Deck Review: The Unveiled Tarot

I don’t often buy mass market decks these days, as I try to save my Tarot budget to support indie creators on Kickstarter, but occasionally one comes along that catches my eye, and the Unveiled Tarot was just that. The first thing I’ll say is this is one DARK deck. Like, dark dark. Mother’s-going-to-lock-us-in-the-cellar-and-feed-us-pins dark. Deep, dark, truthful, uncomfortable, almost abrasive at times. It doesn’t have that ‘I’m gonna kick your (metaphysical) teeth in’ vibe that some of my other ‘Dark Decks’ have right off the bat (e.g. the Nigredo Tarot, the Manny Garza Tarot Deck, the Tarot Restless, the Cursed Auguries Tarot). It’s not that obvious darkness.

No, this deck has a subtle kind of darkness that creeps its way into your chest and rests there, heavy and dense, as you work with it.

Now, this is no bad thing! This is one powerful freakin’ deck, and the way it tackles the hypocrisies and rottenness at the heart of our current world is important and valuable. I have zero regrets about buying it, 100% recommend it to other Tarot readers, and have selected almost half the bloody deck as ‘favourite cards’. But do not be fooled into thinking, ‘oh, comic book style deck, cute’. This deck is not cute. Call this deck cute and it’ll bite your fingers off.

The deck was designed and created by the writer and artist Jesse Lonergan. It doesn’t surprise me at all that Lonergan is principally a comic book artist, as that’s definitely a genre I got into thinking ‘oh, cool, this’ll be something I can read casually if I fancy some light relief- OH GOD“. Some of the most bleakly powerful books I’ve ever read have been graphic novels (looking at you, Beautiful Darkness, you absolutely staggeringly wonderful carnival of horrors), and I now know better than to underestimate how incredibly impactful they can be. In fact, I’m gonna go out on a limb now and say I think they’re one of the most powerful mediums – combining the intensity of literature with the immediacy of film. It makes total sense, then, that Lonergan’s deck carries the same visceral weight: it hits first in the gut, then lingers in the mind.

Lonergan’s background in comics has clearly shaped not just the tone but the look of the Unveiled Tarot. In an interview about the deck he explains, “with my comics, I think about how panels and composition can be used to show relationships that are not simply chronological.” That sensibility is all over these cards. It’s obvious this is the work of a storyteller: someone skilled in crafting sequences of images that carry meaning, emotion, and transformation. There’s a deep sense of narrative throughout the deck: the journey of the Fool, the arc of the Major Arcana, the quiet character moments hidden in the Minors. These aren’t flat, sterile cards – they ripple with motion and feeling, like comic panels caught mid-frame, still humming with what just happened and what’s about to come.

“There are things that stick around through history, that extend through generations and resonate long after their origin: certain stories, ideas, and archetypes that reappear across the centuries and millennia. It’s that quality that initially attracted me to tarot.. These images and figures that came down through history, in some cases evolving as they went, which spoke to people centuries ago in the same way as they speak to people now… I find it easy to believe that… somebody in the eighteenth century… and a person living today.. could look at the Fool or the Ten of Wands and find our minds going to similar places, despite the years between us.”

Jesse Lonergan

The Deck: Look, Feel, and Finish

The ‘theme’ of the deck is essentially modern images juxtaposed with archetypal images – generally a snatched fragment from the RWS Tarot is drawn in a ‘through the peephole’ kind of box that is superimposed on a more modern take on the card’s central message. Or, as Lonergan puts it, “[the] card[s] show… an inner and outer reality.” Sometimes this juxtaposition is neat and wryly amusing, other times it’s jarring. Lonergan explains that his intention was for the “juxtaposition to create harmony or dissonance that leads to new ideas that are more than the sum of the constituent parts”. The overall effect is like one of those fairystories, where you’ve been given the special sight that means you can see people’s ‘insides’; what they really are. Beneath the pomp and the facade; the true, beating heart of them.

I will say the central theme of the deck (its gimmick, if you like) works a lot better for some cards than others – some of the ‘reveals’ can feel a bit underwhelming or somewhat trite. However, when they work, boy, do they hit home. In the foreword to the guidebook, the comic book writer Michael Mignola says, “knowing Jesse’s work, I [was]… guessing we [were] in for something a little different… and (holy crap!) I was right”.

I think holy crap! is a good way to sum up the power of some of these cards 😂 I should also say here, though, that Lonergan’s own interpretation of some of the cards (in the guidebook) seems considerably less dark (and less holy crap!) than mine (and possibly Mignola’s? lol). So it could be that I’ve led you, dear readers, down the garden path, and all that’s really dark about this deck is that it’s somehow managed to tap into the darkness inside me. I’ll leave the decision up to you.

The deck comes in a superbly sturdy magnetic box, with a bottom hinge that you open to pull the internal card drawer out of. Seriously, this magnet is *solid*. There’s no danger of the box/drawer system disintegrating, as with some other decks I own with a similar design. Inside the box you get 80 cards (the standard 78, plus two special cards, The Mob and the Puppeteer), and a small, colour, hardback guidebook. The guidebook gives a brief overview of the rationale of the deck, and then a paragraph description of the meaning of each card.

The cards are slightly bigger than standard Tarot size (12.25cm x 7.25cm), and the cardstock is OK, but mine are already warped – they’re bowed in the middle (I think it’s quite apparent in all my photos). I don’t know if this is unique to my deck, or a broader production problem, but it is a bit annoying! The cardback design is also weirdly insipid, and dosen’t really ‘go’ with the rest of the deck – even the signature ‘peephole’ showing the inside of the tree looks odd, and the design ‘gimmick’ is not as visually effective as it is in the majority of the cards themselves.

Greatest Hits: My Favourite Cards from The Unveiled Tarot

Right, buckle up and get ready for a magical mystery tour of my favourite cards, as there are A LOT!

First up, a really powerful Lovers card, posing one of the key emerging (and problematic) themes of the 21st century: pervasive loneliness, growing isolation, and becoming so caught up in our tech and social media that we are losing the opportunity (and ability) for true human connection. The Lovers card is about choice, and Lonergan makes the point that our late modern alienation often is a choice. As the guidebook explains, “it’s easy to unthinkingly ride the train of life back and forth and never experience the depths of consciousness that love can bring… Passionate relationships, deep friendships, selfless unconditional love… They are all there, simply waiting for a person to make the commitment to be connected to the people around them”.

I love the reconfiguration of the Hermit‘s lantern as a streetlamp, and the idea implicit in the card that we can practice mindfulness, and the peace that comes with solitude, even right in the middle of the rat race – contemplation is a state of mind not a geographical location. In Qabalistic Aphorisms, James Sturzaker makes a similar point, when he writes “although named the Hermit, this is not the path of a recluse but of stepping out into the world. The path of being alone in the madding crowd, with a calm peace and quiet within in spite of the noise without.” Lonergan points out that “with the simple act of standing still within an ever-moving society, you may begin your journey to knowledge and wisdom”.

This Harry Houdini-esque Hanged Man carries with it a sense of the deep insight that often accompanies a near-death experience. Lonergan notes that wrapping yourself in chains and diving into the water may be seen by others as taking a ridiculous risk, but adds “you may be drowning in anxiety, chained by responsibility… [Yet] it is only by refusing to take advantage of this moment of tranquillity that one’s position becomes truly worthy of ridicule”.

I really like the Moon card in the Unveiled Tarot, with its giant crayfish, dog, and wolf all crowding round the bed of the uneasily sleeping central figure. In traditional Tarot decks, such as the RWS, the dog is taken to represent domesticity, civility, the day to day – and thus asks us to think about how we can sometimes feel trapped in the mundanity of our existence. The wolf, on the other hand, represents our independent and wild natures, the parts of us that will never be tamed, that strengthen us. The part that longs to be reconnected with the earth and with our ancestors. Lonergan writes of the contrast, “you must ask yourself what domestication has brought you, and what fear and deception it took for you to bury these wild animals away”.

However, the phrase isn’t just used to talk about dusk. It also expresses that boundary between the familiar and the strange, the comfortable and known versus the unknown and dangerous (or between the domestic and the wild). The psychologist and writer Melissa Burkley writes about the phrase entre chien et loup as a metaphor for hypnagogia, the phase where we transition between wakefulness and sleep. While this can be a disturbing transition (think of the times you jerk awake in a blind panic, like the figure in Lonergan’s card seems to be doing), it’s also been identified as a time of unusual creativity (Thomas Edison and Edgar Allan Poe are among the creatives who have tried to induce hypnagogia to stimulate fresh styles of thinking). Burkley describes this state between dreaming and waking as “a special moment that occurs every day of your life when the veil between your conscious and unconscious mind becomes thinner. A magical moment when you are able to access a bottomless fountain of creative potential.” It’s those crossover moments “when great transformation is possible”.

In the worst hour of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking – they were both walking – north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead.
Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847.
Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.

‘Quarantine’ by Eavan Boland

There’s a welcome moment of lightness in the Six of Cups. The image shows us what it is when we get a chance to revisit the childlike joy, innocence, and playful freedom we sometimes lose along the way. Lonergan’s art here hums with nostalgia, that sweet ache for simpler times. But he doesn’t let us stay there unexamined. As he points out, “the past is rarely as simple and pure as your memories would make it seem.” This card captures that duality perfectly: the comfort of looking back, and the quiet reminder that even memory is a kind of story we tell ourselves.

The Eight of Cups was one of those ‘holy crap’ cards for me – the kind that hits you sideways. On the surface, it shows someone diving into a pool, but the sinister undertone (at least to my Black Hearted Miserable Pessimist eyes!) is that the central figure is swan-diving right off that rooftop. That he feels so trapped by the situation in which he finds himself that he’s jumping off the building itself. The stultifying party, the meaningless trappings of politeness and money, the gilded cage. It’s all so Gatsby!

I can’t help but picture Gatsby himself, floating in his pool, already halfway between life and death, grasping for something long lost. What Fitzgerald has the narrator imagine him thinking in the lead up to his murder (the murder he almost seems to be welcoming): “He must have felt that he had lost the old warm world… He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about…” That passage haunts me, and it colours the way I read this card – as a bleak, beautiful depiction of what it feels like to walk away – permanently – from something that once lit you up, but now only dims your shine. (N.B. Mr Tarot Cake sees no darkness here whatsoever, and suggests I might be projecting just a smidge, which… fair.)

The ballad of the dream deferred, the family never formed, the rainbow that recedes no matter how far we chase it.

Then I was young and unafraid
When dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame…

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed

From ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ (Kretzmer / Boublil / Natel)

So part of the message for me in this particular Ten of Cups is to extend that empathy and love that the whole suit speaks to, to people we encounter who have been through some shit, as it were. To offer to be that source of support, that found family. To bring the rainbow to the street corner, to the rundown bar.

The chess metaphor in the Two of Swords card does a really good job of showing what it is to be so caught up in intellectualising and second guessing our choices we end up paralysed by indecision. Lonergan admonishes us to “take off the blindfold and make a move”.

A brutal but powerful Eight of Swords. The guidebook explains, “you may feel completely immobile, pinned down by routines and responsibilities and unable to move while your soul is pulled out of your body and dissected by the demands of modern life”. It’s an image that hits hard, especially if you’ve ever felt ground down by burnout, caretaking, or simply the dull ache of surviving. And yet, even in this moment of paralysis, the guidebook urges us not to let the situation shut down the mind. “Creative solutions do exist,” it reminds us, “and the biggest changes come from the hardest situations.” The message here is harsh but strangely hopeful: the blade that slices you open might also be the one that sets you free.

Then this Ten of Swords, with its uber bitchy Regency court setting, captures the sense of backstabbing perfectly.

A super smart Two of Pents. You’re keeping all your plates spinning, handling the constant demands and shifting priorities with skill – but it’s only a matter of time before the situation blows up in your face. No one can keep up that kind of juggling act forever.

I love the cogs whirring inside the head of the Seven of Pents as she tries to decide whether to stick around and see if the seed she has planted continues to grow, or if it’s time to cut her losses.

The Ten of Pents showing all who have come before you to pave the way to where you are today is inspired. I like the whole scene of this card too: I love thinking of the weight of history that permeates our streets, the people who lived there, their lives and stories. But, also, the trailblazers – such as the women who came before me who laid down their lives so that I could vote.

On a personal level, I did a deep dive into my great/grandma’s past during lockdown (my grandma grew up in poverty and my bio great grandma essentially ‘sold’ her for ration tokens when she was 5 years old, to a family who changed her name and subjected her to years of abuse, so much of my great grandma’s identity remained shrouded in mystery). After lockdown ended, it was amazing walking down the backstreet my five year old grandma lived on in Birmingham, and seeing the old warehouse building where she shared a one room ‘apartment’ with her mother, step-father, and 12 half brothers and sisters(!) still standing, as well as the local pub where my great grandma used to solicit after she got too sick to work in the pin factory anymore. It felt for a moment like if I closed my eyes hard enough I could re-open them and see them right there, the women who I still carry in my bones. Lonergan writes, “you are not walking through this world alone. Your family or community are there, following right behind. Generations echoing back through the years are there to support you in this moment.”

I love that instead of a rod held like a staff, the wand traditionally featured in the Page of Wands becomes a rope to climb. It’s a subtle but brilliant shift – this Page, full of fire and joie de vivre, isn’t just holding potential; she’s actively reaching for it. But while her energy and enthusiasm are compelling, the guidebook cautions: “Don’t allow overconfidence in your skills to lead you off course and into a dangerous and untenable position.”

The Queen of Wand’s bad boss bitch energy is pitch-perfect as a movie director – all presence, power, and creative control. And the King? Total rock star in his pomp, revelling in the adoration of the crowd who are eating from the palm of his hand. He’s giving BIG Freddie Mercury energy, and I couldn’t resist linking to the legendary Live Aid performance that this image seems to reference (the spine-tingling crowd clap shot comes in at 3 minutes – goosebumps every time!)

I also like having the cards next to each other like this, because: look how they lift each other up! It’s like they’re pointing at each other, saying “look at my partner – they’re the best!” Which is peak Wands Court energy 🧡. Passionate, generous, and endlessly hype-team for the ones they love.

This beautifully rendered Page of Pents has the foresight to see the finished statue inside the hunk of stone, as well as the dedication to turn that vision into a reality. The King of Pents makes an age-old but still relevant connection between the risks involved in capitalism and straight-up gambling. And the King of Cups is great here, so emotionally self-assured that he is able to weather the roughest storm and make it look like smooth sailing.

My final tranche of cards all share a common thread, in my view: War – what is it good for? (Absolutely nothing.) The deck as a whole strikes me as deeply anti-war, which makes sense given that Lonergan spent two years in Turkmenistan with the Peace Corps. While Turkmenistan itself has been relatively peaceful, it borders Afghanistan and has felt the impact of that ongoing conflict – including a steady influx of refugees.

In this context, the King of Swords appears as a hardened General: massive shoulders, but a tiny, withered heart. He radiates that classic lions led by donkeys energy, the kind of leader who commands from afar, insulated from the consequences of his orders. And the Queen of Swords? A grieving war widow, sharp with sorrow, who understands all too well the cost of conflict. In Lonergan’s hands these cards become more than just their traditional archetypes – they’re a quiet but pointed indictment of the glorification of war.

The Knight of Pentacles on his carousel-turned-warhorse speaks to me of the dark side of duty. I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for the KoP – he’s got that steady, reliable energy I sorely lack: calm, methodical, loyal. But his shadow side is clear too. He can become too dutiful, trudging along doing what’s expected even when it’s unethical. He doesn’t question the mission, he just keeps circling, locked onto the rigid pole he’s attached to, letting the merry-go-round spin him endlessly on.

I know Lonergan is American, but the Knight’s uniform strongly evokes the iconic red coats of the British army during the early nineteenth century, which in turn brings to mind the Peterloo Massacre, when a cavalry regiment, recently returned from the Napoleonic Wars, was ordered to charge a peaceful crowd (including babies and children) gathered to demand fair democratic reform. Somewhere between nine and seventeen people were killed, and hundreds more injured – by their own military. Historian Robert Poole called it “the bloodiest political event of the 19th century on English soil.” The Knight reminds us how easily heroism curdles into brutality when we abandon our own moral compass in favour of blind obedience.

The Five of Pents is incredibly powerful, and also one of Lonergan’s earlier designs. He explains how he “had the idea for how an army leaves [versus how it]… returns from war, and the juxtaposition felt right” (you can see a really cool sketch of Lonergan workshopping his ideas for the Five of Pents above).

Then Death very much looks like he’s standing amongst the ruins of war – a lone, skeletal witness to all that has crumbled. Together, these cards don’t just explore the cost of conflict, they remind us that war doesn’t end when the fighting stops. Its shadows stretch far into the lives of those left behind. I’m always awed when a deck reminds me just what an intensely political medium Tarot can be. Anyone who thinks it’s just a fortune-telling parlour game can do one 😝 – the cards know better.

And it reminds me, sharply, of Blake’s vision of what hides beneath our most familiar forms:

Cruelty has a human heart,
 And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
 And Secrecy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face, a furnace sealed,
The human heart, its hungry gorge.

William Blake, ‘A Divine Image’

I don’t think I’ll use this deck to read for others, partly because I suspect my interpretations might be a bit off, and partly because, well… those possibly-off interpretations are bleak as fuck, lol. But I really do love this deck, and it’s made me think. And think. And think. You can buy this really unique, really powerful deck from a range of online and high street retailers, from approx. £22.

.

.

.