Currently on Kickstarter: Tarot of Oxalia

I started this blog as a way to scrapbook my own Tarot journey (as well as to have a platform for reading for others), but it’s been super rewarding that other people have engaged with it (no (wo)man is an island!) A further unexpected perk happened last week when Art of Play reached out to me to ask if I’d be interested in reviewing their forthcoming deck, the Tarot of Oxalia, in return for a free copy. Given the frankly terrifying amount of money I have thus far spent on my Tarot addiction collection, my immediate response was WOOHOO (and telling my husband that a future Tarot-shaped package would be received by me in the post guilt free ;-)), swiftly followed by ‘omg, what if I hate it?‘ I’m defo not going to be plugging the Tarot equivalent of teeth whiteners or fast fashion (no shade at those who do, everybody’s got to make a living, but that’s the benefit of being in the privileged position of having Tarot as a hobby, not my bread-and-butter job).

Thankfully, I do not hate it! Hooray!

Created and designed by the artist and tattooist Kelly Thorn (continuing my love of tattoo artists who create Tarot decks, started by the wonderful Jamie Sawyer), the Tarot of Oxalia is a beautiful deck that builds on classic RWS imagery. This means it’s really approachable and easy to read with for beginners, but at the same time it brings in elements of Ancient Greek mythology and Sci Fi, so there’s plenty to get your teeth into as a more experienced reader. For example, Thorn has based the suits on an imaginary galaxy, where each maps on to a planet: the Blades of Aeranthos (air is our mind), the Cups of Fontinalis (water is our heart), the Coins of Terrella (earth is our home), and the Wands of Banksia (fire is our body).

The cards have a very Art Deco-y vibe, and feel both fresh and quirkily old-fashioned. It’s a very gentle deck, and I definitely feel like Thorn’s interpretation has ‘softened’ some of the RWS imagery. But they’re still very complex and evocative artworks, and I really like the sense of both connection and other-worldliness I feel when looking at the cards. This might sound a bit contradictory (oxymoronic?), but it’s one of the things I like about reading Sci Fi – sometimes it’s when reading about other worlds that I feel most connected to our own beautiful, unique Earth.

“People often believe tarot is about predicting the future, but it can also help tremendously to understand the present and the past. Once you let yourself be led by the cards, a conversation between you and the tarot begins, and you can fully understand where you’re coming from and where you might go.”

Kelly Thorn

The artwork is beautiful, very warm and rich, but it’s the box that really sold this deck to me. The textured embossing is just SO gorgeous – while I think my ride-or-die decks will be hard to unseat from my heart (Bonestone, Blood Moon, Sarah Howard), the box is genuinely the most beautiful Tarot box I have ever seen!

The deck consists of 80 cards, plus a guidebook, and it all comes in the aforementioned sculpturally embossed tuck box (obsessed). The deluxe edition also comes with a lovely ceramic curio box featuring a matte bisque glaze (also, I only had bisque in my vocab for soups before, but I’m now going to use it in a design context all the time!)

There’s an amber and opal version of the deck, and though the opal version is exclusive to the Kickstarter campaign (i.e. more exclusive), I opted for the amber version for my freebie as I just think the red and white box is so stunning. You can back the deck here; prices start from $58 (about £45) for the amber edition.

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