stuck in a stationary car, unable to go anywhere 😂. I love how O’Neill’s sense of humour comes through in cards like this. It takes that classic feeling of restriction and reframes it in a way that allows us to laugh at ourselves.

The Five of Pentacles, depicted as the last few pennies dug out from a pocket (lint and other pocket paraphernalia included), does a great job of capturing that feeling of being down on your luck and flat broke.

And that maps so well onto the Six of Pentacles. Not grand gestures of charity or hierarchical giving, but small, everyday acts of mutual support. One person adds a penny without thinking; later, someone else benefits. It’s generosity without fuss, reciprocity without keeping some kind of rigid score tally, a kind of low-stakes, community-minded balance.

Apparently, though, these trays are a thing of the past in Canada now that pennies have been removed from circulation. (I’m not mourning the loss of small change, it’s an absolute PITA, boo to Big Zinc, lol, but I am a little sad that such a lovely metaphor for this card will get lost in time and disappear with it).

There’s a real thoughtfulness running through the whole deck, a sense that every choice has been made with care, not just for aesthetic coherence, but for symbolic resonance. The deck manages to take these very ordinary, everyday objects and give them just enough weight to carry the meanings of the RWS system without feeling forced or flimsy. It’s gentle, a little bit wistful, occasionally very funny, but never mocking, never trying too hard. There’s real affection here for the world it’s depicting, and that comes through in the reading experience. You can buy the deck here from O’Neill’s website for $60 CAD (about £32.50), and it will make a great little travelling companion 😉.

I also was working with the deck at the same time I was reading Joy Sullivan‘s AMAZING new poetry collection, Instructions For Travelling West, and some of the overlap felt a bit uncanny. So I’m gonna leave you with the opening poem from the collection, as I think it captures some of the same vibe O’Neill does here with the Ever Ahead Tarot:

First, you must realize you’re homesick for all the lives
you’re not living. Then, you must commit to the road
and the rising loneliness. To the sincere thrill of coming
apart. Divorce yourself from routine and control. Instead,
find a desert and fall in. Take the trail that promises a view.
Get lost. Break your toes. Bruise your knees. Keep going.
Watch a purple meadow quiver. Get still. Pet trail dogs.
Buy the hat. Run out of gas. Befriend strangers.
Knight yourself every morning for your newborn
courage. Give grief her own lullaby. Drink whiskey beside
a hundred-year-old cactus. Honor everything. Pray
to something unnameable. Fall for someone impractical.
Reacquaint yourself with desire and all her slender hands.
Bear beauty for as long as you are able, and if you spot
a sunning warbler glowing like a prism, remind yourself – 
joy is not a trick.

‘Instructions for Travelling West’ by Joy Sullivan

.

.

.

.

.

.