Deviant Moon Tarot

The denizens of the Deviant Moon Tarot, in the main, are dual-faced, with the fore-face (I coined a word!) representing the outward facade of the character, and the inner, deviant face representing the hidden, subconscious aspect. Some of the characters are, perhaps surprisingly, warm and potentially friendly, while others are distinctly not so. Add to these the backgrounds drawn from blasted and withered landscapes and buildings, ruins and monsters culled from Valenza's nightmare childhood, and you have a complete new Tarot world to wander through and wonder about, although maybe the possibility of getting lost in these psychically charged tales might snare the unwary or keep the inexperienced (or feeble) at bay! This is not a Tarot for the light-hearted, although there is joy within the scenes - albeit the joy of artistic creation and the ability to achieve such a high standard of self-expression and clarity.

Having taken the plunge and bought the book, my only regret is that I waited so long to do so. The insights it provides, along with the full explanation of the deck's card meanings, makes it an invaluable part of the Deviant Moon Tarot package. (Maybe the publisher's should offer a deck-and-book package?) Knowing what I now know, I am approaching the deck again with an inspired new interest, and am looking forward to applying my new-found knowledge.

If you feel inspired to discover something new, you couldn't do much better than this incarnation of the RWS! There are two versions available - the original version with borders and a borderless version. I have both, although my original version is hiding mysteriously somewhere in the house and cannot be located. If you can, or prefer, I would go with the original version, as Patrick has been quoted as saying, “these colors relate to the citizens of each realm. The borders on the suit of Swords are Red for their strife and pain of the heart. Cups have Blue for the calm purity of the sea. In Wands I used Green for the earth and the natural world. And with Pentacles, Black for the materialistic void they have in their souls.”

Make no bones about it, this is a phenomenal book, and, for what is essentially an expanded LWB, something unique among the Tarot books I have collected over the years - although, much later, I was to come across The LWB to end all LWBs! Valenza not only describes each card in detail, but goes deep into the origins of each image, and, in the process, exposes how he first discovered his artistic abilities around the age of 8, and how these quickly developed into his lifelong fascination with Tarot and its ability to uncover the deeper, darker side of the psyche. He goes on to narrate how, driven by recurring childhood nightmares, and the close proximity of various cemetaries and the Pilgrim State Asylum, New York State, filled his mind and his sketchbooks with visions and phantasies both inspiring and unsettling, leading to the deck and book we have before us today. He also tells of his path from pencil and paper (or ink) to digital media, and how he uses these to manipulate the collection of drawings, images and photos he has pulled together over the years, to construct the scenes and characters for each card, and how he ties those back to the meaning of the card when it appears in a spread.