The Tarot of the Silicon Dawn - Deck Review
The Tarot of the Silicon Dawn, by Egypt Urnash and published by Lo Scarabeo, is a bold and adventurous modern take on the classic Tarot deck. The art style is almost graphic-novel-like in its styling, with beautiful swirling, crackling and nebulous energies portrayed in the images, in bold and self-assured colours.
The deck is presented in a magnetic flip-fold box, large enough to hold the accompanying book and the deck itself, split into two halves and held in a recess beneath, with a ribbon-pull to assist with teasing the deck out of it's snug hidey-hole. The box is good quality and will resist a bash (or six), without any risk to the deck inside, and comes complete with a clever guide inside the flip fold cover as to where and how the additional cards slot into the overall Tarot scheme.
The card quality is "Lo Scarabeo plus" - it's a little smoother and sleeker than the usual Lo Scarabeo card stock, presumably to incorporate the additional varnish overlay, but at 99 cards in the entire deck, it's as well not to be too thick, otherwise the deck would run the risk of being as thick as it is wide. The cards, even with the varnish, are lightly coated, smooth and shuffle exceptionally well, and fit very comfortably into the hand.
The cards are a little smaller than standard, measuring in at 4" by 2 1/4" (10.1 cm by 6.6cm), but far from being a problem, the detail in the imagery isn't overdone - the potential to cram too much into too small a space has been resisted, and the card imagery is beautifully clear, confident and bold, with what looks at first like an elegant simplicity belied by the contrast with the neutral colours and spacing. The colouring for the minors is 'traditional' elemental associations - Cups (Water) are in blues, Swords (Air) in yellows, Pentacles (Fire in this deck) in reds, and Wands (Earth in this deck) in greens, while the court cards enjoy a little more latitude and the majors are a cornucopia of colour and expression.
The card backs are black with a white milky-way style galaxy swirl in the centre. At first glance, and if you're not squinting at the back of the deck, they're reversible, however, with closer examination, there's also some faint patterning running through the central swirl that means that the design isn't reversible if you're looking particularly closely.
There's a very clever aspect to the deck which is an overlay varnish on many of the cards, adding an extra set of detail to the design, if you angle the card just right for the light, revealing its little additional designs and secrets. Certainly this is something that I've never seen on a deck before and should be praised for its ingenuity and creativity. Indeed, with the addition of the 'void' cards, which are made up of only this varnish overlay on a black background, it adds a certain mystery and depth to these cards, which is presumably the effect being aimed for with the dark styling to the design.
The deck features an additional 21 cards, which include 'the 99s', an expression of beyond-the-horizon totality to the suit; 'the Voids', looking at the colder, hollow expression of a particular suit; additional Majors, such as 'she is legend', 'vulture' and Aleph squared; and additional Fools, four in total - all removable from the deck if something doesn't resonate with the individual reader.
Characters in the cards are mostly humanoid-esque in their forms, with a positive showing of diversity in form, colour and shape. Everything from goat- and serpent-women, through to demonic forms, mermaids, basic-humanoid and beyond are represented, with the deck skewing very heavily towards the feminine, with traditionally male/masculine figures represented only in the Kings, a couple of the Knights/Page cards, and a couple of supporting/background/shadowy figures in the remainder of the deck.
The Aces are beautifully rendered, giving an 'emergent' feeling to the energies they portray, a birthing, a revivification, and an invitation to explore their depths more thoroughly. With the faces of each Ace character covered by a mask with only the suit symbol on it, it reminds us that this energy is an expression, of how we can bring that energy into our lives and into the world through our actions.
There's also an element of sexual fluidity to some of the images, an example being the Lovers card represented by three swirling and ecstatic figures, with a suggestion of more just out of frame, giving the card a poly-amorous feeling; and there's a feeling of 'schrödinger's gender(sex/sexuality)' to some of the cards where you're not entirely sure on the correct pronoun to use without closer examination and a bit of determined consideration.
The addition of the oodles of extra cards was, unusually for me, exciting, rather than daunting; and yet the thing that made the deck ultimately unusable was the senseless swapping of (some) Pentacles for (some) Wands. In the intro to the minor arcana, Ms Urnash herself comments "[t]hese changes are further convoluted by the fact that I switched most, but not all, of the meanings of Pentacles and Wands around compared to most decks; 'the bounty of the Earth' seems a much better association for the Wands than the Dics/Pents/Coins to me, especially when the Wands are so often depicted as being alive and flowering", but unfortunately this doesn't address why Pentacles are therefore better associated with Fire...it feels like a "three out of four" best fit exercise, with the Pentacles wedged in to represent Fire as a leftover, and the fact that only some of the cards in those suits, rather than all of them, have had their meanings transposed makes for very tricky territory when it comes to interpretation - I find myself looking at the image not to see what I can intuitively glean as part of the message for the querent, but more to work out whether it's a Fire Pentacle or an Earth Pentacle card, a new interpretation or an original translation, which interrupts that intuitive flow...it's an unnecessary distraction that is the downfall of what could otherwise be a gripping, challenging and ground-breaking deck.
It's one of those decks that I had *such* high hopes for, but the disappointment I felt in what is such a silly adjustment to the deck over the Wands/Pentacles swap has led to the deck languishing in a drawer, when it should be actively pressed into service, a modern take on a traditional form of divination. Decks like The Ellis decK do the modern decographic style just as capably and confidently, but without the temptation to try and reinvent the wheel, throw out the rule book, challenge perceptions and flip the bird to tradition, all at the same time. One or two of these adjustments would give the reader something to stretch their boundaries and 'push the envelope', but with 21 additional cards, there's a lot going on with the deck, and, unfortunately, not all of it is positive - even stripped back to the core 78 'traditional' cards, there's still that pesky Wands/Pentacles stumbling block of a swap, making the deck more than difficult to grasp, as it feels desperate to resist any kind of control, or, gasp-in-mock-shock-horror, pigeon-holing.
It's clear that the deck was developed to try and challenge the reader, but even with my 20+ years of experience, and relationships built with dozens of decks, it comes across more as if this deck is trying too hard to be hip..."you'll not have heard of these cards, they're terribly underground, I saw them when they first appeared, and they spoke to me directly backstage, so don't expect the same connection in your late-to-the-party relationship with them" is the vibe that they throw off - instead of challenging, it comes off as cocky; instead of adding to the Tarot gestalt, it stands apart, seemingly slightly embarrassed to be constrained by the Tarot moniker; it rejects your attempts to get to know it with a sense of disdain that you'll never really grasp all the individual elements and bring them together successfully without suffering from a bout of furrowed brow and a stop-start feeling to your readings. With a traditionally ordered set of minor suits, the deck would have been an absolute winner, allowing the reader to add in various elements at their own pace, to suit their own reading experience...it's a very disappointing demise to what should have been a piece of Tarot toolkit gold.
The Tarot of the Silicon Dawn is by Egypt Urnash, with more information on her website, the image is courtesy of, and ©, Lo Scarabeo srl, and the deck is available from their website, Amazon, or your local Tarot stockist.
