After

The archive's review of After opens with a claim about tarot itself: traditions that endure do so because they are valid or answer a real human need, while others enjoy a moment of attention and fade. That is the frame set for a deck built by Pietro Alligo, Corrine Kenner, and Giulia F. Massaglia on Rider-Waite-Smith foundations, and read against it, After positions itself as a deliberate test of the tradition it is built from. Using RWS structure to question RWS structure is a neat trick if a deck can pull it off, since the reader recognizes the familiar arcana even as the imagery pushes against what those cards usually mean. Whether After earns the challenge it sets for itself is the harder question, and the material here states the ambition more clearly than it confirms the result. It suits readers already fluent in Rider-Waite-Smith who want to see its assumptions questioned from the inside. Anyone still learning the cards should spend time with the tradition itself before testing what pushes against it.