Readers of the Raven Cycle might have guessed that I’m fairly fond of tarot. I like tarot on both a psychological level and a spiritual level — it, like so many other things in life — can be as magical or mundane as you want it to be.
On a mundane, psychological level, I like it as an ice-breaker. Sometimes doing a reading with an acquaintance is enough to provoke deeper conversations about what we want out of life and where we think we’re headed. Big talk is always better than small talk.
On a deeper, spiritual level, I like it as a meditative device. If I need to think more honestly about a decision or change, I’ll give myself an occasional reading, and no matter what it says, I’ll learn more about what I think about the situation by how strongly I agree or disagree with what I think the cards are telling me.
Tarot is a cool tool for people who are already in the mood to self-examine and to improve; I don’t really have much interest in it as a parlor trick. I think it’s strongest magic is when it is crystal-clear mirror: it’s so hard to see ourselves and situations clearly, and often just the seeing is the way to a solution.
I’ve drawn one tarot deck before — very loosely based on the Raven Cycle aesthetic — and it was a cool, mind-bending art assignment: draw a visual metaphor for the meaning of the card, trying to make the deck as intuitive to use as possible.
Now, a billion years later (ok, not really), I’ve drawn another deck, The Scorpio Sea deck, based on the imagery of Thisby and the novel The Scorpio Races (although, like the Raven’s Prophecy deck, it stands alone). This time, it comes with a guidebook written by my friend, Melissa Cynova, who is a professional psychic and real-life woman of Fox Way. And my goal this time was to draw a deck that was more comforting and homey than the other deck, one that seems to agree that creature comforts are an acceptable goal (I’m not sure the art of the Raven’s Prophecy deck agrees with that as a thesis). It’s also wild and rural, as complicated as the seaside town of Skarmouth in The Scorpio Races.
SO. The deck comes out October 8th (NEARLY SCORPIO SEASON RAWR), and if you pre-order it from One More Page Books, it’ll come with a signed book and with this bonus alternate Chariot card:
(a note: they carry signed copies of all my books and ship internationally, but keep in mind that anything you order at the same time as a pre-order will ship at the same time as the pre-ordered book, so if you want to order stuff that will come far earlier than, say, your pre-ordered copy of Dreamer Trilogy 2, which comes out in May, place two separate orders).
I’m also going to do 78 days (we’ll see how timely I can be) of tarot card blogging over on my Instagram account, talking about each of the cards and why I picked the art for them, what it means to me, etc. etc. You don’t have to believe in psychics to follow along, you only have to believe in the future.
(And if you want to properly learn, Cynova is hosting a digital conference next month).