Wicce's Tarot Collection -- Second Opinions!

New York Tarot
a guest review by T Susan Chang

Created by a former New York native, the New York Tarot is a black-and-white photographic deck which depicts street scenes and familiar sights in the daily life of the city. The images generally appear to date from about 1980, although the photographs were taken over the course of several years. Most seem to take place in Manhattan proper, with a preponderance in Central Park and the West and East Village. There is little evidence of the city some remember as a place of business, a haven of crime, a center of fashion -- the New York pictured here is a city of artists, writers, filmmakers and other free spirits living as they wish and struggling to get by. Siri’s images are quite grainy and high contrast, giving the deck a documentary sort of feel; also, the quality of the reproduction is a bit inconsistent and homemade-looking.

There are some familiar New York icons: The Statue of Liberty for the Empress, the old Unisphere from the 1965 World’s Fair for the World. The 1934 golden statue of Prometheus that presides over Rockefeller Center is the Emperor, and throughout the minors there are plenty of bagels, loudmouth cab drivers, and tiny apartments that look as if they could only exist in the Big Apple.

The deck shows some familiarity with traditional Waite-Smith imagery: Strength, for example, features one of the New York Public Library lions, and the Moon card has a dog cavorting before the neon sign of the old Moondance Diner in TriBeCa. The High Priestess, seated before a fireplace in lieu of the traditional veiled pillars, has a book entitled “Drawing Down the Moon” at her feet. Some of the minors are still more literal than that: the construction worker in the 10 of wands struggles with too many beams in his arms and underfoot; in the 9 of Pentacles a woman enjoying the fruits of her labors holds a bird in her hands (the fruits being, in this case, chocolate-chip cookies).

Structurally, there are a few idiosyncrasies -- there are four extra court cards and 12 cards for the zodiac signs bringing the total count to 94, and each card is numbered 0 to 93. Among the majors, a few cards have been renamed or renumbered:

V. The Hierophant = Psychopomp (deriving from ancient Greek for “sender of souls,” a term used for Charon, the ferryman of the underworld)

VII. The Chariot = Transport. A wonderful image of a rider on the old A train, complete with some very nice graffiti (which helps date the deck. There’s been no graffiti on the subway for at least ten years.)

XII. The Hanged Man = The Hanging Man. No apparent reason for changing the name except perhaps for squeamishness.

XXI. Judgement = Resurrection Day. This has been renumbered and appears as the last of the major arcana, switching places with the World. It looks as though resurrection will be a sort of Concert to End All Concerts in Central Park. No wonder it had to come last.

Justice is VIII and Strength XI.

The zodiac signs, which follow the majors in numerical sequence, are a set of rather featureless metallic medallions of unknown origin. Confusingly, the first is Aquarius rather than Aries or Capricorn. There are 5 rather than 4 court cards per suit: Child, Knight, Dame, King, and Queen. Personally, I think the addition of the Dame figure, a female equivalent of the Knight, is one of this deck’s real attractions. The Dame cards show tough working women looking after themselves in a rough-and-tumble urban environment -- a good balance to the more passive and receptive qualities traditionally associated with Queens. My favorite is the Dame of Wands, who cheerfully brandishes a baseball bat behind the cash register of the corner delicatessen.

Other cards which work well are the creepy, ritualistic Devil card, the pizza-bearing Queen of Pentacles, and the instantly recognizable 5 of Cups, drowning his heartbreak at a quintessential New York bar. The Aces are architectural details, of which the best is the Ace of Pentacles, an ornate manhole cover. The backs of the cards depict the sunlit fire escapes of a tenement building; the pattern is symmetrical enough to work OK in reverse.

There is no book packaged with the deck. Four extra cards printed front and back have the author’s credits, cursory instructions for spreading the Celtic Cross, and impressionistic one-line interpretations written by the artist. These last are random personal associations without real interpretive value -- some just quote a line of Beatles lyrics. The artist indicates that she has written a full-length book about the history, context and meanings of the New York Tarot, but has not yet found a publisher for it.

The cards are roughly standard size at 3" x 4-5/8”. The cards are a bit stiff to shuffle and have a tendency to stick together. They come in a white corrugated cardboard box; each deck has a different card pasted to the top of the box.

Although not every card is a success, many fuse traditional meaning with vividly imagined and photographed street scenes in a truly satisfying way. When it comes to reading, the deck is surprisingly functional, but only with the right querent. While I myself had bought the deck only as a collectible, I have found that with the right people it gives accurate and empowering results: if, like the people pictured here, you are figuring out who you are in a big city that you love, this deck has your story.

The deck is currently only available directly through the artist:

New York Tarot
Giani Siri
Sirius Endeavors
5483 Hay Point Landing
Smyrna, DE 19977
(302) 653-5437

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New York Tarot by Giani Siri
published through Sirius Endeavors