My (Most Unusual) Journey with The Steampunk Tarot:

I’m not sure why it took me so long to get The Steampunk Tarot because I am a lover of all things Victorian and Steampunk. I am that person who grabs a friend (thank you, Marian), dresses up in period costume complete with sassy hat, and skips off to The Great Dickens Fair & Victorian Holiday Party in San Francisco. Every. Single. Year. And like a weekend of binge-watching “Downton Abbey,” I never get tired of it.

To be clear, Steampunk is not a real era. Wikipedia refers to it as “alternative history” (I’m not making that up). Conversely, Victorian England was a real time period in history marked by the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901. While the Victorian era gave us Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, "Dracula,” and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” the Steampunk era inspired, well . . . “Doctor Who.”

Therefore, it was with great anticipation, dare I say, excitement, that I began working with The Steampunk Tarot. Created by Barbara Moore, Steampunk is an absolutely beautiful 78-card deck illustrated by Aly Fell following the Rider-Waite-Smith system. Barbara Moore is an acclaimed tarot reader, teacher, and author and indeed the guidebook, or “manual,” as it’s cleverly called, does not disappoint. Her insights, her explanations, and her attention to detail make this “manual” one of the best guides I’ve ever read. Her writing is fluid and imaginative, while the content provides ways to read that are helpful and informative. You can tell that Moore and the illustrator collaborated very carefully to meld the structure of tarot with the world of Steampunk to form this cohesive whole.

And this is where my unusual journey with the deck begins. Although I loved everything about this deck, I could not work with it – at all. I would shuffle and put down cards, reshuffle and put down more cards and still . . . nothing. To make matters worse, I had a stalker. A “stalker” is a card that comes up again and again, desperately trying to tell you something. My stalker was the Six of Pentacles and I had no idea what it was saying to me. But I refused to give up, in part because I love Steampunk, in part because the cards are stunning, in part because of my respect and admiration for Barbara Moore, and in part because in my heart of hearts I felt that I just hadn’t found the right key to unlock the deck’s mysteries.

When I’d get frustrated or impatient I’d remind myself that some things are worth pursuing, with some things you have to be the Knight of Pentacles. So I persevered, every day coming to my tarot table and trying again and again to read with this deck – shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, Six of Pentacles. Then I watched a YouTube video by Tom Benjamin called “10 Tips for when you feel (poop emoji) about your reading skills.” His first tip is that if you’re having trouble reading, you need to “examine the questions you’ve been working with.” Brilliant – simple, but brilliant. And it got me thinking: my questions had been the usual type of questions I pose in the usual way I pose them. But what if this deck had a different purpose for me? What if this unconventional Steampunk had something else in mind?

The plot thickened. I got up on my Knight of Pentacles horse and galloped on, intent on finding the next clue. The next sign came from a most unexpected source – The Green Witch Tarot. One day while I was laying out some cards from The Green Witch and we were chatting comfortably, I thought, “What if I invite Steampunk to the party and pull a card from Steampunk for each of the Green Witch cards I pull?” And voila! An amazing thing happened. The decks paired marvelously and I suddenly could read the Steampunk cards. For every Green Witch card, the Steampunk card elaborated. For example, from The Green Witch I pulled the Eight of Pentacles, showing the industrious person immersed in a craft. The Steampunk showed me the Nine of Swords, reminding me that I’d been letting my work stress me out lately to the point of losing sleep.

After slinging a few more cards, and thanking The Green Witch, I felt ready to fly solo with Steampunk. With Tom Benjamin’s advice on my mind, I did a past life reading using a spread I’d just learned. It was a powerful reading – profound and thought-provoking. And you’ll never guess what the very first card was that jumped out of my shuffle and onto the table – yep, the Six of Pentacles. And it made complete sense to me. The key clicked and the door opened.

I’ve never had a tarot experience like this before. After all that “tarot drama,” I feel a special bond with this deck. I mean, the two of us have had quite an adventure already. But then, I should expect drama and adventure whenever I enter the alternative world of Steampunk.