OBITUARIES UNIT
In Memory of: The Tarot Deck That Ran for City Council
Born: 1994, in a dusty print shop in Rhode Island, to a woman named Rachel who thought the Tower card meant something different then.
Died: Yesterday, at the county clerk’s office, when the deadline for write-in candidates passed without a single rival filing to oppose it.
The Tarot Deck—known to its friends as “The Rider-Waite-Smith Standard,” or simply “The Cards”—leaves behind a campaign platform that included: a promise to “rezone the industrial district into something that doesn’t make you feel like you’re in a minor arcana of despair,” a proposal to rename the city’s main thoroughfare after the Empress (“because she deserves better than a strip mall”), and a plan to replace the city council’s gavel with a gently used crystal pendulum. It did not, at any point, offer a position on the municipal budget.
The Deck is survived by: three unused parking permits, a stack of campaign brochures printed on recycled paper that smell faintly of patchouli and regret, and a small but devoted following of local Mystic Moms who “just feel like the cards really get the infrastructure problem.”
It is predeceased by: a brief flirtation with electoral politics in 2017, when it ran for school board and lost to a retired accountant who “didn’t believe in the Four of Swords as a metaphor for truancy.”
The Deck’s campaign began, as all great political movements do, in a moment of existential exhaustion. A woman named Elise—a regular at the Crystal Moon Emporium on Elm Street—had been doing a reading for a friend about whether she should move to Portland. She drew the Wheel of Fortune, the Two of Cups, and then, because the universe has a sense of humor, a “Vote for Me” flyer that had been tucked into the deck by a previous owner.
“What if,” Elise said, squinting at the flyer, “the cards actually ran for office?”
She meant it as a joke. The deck, however, had other plans. By the next morning, it had drafted a mission statement using only the Major Arcana: “Justice, Strength, The Star, The World. Also, better crosswalks.”
The campaign was modest. A table outside the co-op. A sign that read: “Ask Me About the Moon.” People stopped. They asked about love. They asked about their exes. They asked if they should quit their jobs. The Deck answered honestly: it pulled the Ten of Swords for the love question (“This is over, babe”), the Page of Cups for the ex (“They’re not thinking about you, but they are thinking about a new hobby”), and the Chariot for the job (“Yes, but pack a snack”).
It was, by all accounts, a deeply attentive candidate. It never interrupted. It never filibustered. It never promised to lower taxes, because the cards don’t do numbers. “The Ace of Pentacles,” the Deck would explain patiently, “is not a line item. It is a vibe.”
The city council, for its part, pretended the Deck did not exist. The mayor issued a statement: “We remain committed to transparent governance, which is why we will not be consulting a spread of randomly shuffled cardboard for public policy.” The Deck’s supporters responded by forming a Super PAC called “Arcana PAC,” whose bylaws required all meetings to start with a three-card pull. They raised $847, which they spent entirely on incense and a small ad in the local paper that read: “The Tower is coming. Vote accordingly.”
But here is the truth the Deck never told anyone: it did not want to win. It did not want to sit in a meeting about zoning variances. It did not want to debate the merits of a new sewage plant. It wanted what all decks want—to be touched, to be shuffled, to be asked one more question about love. The campaign was a beautiful, doomed gesture, a way of saying: You keep asking about your future, but what about our future? As a community?
The city council seat went unopposed. The Deck will be sworn in next Tuesday. It has already promised to recuse itself from any vote involving the Ace of Wands, because that card is “clearly biased toward action.”
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that you pull a card for yourself. Not about your career. Not about your love life. About the street you live on.
The cards are done asking about love.
Now they’re asking about the budget.