Deck Review: Figuratively Speaking Tarot

I’ve had the Figuratively Speaking Tarot by B. Miller for a while now, but Bee launching a Kickstarter campaign for her new deck, the Figuratively Speaking Mermaid Tarot, has prompted me to finally get round to doing a deep dive and a review!

First things first: as is well documented on this blog, I have zero self-control when my weird little ADHD magpie brain decides it likes a deck and FIXATES <wallet releases muffled screams of pain in background>, so I bought LOADS of the booster packs for the Figuratively Speaking Tarot [FST], and then sorted out my ‘favourite 78’. So please don’t assume that every card I’ve selected below is definitely in the ‘official’ FST deck, as some might be cards I’ve subbed in from one of the booster packs. As far as I can tell, they’re all still available on Bee’s Game Crafter site, so if I feature a card you love below, you should be able to find it in one of the booster packs somewhere!

As the deck is a DIY-style Game Crafter jobby, the box is a bit basic – a fairly lightweight tuck box that does get scuffed up pretty fast if you use the deck a lot, like I do. If you’re planning on regular use, it’d be worth considering putting the cards in a more robust case. The deck is printed on good quality mid-slippery cardstock, and comes with a very small leaflet that talks about the deck creation process. There is therefore no guide as such, but the deck adheres reasonably faithfully to RWS concepts (though often in novel and delightfully leftfield ways), so it’s not a problem if you’re already pretty familiar with card meanings and symbolism.

The illustrations are all in watercolour, and have a really charming, naive quality to them that makes the whole deck feel really raw and authentic. It’s hard for me to verbalise without sounding like a weirdo (plus ça change), but doing a reading with this deck is like sitting down with an old friend. A quirky, slightly zany friend whose ‘out there’ views on life make you reflect on your problems in a completely new light, leading to surprisingly innovative resolutions. Also, I haven’t included it in my review, because it’s from a non-trad-Tarot booster pack, but can we just take a moment to admire the ‘Particular Friends’ (oh my god they were roommates) card above? Given my day job involves researching women who enjoy m/m porn, erotica, and slashfic, I adore this card lots and hard. In my head this is the cover for some homoerotic Plunkett & Macleane fan fiction, which I want to read 😂.

Right, enough of me indulging in my other loves asides from Tarot, and on to my favourite cards. One of the things I really like about both of Bee’s decks is her clever subversions of gender, so I really like The Empress as a Queen Xenomorph here. Far from the usual soft and gentle barefoot-and-pregnant depictions we see in traditional decks, this card shows the fiercer aspects of motherhood/maternal devotion. After all, no one is more ferociously protective of her children than the Queen in Aliens!

I really like this ‘everyday’ kind of High Priestess, depicted here as a woman studying with her cat; and the image of the Wheel of Fortune as the wheel of a ship. In ‘Wild Card‘, Jen Cownie and Fiona Lensvelt write that it’s no coincidence that The Wheel of Fortune card is often depicted as a compass or the wheel on a ship: “you don’t have to be an experienced sailor to know that travelling by boat means you’re at the mercy of some very powerful elements. Sometimes, when a storm races through your life… you just have to wait it out”.

I love how comforting and nurturing The Moon card is here, with the figure curled up in foetal position inside the moon’s glowing embrace, contrasted with the radiant, active energy of The Star.

I like this depiction of ‘the world [as] your oyster’ – instead of the sweeping scale we often get on World cards, we have here the idea of having mastered the world (and ourselves), and now holding it within the palm of our hands. The image also reminds me of Earthrise, which is concordant with the card’s message of taking time to reflect on all that we have lost, gained, learned, and created during our life. It brings to mind Apollo 9 astronaut Russell Schweickart’s quote upon looking at Earth from space, “From where you see it, the [Earth] is a whole, and it’s so beautiful. You wish you could take one [army] in each hand, one from each side of the various conflicts, and say, ‘Look. Look at it from this perspective. Look at that. What’s important?‘… We see the Earth now as it truly is, bright and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats… and men and women as riders on the Earth together, on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold, brothers and sisters who know now that they are truly brothers and sisters.”

The Ace of Cups as a warm cup of coffee with a steaming heart drawn in the milk froth is lovely, and I appreciate a nakey Knight of Cups, seeming as he is the fuckboy of the deck! I love the six cups here depicted as sandcastles (made from the ‘cup’ of the bucket) – it really captures the nostalgia for simpler and easier childhood times represented by this card.

The Three of Swords ripping out her own heart with her bare hands is a real gut punch. Sometimes this card can represent externally imposed heartbreak and betrayal, but other times I think it really speaks to our own internal conflicts, especially when we (sensibly?) decide to follow our heads not our hearts, and in the process cause ourselves a lot of pain and grief.

I love the Ace of Swords using her sword of insight to slice through the veil and peer at the viewer; and I also really like what Bee has done with her Six of Swords. Often in this card – as we move from one period of our life to another – the Swords are still depicted as ‘with’ us (i.e. in the RWS they’re still inside the boat alongside us, so even as we move to calmer waters we’re still bringing all our historical metaphorical baggage with us), but here they’re being discarded as the figure makes her way along the beach. Sometimes we have to take all our anxiety and negativity, and the endless ‘what ifs…?’ our thought processes torture us with and just… let them go. Just as the Eight of Cups speaks to walking away from something that has given us emotional satisfaction but has now run its course, so the Six of Swords here can be seen as walking away from ways of thinking that once served a purpose, but have now become counter-productive.

I am always a fan of the King of Swords as the strategic chess master, so I like this image. It captures his foresight and wisdom, but also his sometimes limited (after all, the King can only move one square at a time!) and very black & white way of thinking. The Seven of Wands is my favourite card in the Tarot, and I think of it as the activist / speaking truth to power card. When I first saw this version I was a bit like ‘huh?’, but the more I thought about it the more I realised how clever it is – the bold, brave Statue of Liberty and all she represents, with some demonic claw (I wonder who that could belong to…?) trying to undermine her by stealing a wand from her crown.

This gorgeous Four of Pents card reminds me of J.R.R. Tolkein’s ‘Conversation with Smaug’ which was one of my favourite pieces of art as a kid, so it was an instant win for me 😍.

The Figuratively Speaking Tarot is a super smart, very original and intriguing little deck, and I heartily recommend it. Prices start from $42.99, and you can buy the deck here. You can also back Bee’s new project, the Figuratively Speaking Mermaid Tarot, here.

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