Deck Review: Earthbound Tarot

I missed the Kickstarter on the Earthbound Tarot, so it’s a testament to how much I like it that I coughed up the exorbitant shipping and import fees to have it fly across the ocean to join the TarotCake collection!

The deck is created by New Mexico-based artist and illustrator Celine Gordon, and the spirit of that desert place runs through the Earthbound Tarot like groundwater. It’s right up there as one of the ‘placeiest’ Tarot decks I own, lol (along with my beloved Delta Enduring Tarot). It’s also one of those decks that immediately feels crafted in the truest sense of the word: not just designed on a screen and printed into existence, but physically formed – handled, foraged, ground, stained – and slowly brought into being through contact with its component materials, with the land itself. Because – and this is the super cool thing about the Earthbound Tarot – the cards were created using earth pigment watercolours made from rocks and minerals Gordon forages herself.

I’m going to talk a bit later about how Abrahamic this deck feels to me* – there’s a lot of imagery that evokes the Old Testament, all dust and wilderness and strange prophetic encounters. Given this, what particularly appeals to me on a meta level is that even the deck’s creation process carries something of that same biblical-myth energy. The Earthbound Tarot is, in a sense, moulded from “the dust of the ground,” just like Adam is in the Genesis story. Watching the paint making process on Gordon’s Insta made the deck basically irresistible to my little magpie-collector-brain. There are videos of her crushing pigments by hand with a mortar and pestle, and grinding stone into powder before mixing it with natural binders to create paint, which are extremely satisfying to watch (kinda ASMR-adjacent) and def worth checking out.

(*NB this is NOT me saying the deck is overtly religious – it isn’t in any way. And obvs Sinai is a looongggg way away from the Chihuahuan Desert, which has its own rich artistic and cultural histories, so I’m not claiming the deck is consciously riffing on Abrahamic imagery. It’s just the emotional/mythic register it evokes for me personally, as someone raised within Western visual culture.)

The result is a deck with a wonderfully smudgy, earthy aesthetic. The images are very warm, very human, but also kinda ancient. What they depict often feels less like modern illustration and more like myth made visible: archetypes daubed onto cave walls with ochre and ash, stories we’ve been telling ourselves for thousands of years. And in a way, they are. As Gordon explains, these pigments connect the deck to long artistic traditions, from prehistoric cave paintings to Indigenous and folk art traditions in New Mexico, including Diné and Puebloan uses of ochre and clay pigments, and the Santero traditions of northern New Mexico, where earth pigments and plant matter are used to create devotional paintings and carvings.

Gordon’s wider artistic practice focuses on “the rhythms, patterns, and connections in [her] Southwest landscape,” using silkscreen, block printing, riso, and earth pigments, with pieces “made by hand and rooted in a deep sense of place.” The whole philosophy behind her work seems tied to a kind of deliberate slowness and resistance to modern churn. Her studio is called Off Grid Studio, which she describes not just literally, but metaphorically: an attempt to operate outside “the pressures, routines, or constraints of society,” embracing self-reliance, sustainability, and connection to nature. That ethos runs all through the Earthbound Tarot too – it’s not a deck trying to look glossy or hyper-polished or algorithmically “witchy.” It feels tactile, grounded, sun-baked, almost ancient. And while the artistic process certainly means Gordon is working with a more limited colour palette than many modern indie decks, the Earthbound Tarot never actually feels limited visually. If anything, it feels expansive – super ‘real’ in a way that’s difficult to explain. The colours behave the way they do when we gaze at a vista bathed in bright, bright sunlight: washed out at the edges, all shadow and dust and strange glowing warmth. Everything feels weathered into existence rather than artificially sharpened.

Gordon’s hands-on art production process also gives the deck an almost alchemical feeling. Because the landscapes depicted within the cards are often the very same places where the pigments themselves originated, it makes the deck feel fully alive, as well as creating this beautiful circularity between the land, the materials, and the imagery. A lot of the cards capture that feeling of Huge Sky, Distant Horizon that feels so specific to the region the deck is pulling from: that sense of space and heat and weather and silence. As Gordon puts it, the deck “depicts archetypes of human experiences while incorporating the landscapes where I forage for rocks, establishing a strong connection between the creative process and the final artwork.” This totally works IMO – the Earthbound Tarot doesn’t just depict nature symbolically in the vague Pinterest-y sense many decks do; it feels materially entangled with it. The earth isn’t an aesthetic backdrop here, it’s literally part of the deck! (As a kinda random aside, writing that sentence made me think of the intro to ‘Harder Than You Think’ by Public Enemy where Flavor Flav says of Chuck D “yo, the brother don’t swear he’s nice, he knows he’s nice” – this deck doesn’t just represent the land, it is the land!)

“Art carries energy, and the ritual of making something by hand is just as important as the finished product.  I wanted this process to bring a tangible sense of connection to nature into the cards.  Earthbound Tarot is a deck that honours cycles of growth, decay, and renewal that are present in our natural environment.”

Celine Gordon

As I said up top, the combination of ancientness and desert-y-ness makes this deck feel super biblical to me, very Old Testament. Its whole vibe: nomadic peoples, wilderness prophecy, revelation arriving out in the wastelands far away from civilisation and comfort. It contains burning bushes, “the voice[s] of one[s] crying in the wilderness,” strange signs and wonders appearing beneath vast skies, the planets and the comets coming down very close to the earth, impossible things hovering in the dry desert air. The boundary between the earthly and the cosmic feels unusually thin in Gordon’s artwork, as though the heavens themselves have stooped down toward the landscape. It captures that thing that so many Tarot decks want, it feels numinous. Like the kind of visions people might once have carried out of deserts and caves and lonely mountains, trying afterwards to find the best ways to convey to others what they’d seen.

The Deck: Look, Feel, and Finish

The cards are standard Tarot size, printed on 310 GSM cardstock – so not thick, but not ridiculously flimsy either – with a flexible linen finish that feels good in the hands. It’s easy to shuffle, properly riffle-shuffle friendly, springing right back into shape afterwards instead of bending into sad little Tarot tacos. The linen texture especially suits the deck’s earthy aesthetic; it gives everything a slightly tactile, organic feel rather than that super glossy massmarket finish some decks go for.

The deck comes housed in a tuck box which, ehhhh, y’all know I am never gonna love the humble tuck. That said, this one actually opened OK without me accidentally ripping the top, as is my wont, so that’s a plus! And I do love how it’s painted in a style that’s meant to mimic the layers of the Earth. We also get a small guidebook containing card meanings and reflection questions.

I also love this type of bordered card, with the artwork escaping beyond the frame. There’s something so satisfying about it visually, the border gives the deck structure and containment, but then the images keep pushing past it anyway. The Earthbound Tarot will not be contained, y’all!

The card backs are gorgeous too: four mirrored quadrants where water endlessly reflects sky and sky reflects water, creating this hypnotic circular symmetry. In the centre, the shapes almost form a great unblinking eye, which gives the whole design a strange numinous feeling, like being watched by the landscape itself. The backs have that same sense of vastness the rest of the deck carries – horizon upon horizon, reflection upon reflection – simultaneously calming and slightly terrifying in the best possible way.

Greatest Hits: My Favourite Cards from the Earthbound Tarot

I’m going a bit renegade with my usual review structure here. Normally I go Favourite Majors → Favourite Minors (by suit), but with the Earthbound Tarot I found myself grouping cards together much more thematically instead. And these three were my big ‘Biblical imagery’ cards.

And the Aces are kinda terrifying in the same way as this burning bush because they’re not safe. We often talk about them as exciting or hopeful – and they are – but capitalising on opportunity is risky. It requires great courage, and great optimism, and sometimes it can be hard to muster both of those things in our lives. It can be hard to muster hope. And that’s what the Aces ask of us: hope. The willingness to step toward something uncertain without any guarantee it will work out.

The Seven of Wands continues this burning bush imagery for me, but in a darker, more dangerous register. Gordon’s guidebook describes “a man [who] walks through fire, unflinching,” explaining that “each step forward is an act of defiance, resilience, and belief in a cause greater than fear.” And I really love that framing, because this card doesn’t feel triumphant in a comfortable superhero way. It feels intense, fanatical even. There’s something here that reminds me of the wild-eyed prophet archetype: the strange desert ascetic utterly convinced of their vision, unconcerned with whether the world considers them holy, heretical, or simply mad. Again, I keep thinking of “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.” The figure strides through the flames because he believes, utterly and completely, that he must. But at the same time, in reality he is far too close to that fire, lol – that’s not good campfire safety, kids! And that’s what makes the card so interesting to me, because alongside all the righteous conviction and courage, there’s also danger in this Seven of Wands: the possibility of self-destruction and martyrdom to your cause.

Prob because I went on a random deep dive on the First Crusade recently because of a historical romance novel I’m attempting to write, the card ended up reminding me strongly of the medieval “trial by ordeal,” where divine favour was supposedly revealed through survival of impossible physical suffering. The example I got briefly obsessed with is the visionary Peter Bartholomew who attempted to prove the authenticity of his mystical visions by walking through an enormous corridor of flames while carrying the so-called Holy Lance. Contemporary accounts describe stacks of dry olive branches being lit to create towering walls of fire over 40 foot high with only a one foot wide path to walk between them. Peter entered the flames “confidently,” eventually emerging from the other side crying “Deus adjuva!” (“God help!”) to the cheers of the gathered crowd. (He did die some 12 days later, but the jury seems to be out on whether it was from burns sustained during the trial or from being attacked by a mob of his enemies posing as over enthusiastic relic-hunters post-walk-of-fire).

I think Seven of Wands energy often does feel like a trial by ordeal sometimes. The sense that you are defending something vital – your integrity, your beliefs, your survival, your work, your identity – even while standing dangerously close to the burnout looming in the Nine and Ten. Gordon’s interpretation captures this when she writes: “the Seven of Wands assures us: we are strong enough. When we stand with integrity, even the fiercest flames cannot consume us.” Although I feel the card also hints at some of the shadow work that’s always there in the Wands suit. Conviction can save us, but conviction can also lead us willingly into the fire.

The third card in my little cluster of Biblical/religious imagery cards is the Eight of Swords. Gordon describes a man “blindfolded on the edge of a cliff, wind rushing around him” who “believes he is trapped, but the ropes coiled around him are not actually binding him,” with the card representing “fear and uncertainty” and the limiting narratives we build around ourselves. Which is a very solid, classic Eight of Swords interpretation.

However, for me, the visual parallels with martyrs and heretics being burned at the stake are really strong! The leaves swirling through the air resemble little tongues of flame, the swords and cliff-edge create the same visual shape as the bundles of timber stacked beneath execution pyres. Even the figure’s posture feels martyr-like to me: the upturned face, the defiant jaw, the hands behind the back, the strange stillness. And, to me, this person doesn’t actually look panicked or helpless. Not really.

And that’s what I find fascinating about the idea of martyrdom in relation to the Eight of Swords specifically. The card is traditionally about entrapment, but entrapment so often connected to the mind, to fear, to internal narratives, to belief itself. In traditional Tarot thinking, the ‘prison’ the figure finds themselves in is psychological, not physical. And martyrdom works in a strangely similar way; at any moment the martyr could theoretically recant and save themselves. But they choose not to. Their mental conviction becomes stronger than bodily fear: mind over matter. A lot of historical martyrdom art reflects this too. The condemned are often not even tightly restrained, their bindings hanging loose and often their hands are not secured at all – because the point is precisely that they go willingly toward suffering rather than renouncing what they believe to be true.

And that feels super Swordsy to me! Because the suit of Swords is all about thought, belief, perception, conviction, ideology, truth, clarity – and also the terrible psychological consequences those things can have. The Eight of Swords asks whether our limitations are real or self-created, but this card also made me think about the strange power of belief itself: the way human beings can endure almost unimaginable suffering when they feel anchored to some deeper truth, purpose, or certainty.

Then we come to a tranche of cards that are my favourites from what I mentally grouped together as the ‘I saw wonders’ set – with a mix of ‘mysterious skies’ and ‘rocks behaving weirdly’.

In the Magician we have a sort of travelling-cowboy-preacher-wizard figure seemingly summoning down a dramatic fork of desert-storm lightning out amongst the scrub. This card is so visceral in how its painted, I can almost smell the storm, hot and metallic. And now I think of it, ozone absolutely would be the Magician’s signature scent!

Gordon’s guidebook describes the Two of Pents (Coins) as a reminder that “effort doesn’t always have to be exhausting,” and that “sometimes, we find pleasure in the act of keeping things going, and even the heaviest parts of life can feel light in the right hands.” I like this card because it shows something more than the standard juggling imagery, given how heavy those rocks would be what’s happening here looks like magic. Absolute mastery that becomes pleasure. It reminds me of that strange point you sometimes reach with a difficult skill where you get practiced enough at it that effort transforms into what the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls ‘flow’. Flow is the melting together of action and consciousness; the state of finding a balance between a skill and how challenging that task is. When you stop fighting the thing and begin moving with it instead, a bit like the green room in surfing.

And a beautiful Eight of Cups, with the figure almost using her cups as stepping stones to walk into one of those impossibly big skies you only get out in the wilderness. It’s almost like she’s walking into the swirl of the galaxy itself. And I love that for the Eight of Cups, because the card is always such a strange mixture of grief and hope. There’s sadness in it, obviously, the growing acknowledgement that something once meaningful can no longer sustain you. But there’s also this pull towards mystery, towards something larger and harder to name. And Gordon’s figure’s journey feels both terrifying and exhilarating – she is walking away from certainty into enormity. Into loneliness, maybe, but also into wonder. Into a sky brimming with possibility.

With the Hermit, it’s not entirely clear whether we’re peering into the darkness of his cave, or whether we’re already standing inside it ourselves, looking outward into the swirl of the night sky high in the desert mountains. I like Hermits that collapse the distinction between the vastness of both interior and exterior spaces, the universe within us, the universe without. The Hermit is often framed as a card of withdrawal, but I think cards like this capture the paradox at its heart: sometimes retreating inward is also a way of reaching outward toward the rest of creation.

An absolutely terrifying Wheel of Fortune, lol. It’s an impossible thing. But also made possible via Gordon’s art. It’s hard to explain, it’s like you look at it and your brain goes ‘nah’, but at the same time, on some deeper intuitive level, you instantly understand both what it is and what the archetype is trying to communicate. Because that’s exactly how huge life changes often feel while they’re happening; surreal, illogical, like the laws of reality have abruptly stopped behaving properly. Gordon writes that the Wheel represents those moments “when, without warning, we find ourselves in a different reality,” and I think that phrasing captures it well.

I like the Ace of Pents (Coins) as a giant perfect sphere just randomly plonked in the middle of the scrub. And again, like the Ace of Wands, it feels less like an “object” and more like a Sign. A portent. The kind of thing you might stumble across in folklore or myth and immediately understand to be meaningful, even if you didn’t yet know how. You would not encounter something so strange and wondrous out in the wilderness and think: ah yes, perfectly normal desert rock behaviour. And because this is the Ace of Pents specifically, the sign feels deeply earthly. Heavy, of the ground, material. Not some celestial vision blazing down from the heavens, but something emerging from the landscape itself, a gift of the earth rather than the sky.

The Three of Pents (Coins) sticks pretty faithfully to the ‘teamwork makes the dreamwork’ imagery of the RWS, but with this insanely cool circular rock creation instead. I love this interpretation so much, because it makes the card feel less like bureaucratic collaboration and more like collective creation on an almost mythic scale. These tiny human figures aren’t just completing a task together; they’re shaping the world itself. Or possibly revealing something already hidden within it.

A very cool goaty-instead-of-rammy Emperor. Gordon explains that, “like the mountain goat, he has climbed great heights to gain a vantage point that allows him to see and understand the world with clarity.” I think the Emperor works well as a goat-bloke: the ability to survive in hostile terrain through sheer tenacity and sure-footedness.

I write in my Strength deep dive that I love cards that take the traditional “maiden” of the RWS and show her as an older woman. Yes, I know the archetype is all about purity and innocence overcoming brute power, but in real life it’s often not ‘til we’re a bit older and wiser (and scarred from all the times we took on the lion and lost!) that we finally have the emotional maturity to work in harmony with our baser desires and innate passions.

A really beautiful Death card; and look how delicate and pale all the colours are here. So many Death cards go heavy on darkness, but this one feels hushed instead, quiet and reflective. Gordon describes a woman gazing into a still pool and seeing “not her reflection, but Death staring back… no fear in her face — only recognition.” For, as she explains, “when we allow ourselves to see it clearly, Death becomes not only an ending, but a return. A return to the earth, to the collective, and to the unknown.” Very appropriate for a deck literally made of the earth (dust thou art and to dust thou shall return & c).

Arghhhh, I love this Moon card, with its two howling women, SO much! Perfection. It made me think of this poem by Wendy Xu that I adore:

You put on some new pants. I put
on some sunlight. I put on a coyote. You
put on a bigger coyote. You put on all
of the coyotes. You put on the sand as it flies
beneath your incredible little paws. I put on
rain not reaching the desert. You put on how we
feel sad after this. You put on the sadness. You
put on methods for dealing with it. The sadness tries
to put you on but you say No! You wrestle
the sadness to the ground. You are big and need
large wings. You put on the large wings. You are still
a coyote. You put on the howling. You put on
things that howl back. There is nothing
you won’t put on. You put on the darkness.
You put on some stars and even what
is between them. You put on the moon. The moon
that shines. You put on how we want
to stay here. You put on how we forget where
we were before. You put on the earth how
it cracks. You put on its face when it sees us.

‘You Think You Are Something Less Real Than You Are’ by Wendy Xu

In Judgement, we have people standing between great cracks and fissures in the ground their shadows rising up behind them. Gordon describes these shadows as being “stretch[ed] with the weight of past regrets and unhealed shortcomings — reminders of what still lingers in the background.” Again, this gave me biblical vibes, Job 26:2: “The realm of the dead is naked before God; Destruction lies uncovered.” There’s that same sense here of nothing remaining hidden any longer, everything exposed to the light. The selves we perform, the selves we avoid, the selves we regret, all suddenly laid bare. Gordon writes of her figures: “They are vulnerable but unafraid — meeting themselves fully, without pretence or armour. Judgment calls us into radical self-honesty,” concluding “we ascend not because we are flawless, but because we are ready to live with all parts of ourselves.”

We see more chasms and ruptures in the Three of Wands, where a woman stands at the edge of a great fissure splitting open the earth, molten rock glowing deep within it. Gordon explains that “the crack is a rupture in her reality — an invitation to step beyond what is known and into a realm of possibility,” which feels like such a clever reinterpretation of the traditional Three of Wands energy. Gordon writes that “cracks in the earth — like cracks in our habits, assumptions, or comfort zones — can lead us toward deeper discovery,” and I think that captures the card beautifully. The fissure becomes symbolic of all those moments where certainty fractures just enough to let something new emerge: new perspectives, new ambitions, new understandings of ourselves. The card asks not simply whether we want more from life, but whether we are actually prepared to let our existing worldview crack open in order to receive it.

A beautiful, cozy Four of Wands, that feels a lot more intimate than the traditional RWS image. Gordon explains, “this moment is not the end of the journey, but a vital pause — an invitation to reflect on how far we’ve come and to gather strength for what lies ahead.”

The Wands in the Eight of Wands take on the appearance of meteors, streaking across the desert sky, and it makes for such an aesthetically pleasing image. It also retains that sense of wonder and sublimity running throughout the deck. The meteors are beautiful, but they also feel slightly ominous. Ancient people absolutely would have looked up at a sky like this and thought: oh, something significant is happening.

I also really love the brave little Page of Wands, exploring a dark cave armed with nothing but a tiny flame and eyes which Gordon says “shine with curiosity.” Gordon writes that “he doesn’t need to see the entire way forward — just enough to take the next step,” which feels to me exactly the energy Pages often embody: not mastery or certainty, but openness, that beautiful mixture of gentleness and recklessness childhood can have sometimes. The slightly gung-ho, unjaded courage of someone who hasn’t yet fully learned all the reasons they should be afraid. The Page isn’t fearless because the cave isn’t dangerous; he’s fearless because curiosity (the great fire within us all!) still outweighs fear.

And a commanding Queen of Wands, glowing with the brightness of a hundred candles.

A totally joyous Three of Cups. Water is obvs the elemental suit association here, so having this card as a rain dance, as the celebration of the return of water into our lives after a period of drought and hardship, of the pure undiluted joy in that, is perfect. Gordon explains, “Like rain in the desert, community support can feel like a blessing — restoring us when we feel dry or isolated. It asks us to embrace celebration, express gratitude for those who truly see us, and remember that joy is always deeper when shared.” This card illustrates one of the things I love most about the Earthbound Tarot overall. The emotional states within the deck feel tied to material realities: weather, land, thirst, heat, exhaustion, shelter. Joy isn’t abstract in this deck, it arrives like rain on parched ground.

A gorgeous Four of Swords here, with the figure resting, and daydreaming, on a literal cloud. Gordon writes that “like a cloud that absorbs and disperses, sometimes we need time to let our thoughts drift and settle before we act.” I also noticed the altered sword pommels here, which feel very deliberate. Whereas the RWS just has normal round pommels for all the swords, one of Gordon’s forms a crescent moon shape, while another resembles a diamond or portal-like symbol – giving the swords a more ceremonial, mystical quality rather than making them feel like ordinary weapons. It fits the card’s dreamy, liminal atmosphere perfectly. The Four of Swords has always been about retreat, rest, and altered states of consciousness, and these little celestial details subtly reinforce that feeling of suspension between worlds.

This card so often lives in the murky space between necessary cunning and outright deception, self-protection and betrayal. Not pure villainy, necessarily, but compromised morality. And the narratives we construct to live with what we’ve done.

And a particularly dark Ten of Swords, I feel. This is not the relatively bloodless rendition of betrayal we get in the RWS, there’s a Pretty Serious Looking pool of crimson spreading beneath our fallen figure here. And then we have a tornado to the left of the frame; though the way Gordon’s art spills out through the borders throughout the deck, it almost stops looking like weather entirely. Instead it resembles some huge black wound torn through the image itself, a rent in reality where darkness is actively spilling inward. But what I appreciate is that Gordon still preserves the core meaning of the Ten of Swords as an ending rather than simply annihilation. She writes: “The pressure of multiple setbacks can leave us feeling paralyzed and unable to move forward. But even in the depths of despair, the Ten of Swords marks the end of a cycle.” Because the card isn’t really about pain for pain’s sake, it’s about collapse reaching its absolute limit. The point beyond which something must change because there is literally nowhere further downward to go. Gordon notes, “it is a painful moment of reckoning, but also the invitation to release what is no longer serving us and find a way to rebuild.” The wound is open. Which means, eventually, it may also begin to heal.

I really love all the Swords royal family in this deck. We have the Page cutting sheaves of paper into ribbons, so enamoured with her newfound sharpness.

And we have the Knight on his hawk. All the Knights feature figures riding on wildlife indigenous to the Southwestern US region (rather than horses): a coyote for the Knight of Wands; a mountain goat for the Knight of Cups; a hawk for the Knight of Swords; and a black bear for the Knight of Coins. It helps root the court cards within the deck’s wider ecological and symbolic world, making them feel less like transplanted medieval archetypes and more like figures genuinely emerging from this particular landscape. I especially love the Knight of Swords. Gordon’s interpretation of him is so sharp and psychologically perceptive:

“The Knight of Swords rides high on the back of a hawk, dagger drawn, soaring through the clouds. From this elevated vantage point, he believes he sees the full picture — confident in his conclusions and sharp in his delivery. But the earth below holds stories he has yet to hear, and his knowledge, though lofty, is incomplete. The Knight of Swords represents the danger of unchecked intellect — of believing we already know everything worth knowing. This is the card of the so-called “know-it-all,” someone who shapes facts to support their perspective, unwilling to admit error or embrace the limits of their understanding. While bold ideas and clear thinking can be powerful, they can also become rigid and isolating when driven by ego rather than inquiry.”

The shadow side of this card captures that very modern temptation to mistake confidence for wisdom, or speed of analysis for genuine understanding.

And an absolute badass Queen of Swords, warrior goddess, sounding her battle cry. Gordon notes that the butterflies around her serve as “a testament to the transformation that has forged her. She has suffered, survived, and come out the other side unwilling to be silenced.” Amen, sister.

Right, now we’re on to my favourite three cards in the deck, the ‘…and strange signs appeared in the skies’ trio, and it was VERY hard for me to choose between them!

First up: this astonishing Five of Pents (Coins). The two figures struggle through a snowstorm (so far, so RWS), but before them five planets loom low in the sky, forming an exaggerated version of what astronomers call a planetary parade. Gordon describes the planets as “symbols of what they need but cannot quite reach,” though she also emphasises that while “hardship is real, …so is the possibility of receiving help”. But such is the amazing weird power of this card that I’m not even sure those planets are fully out of reach. They’ve already descended so impossibly close to the earth that the whole scene starts to feel biblical again – like signs and wonders in the heavens. Like the cosmos itself bending downward toward human suffering. They almost feel compassionate to me, attentive, like the gods themselves have paused to listen, and maybe to intervene.

Then we have the Seven of Cups as yet more strange signs descending from the skies: seven great chalices of possibility hovering before the figure in the desert. Plenty of decks present this card as giant cups in the sky, but few feel as oddly and unsettling grand as the Earthbound Tarot. These visions feel raw, real, not metaphorical. And again, maybe this is my Biblical-brainworms speaking, but they immediately made me think of the temptations of Christ in the wilderness: visions of power, fulfilment, transcendence, escape. Not necessarily evil in themselves, but seductively dangerous precisely because they offer shortcuts around the difficult, ordinary work of actually living. I think that’s what Gordon’s card gets so right. The danger of the Seven of Cups isn’t simply “daydreaming too much” in the shallow productivity-guru sense. It’s the way fantasies, identities, ambitions, and imagined futures can begin to consume us so completely that we lose contact with what is actually sustaining, nourishing, and emotionally true. We become trapped in yearning itself. Permanently almost-but-not-quite. And because the Earthbound Tarot renders these visions as so vast and numinous, the card really captures how hard it can be to resist them. Of course the figure stops to stare. If the heavens themselves cracked open to offer you seven impossible futures, wouldn’t you?

Which feels like the thesis statement for the whole Earthbound Tarot tbh. The deck is full of impossible skies, strange planets, cracks in reality, and visions in the wilderness, but ultimately it keeps returning to the idea that transcendence is not separate from the material world. It’s already here, woven through it.

I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand…

I dream of fire
These dreams that tie two hearts that will never die

From ‘Desert Rose’ by Sting

As you might have gathered from this lengthy ode, lol, I really like this deck. It feels genuinely rooted in material processes, in landscape, and in the messy emotional realities of being alive. Like something weathered out of the desert itself. You can buy it from Gordon’s website for £46.

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