I printed out a physical copy of the Book of Maps just to make sure everything is as it should be, before releasing it to those who ordered the premium package. I am so in love with how this cover art came out.

After finishing the graphic design on my computer, I wasn’t 100% sure I was loving it. Maybe it’s too yellow? (I was hoping it’d look more gold.) But the dominant-gold with floral-green accents was the color symbolism I wanted to go for, with that pearlescent pattern for the background.

Ack– the background isn’t center-symmetrically aligned. See how the white pearly aura part is a little off center around the ornate diamond thing? For some reason I didn’t notice that on the computer screen, but now it’s so obvious. Sigh.

The above transcribed words of the Holy One are going to be printed on the deck box and also in the introductory front pages of the guidebook. When I am surrounded by malignant forces, these words spoken by the Voice of Spirit were a Light that shined into my life, safeguarding and illuminating my path. And I hope that you experiencing these words will in turn connect you to and invoke this power of Light so that you’re safeguarded and that your path is illuminated.

It’s not as big as Holistic Tarot, but it’s the same thickness as the Key of Solomonic Magic and Spirit Conjures if you got that printed out, and same thickness as the Tao of Craft.

Please note that the Premium Package is for the e-book (PDF digital file sent by electronic mail) only. I do not sell the printed paperback copy of this book.

Instead, when you purchase the Premium Package, in addition to the e-book, you’ll get access to a private, unlisted hyperlink to Lulu.com (“private” here means it is not a book available for purchase to the general public; “unlisted” meaning the only way you’ll get that hyperlink is through that e-mail). You can then purchase a pre-uploaded prepared paperback copy of the book from Lulu.com, an unaffiliated third-party print-on-demand site. The transaction for purchase of the printed paperback book is between you and Lulu.com only.

My apologies if I haven’t been making this clear.

If you’ve ordered the Premium Package, then some time in the first two weeks of May 2021, you’ll get an e-mail from me in your inbox with delivery of both the Book of Maps digital PDF e-book only and an SKT tarot journal/workbook (digital PDF e-book only).

Oops, the numbering on that auto-generated list went wonky for the Seven Angels. See? Must line edit.

The Book of Maps is not a tarot card meanings book. It’s really, really specific to the SKT.

For example, the entry for the Eight of Swords is long because I was interested in recounting Hypatia’s life story, which is my nutshell summary after reading five books about Hypatia. I also explain why I am depicting her in the Eight of Swords and why every symbol on this card is the way it is. So I don’t think you can necessarily transplant those insights to general interpretations of the tarot Eight of Swords card.

I also went unabashedly personal in terms of what these tarot keys mean to me. I do cite from both Waite and Crowley, talk about how they’ve approached the same key, and then talk about how I’ve incorporated their approaches and how I’ve diverged from their approaches to assert my own.

So again– not a book of tarot card meanings. =) I really don’t think you can (or should) transplant these card meanings I give to more standardized decks.

These photo snapshots of the book’s contents is for you to get a sense of what’s in it. I went with the full-color print option, and here’s the thing, when you’ve already gone for the full-color print option, whether it’s 700 pages of grayscale or 700 pages chock full of color won’t change the price. So mind as well include as many full-color images as you can, right? =)

Another thing about the Book of Maps is it contains images of the background illustrations on the cards, without the foreground (the main “tarot” part). That’s because I was a little salty at myself for having put in so much work drawing a detailed background, and then like 90% of it gets covered up by the foreground. Sad. So the Book of Maps was a place where I could show off those backgrounds. =)

This edition’s delivery trajectory is going to be similar to previous editions, where I’ll e-mail you the digital files for the Book of Maps about a month or more before we begin packing and mailing out the decks. From my experiences with Lulu, the third party print site, it takes them about one month to mail you your paperback order. If I’ve timed all of this right, then you’ll get a physical copy of your paperback book (assuming you choose to order one from Lulu) a few weeks before you receive the deck from us.

You also have the option to print the book pages out yourself if you have access to an office printer that can take such a hefty print job. (Just a reminder: If you do that, make sure before you hit “Print,” your printer settings are selected to “Print to Fit” so that the contents will be auto-adjusted to fit your paper size.) Then you three-hole punch the pages and put them into three-ring binders. =)

One of the issues that I’ve been experiencing with this third round of production is that a lot of things have changed as a result of the global pandemic. For starters, everything seems to take much longer than it used to take. Like people are slower to reply, things take longer to get done, even mail delivery seems to be slower for some reason.

I sorta accounted for that possibility, but I didn’t effectively and fully account for it. I didn’t realize just how much of a delay or how much longer everything was going to take. It feels like everyone at their jobs are working at it slower, are taking longer to accomplish tasks, I mean, I dunno. Everything just feels a little bit like wading through molasses.

I used my previous two edition experiences to project timing, and I shouldn’t have done that. Timing during the global pandemic is a totally different ballgame.

Even in other professions, it’s been like that. Like cases in litigation for law. Everything has been taking longer. Everything gets delayed. It’s like the business world is on 0.5 playback speed. =)

Right now I’m still waiting on receiving a physical copy of the printed proofs. We placed a print run order of 3,456 decks and reserved an option to increase the order quantity if prior to commencement of full production we realize we need more decks. Yes, the first print run edition is limited, but the exact number of copies has not been set yet.

Why are we doing it this way? Because we have a lot of factors to account for, and this is the best path for us forward. Taking orders, processing them, packing decks, and hauling them to the post office to mail out takes a lot of work. A lot. It takes over your life. If this is your full-time job, then that’s kind of the point. But if this is your hobby and something you’re doing for the love, that amount of work every single day, through every single weekend, transforms something fun to something very not fun all too quickly.

Inventory also takes over your living space. If there’s a bunch of boxes of decks cluttering every hallway in our house and stacked floor to ceiling in every unoccupied room for just a short period of time, then that’s okay. But if that’s how our house looks forever, then that’s not as okay.

So I understand and empathize with a lot of the criticisms people have voiced about this seemingly “limited run” approach we have. After a lot of thought and consideration, this is just the best approach for our own mental wellbeing.

Whew that was a longer production status update than I had intended on writing! Omigosh is it un-humble of me to gush over my own book cover? Because I LOVE this book cover. It’s so pretty, and now that Lulu has added the new option of matte finish for book covers, the matte finish here is just luxe as all heck. (I really dislike high-gloss, and the high-gloss just didn’t work with the aesthetics for the SKT, but for the previous two editions of the book, high-gloss was my only option.)

Alrighey, that’s it for now. ❤