mentioned by Powers is a key. Between October 2009 and February 2010, an exhibition described as “the world’s first museum exhibition of Steampunk devices and contraptions extraordinaire” was mounted at the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford University. It included exhibitors from Canada, Japan, Australia, Switzerland, the United States, and the UK, and it attracted more visitors than any other exhibition staged by the university. In it were indeed many “devices,” varying from sculptures of clockwork spiders by Thomas Willeford and flying men by Stéphane Halleux, to a mechanical womb with a clockwork foetus by Molly Friedrich and a (working) time machine devised by Jos de Vink. There were also a number of steam-powered weapons, clockwork devices, and even a steam-powered mobile phone. All the artifacts were at the same time elegant and utile, elaborate and devastatingly simple. Ingenuity, wonder, imagination, and cleverness dominated, and drew literally hundreds of people to peruse the wonders of this modern temple of science and delight. It was both art exhibition and science exhibition, and, while some might have called it a science-fiction exhibition, it actually showed a universe that was every bit as real as the one in which we (possibly) live.
The Steampunk Explosion
Steampunk is now, literally, everywhere. In fiction, it flourishes in the writings of Mark Hodder, Gail Carriger, and George Mann; in film, it appears in the new Sherlock Holmes movies (2009–11), in the most recent version of The Three Musketeers (2011), in the 2003 version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and in the wonderful Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004). In music, bands such as Abney Park, ArcAttack, The Dresden Dolls, and Dr. Steel push the envelope into the wildest reaches of steam-powered imaginings.
This has been—and continues to be—Steampunk’s raison d’être. Though reworking themes from earlier times, it reflects the modern and future world, holding up a mirror to everything, which it views from its own particular perspective. In this world the most ordinary things become imbued with strangeness and wonder, and the bringing together of wildly disparate objects creates new and astonishing things.
Nor does Steampunk turn its back entirely on the world we think we know, as evidenced by fine examples of Steampunk cases and decorations created for computers and laptops (none of them steam-driven). It is as though, by looking to the past, the contemporary Steampunkers have discovered things we missed when they first appeared.
Why a Steampunk Tarot?
All three of the devisers of the pack you hold in your hands share an interest in things wonderful, outlandish, and strange. We are all avid readers of alternative fiction that suggests new directions, new possibilities, and extraordinary opportunities. Moving more at the fringes of the Steampunk movement over the past few years (though now we have embraced it more thoroughly through the “steamsonas” we have created within its rapidly expanding universe), we noticed that there was one element that, if not actually missing, was seen less often: the sacred and metaphysical arts. Oddly, it seems that few (if any) of the leaders within the movement have sought to re-envision the parallel developments in spiritualism, magical orders, theosophy, and the burgeoning esotericism that marked the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which explored the metaphysical side of reality at a time when science was making its own breakthroughs, although there are certainly riffs on all of these in the welter of Steampunk literature which has poured forth in the last decade.
It could be said that there is no place for such things in the Steampunk universe, but in fact it is already there. The Gods of the Machine were not thought up by us (though we did choose their archetypal forms for this deck), having been present in Western hermetic lore since Classical times and then reawakened during the Renaissance. The awakening and divine embodiment of statues is taught by Hermes Trismegistus as early as the Corpus Hermeticum, while the ingenuity of automata was explored by Athanasius Kircher and others. The rich creativity and wonder of life on the other side of reality is everywhere celebrated in the history of our universe.
And since, above all else, Steampunk is about adventure—wherever, whenever, and whoever it features—it seemed high time that there should be a way of looking into and through the strange distorting glass of this new-old world, and to explore its vitality and wonder, and its wisdom. Just as we may turn to the tarot to aid us in navigating the shoals of uncertainty which surround us, so, in the alternative world of the Steampunk Imperium, it opens vistas that help us to see things in a new way.
Nor did we have to look far to manifest this deck. Even the most cursory glimpse into the Steampunk world shows a fascination with ancient wisdom, future possibilities, and the elemental qualities that are central to every tarot. Thus we arrived at the Four Leagues (the suits in traditional tarot) and the archetypes of the Gods of the Machine (the Major Arcana).
So, get ready to cross the threshold of the Imperium, where everything is just a little bit different, but draws upon the familiar as well as the unfamiliar. Beyond this page, we, as creators, will vanish entirely, to be replaced by our steamsonas, or alter egos: the bold adventurer Major Jack Squares, the wise Madame Hypatia Tetraktys, the devilishly clever artificer 124C (say it out loud)—and the voice of the Imperium itself. Join us, then, and prepare to be thrilled, astonished, and enlightened by the Gods of the Machine, as we enter the world of The Steampunk Tarot.
John Matthews, Caitlín Matthews, and Wil Kinghan
Oxford, 2012 – Year of Steampunk Dreams
INTRODUCTION
• INTIMATIONS OF THE IMPERIUM •
“These illustrious strangers came down into the world of things that come to be, in order to make trial of it.”
HERMES, De Castigatione Animae
There are many forms of reality. You inhabit but one part of a much vaster cosmos, and are perhaps ignorant of the Imperium. We urge you to acquaint yourself with its co-existence beside your own world, for it is but a step away.
The history of the Imperium is a long one, reflecting our beloved Queen-Empress’s long reign. But its roots lie much further back, in ancient times, before the arrival of steam and the enlightenment of anbaric power. Then, the Gods of the Machine walked among us, and we spoke directly to them—and they to us.
The technology of that era was the art of sympathetic magic, practiced from these earliest times, as we see from the Corpus Hermeticum, that great body of august knowledge that was disseminated in both our worlds many centuries ago. Long ago, it was widely believed that the influences of the protean stars were poured out upon the earth, and were capable of being canalized by the practitioners of ancient knowledge, to be contained within talismans, objects of worship, and through the devising of rituals. From the sacred arts of Egypt, to the sympathetic magic of the great philosophers Marsilio Ficino and Athanasius Kircher, or the making of the Prague Golem by the mysterious Rabbi Loew, you may see how this belief ensouled ordinary objects with divine influences in your own world.
Visions of the Artificers
Drawing upon this craft, the artificers of the Imperium’s Four Leagues created vehicles to roam the earth through the four elements. In their works the Gods of the Machine live yet, and are embodied within the ever-living influences of the tarot that you hold in your hands. Often, what was thought to be an illusion turns out to be reality, especially when the workings of the imagination are respected. The visions of those ancient artificers and natural philosophers paved the way to the science of life, and forged enduring presences that these seventy-eight tarot cards reveal.
When things are made by hand with intention and craft, they have a more pleasing aspect about them than things that are mass-produced from
