King in Yellow Tarot - A Reading

 

My King in Yellow stuff from the Delta Green Conspiracy Kickstarter arrived today. 

 

I've been looking forward to the tarot cards since the earliest previews dropped around seven years ago. The cards come with a little booklet that explains the lore and mythos behind the KiY Tarot, which is familiar to anyone who read the old Countdown splat for the original Delta Green. There's some additional exposition regarding why John Tynes picked the character "Madame Sosostris" as the creator of the deck, based on her appearance in literary works from the interwar period.

The booklet ends with an explanation of the Sosotris method of tarot reading, where a handful of cards are dealt as characters, themes and acts of a play, mirroring the dramatic structure of the work after which the deck is named. The cards are arranged according to a provided diagram.

 

 

I dealt myself a hand and got the following spread.

 

The Emperor is removed from the deck before dealing and set aside. According to the lore, the original run of KiY Tarot cards didn't include the Emperor, but he mysteriously appeared anyway to portend ultimate doom. The face down card is chosen randomly, flipped and shuffled into the deck without looking at it, never to be revealed at any point during the process. I arranged all the cards upright because I didn't realize their being upside down or right side up had any significance in cartomancy until after I dealt them.

Let's go through the play and see what we got.

This card is the signifier, chosen by the user as the subject of the play. Kurt Komoda's interpretation of the King of Swords is the reason I bought this deck. I've been obsessed with it since the earliest sketches. I'm told the King of Swords represents the intellect, cool and judgemental but detached and unsympathetic. I just like him because he looks cool. This character is called the Suicide King in the standard French deck.

The Mask is the Four of Coins. This means the protagonist of the story (in this case me) presents to others as a greedy collector obsessed with material wealth.

The "performance" is the Five of Coins. This indicates our story will be one of ruin, hardship and poverty - or an inadequately shuffled deck.

Our audience is the Hierophant, indicating the story will be told to an orthodox authority figure or avatar of convention. Is this a morality play? A confession?

In the subtext slot, the Nine of Wands. Will our story be one of perseverance or exhaustion? Perhaps ennui? I love this design. I have my favorites but there are no dud cards in this deck, all the Minor Arcana get cool drawings.

 

In the actor slot, the Empress. So I perceive myself as somehow nurturing, in tune with nature, in control... I think the formula is starting to break down.

The Script is the Empress, which explains how we got in this situation. Or it doesn't, because the meaning of the Empress is essentially unknowable. We'll never know how things got so fucked up.

The stage is the Seven of Cups. A climate of confusion and delusion, a false reality.

The surprise is the face down card. You pick it over, flip it without looking at it, shuffle it back in and then flip the entire deck so you never see it. There's a possibility it gets dealt into the story. So we don't know what the plot twist is, it's a genuine surprise.

The rising action is the Wheel of Fortune. So the thing that sets the events of our story in motion is... change. This is some Joseph Campbell horseshit.

The Eight of Goblets is our unchangeable fate. Severance from the past, the inability to return to the place from which you came.

The revelation is the Fool. Folly, mania, extravagance, intoxication, delirium, frenzy, bewrayment.

 

 

Then the falling action. Six of Cups. Nostalgia.

So my story is about a heartless intellectual obsessed with material things, driven to ruin. You think you're helping, but the reality you inhabit is false, the end is madness, and if you survive all you are going to want to do is get back there. The whole thing plays out in front of some inquisitor or enforcer of normalcy, pervaded with a sense of ennui or despair.

This is the plot of Viktor Eikman's Delta Green shotgun scenario Hoard. Eikman's Delta Green essays are terrible but he's written some excellent scenarios, and Hoard is the best one. It was the original basis for Act 3 of AUTARCH SUNRISE, one of my first Delta Green adventures.

...But of course I would say that. The cards have the King in Yellow on them and were made by the Delta Green devs, so I interpreted the result as the plot of a Delta Green scenario about the King in Yellow. The booklet with the Sosostris method is full of lore about the play, which colors the user's interpretation of the "surprise" and "revelation" in the script. The cards have multiple possible meanings and which one you choose is strongly influenced by the authors' priming.

 

This was more fun than I thought it would be. I don't know how the Sosostris method stacks up versus normal cartomantic schemes like the typical Celtic Cross reading. I can't recall if anyone ever attempts a reading or what method they use in Tim Powers' Last Call, which is probably where Tynes got the idea for a deck of superpowered evil tarot cards in the Delta Green lore.

 

If it isn't obvious by now, my favorite part of this deck is the art. The designs range from openly grotesque to quietly menacing. The whole set is shot through with a sensuality that fits the King in Yellow theme of forbidden delights that drive the user to madness. Kings deep throating swords, women in chains, naked men whipping themselves, naked ladies suplexing lions, queens with bedroom eyes drowning in blood...

 

 

I think this deck would make a great gift for someone who likes CoC/DG, or someone who likes to fiddle with tarot cards - either for cartomancy or card games. The only flaw with the product is that the little box it comes in gets bent out of shape quickly through repeat opening and closing, which might damage the cards. The lore booklet says that all the owners of the original hundred Sosostris decks got custom engraved boxes to hold them, maybe that's my next step.