Tarot Decks
Deviant Moon Tarot
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
Deviant Moon Tarot is a seventy eight card deck created and illustrated by Long Island artist Patrick Valenza, published by U.S. Games Systems in 2008 after roughly three years of work. It sets the standard Major and Minor Arcana in a surreal dreamscape of a fictional moonlit city populated by masked, wide eyed figures, and has since appeared in a Borderless Edition and a companion book.
Facts
Deck
Cards in the Deck Pip CardsScenic pips: every suit card is an illustrated scene 1 Confirmed fully pictorial pips across the deck's standard and illustrated-pip editions. Trump NumberingJustice VIII, Strength XI (Marseille and Continental order) 1 Confirmed on tarot-forum discussion of this deck by name: Justice VIII, Strength XI, a deliberate reversion from RWS order. Attributions
TraditionSourced to the subject's own accountRider Waite Smith derived: the Aeclectic Tarot deck database lists its Minor Arcana style as RWS based scenes, reworked into a surreal, moonlit visual language. 2 Method
How the Cards Are ReadRead upright and reversed, following the standard Major and Minor Arcana structure. 1 Identity
Publication Year Origins
Creator / Originator Cult
Attributes and IconographySurreal, gothic dreamscape imagery of a fictional moonlit city and its masked inhabitants. 1 Learn More
Three Years Building One Moonlit City
Deviant Moon Tarot is a seventy eight card deck that Long Island artist Patrick Valenza spent roughly three years creating and illustrating alone, published by U.S. Games Systems in 2008. It follows the Marseille and Continental trump order, Justice at eight and Strength at eleven, and keeps the standard Major and Minor Arcana structure while setting every card inside a single invented world, a surreal, gothic dreamscape of a fictional moonlit city populated by masked, wide eyed figures who recur across the deck rather than appearing once and vanishing.
That single sustained setting distinguishes it from decks that adapt existing folklore or religious imagery card by card. The deck's popularity led U.S. Games to issue a Borderless Edition stripped of the standard white card frame, letting Valenza's dreamscape run to the card's edge, alongside a companion book expanding on the deck's own mythology. Read upright and reversed, Deviant Moon Tarot sits within the wave of creator illustrated tarot decks that use the traditional seventy eight card structure as a fixed scaffold for a single artist's invented visual world, an approach shared by later single artist decks even where their imagery and tone differ entirely.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.