Review of The King in Yellow

When I first saw this deck online, I was highly intrigued. The website for the deck mentioned that the deck itself was referenced in a play of the same name, and that the script for the play had been irretrievably lost. I initially loved the imagery on the cards displayed on the website and wanted to see the deck in my own hands to understand it better. While I waited for the deck to arrive, I did a little more research on it and was disappointed that both the deck and the play came from a titular book of fictional short stories written by American author Robert W. Chambers. The actual deck itself was created by Dan Harms, who conceived the deck while in college, along with John Tynes, with art created by Kurt Komoda. Knowing that the deck is based on something entirely fictional does not make the deck any less valid, so I waited to see how the deck would function once I had it in my hands. 

One of the reasons I was so intrigued by the deck is that the accompanying PDF, to which I had access before the physical deck arrived, mentioned that the play was so salacious, utterly heretical, and full of sexual debauchery that it could drive people mad. The deck itself purportedly dated to the 1700s and had a missing Emperor card, a card which would only turn up in decks at times of socio-political chaos and at particularly dire times, all the cards would turn up as the Emperor. The original deck’s owner was said to be a mysterious Madame Sosostris, a card reader of the elite of her day, who was mentioned in T. S. Eliot’s poem The Wasteland and in Aldous Huxley’s novel Chrome Yellow. She sounded much like the 18^th century “Sybil of the Salons,” Madame Lenormand, whose name now graces a style of oracle deck. In any case, the very long story written about the deck’s origins and Madame Sosostris are both works of fiction. 

Having written all the above, the key parts of a deck review assess how well the cards “work:” are the images consistent with the stated meanings of the cards; are the images easy to interpret and last but not least are the images on the cards pleasing. These are the details I am choosing to prioritize. Interestingly, the deck’s creator himself says of the cards in his blog on Medium, “First of all, our booklet inside is entirely fictional. Also, the deck itself was conceived of as warping the traditional symbolism of the Tarot, which I feel is antithetical to the spirit of a deck used for readings.” (Harms, 2024, https://medium.com/@danharms_29771/on-the-king-in-yellow-tarot-c06eda3d0166). Knowing that the author himself felt this way further fueled my disappointment, but I was willing to give reading with it a try anyhow. 

Tarot deck images copyright Arc Dream Publishing

The imagery on the cards is drawn in what appears to be an approximation of the style of Rider Waite Smith deck; however, the style is where the similarity ends. The images themselves I found rather gloomy, as we can see straight away on card number two, “Juno,” which I am guessing is equal to the High Priestess card. The picture on the card shows a woman chained by each wrist to two pillars, her wrists bloody, the blood running down her white dress. She looks down at a closed book at her feet. This is significantly different from the empowered High Priestess we usually see in most decks. When we come to the Minor Arcana, the card’s images can be quite sinister, as we see in the Two of Swords, where the figure of a man cut in half floats on a background of stars. In each of his hands, he holds a sword. As you can imagine, these strange and sometimes violent images may make card interpretation difficult. Again, I decided to give them a try. 

I did a reading for my friend Debbie. I won’t disclose the question for confidentiality’s sake, but the cards I pulled were Valet de Coupe (Page of Cups), The Six of Pentacles, and Junon/The High Priestess. The Page of Cups shows a young man in a library, surrounded by shelves and piles of books, reading from a large volume. The Six of Pentacles is not far off from the Rider Waite Smith image, in that it features three people, one of whom is distributing coins. However, on this deck, one of the people is a deathlike figure with a skeletal hand on the shoulder of the person handing out coins. I’ve already described Junon, so here is how I interpreted the cards. I determined that someone was not going to get what they thought they were getting, and based on the imagery on the Junon card, they had boxed (or chained) themselves in. It was definitely not the same interpretation I would have used if reading a traditional deck. 

I did a few more readings for other friends and concluded that this deck was inherently gloomy. I suppose I should not be terribly surprised as the inspiration for the story of The King in Yellow was based on the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. It is a very interesting deck to be sure, and not a bad addition to anyone’s Tarot collection, but I don’t think I will be giving readings with it again.