Tarot Magic

My recent trip to Melbourne for the Festival of the Photocopier included a visit to Sticky, located in the Flinders Street tunnel under Degraves Street. Visiting the shop in person (as opposed to online) is a far more valuable way of keeping up with new titles and zine news. The amiable Fulsome Prism, who staffs the shop, introduced me to some choice material, one of which was Bastian Fox Phelan’s latest offering, Tarot Magic.

I was excited to discover the existence of an esoteric zine that wasn’t mine! I’m unaware of other DIY titles that cover arcane subjects, so discovering Tarot Magic was a revelation. The zine is a tarot reading in itself. It documents Bastian’s adventures with a deck designed and printed by The Collective Tarot, a creative/esoteric co-op based in Portland, Oregon.

The Collective Tarot uses images loosely based on the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. Interestingly, it contains the Suit of Bones, which I feel represents the Earth element and our questions concerning structure, support and finding ground in an uncertain world.

Tarot is Bastian’s preferred method of engaging in healthy dialogue with herself. It’s a self-care ritual where she can safely process negative emotions and experience the ‘thing’ that has many guises – magic, intuition, instinct, gut feeling, insight, sensitivity, sixth sense, divine guidance, Universal consciousness … call it what you will.

Like astrology and other divinatory tools, tarot is a creative way to check in with yourself and reconnect with suppressed feelings. It’s an opportunity to pause and ask, ‘What am I feeling right now? Why am I feeling this?’

It’s refreshing to see another esoteric zine floating in the sea of perzines and artist books that define DIY culture. It requires a certain amount of bravery to produce a zine like this and I commend Bastian for its existence. Tarot Magic is an enchanting read. The fact that one of our finest zine makers has created it is reason enough to go there.