Review of Edward Gorey's Fantod Pack

This has been on my wish list for ages, so earlier this week when reading about it online had me jibbering in my angst yo own it, & I found one online at a price I was prepared to pay, I had to have it.

Several things drew me to it: I love Gorey's art. I love that it was originally published as a cut out in Esquire magazine for people to paste on to their own cards. People tend to review it as if it's a joke, but of course my camp thing makes me want to turn the jokey serious & vice versa, so that appealed to me, & finally *not one* of the meanings of the cards is positive, or even vaguely pleasant. Of course this is bang up my street, I love foretelling bad things happening to people, to the extent that I realised the other day I've only ever interpreted the 6 of cups with a reversed meaning. Everybody but me sees it as happy family, reminiscence & wishes coming true, I see it as inherited disease, abuse of all kinds, dysfunctional families, & the sweets offered a child by an abductor.

Unsurprisingly, then it was gratifying to read the tale of Madame Groeda Weyrde, author of The Future Speaks Through Entrails, in the Little White Book. I feel as if I know her actually, but think I've probably met her under another name. Unsurprising that, since she ended up as persona non grata with the rich & the famous, on account of her unflinching prediction of death & disaster. As part of her lifetime's work of divination she only reluctantly consented to the publication of the Fantod Pack.

The pack itself comes in a pleasant box with a lid that lifts off. I much prefer that sort of box myself to the sort of flip-top box tarot decks normally come in. There are 20 cards, a pleasant size to hold in the hand, if a little tall for their width. They feel very laminated, to the point of sticking together, which could make the recommended method of reading with them difficult. That said, they don't smell as plasticy as, say, my Aquarian tarot cards do, even after some years of use. The LWB has the history of the deck, a method of reading with them & meanings for all of the cards.

Perhaps these things are best demonstrated with an actual reading. The online vendor I bought them from advertised them as new. When they arrived, I found they are not new: they are not shrink wrapped & the box they arrived in is scuffed & dented. I don't have a problem with this - I would only not use second-hand tools if I felt there was something wrong with them - but they should have advertised them as the condition they are in. I'm not shooting myself in the foot - I'm not going to find this deck that cheap again - but let's see what the vendor's misfortune is using the method in the LWB.

First you shuffle the cards, then hold them in your left hand & throw them in the air. You pick up five cards, still with your eyes closed, & place them in a cross shape in order you have picked them up. Here's what the vendor's got, using the meanings in the LWB:

1. The Yellow Bird. For this one I'll give all of the meanings as a taste of how the book reads: 'Saturday; true love thrown away; pique; foot trouble; mania; barratry; an accident on a ladder; indiscretion; bone disease; thwarted ambitions; poison; an unforeseen catatrophe; complications.' This position represents the basic situation. Since it is Saturday, I feel the state of their business is already bad. They're advertising things wrongly because they're not bothered, their business hasn't worked out the way they wanted it to, there may have been an unforeseen problem, or they may have planned badly.

2. Something from the past that continues to affect your future: The ladder. Slander, reversals & jealousy are amongst the meanings. I really feel the owner of the business has gone about it in the wrong way, they clearly want to succeed without doing the leg work necessary to run a business.

3. His or her inner self: The Ecorche. Aha, this confirms my feeling that this person doesn't have the necessary mind set to run the business: 'a forged check; obscurity; irregularities; puckers; inconstancy; deception' are the relevant meanings in the book. Don't worry, I'm not picking out the negative & ignoring the positive - the other meanings are no more positive, but 'an accident on a pier' is unlikely to be this person's inner self!

4. The outer world: The Tunnel. I'm not sure whether this refers to how the outer world objectively is for the person or how they see it, but it's highly likely they see 'a swindle' & 'angst' in their outer world. Meanwhile of course it's even more likely they have 'an unpleasant discovery' & 'bad luck' awaiting them if they carry on as they are!

5. Something about to come into being in the near future: The Bundle. If I wanted to tell a really old school misfortune, I'd conclude that they were going to have a broken engagement & a train accident on Wednesday. However let's subtle it down a bit. The existing malaise in their business will come to a head very soon, likely this week, they may even be meeting their accountant on Wednesday! Or else conceivably this person has some business deal coming up this week that will fall through, at root it will once again be because they're not putting the work in, but I feel this is someone who will blame everyone else. In fact there's almost no point telling some people's misfortune, because they won't listen, will they?

As an aside, just because I'm nosey, I'm interested to see that Gorey gave out his sexual orientation as asexual. I'm intrigued by this because I would normally assume a person saying that is denying or covering up their sexuality. I would have thought an artistic man living in a house full of books with a collection of cats & other fur coats was gay - at least that's how I would have guessed his orientation until I found this out. He even had a respectable collection of old school tarot decks, many of which I would kill for - Gorey's collection at his house is the second picture.

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