outlikethat:

the Alleyman’s tarot

I backed this enormous project, and at the time, mostly thought “this is SO COOL!” I didn’t think it would particularly be a practical deck. a week after its arrival, I’m here to retract that assumption. the Alleyman’s deck, at least for me, appears to be a very usable reading deck, apart from the physical difficulties it presents.

yes, it’s enormous. I got all the boosters, which I think is more than double the number of cards in a standard tarot deck. the whole deck barely fits into my hand. there are — twelve, I think? very different Death cards, and multiples of several other cards, AND a whole lot of nonstandard cards.

the cardstock is thin, though according to publisher/creator @publishinggoblin it’s very high quality (with which assessment, having cut a hole in my own Hole card, I concur). (in addition, having attempted to burn the removed hole piece, I must confess I’m absolutely consumed with curiosity— PubGob has said they’re burning several cards in the “touched” decks, and that stuff didn’t burn at all when I tried. it blistered strangely, and then the soot brushed right off it. but I, as usual, digress.) what this stock also is, though, is very VERY slippery. seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever dealt with a deck this slick in my life. combine that frictionless, enormous deck with my small hands, and yep, I’ve sprayed most of the cards across the floor multiple times already just taking it out of the box. (I’ve got a piece of ribbon in there under the deck as a hoist, by the way, which can be seen in the picture above.) put one card atop another, and it could end up anywhere, slipping off or gently spinning. it’s absolutely impossible to shuffle, at least for me; I’ve been “shuffling” it by dealing out a carpet of cards in various orders and from various points in the deck until the deck is gone, and then restacking the little piles out of sequence. (it’s not a bad method. gets one in the mood, anyway.)

the book is also on a shiny, slippery stock, and the paper is thin. given how the card interpretations, in particular for the additional cards, are all over the place and out of order (requiring lots of flipping back and forth for a reading), I suspect the spiral binding really isn’t going to last very long at all, unfortunately. aesthetically, too, a dull or matte stock would have served the conceit of both deck and book far better. (and, ideally, this is very much a deck that would have benefitted from a book with room to add one’s own notes.)

that’s my complaints out of the way. onward!

first off, it is indeed SO COOL! there are so many cards and they’re so varied. sure, I don’t like some of them, but there are far more that I love. plus, I’ve had more than a few decks in my time where I absolutely adored certain cards, thought they were the best of their kind. and then the deck as a whole was weakened by one or two other cards I didn’t like at all. first: oh hey, cards I love, have you met the Alleyman’s? and second, wrt the Alleyman’s, see first.

several cards have foiling, and, delightfully, the foiling is in different colours, which makes the deck lovely viewed edge on. the back of each card is different too, with the back of the deck it belongs to! were I a more intuitive reader, I could probably read the card backs alone.

I didn’t get the fancy box, but the box I did get is very nice (I might end up painting it at some point. I might not. I haven’t decided yet.) it’s pleasing, holds all the cards and the additional coin and poker chip, is lined with felt, and has a nice swing latch on it. it IS hard to get the deck out, but my ribbon sling fixes that easily enough.

but how does it read, you say? so listen. as I said above, I didn’t really have high expectations that way. I’ve spent a long time and too much money looking for “the perfect” deck to read with, and for the most part, haven’t found it. I have a number of beautiful decks, some of which it turned out didn’t agree with me at all in reading, and others that are “very good, except…” or “really good for these particular kinds of readings but not for these other kinds.” out of all my lovely decks, I mostly wind up reading with my Universal Waite (nicer colours than the original flavour Waite decks, sure I wish some of the cards were more exciting or less conservative, but it’s straightforward, all-purpose, and I don’t have to squint at a card going “what was that one again?” and get the book out).

the Alleyman’s deck is not straightforward, but to my surprise, the wide variation and seeming chaos of it is extremely useful for me, person with adhd. this is not something I’d ever considered before, but after only a few days of reading with the Alleyman’s, it’s clear that in some ways the aesthetic consistency of the more artistic decks I’ve always been drawn to actually works against me. the beautiful artwork can confuse or obscure my perceptions of the symbolism, and even my immediate recognition of the cards. I do not have this problem with the Alleyman’s deck. every card is clear. moreover, the relationships between the cards are much more distinct to me, and additional relationships reveal themselves in the ways the different art styles mesh or complement or conflict. I’ve always had to work to get a story out of my spreads, but the Alleyman’s wants to tell stories.

the interpretations in the book are also very good, clear, and helpful. I enjoy the writing style and the conceit of the Alleyman a great deal, as well as the “notes” from Seven, and so far they’ve served me very well in reading. it is, in general, a deck that encourages creativity, and seems to have a very grounded, practical bent overall, at least in my hands (which again, may come as a surprise given how seemingly off the wall it is). it is certainly a deck that leans to the unconventional in a reading, revolutionary, queer— but it’s not disconnected from reality. the description of one of the cards - oh yes, here it is, Tradition — says, among other things, “the only way to embrace the world is to be chaotic, like this deck”. but the seeming chaos of this deck exists firmly on the foundation of the traditions that it’s challenging, dismantling and reconstructing, growing out of them in the most encouraging and hopeful manner.

I’m really looking forward to working more with this deck and shaping it to my needs. it might be “the perfect deck”, it might not, but it’s certainly a uniquely exciting and stimulating one, with a lot to say.