Alchemy--"divinity in the materials"

Kim Krans' Wild Unknown Alchemy Deck

I bought Kim Krans’ Alchemy deck the moment it came out, and then it sat on my shelf for close to a year. I realized it was complicated, deep, and like all her work, gorgeous. But I didn’t have the bandwidth until recently to dive in. I’ve started to work a few spreads and it is interesting how conversations about the connections between the concepts in the cards have evolved. Just a three card reading, root, heart, crown, can provide so much fodder for thought and insight into what is happening for the querent.

It’s hard to know where to begin with this deck. A part of me wanted to start a new notebook and analyze each card in depth, the way I did for the #100DayProject last year on Instagram. But the most accessible way for me to start learning the cards was to just start pulling them to see what came up. The deck is divided into six categories, seventy-one cards, planets and seasons, materials and mysteries, the combinations are a little mind-bending.

But what I really want to talk about here is how intuition gives us the responses we need when we are looking at cards with such complexity. Yes, my go to is to write it all out, do the extra research and readings, become a scholar of the cards. But I think Krans is asking us to relax the intellect a little, and take in the cards as they are, with our own intuitive senses activated to interpret.

The Oil of Vitriol, pictured above made me think of lashing out without pause for thought, overreacting, or maybe just reacting, but in a way which serves no one. I don’t know what the symbol which looks planetary is, and today I don’t need to. The color green feels acidic, the lion looks to be about to eat the sun, both cause feelings of uncertainty, worry maybe. This card reminds me to take time out to breathe.

Sublimation, also pictured above, feels almost opposite to the Oil of Vitriol, in that it offers the opportunity to rise above, in the starry, purple night sky, the bird in flight. It is the NOT reacting, the breathing, the pause so necessary for real communication. It feels like peace.

Just two cards can connect and lean on each other with no special training from the observer, the seeker. We are all readers of the cards if we choose to pay attention to how they look individually, how they may relate to each other, and how we personally connect to them.

I just love this deck.

On a final note, we are right in the middle of eclipse season, with the lunar eclipse finishing it up next Friday. Embrace the changes, transformations, energies you are feeling. We are certainly living in interesting times.

xoHanna

Tarot Circle for paid subscribers will be on Saturday May 13th at 8am PST/11amEST. Maybe we will do a session on Kim Krans. If you’d like to check it out you can become a paid subscriber here: