Playing cards have occupied an important role in our culture for hundreds of years. Their significance is in the first place connected to their primary use as as tool for playing card games, which is the primary factor that popularized them rapidly and led to their spread throughout Europe in the 15th century. Even today card games are one of the main ways that playing cards are enjoyed, especially in a social and casual context in the home.
But playing cards shouldn’t just be associated with games for children, because they have come to mean much more than that, and have wormed their way into many aspects of human life and existence. There are many people who make their livelihood with a deck of playing cards in their hand, like casino workers and card magicians. In our modern era, Poker gets regular air time on TV sport channels. Gambling games have been popular for centuries, fueling lives of luxury as well as spawning lives of crime, and many a fortune has been lost or won over the turn of a playing card. Playing cards are also closely associated with fortune telling and sometimes even the supernatural.
As a result of all this, playing cards have become firmly embedded in our culture and way of life. So it comes as no surprise that playing cards have influenced our English language. Common expressions like “lost in the shuffle”, “have an ace up your sleeve”, “follow suit” and many others all owe their origin to playing cards (read more about this in my article The Impact of Playing Cards on the English language).
But playing cards also have established a presence in many art forms. Many paintings and works of art depict people holding cards or playing card games. Many a song has been written about poker, gambling, and even about specific playing cards, or used them as metaphors for romance and for love gained or lost.
Given how entrenched card games and playing cards have become in our lives, we can also expect them to appear in another form of art: the novel. And sure enough, there are some fine books where playing cards aren’t just a prop or part of the supporting cast, but are one of chief elements. Perhaps the most well known example of this is Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. But in this article, we’ll introduce you to a much lesser known and yet superb example of a clever novel that features playing cards as central characters. In my previous article I considered playing cards about novels, so now it’s time to look at a novel about playing cards, with reference to Jostein Gaarder’s clever book, The Solitaire Mystery.
The Book
Jostein Gaarder first caught my attention with his award-winning novel Sophie’s World, which was an international best-seller, with millions of copies sold around the world, in multiple languages. That story is geared to young adults, and promises to provide an overview of the history of philosophy in the form of a novel. It received high praise for what it achieves, although it has its share of critics as well. In fact, I’ll let you in a personal secret with this honest confession: I really wanted to like this book, but personally I found it rather tough going and struggled to finish it. It didn’t quite live up to what I’d hoped for, because I found it too dry, and it read more like a philosophy text-book than a story. But it did confirm the respected credentials of the author as a credible voice on the subject of philosophy. And I’m always prepared to give someone a second chance.
So when I discovered the book The Solitaire Mystery by the same author, his name was already familiar to me. Perhaps more importantly, the artwork on the front cover of the copy I came across immediately caught my attention. “Solitaire, as in the card game? Playing cards on the cover?” As a playing card enthusiast, I was instantly intrigued by the title, the artwork, the concept, and the blurb on the back.
Fortunately, unlike its more well-known sibling Sophie’s World, this book is much less didactic and dry. Instead, it is a convincing and entertaining story that is actually readable, rather than being pure philosophy. Best of all, it’s brilliant because of how the entire story is structured around a deck of playing cards, and how they are a central feature of this book. If you are a playing card enthusiast, you will almost certainly will love this novel, and you should definitely check it out. Let me share some more about it to whet your appetite.
The Story
The main story describes a twelve year boy, Hans Thomas, and his father, who are on a trip to Greece (the homeland of philosophy) on a quest to find the boy’s mother. In the process Hans Thomas finds a book, which is described in the story as “the sticky bun book”, because he literally finds it inside a `sticky bun’ given to him by an old baker. We now get large excerpts from the sticky-bun book, which tells the story of another baker long ago, who was shipwrecked on an island, and where an entire deck of playing cards comes to life as real characters. Together with the old story-teller from the sticky-bun book, we meet a host of playing card characters, and find ourselves immersed in their magical world. There are several intertwined stories with characters from different times, and slowly their connections become apparent – hence the accurate description of the book as a “mystery”, as we slowly get to unpuzzle how the characters are connected. Fortunately Gaarder has structured the novel in a way that we don’t easily get confused about who is who.
The idea of playing cards coming to life may remind you somewhat like Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, but this is actually much more clever. Gaarder uses the concept of playing cards that have come to life to raise many philosophical questions about reality and the purpose of our lives here on planet earth. Because the playing cards start off purely in the mind of the old baker, who amuses himself after being shipwrecked on an island. He first plays solitaire with real cards, but when these disintegrate, he makes it a mental exercise, and imagines the playing cards as real people. But when his imagination brings them into the world around him, are they actually real or not? Hans concludes about the sticky bun book: “I had read about the world’s greatest card trick ever. To conjure up a whole pack of cards would be pretty impressive in itself, but to turn all fifty-two playing cards into real people bursting with life was magic on a totally different level.” (p.158)
The philosophy never gets too heavy, because it remains a good story first of all. Yet Gaarder uses his story to raise philosophical questions, without having these weigh so heavily that the story itself bogs down. You’ll learn about things like the Socrates and the Delphic Oracle, and you’ll also learn that the most important part of wisdom is to ask questions. This novel encourages us to be “Jokers” who think seriously about our place on the planet, and consider the important questions of life such as: Who are you? and Where do we come from?
But there’s much more to the playing card component of this novel: the book is divided into 53 chapters, each one named after a different playing card, including one for the Joker, who is a key character in the story. So chapter 1 is entitled “Ace of Spades”, chapter 2 is entitled “Two of Spades”, and so on. The patterns and relationships of the playing cards within a deck becomes an important structural and thematic device. There are also sections of the story that deal with the remarkable way how how a deck corresponds to a calendar, with 52 cards corresponding to the weeks of a year, and various many other patterns that can be found within a deck. Hans Thomas’ father is even a collector of playing cards! As you can see, there is an enormous amount of content that the playing card enthusiast will pick up on and appreciate!
Collecting Playing Cards
To whet your appetite to seek out this book, I’ve collected some of my favourite excerpts for your reading pleasure, which relate specifically to playing cards. (NB: If necessary, you can click on the images to see these excerpts in larger size).
Let’s start with a delightful passage where Hans Thomas describes his father’s own hobby: he collects playing cards, specifically Jokers. “Lots of people collect different things like stones, coins, stamps, and butterflies. Dad also had a passion for collecting. He collected Jokers.” (p.62)
I’ll let Gaarder tell the rest of this story:
Much of this will strike a chord with collectors! There certainly are people who do this in the real world. In fact the current world record holder is Tony De Santis of Italy who has 8,520 different ones (see another of my articles for more such world records). But its not just his Dad who collects cards, but so does Hans Thomas:
“There was an unwritten law; when Dad bought a pack of cards, he kept the Joker – never more than one – and gave the rest of the cards to me … In this way, I’d collected nearly a hundred packs of cards.”
The passage continues by hinting at the significance of the Joker, and also shares how Hans Thomas’ father acts in compassion by often giving away the rest of the decks for other children to enjoy.
The Deck as a Calendar of 52 Weeks
There is also a fantastic section about how playing cards represent an entire calendar of 52 weeks, and four seasons. I’ve covered this previously in my article Interesting Facts About Playing Cards, and it was a delight to see a novel explain this at length!
“The cards also came to play an important part in the calendar we follow here on the island … The year has fifty-two weeks, so each week is represented by one of the cards in the pack.” (p.194)
Hans Thomas, it turns out, was born on February 29th in a leap year, which means he was born on a Joker Day.
But the connections between the calendar and a deck of cards run even deeper than that. “Every week has its own card, every month has its own number from ace to king, and every season has one of the four suits. You should take out a patent for that, Hans Thomas. As far as I know, to this day a proper bridge-calendar hasn’t been invented.”
The Deck as a Calendar of 365 Days
And what about the little known fact that the values of an entire deck add up exactly to 364 – plus one for the Joker making 365 – exactly equal to the days of the year? There’s a great section that covers that, and it all has importance for the plot and the structure of the book. Hans Thomas’ father explains:
“If you add all the symbols in a suit together, he continued, you get ninety-one. Ace is one, king is thirteen, queen is twelve – and so on. Yes, you definitely get ninety-one.” (p.201)
And for four suits this means a total of 364: “Exactly! There are 364 symbols in a pack of cards – plus the Joker. But then there are some years which have two Joker Days. Maybe that’s why there are two Jokers in a pack, Hans Thomas. This can’t be coincidence.”
Solitare
In keeping with the title of the book, and the theme, the closing pages of the book even provide instructions about how to play the classic Solitaire game.
A Philosophy of Life
After reading this story, you’ll never look at a deck of playing cards in the same way, and you’ll imagine each playing card as a character. And hopefully you’ll never look at life in the same way either either.
“It was a mystery to me how people on earth could simply roam around the world without asking questions, over and over again, about who they were and where they came from. How could life on this planet be something you either turned your back on or took for granted?” (p.136)
The mystery of the playing cards challenges us to think about our lives, just as it challenged Hans Thomas.
“It was strange that we human beings are so clever in so many ways – we explore space and the composition of atoms – but we don’t have a better understanding of what we are.” (p.141)
The final sentence in the book leaves us with this excellent thought:
“I am positive there is still a Joker roaming around the world … He will look deep into our eyes and ask, Who are you? Where do we come from?” (p.319)
Other Novels
Are there more examples of novels that strongly feature playing cards? There are certainly plenty of stories that revolve around poker or gambling (Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey), bridge (Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie), card games (Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King) or around performers of card magic (Bluff by Michael Kardos), but that’s not quite what we have in mind. Nor are books about Tarot cards (Last Call by Tim Powers), although these lend themselves well to stories about the supernatural.
Perhaps the most obvious example of another novel about playing cards is Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, which I will cover in my next article. It’s a whimsical story in a surreal setting where playing cards are also depicted as characters. This classic book has also inspired other novels which build on Lewis Carroll’s playing card characters, such as Heartless by Marissa Meyer, which is effectively a prequel to Alice in Wonderland, and tells the story about the Queen of Hearts as a single girl who is pursued by the unmarried King of Hearts, and who finds herself secretly in love with the mysterious court Joker named Jest.
Jostein Gaarder’s The Solitaire Mystery is a fine work, that shows how important playing cards have become to us. They aren’t just part of our lives, but we can even use them to make us reflect about what life is really about.
About the writer: EndersGame is a well-known reviewer of board games and playing cards. He loves card games, card magic, and collecting playing cards. This article first appeared on PlayingCardDecks.com here.
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Stories are told in many ways. Writers use poems and novels; artists put paint on canvases. The history between tarot and literature is prominent and continues to inspire both art forms.
THE OLDEST TAROT DECK
Francesco Petrarca’s series of poems called Trionfi, or Triumphs (1351), mirrors the oldest tarot deck, Visconti di Modrone (15th century). The poem’s title is featured in the deck with 11 Triumph cards. Whether inspiration stemmed from Petrarca’s anthology is up to interpretation. Nevertheless, there are additional notions that lead many to believe his poetry inspired the earliest tarot designs because of his descriptions on Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time and Divinity.
The Visconti Tarot collection, available at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University can be found here.
The Fool & Shakespeare
William Shakespeare’s various ‘fools’ characters are suspected to have influenced the tarot card that shares the same name: the Fool. In Shakespeare’s plays, the fool’s role is to entertain while cleverly commenting on the drama. In other words, this sensible character acknowledges nonsensical life events. With tarot, this card emulates the journey through life. The number 0 on the card reveals the unlimited potential to travel either to the beginning or end of the Major Arcana. The Fool’s spontaneous life experiences create a wise and free soul.
TAROT IN LITERATURE
Allegorical tarot figures often appear in literary pieces and vice versa. There are quite a few poets and writers who assemble their story’s theme(s) and characters based on tarot card meanings.
William Butler Yeats, an Irish poet and avid tarot reader, was a member of an occult society called Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Yeats deliberately tied tarot imagery into his poems like Blood and the Moon and The Fool by the Roadside.
Blood and the Moon:
The Moon tarot revolves around illusion. The card’s artwork depicts a moon that sits in between two towers. This describes a misunderstanding or the inability to accept the truth.
Yeat’s poem references the moon’s innocence and how it cannot be stained by blood:
The purity of the unclouded moonHas hung its arrowy shaft upon the floor.Seven centuries have passed and it is pure,The blood of innocence has left no stain
The Tower tarot often symbolizes danger, crisis, unanticipated change and liberation. It is believed that in this poem, the tower symbolizes Yeats himself:
I declare this tower is my symbol; I declareThis winding, gyring, siring treadmill of a star is my ancestral stair
The Fool by the Roadside:
Fool by the Riverside is brief and follows the rhyme scheme AABCCB, which is categorized as simple, juvenile, and in a way, foolish.
In this poem, the Fool believes that life can spool backward and forward. This strongly relates to the Fool tarot card, which can appear either at the beginning or end of a deck. It is clear that both Yeat’s character and the tarot symbol are similar in the sense that they can exist in any direction or environment.
When all works that haveFrom cradle run to graveFrom grave to cradle run instead;When thoughts that a foolHas wound upon a spoolAre but loose thread, are but loose thread;When cradle and spool are pastAnd I mere shade at lastCoagulate of stuff Transparent like the wind,I think that I may findA faithful love, a faithful love.
W.B. Yeats is one of the most influential tarot poetry writers. He sought to implement allegorical imagery in a subtle way. This is because his involvement in Golden Dawn was a secret and exposing the organization and its members were strictly not in the cards.
The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot
While a poet may intentionally create specific themes, concepts and imagery, most of the time the poem’s deeper meaning and overall analysis fall on the reader to interpret. That is the beauty of literature; we speculate and dissect a piece until it makes sense to us.
For example, in the poem “The Waste Land,” some believe that the drowned Phoenician Sailor is a reference to the Ten of Swords card and the Lady of the Rocks is the Queen of Cups. But the more obvious tarot indications by Eliot are the mention of The Hanged Man and the Wheel (The Wheel of Fortune).
The Connection
There are various ways to read poetry, but the basics include identifying the narrator and the tone as well as interpreting the deeper picture and overall theme.
While reading poetry, you discover themes, understand the basic text and find a deeper meaning. Tarot cards have visuals, symbols and meanings presented to you. Both tarot and literature require you to interpret beyond what you are given. You are urged to find connections amid the metaphors, images, text, archetypes and more.
Their similarities allow you to use one art form, like poetry to better understand the other: tarot.
Caos del Triperiuno
Among the first writers to feature tarot in poetry was Teofilo Folengo. In 1527, he wrote a poem called Caos del Triperiuno. The poem itself revolves around a poet who accompanies four people into a room where they each choose a fate-related tarot card. The poet then writes a poem that connects the person to the tarot card drawn.
Tarot Cards Featured in Folengo’s Poem:
The 22 Major Arcana, or trump cards: The Fool (0), The Magician (I), The High Priestess (II), The Empress (III), The Emperor (IV), The Hierophant (V), The Lovers (VI), The Chariot (VII), Strength (VIII), The Hermit (IX), Wheel of Fortune (X), Justice (XI), The Hanged Man (XII), Death (XIII), Temperance (XIV), The Devil (XV), The Tower (XVI), The Star (XVII), The Moon (XVIII), The Sun (XIX), Judgement (XX), The World (XXI)
Major Arcana Meaning: A tarot reading with these cards use one’s soul to explore their long-lasting life changes.
The Breakdown:
Mary K. Greer, writer and professional tarot consultant, labeled each tarot card mentioned in Folengo’s poem:
Love, under whose Empire many deeds (VI; IV)go without Time and without Fortune, (IX; X)saw Death, ugly and dark, on a Chariot, (XIII; VII)going among the people it took away from the World. (XXI)She asked: “No Pope nor Papesse was ever won (V; II)by you. Do you call this Justice?” (XI)He answered: “He who made the Sun and the Moon (XIX; XVIII)defended them from my Strength. (VIII)“What a Fool I am,” said love, “my Fire, (O; XVI)That can appear as an Angel or as a Devil (XX; XV)can be Tempered by some others who live under my Star. (XIV; XVII)You are the Empress of bodies. But you cannot kill hearts, (III)you only Suspend them. You have a name of high Fame, (XII)but you are nothing but a Trickster.” (I)
Judgment & Devil
Now, here is my insight into a couple of the tarot card meanings that are included in the poem above:
That can appear as an Angel or as a Devil (XX; XV)
The Judgement tarot card’s keyword is crossroads has always reminded me of Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken. Here’s an excerpt from the 1915 piece:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.
At the end of Frost’s poem, the speaker has realized that both paths cannot be taken. The Judgement tarot card advises that a decision must be made. The message encourages you to not allow anything to hold you back; you should release the parts of you that are unnecessary and untrue. In Folengo’s poem, the speaker is struggling with good and evil, where he/she transitions between both expressions transparently. Eventually, the speaker must decide if they will follow a light path or the dark one. This is a difficult choice being that the Devil card embodies entrapment and illusion. The only way to break free is to remember who your true self is, which brings us full circle in seeking guidance from the Judgement card.
Temperance & Star
can be Tempered by some others who live under my Star (XIV; XVII)
The following sentence uses the Temperance card to reassure that although the choice between acting as an angel or a devil is difficult, you will find peace and balance through the people who love and care about your soul. This reveals that you need assistance from the people who you trust. Your life will transform as well as those who follow close to you. After all, our life decisions impact every single person in our circle or Star.
The Empress, The Hanging Man & The Magician
You are the Empress of bodies. But you cannot kill hearts, (III)you only Suspend them. You have a name of high Fame, (XII)but you are nothing but a Trickster.” (I)
The Empress tarot card connects you to the natural world. Our soul consists of the Empress’ teachings and strength, but our self-expression is not always filled with positivity. The connecting theme throughout this poem is Love and Death, where Death has control over suspending the physical body (The Hanging Man card), but Love can never die. The speaker refers to Death as a Trickster or a fraud. This embodies the Magician tarot card, which manifests dreams and magic into one’s reality.
Tarot Poetry
Poetry and tarot have leaned on one another to further develop their respective craft. Without poetry, the modern tarot cards we use today may look completely different, or perhaps not exist at all. And without tarot, literary storylines, themes and characters would lack allegorical symbols and meanings. After all, when we allow art to inspire art, we gain access to groundbreaking work.
Here are some of our clients’ custom tarot card designs, equipped with personalized designs, number of cards, instructions and more.
The Spiritful Tarot deck is complete with 78 custom-designed cards, an instructions booklet and a two-part box.
This nature-themed deck follows the conventional Tarot layout. Featured above are the King of Pentacles and the Page of Pentacles.
The Dark Exact Tarot deck — Illustrated and designed by Coleman Stevenson. The cards above are the Fool, the Magician and The High Priestess.
In a previous article we shared some of our favourite playing cards that depict novels. But how about novels that depict playing cards? Already for centuries playing cards have embedded themselves into our lives and culture, and crawled their way into language, paintings, and music. But what about literature?
It’s not hard to think of examples of books where playing cards are part of the wider background of a novel. Perhaps we find them in the hands of characters who are having a social game of bridge, or in the hands of gamblers trying their luck at Blackjack at a casino or playing Poker in the back room of a saloon. But are there other examples besides Jostein Gaarder’s The Solitaire Mystery (see our previous article) where playing cards become central characters, and key figures in the story?
The example that will spring to mind for most people is Lewis Carroll’s classic work, Alice in Wonderland.
The Book
This story is one that almost everyone has come across in their life. But if you’re like most people, then you’ve only been exposed to Alice via Disney films, or perhaps through an abridged version for young children. You really owe it to yourself to read the original book by Lewis Carroll, first published in 1865. Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Dodgson, who excelled in playing with words, and delighted in logic and fantasy. In Alice in Wonderland we see all these skills and interests on display, and come together in a wonderful and charming story.
If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can easily find it online, because the copyright has long lapsed. I suggest you head here, where you’ll find a downloadable PDF of a virtual edition created by Peter Zelchenko in 1998 for BookVirtual. This project is a true typographically accurate replica of the original Macmillan edition and this free digital edition was produced by VolumeOne.
The Story
For those unfamiliar with the story, what can you expect? Alice in Wonderland is a story of childlike innocence and curiosity, as we journey into a world of the surreal, the fantastic, and the whimsical.
Together with the seven-year-old Alice, we follow a talking white rabbit, and fall into a rabbit-hole, by which we enter an imaginary and wacky world where nothing is at it seems.
If you were the kind of child who always asked the “why?” question, and who liked to challenge what everyone else regarded as normal, you’ll love this book. In this story, Lewis Carroll gives us a picture of a world where everything that we accept as normal is turned upside down. We find ourselves in a land which is populated by an arrange of fantastic characters that entertain us with their wit and whimsy. Consider this excerpt from an absurd conversation Alice has with the Cheshire Cat:
“By-the-bye, what became of the baby?” said the Cat. “I’d nearly forgotten to ask.”
“It turned into a pig,’ Alice answered very quietly, just as if the Cat had come back in a natural way.
“I thought it would,” said the Cat, and vanished again.
In one of the book’s more famous scenes, Alice finds herself at a mad tea-party together with the March Hare, a Hatter, and a Dormouse., where she is bombarded with paradoxical riddles, and astonished with absurd logic.
“…they drew all manner of things – everything that begins with an M –”
“Why with an M?” said Alice.
“Why not?” said the March Hare.
The Playing Cards: Croquet with Queen of Hearts
But it is in the next chapter, entitled “The Queen’s Croquet Ground”, that we meet our playing cards for the first time. After leaving the tea party, Alice enters a garden, where she sees a procession of living playing card characters, which all have human heads, arms, and legs. Chief among them are the King and the Queen.
The suits of these playing card characters all correspond to different roles in the royal court, with the Spades serving as gardeners, Clubs as soldiers, Diamonds as courtiers, and Hearts as members of the royal family.
Click on the images below to read the first few pages of this chapter:
It’s here that we read about the antics the execution-minded Queen of Hearts with her constant refrain “Off with his head.”.
After this Alice commences what has to be one of the most bizarre games of croquet ever witnessed.
The Playing Cards: The Trial of the Knave of Hearts
The final two chapters of the book put the spotlight once again on our playing card friends, as Alice witnesses a trial overseen by the King of Hearts as judge, to settle a case where the Knave of Hearts has been accused of stealing the Queen’s tarts. At this point Lewis quotes the old and well-known English nursery rhyme “The Queen of Hearts”, which cleverly forms the basis of his plot:
“The Queen of Hearts / She made some tarts, / All on a summer’s day;
The Knave of Hearts / He stole those tarts, / And took them clean away.
The King of Hearts / Called for the tarts, / And beat the knave full sore;
The Knave of Hearts / Brought back the tarts, / And vowed he’d steal no more.”
Alice herself is called upon to give testimony against the Knave, and a measure of chaos ensues when Alice first knocks over the jury box filled with animals. She then challenges the King and Queen of Hearts about the absurdity of the proceedings.
I won’t spoil what happens in the final scenes as the pack of cards starts to gang up against Alice. You can read the final pages of the book for yourself here:
The Message
Is Alice in Wonderland all nonsense? I don’t think so, because there’s much more to this story than first meets the eye. Behind the outer layer of apparent `nonsense’ Carroll conveys a great deal of sense. There’s a wonderful version of the book entitled The Annotated Alice, that was produced by famous mathematician and logician Martin Gardner. In this annotated version, Gardner explores a lot of the imagery and ideas of the Alice in Wonderland story, and explains some of the references and influences behind the characters and more. As a mathematician, he especially points out many of the clever logical and mathematical concepts found in the story. There’s also a lot of political commentary and parody of the popular culture of the day which he identifies and explains. For example the farcical trial at the end is generally understood to be a lampooning of the British legal system.
What Lewis Carroll really wants us to do is return to reality along with Alice with a renewed appreciation for everything that is normal and accepted. But because this whimsical tale and its fantasy world is so nonsensical and enjoyable, you’ll want to return there many a time, and enjoy its sheer madcap humour. Alice in Wonderland is full to the brim with wild humour, farcical fantasy, witty wisecracks, and even slapstick comedy. You’ll be amazed by the cat-less grin of the Cheshire-Cat, amused by the absurd logic of the mad Hatter, and in hysterics over the antics of Queen of Hearts. I especially enjoyed the abundance of delightful puns, paradoxes, and parodies. While much of the deeper significance will escape young children, they will certainly enjoy it as a fantastic story, and rediscover it with even greater pleasure as adults. A classic is a book that appeals to people of all times and ages, and that’s certainly the case with Alice in Wonderland; this is truly a classic for the child in all of us!
Special mention should also be made of the illustrations accompanying the first published versions of the book. The original pictures were wood engraved by John Tenniel, and his artwork has become forever connected with the story of Alice, and has influenced a great deal of subsequent imaginings of it.
The Tribute Deck
So the book is about playing cards, but are there playing cards about the book? Of course! With the glut of custom decks on today’s market, surely it is inevitable that the circle would become complete, and someone would make a deck of playing cards based on this novels about playing cards.
And sure enough, there are several such decks that are marvellous tributes to Alice in Wonderland. The White Rabbit deck features a simple black and colour scheme with line art that was inspired by the classic John Tenniel woodcut illustrations from the original Alice in Wonderland books. The Wonderland Tarot deck has more playful and colourful artwork by Morgana Abbey, but is also a homage to the style of John Tenniel.
But perhaps my favourite Alice in Wonderland themed deck is the Alice in Wonderland deck created by graphic designer and illustrator Sasha Dounaevski, who has been a fan of the Lewis Carroll stories since her childhood.
The simple blue and white colour scheme is a recurring feature of the deck, and Sasha has used linear drawings with a minimalist style and with a childish and playful feel, believing that this best suits the absurdity and logic of the story. Just like the book itself, there are many imaginative details that the artist has provided, but there’s also plenty of scope for you as reader to imagine details of your own.
The card backs represent the garden that Alice gets into, with a distinctive symmetrical pattern. The Aces each recount part of Alice’s adventures and companions, e.g. Pigeon (Spades), the child that turned into a pig (Clubs), the mad tea-party (Diamonds), and a mallet-flamingo (Hearts).
But as with most custom decks, it’s the court cards that are the real highlight, depicting characters like The Cheshire Cat, Mad Hare, Hatter, White Rabbit, and more – including of course The Queen of Hearts and The King of Hearts.
To distinguish the suits clearly, the black suited court cards have a blue background, while the red suited court cards have a beige background.
The number cards are also customized with uniquely shaped pips in a non-standard arrangement. An extra feature of these is a unique symbol for each different suit, each of which has been derived from the story, e.g. the pocket watch, the pepper pot.
The Jokers feature the magical food/drink from the story which made Alice small and big respectively: the “Drink Me” mixture and the “Eat Me” cake. Also of note are two bonus cards, one of which pictures the book’s final court scene – which appropriately features lots of playing cards!
This deck is a wonderful tribute to the famous book, given the extensive customization and how the Alice in Wonderland theme has been incorporated in every aspect of the playing cards, making it a charming deck for the child in all of us!
Final Thoughts
In many ways playing cards have become a microcosm of life. Art mirrors life, and when playing cards find a place in our art, then they are giving us reason to reflect on ourselves and on our lives. But art can also be enjoyed for its own sake, and those of us who are playing card enthusiasts will appreciate the clever way that playing cards have found a place in novels like the ones discussed above, and will enjoy reading these stories and appreciate the clever ways they incorporate playing cards.
Not only have playing cards become an integral part of our lives, but as a form of art themselves, they also reflect something about life. With today’s myriad of custom decks, we are now in a position where playing cards have become works of art, and reveal something about what we like, and they are indications of what is important to us. And in cases of decks about Alice in Wonderland, they have even become tributes to works of art that themselves honour playing cards. So why not head down a rabbit hole, and join me in enjoying some of these great books which honour our 52 paper friends!
About the writer: EndersGame is a well-known reviewer of board games and playing cards. He loves card games, card magic, and collecting playing cards.
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