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lb_leeRogan/Mori: well, Open Studios was kinda a bust, and naturally the rainstorm broke right as we were dashing to the art show reception in between, but silver lining: we found the coolest book in a free box on the way!
It’s called “Lost Envoy: the Tarot Deck of Austin Osman Spare,” edited by Jonathan Allen. It’s published by Strange Attractor, some small UK publisher I’d never heard of, and it costs 30£ new, and for DAMN GOOD REASON.
Guys, this book is a work of art. Letterpress cover that’s so pleasing to the touch. Full color reproductions of Spare’s long-lost deck, and every other image is thoughtfully chosen and well-placed. (Harder than it sounds—think of every book you’ve read where the images are just all shoved in random order in a section somewhere in the middle of the book, or the printing makes them hard to make out.) When I read that the special edition of this book came with pull-out bits of how certain cards go together, normally that would be totally unnecessary but NOT HERE. Here, I was like, “damn, that’s a good idea! Wish I could’ve seen that!”
The book itself concerns the sole tarot deck ever made by Austin Osman Spare, workingman’s artist, failed child prodigy (depending on your definition of failure), and protogenitor of chaos magic. He handmade the only copy in his teens, roughly 1906, gave it to a stage magician buddy of his, who in turn donated it to The Magic Circle, a stage magician org who plunked it into their archives and promptly forgot about it... until 2013, when some guy rediscovered it and went “wait, you have WHAT BY WHO???” Because by that point, nobody knew that Spare had made any tarot deck ever (though he later made other divination card decks that AREN’T tarot).
This book is a fascinating dive into one specific deck that was never sold, never famous, and ruggedly individualist. It talks about the historical and social context Spare made it in, the significance for both him and British occultism in general, and includes the catalog notes of the Magic Circle archivist who cataloged it, and some of Spare’s notes on his method of cartomancy. The book also goes into the idiosyncrasies of this particular deck, which predates the Rider-Waite-Colman deck that dominates tarot now, the Crowley deck too, so it’s a wondrous look at an interstitial piece of tarot history. I don’t even care much about chaos magic and found myself totally engrossed in this book, just on a historical and artistic level! It’s beautiful, thoughtful, and fascinating!
It is also mercifully free of the tarot guidebook stuff because... well, Spare’s deck is just the one copy. You can’t use it. Spare wouldn’t have wanted you to. He says, “make your own!” And indeed, this book already got us working on our own Infinity Smashed deck again.
I don’t know what we will do with this book, so I’ll just end it with a quote from pg. 78, from Phil Baker’s chapter, “‘His Own Arcana’: Austin Osman Spare and the Borders of Tarot”:
“[Spare] writes [in The Focus of Life (1921)] ‘Who doth know what his own subconsciousness contains? Still less his own Arcana.’ We all, in other words, have our own arcana, our own personal symbol systems and inner landmarks connected up by dream logic. And this, perhaps, is why Spare seems to have turned his back on conventional tarot. It was part of his rejection of ceremonial magic and established hermetic symbolism, in favour of a more stripped down and psychic style of magic relying on the unconscious. He then returned to ordinary playing cards, perhaps customized, or even cards completely of his own devising, with a legion-like pack of hand-born squiggle entities ready to come to the cartomancer’s assistance: wild cards indeed, and operating well outside the borders of tarot.”
It’s called “Lost Envoy: the Tarot Deck of Austin Osman Spare,” edited by Jonathan Allen. It’s published by Strange Attractor, some small UK publisher I’d never heard of, and it costs 30£ new, and for DAMN GOOD REASON.
Guys, this book is a work of art. Letterpress cover that’s so pleasing to the touch. Full color reproductions of Spare’s long-lost deck, and every other image is thoughtfully chosen and well-placed. (Harder than it sounds—think of every book you’ve read where the images are just all shoved in random order in a section somewhere in the middle of the book, or the printing makes them hard to make out.) When I read that the special edition of this book came with pull-out bits of how certain cards go together, normally that would be totally unnecessary but NOT HERE. Here, I was like, “damn, that’s a good idea! Wish I could’ve seen that!”
The book itself concerns the sole tarot deck ever made by Austin Osman Spare, workingman’s artist, failed child prodigy (depending on your definition of failure), and protogenitor of chaos magic. He handmade the only copy in his teens, roughly 1906, gave it to a stage magician buddy of his, who in turn donated it to The Magic Circle, a stage magician org who plunked it into their archives and promptly forgot about it... until 2013, when some guy rediscovered it and went “wait, you have WHAT BY WHO???” Because by that point, nobody knew that Spare had made any tarot deck ever (though he later made other divination card decks that AREN’T tarot).
This book is a fascinating dive into one specific deck that was never sold, never famous, and ruggedly individualist. It talks about the historical and social context Spare made it in, the significance for both him and British occultism in general, and includes the catalog notes of the Magic Circle archivist who cataloged it, and some of Spare’s notes on his method of cartomancy. The book also goes into the idiosyncrasies of this particular deck, which predates the Rider-Waite-Colman deck that dominates tarot now, the Crowley deck too, so it’s a wondrous look at an interstitial piece of tarot history. I don’t even care much about chaos magic and found myself totally engrossed in this book, just on a historical and artistic level! It’s beautiful, thoughtful, and fascinating!
It is also mercifully free of the tarot guidebook stuff because... well, Spare’s deck is just the one copy. You can’t use it. Spare wouldn’t have wanted you to. He says, “make your own!” And indeed, this book already got us working on our own Infinity Smashed deck again.
I don’t know what we will do with this book, so I’ll just end it with a quote from pg. 78, from Phil Baker’s chapter, “‘His Own Arcana’: Austin Osman Spare and the Borders of Tarot”:
“[Spare] writes [in The Focus of Life (1921)] ‘Who doth know what his own subconsciousness contains? Still less his own Arcana.’ We all, in other words, have our own arcana, our own personal symbol systems and inner landmarks connected up by dream logic. And this, perhaps, is why Spare seems to have turned his back on conventional tarot. It was part of his rejection of ceremonial magic and established hermetic symbolism, in favour of a more stripped down and psychic style of magic relying on the unconscious. He then returned to ordinary playing cards, perhaps customized, or even cards completely of his own devising, with a legion-like pack of hand-born squiggle entities ready to come to the cartomancer’s assistance: wild cards indeed, and operating well outside the borders of tarot.”
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Date: 2025-05-07 09:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-08 02:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-08 01:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-08 02:08 am (UTC)Check it out!
no subject
Date: 2025-05-08 09:08 am (UTC)~Elle
no subject
Date: 2025-05-08 02:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-09 12:36 pm (UTC)We should definitely hang out! It's been too long, and as I'm unemployed for the time being, I have much more free time than usual. I'll hit you up in early June when I'm back in the country!
~Elle
no subject
Date: 2025-05-08 04:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-08 02:45 pm (UTC)