Originally planned to be a tarot deck, I’ve shifted gears the last few weeks into finalizing this as an oracle deck, which allows me more flexibility with my intuition, creative processes, and desire to honor formal and informal history without restriction. This project, along with all other Ruinfolk works, lives at the intersection of folklore, scholarship, and spiritual practice.

The foundation for this project includes historical photos and Americana legend. This deck is inspired by traditional tarot, alchemical, and Jungian archetypes, which are then used in conjunction with Western myth and Americana folklore.

The imagery in this deck is based on personal experience as well as documented legends. The timeline is somewhat anachronistic, but spans frontier era into the great depression, with a geographical focus mostly on the Rocky Mountains and surrounding boomtown communities.

From the gold rush to the dust bowl, this deck seeks to reimagine what it meant to exist on the threshold of survival. It’s an excavation of sacred debris from the stories and traditions of westward expansion, and ideally, a spiritual tool to recognize our own self-mythologization.