The Tarot Room – Georgianna

My Five Fave Decks in Regular Rotation Right Now:

•Thoth Tarot by Aleister Crowley and Lady Frida Harris – The Thoth is my first and still favourite deck of all time, and the one I’ve been using for public readings these days.

•The PoMo: A Post Modern Deck for Navigating the Next Millennium by Brian Williams – We’re in that next millennium now and this deck of re-visioned post modern art classics is a surprisingly powerful (and often amusing) guide.

•The Pulp Tarot by Todd Alcott – I just got this deck recently … you can see my review here. The more I get to know them, the more I love these images.

•Il Giardino Dei Tarocchi Tarot Cards by Niki de Saint Phalle – Another fairly new deck in my collection … here’s my review. It’a a stunning Majors-only deck, straight to the point and full of colour

•Science Tarot, a collaborative project: I’ve had this deck for years now, it’s a regular go-to for questions regarding the state of our world.

Today’s Tarot Card Compare looks at 3 versions of the 6 of Wands/Keys.

The first card is from The Pulp Tarot by Todd Alcott. The second is from The Collective Tarot, a collaborative deck, with this card created by Lori Lawrence. And the third card is from the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot by Arthur Waite and Pamela Colman Smith.

How are themes of victory, celebration, achievement, and mastery expressed in each image? How are the cards similar? What makes each unique?

These are nice cards to get in a reading … assuming, of course, that you’re the one they’re talking about.

Today’s pull from Georgie’s Magic Card Collection is The Pulp Tarot by Todd Alcott, published by The Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild in 2023.

5 Points About This Deck

1. Box: The box looks like a well-worn paperback and opens from the top – I think it’s fabulous.
2. Theme: Pulp illustration is the theme – bold, dramatic, and eye-catching, with a fun (yet non-nostalgic) 50’s feel. It really appeals to me
3. Readability: if you’re comfortable with the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot, you’ll have no problem with The Pulp Tarot. Though the images actively pay homage to the RWS, this deck definitely stands on its own with fabulous stories to tell in each card.
4. Gender: Alcott specifically mentions in the instruction guide that whether there’s men or women pictured in the images, they’re meant to relate to all of us. It’s fun to see though, how this deck breaks a little with tradition and includes some women in roles that are usually pictured as men … some examples – The Fool, The Chariot, the person in the 9 of Cups and the 9 of Wands, and more.
5. Card Design: Alcott describes the images as basically collages. He used multiple images to create each card, but manipulated them in photoshop to make them look as if the whole card was drawn by one artist.

I really like The Pulp Tarot. It’s kind of a kitschy theme, but don’t let that give you the impression it’s not serious. It tells a Tarot tale with the best of them.

One of the first things I did when I opened this deck was to ask it, “What do you like to talk about most?”

I pulled three cards and got The Tower, the Page of Cups, and the 5 of Pentacles.

My take on that is that it likes talking about big shocks, new love, and financial questions. I’ll keep that in mind.