Steam punk tarot - wisdom from the gods of the machine

Steampunk is the fastest growing subculture around. It imagines a world in which steam is the main locomotive power driving submersibles, rockets and ships across the world. And it features Victoriana, time travel and adventure, all elements in this wonderful new tarot. The major archetypes are the Gods of the Machine, and the four suits are Airships, Engines, Submersibles and Leviathans. This interaction of energies offers wisdom and direction from an alternative reality, but still relevant to us today. Imagine a time when vast helium-fuelled airships took the place of aircraft, and where the hunger for adventure and exploration never died, but took the human race into stranger places than we ever imagined, save perhaps Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. THE STEAMPUNK TAROT presents an alternate-reality tarot where The Technomancer is king and the punk diva is queen. Ever since Prometheus, humans have called fire from heaven, creating ingenious devices and machines that support our lifestyle by inventive and curious ways. In this tarot, we tumble into a bricolage of technology, machines, retro-art and culture, full of fantastic visions in a time and place that realizes an alternate world to our own. Steampunk combines Victoriana, the Gothic, and early invention with the huge dash of imagination and a tremendous sense of style. Some features of this Imperium are familiar to us, while others have clearly developed in a manner undreamed of. THE STEAMPUNK TAROT is a world apart: a nexus of opulence, innovation and alternate worldviews that is reflected in 78 scenes. This is the place where the struggle to find balance and harmony in both environment and technology is welcomed and explored, and where anbaric power (a mysterious source derived from amber), analogue and digital mechanics rule. More utopian than dystopian, it breeds its own thrilling archetypes. The 22 major arcana cards are the actors at the heart of the machine, the deos machinae or the gods of the machine . Here their primal impulses beat out the determining rhythm to course through every artery of the Imperium. Each of the actors in the steampunk mysteries are like performers on the stage, their archetypes spot-lit within the temple from which all steampunk wisdom stems. Acting as mediators of the Gods of the Machine are the 16 court cards who are the Legates of the Imperium, or ambassadorial representatives of the Four Leagues, comprising all the skills that maintain the Imperium: they are the movers and shakers the Captain, Lady, Navigator and Messenger, or King, Queen, Knight and Page. They oversee the other 40 cards of the minor arcana, who are the elemental worlds of Airships, Engines, Submersibles and Leviathans, or Swords, Wands, Cups and Pentacles. Not everything has been explored, ticketed and filed away as known in the Steampunk Imperium. There are still things to understand and discover, as we find when we lay the cards in alternative ways. Many new methods of spreading and playing with tarot cards are included, as well as methods of life-navigation by the use of skilful questions. The STEAMPUNK deck is an adventurous tarot for the discerning diviner, to be appreciated both by tarot-users and steampunk fans the world over.