Pick a card from Edward Gorey's Fantod Pack
I love Edward Gorey's art.
A poster with a macabre children's nursery rhyme loomed on the wall, and I read it whenever I stayed in my sister's room instead of my own. It was the Ghastlycrumb Tinies: "A is for Alice who fell down the stairs. B is for Boris, eaten by bears." That sort of thing. Dark and strange and wholly inappropriate for kids. But darkly funny.
The animated introduction to Mystery! on PBS enchanted me, even though I changed the channel once that introduction was done because it was adult, live-action drama. Snooze fest to my childish mind.
When I first discovered Edward Gorey's Fantod Pack in a little local book shop, I was so excited. Then I read the guidebook and I was so disappointed. I was offended. I was old to tarot but new to oracle decks, and I was just so disheartened that this was what one of my favorite illustrators felt about a craft I loved. His art was so darkly comedic, so off-putting yet still sexy, and just so perfectly faux-Edwardian. Surely spiritualism would be held with regard.
I gifted the deck away and forgot about it.
Then—surprise!—I saw it a few years later and bought it again. I hadn't forgotten how it thumbed its nose at cartomancy. But I had learned to accept it. I embraced the snide jabs and redirected them because some oracle decks are, quite frankly, hard to take seriously.
I've done my shadow work around being seen as legitimate. I can read a scattering of bread flour at this point. So why can't I make good use of these very unserious oracle cards?
So pick a card ... if you dare. And be ready to make the most of their messages. This isn't a light-and-love deck.
And if you want to learn to read the cards—any cards—with clarity, I invite you to come learn with me.
Until then, read or be read.
