the ALLEYMAN'S TAROT, the BOOSTER PACKS, the SEQUEL DECKS (to the Alleyman's), and the SEASONS LORDS ORACLE.

So these are technically 5 different decks from Publishing Goblin and several booster packs. Except, it's the Alleyman's tarot and the descendants thereof (And also the lords oracle from the divination dice but I'll explain that later)

The Alleyman's is a deck made up of cards licensed from a couple hundred artists, meant to be a replica of the deck used by the Alleyman, a mythical divination cryptid created by Seven Dane Asmund. Anyway, without getting too into the weeds, let's just say there's significant amounts of lore.

So it's a #MagpieTarot style deck, with each card having it's original card back replicated as well. The AlleyWAY tarot and the two oracles are recreations of three other decks "found" in the lore, also with unique card backs (Fun fact, a Cryptica card appears in the Alleyway tarot and another one is in the Oracle of Play). So I put my open copies of all these into a single card pool, and constructed myself a magpie of only Publishing Goblin cards. In the second picture, the closeup of the card edges, the stack inside the cloth lined container are the leftovers, and the pile standing up against the side of the container is the magpie I compiled out of it. Much like a TCG player, I'll sometimes tear down and rebuild a magpie deck out my personal card stash (I've got a separate stash of non-pub-gob cards for rearranging my personal magpie that lives in the hot pink chest). And then of course some example cards from my curated deck, and a card back spread are the third picture.

The Lords Oracle actually belongs to the Pub Gob Divination Dice. Each die is presided over by a "lord" from Seven's fictional worlds. Each lord has a card, so I shuffled them into the curated magpie deck. When one turns up, I roll the corresponding die, if I'm feeling energetic, or just read the lord card itself if I doin't feel up to dice.

THE NORMAL TAROT

tl;dr, it isn't normal.

So, the Normal Tarot. If you've ever run across Normal Horoscopes on tumblr, this is Caretaker's deck. Well, decks. There's 4 different decks, but they all have the same structure, just different art.

Here's how it's set up:

The three omens. The four maidens. The five dreams. The six books. The seven dead kings. The eight moons. And then a suit for each season, starting with the solstice or equinox as an ace, then the second through the tenth of the season. Then the first, second and third Knights for the season. And then the Lady, the Queen, and the Mother of the season.

The deck in the top row is a reprint of the original version, with the original art, and silver gilt edges. (and the version I tend to prefer, it's easier to see details and read the text on this version.)

Theoretically, there's a missing row for the "silver" edition. The silver edition uses the otiginal edition art, with some changes made to darken some negative space to make the silver foil details pop. I have a copy, but it's still in shrink.

Then the middle row in the pic is the Gold edition. I got this one when only the gold and silver editions were in print, so this one is an earlier printing than the other two in the pic (Why the box is a slightly different style than the other two). Lots of cool gold foil detail work on these, and gold edge gilding. I actually like the art on this better than the original/silver, it's just harder to read the text because of the typeface and also because the text is foiled.

The color version is the newest one, with no foil or edge gilding. It's nice but it's very soft, hard for me to see details in, and the titles are tiny. One notable thing about this version is that there is a person on every card which is not the case for the other versions.

The example cards are a Dead King, a Moon, a Book, and a card from a season from each of the three decks. I didn't bother to match them up between the decks, but should still give you a good idea of the different art flavors.

I ended up with these because during the final hour of crowfunding campaigns, Seven does a livestream and drops some ridiculous deals. Like, early on, I caught a "wandering tier" that was open for a short time to pick up one deck for 20$ which was already a significant discount, but then during the final hour livestream, Seven dropped an add-on item that was a copy of each of the 4 versions without the accompanying book for 20$ total.

Anyway, the upshot is, go attend the final hour livestream on publishing goblin crowdfundings

THE ADVENTURER'S TAROT (Empress Deck)

This one is actually a d&d tool. It's got multiple copies of all the classes, dnd races, and creature types as cards, and you use them to replace initiative rolls. You add a card for each actor in the encounter, shuffle 'em up, and flip 'em one by one, and that's your initiative.

They added on a dvination/oracle method though, which is what I reference with the d&d class coins in the coin casting conglomeration posted previously.

I never really liked trying to use this one as a standalone oracle. The art is really nice, I particularly like the color palettes. Cards of the same type use the same art, but recolored, so each is visually distinct at a glance, in addition to being marked like "I of humanoids, II of humanoids, III of humanoids", etc.

Lots of gold foil detail all over the fronts, backs, and the box.

One thing I'd like to point out, I kickstarted this deck only 5 years ago, january of 2020. It was 20$, and was going to retail for 30$. They just did a crowdfunder to do an updated reprint. 45$ for the deck, to retail at 60$.

That's how much costs have gone up in 5 years due to pandemic price gouging, supply chain whatevers, and also just the general state of The Everything.

from https://www.weird.works/

Seems like a good time to throw in these couple from the board game shelf. The art cards in Mysterium (and Dixit) make great divination decks, if you're comfortable with a looser more intuitive type of situation. I used the Mysterium cards before I got my first actual tarot. I don't go for it much these days because there is One Billion pieces in that game box that I am too tired to fight.

The other is Looney Pyramids in Magic the Gathering colors (on a pub gob dice mat). This method is still sorta in the prototype stage, but here's kind the rough idea. The pyramids show the interplay of different energies (M:tG color stereotypes/philosophy) in a situation. The point of the pyramid shows what the energy is acting upon like an arrow. Different sizes show the Primary, Secondary, and Etc. factors.

The pyramids can be read alone or tossed atop a coin, dice or card reading.

the HIERONYMOUS BOSCH TAROT

This is the one from Travis McHenry that uses the actual Bosch art, not the one from Lo Scarabeo that's just 'inspired' by Bosch.

This one is probably even more weirder than you're picturing. There's a 22 card major arcana the vaguely corresponds to the standard array of Majors, but this one has cards like The River To Hell, The Flower Pusher, and Mistress of Terror.

But wait, there's more!

This deck has 8 suits of 7 cards each: Berries, Birds, Skates, Swords, Vessels, Books, Coins, and Sins.

How does a 7 card suit work in this deck? Well, there's no pip cards, just court cards and aces. So each suit (excepting sins) has the Page, Knight, Baron, Prince/Princess, Queen, King, and Ace.

This is the first version of the deck, it's had a reprint with keywords added to the cards, and blue foil edge gilding.

Given how Christianity-oriented the deck is, it's not one I tend to go for to actually use, but it's weird, it messed with "traditional" tarot structure, It was on sale to make way for the new edition, I had to acquire it.

THE ARCANALESS

This one is from fellow Alley artist and community member, Matthew Pazzol https://pazzoldeckshop.bigcartel.com/

The Alley is the name of the facebook group for the members of the Alleyman's Tarot fandom/community, and has kind of become one of the general ways to refer to the folks actively participating in the community. Alleyfolk or The Seventeen (which I don't personally care for) are also common.

The Arcanaless is a deck meant to be split apart and used for #MagpieTarot decks, so there's not actually a structure to this one. There's a suit of birds, a partial suit of worms, a bunch of oracle style cards, and then a section that aren't even titled at all, they're just his artwork.

His card art construction techniques and mine are similar, but he has better image resources to remix, and likely spends a lot more time per card than I ever did.

Anyway, I love his work, I wish I could afford his other 4 decks.

STARCODES ASTRO ORACLE

The title makes it sound a lot more "new age woo" than it actually is. (I know the irony of talking about new age woo on a post about an astrology oracle deck, you don't have to @ me about that part). It's actually a straightforward astrology deck, with all the planets, houses, signs, asteroids, points, and aspects you'd expect. The card number and text are easy to read.

But the artwork.

And the colors.

This one is just pure eye-candy for me. This is what my elementary school trapper keepers aspired to be.

Also this one is a mass-market deck, so it isn't even expensive.

the DELETED WORLD TAROT

A deck about the liminal spaces and glitches between dimensions, deleted digital realities, with non-standard cards, done in Good Colors and in a digital glitch/collage style reminscent of (and also better than) my own style? YES PLEASE.

Like, this one is just about made for me. There's copious Important Esoteric Symbols on the card border. I love the sort of Victorian Proto-Vaporwave aesthetic mixed with Computer Stuff in the artwork. The cards are linen textured so shuffle like a dream. And the ink used to print it still smells faintly of almond. Gold foiling on the box and book, but none on the cards themselves.

Anyway, this one is just VERY YES for me.

#tarot

the TRAVELLER'S TAROT and the MYSTERY TRAVELLER'S TAROT

(and the Red Court expansion)

R. Thomas Allwin is another fellow Alley artist. So thecnically this one is two standalone decks, but they're designed to work together as one deck. So the Traveller's Tarot covers your more standard tarot major arcana and minor suits. The number cards are technically pip style, but have additionl symbolic details that help impart the meaning. The card art is inspired by not just the RWS deck, but also the Marseille style decks, and all the earlier Tarrochi decks, the Visconti-Sforza deck, the Sola Busca, and the Minchiate deck. Also, there's a lot of modern inspiration from more pop-culture sources. I've found references to Twin Peaks, the Good Place, Stephen King, and lots of other little nods.

So the original Traveller's Tarot is structured more or less as you would expect, with the standard 4 suits, and a major arcana pretty close to the standard majors (though many have reimagined card names/imagery based on the meaning of the traditional card). The Mystery Trevller's Tarot has 3 suits, Keys, Bells, and Bones, representing Void, Consiousness, and Spirit. It has a much more erratic major arcana that the first Traveller's deck, with some different interpretations of the standard majors. Like, in the original, there's The Lover card, showing a person trying to choose between two other people, but in the Mystery deck, there's Love, which is more about an established couple rather than choosing between potential partners. So there's no real card overlap if you choose to combine the decks. I also have the Red Court expansion, but not the Black court expansion. The prices were already a little spicy a while back, being a swedish indie deck (english text, though) sold directly by the artist, and now with The Everything crashing down around us, prices and shipping are just too much to consider, even for just a booster pack or two.

https://rthomasallwin.com/tarot/ lists the major arcanas for both decks and talks a little about the suits


Other high-points:

non-gendered court cards. Depictions of people with non-stereotypical arrays of primary+secondary sex characteristics. dense symbolism cleanly laid out in the books. #tarot

Well, y'all, we're almost done touring my divination stuffs. Just one more deck to go.

Are you ready, kids?