Reviewing the Reviewer
At the end of 2018, I joined Indie Deck Review as a Writer. Though I had read tarot for over 20 years it had largely been for myself, using the classic Rider-Waite-Smith, the same deck I’d received as a gift from my extraordinarily cool older brother as a preteen.
I had other decks, but they didn't call out to me enough to lure me from the well worn grooves of habit.
There were some things I definitely enjoyed about bonding so thoroughly with a deck. It's my base language when thinking of a tarot card. The red roses and white lilies amidst greenery, the Magician, dressed in white, outer robe of red, infinity sign above head in a bright yellow sky. I ignored what he looked like as a human, as I was every card in the deck, so it didn't matter if he was gendered or assumed white. I stood with wand upraised in my right hand, before an array of other tools laid out on a flat working surface - the cup, the dagger, and pentacle. My own left hand pointed towards the ground.
Years later, when I first read a prayer that said "Isis is all things and all things are Isis," (I think I read it in Isis Magic by M Isadora Forrest) I knew it as true as I was every card in my tarot deck.
This left me grounded and able trust to my own knowing, my own readings, which were simple, direct, often improvisational, and full of clarifiers. I read for myself without hesitation, grew accustomed to writing it down and later reviewing to reflect my interpretations against reality. Just as I was every card, the only way to read incorrectly was to allow the untested personal interpretations of others into my readings for myself. I realized early on this was a conversation between me and the universe and each reader taps into both the archetypes and their own personal relationships with those Archetypes. We use the encyclopedia of our own experiences to fill in the large gaps between human myth and our own lives. To do this well would inevitably lead to big and small differences in the way we each of us read. I also trusted the omens and signs to speak in a language I knew. As my vocabulary grew so too did the ways the cards communicate.
So I always saw my African American experience in the oh-so white eurocentric RWS deck. I owned other decks and gave them away. I tried runes, cowrie shells, playing cards, pendulums, palmistry, tea leaves, fire, smoke, water, and crystal ball scrying, but nothing speaks as easily for me as the tarot.
I am, however, so grateful that others don't have to translate as much as I did. Today, a person of color can pick up a deck and literally see themselves in the images and feel personally welcomed. A non-binary person, a queer person, a person not shaped like a nordic Barbie of the 20th century can find a deck that speaks to and reflects them. They can find such creativity and so many styles, themes, art to thrill their senses enough to see the pages of their lives within oracle or tarot cards made by regular people just like them.
Indie creators rock.
I love that the Indie scene is setting and pushing the standards the mainstream publishers seem to run with these days.
What a time to be alive. What a time to have the privilege to peruse the wide scope of #cartomancy and report back what I find. My experience with Indie Deck Review has been a sea of community, conversation, exploration, and learning.
Here’s what you can expect from me:
I review what I like.
I tell the truth, kindly.
I speak from my experience.
I am not a card collector, so you won't see every popular deck come through here. There are many decks I find lovely but I do not buy or keep because they would go unused. At this spider's web, they are here to work. If they don't get used, I honor them by re-homing them with someone who will love them.
Some of my favorites in the order they occurred to me:
Decks of 2019
Spirit Keeper's Tarot (Vitruvian Edition)*
Light Seer's Tarot (Indie edition)*
Wayward Dark Tarot (Indie)*
Melanated Classic (Indie)*
Dreams of Gaia (Mass market)
Dust II Onyx (Indie)
Mary-El Tarot, 2nd Ed (Mass Market)
*denotes a ridiculous amount of time spent with these in my hands
I've done more reviews. You can see them and many, many more from the talented team at indiedeckreview.com.
