The Threshold Tarot is Lucian’s fully-realised 78-card deck. It has been sort of half his life in the making from idea to result. The figures in it are real people that inhabit his internal world, and the symbolism has been worked out from the guiding principles of tarot as set out by Aleister Crowley in the Book of Thoth. The resultant deck is as fresh as a Spring morning. The symbolic language used within is informed by a lifetime of personal magickal and devotional practice. Lucian listened to a solid diet of Trepaneringsritualen, Lingua Ignota, Of The Wand And The Moon, Rich(ard) Dawson, The Body and Coil while he produced the deck, and this is evident in the resultant artwork. The deck feels earthy, dirty, touched by the divine madness of Dionysus, and is absolutely stuffed with queers.

A tarot deck had been on Lucian’s to-do list (and high on his “when will you do an [x]” request list) for over a decade, but it hadn’t yet been “the right time”. The “right time” came as a surprise at the end of 2019. Lucian was made redundant (which was tiresome), and his newfound freedom saw the production of the artwork for the Threshold Tarot recommencing in earnest. He explored again the world and people inside his spirit, and rooted himself in amongst them, laying out his own pain, understanding and healing in the cycle of the tarot. It is possibly his most personal, honest and fun work to date.

The First Edition

The majors-only deck came with a small illustrated study booklet that explained the symbolic language used in the card artwork, a printed recycled card tuck box, and a brown hessian deck bag, hand painted by the artist with a mixture of black ink and ritual ash from his fire pit. Each bag is completely unique. Feedback is that they smell great, too.

The Second Edition

The second edition of the deck is a full deck. The first iteration of this deck had no cleaning done to it at all: all the linework was exactly as it sat in Lucian’s sketchbook. This version is much cleaner, crisper, and well-balanced, the colours stronger and sharper. Only eight colours are used throughout: black, ivory, raw sienna, burnt sienna, burnt umber, crimson, burgundy and gold.

The minor arcana were drawn up in a couple of ways. The number cards are devised as “pips” – arrangements of the salient suit symbols to evoke where their interpretation lies within the Tree of Life, with a title to guide the mind (based on Crowley’s titles used in the Thoth deck).

The court cards are designed to evoke various personal moments, journeys, and dramas within the lives of the people portrayed therein. These can be interpreted according to single line “kenning” poems that can be found in the booklet.