This didn't begin as a tarot deck. I knew next to nothing when I started to draw my first few cards, and I don't think I ever actually intended on finishing it either. But what I liked about it is that drawing the tarot let me build a world, and at the time of its inception thats exactly what I needed.
     I'd just suffered a grave disappointment; moving out of the country on my own, only to have my plans foiled and unexpected circumstances sent me back to the states. Which, now I laugh. It was obviously a Tower moment. I’d spent my life until that point looking to others to show me how I should live, and it was now time to start living for myself.  
     I spent many days of that summer in the cemetery by my mother's old house in Massachusetts, where I was recovering for a few weeks, drawing and imagining what this world might look like.  Once the air started to chill and the leaves started to turn I decided to fly back to LA and kept drawing.
     I took so much of what I discovered in Napoli and put it into these cards. I drew the lovers card in front of the most striking view I have ever seen of Vesuvio from Gaiola. I framed many of the cards in arches reminiscent of the altarini and doorways at every turn. I imagined mermaids on the jutting rocks I saw on a trip to eastern Sicily.
      I have never in my life been so galvanized, I had truly found my well of inspiration. I began the tarot in 2021 and it is now 2026. A lot of life happens in four or five years, but something kept pulling me back to the Tarot that whole time. After countless drafts, I am finally in a place to share it with you. Each card is hand drawn from my own lived experience and interpretation of the archetypes, populated by figures that celebrate the feminine, the androgynous and the fluid.  I hope that they will help you like they've helped me.

The Name Al Di Là comes from a song, interpreted many times throughout the last century, by the legendary Milva. Italian music is one of the most important parts of my daily life, and this song followed me through the entire process of creating the tarot. It is also one of the main ways I learned the language, and there was something very profound about hearing these songs change as my understanding of them deepened.

Aldilà: ‘beyond’, the ‘afterlife’ or the ‘underworld’