This is a guest post by Niko ___ (they/them or xeh/xem) sharing their creations, Dark Tarot.
“What do you mean no one’s done this before?”
This was what I had in mind when I first started studying the Dusk Tarot.
The idea is very simple: completely immerse the deck in an aesthetic of mystery, midnight messages, and subtle secrets, with your designs being nothing more than speckled gloss on black paper. It felt like my tarot experience, turning over the readings in my head, revealing the connections between the cards by holding them at the right angles until everything fell into place. The metaphor became obvious, the elegant aesthetic of the imagination – they were like catnip in my brain, an idea so powerful that I was sure I couldn’t be the first person to want a deck like this.
Imagine my surprise when, after searching far and wide, I didn’t find such a deck.
There are elements of it, to be sure: some speckled gloss here, some minimalist design there, others accentuating black, but nothing like the focus on delivering this unique aesthetic from start to finish. If I wanted my dream deck, I had to make it myself.
So I did.
I quickly discovered that the Dusk Tarot deck was different from other decks, and not just in aesthetics.
While my knowledge of tarot is based on Ryder-Waite-Smith’s interpretations, many tarot cards fail to resonate with me as an asexual, romantic, and genderless person. Why is gender included in so many cards, and what does that mean for me as a genderless person? How do I relate to a lover when all-encompassing love—physical, sexual, and romantic—is so alien to me?
If I’m making a deck for myself, then I refuse to alienate myself from it. The connection between inner and outer maturity and gender forms disappears. Gone were the Christian ideas that didn’t fit me, those narratives that ended with the nuclear family, the disasters of change, the false dichotomies. Instead, I devised stories about why we pursue power when it causes us pain, the challenges of finding or building systems that support us, the impact of perceptions on our reality, and most importantly: discovering our Pain and pleasure. Be your authentic self and choose to live like them.
The end result is a deck about power, community, and change.
This is a deck that is soft-spoken but insightful. It’s a deck that acknowledges the politics that govern our lives, but remembers that we must work to solve the problems they create—and we don’t have to do it alone. If you would like to learn more about the stories contained in the Dusk Tarot, I have written a lot of about This deck of cards on twitter. Now, I hope I’ve conveyed the aesthetic underpinnings of the uniquely queer deck of The Dark Tarot and the passion I put into making it.
I’m crowdfunding to print a limited edition Dimlit Tarot on Ulule, and probably won’t be printing anymore. I chose to use Ulule because I refused to support Kickstarter for trying to incorporate unnecessary, environmentally damaging blockchain technology into its platform (no, carbon offsetting is not enough). However, Ulule lacks the visibility of Kickstarter, so every little bit of support and sharing helps! Thanks for reading and have a great time!