Deck Review: The Mushroom Hunter’s Tarot

The Mushroom Hunter’s Tarot is one of the first decks I ever back on Kickstarter, and it got me hooked on the whole process. This is partly due to how the creator, Joe Buckley, managed the whole project. Regular updates, a beautiful Insta, everything on time and seamless, and a really top notch finished project.

It was hard to find any flowers to do my customary “new deck photo” as the deck arrived in the middle of the bleak mid-Winter where I am in the UK, but these scrappy little yellow ones were fighting on! I wanted to photograph the deck with some mushrooms (obviously), but every time I found a cluster on a walk, they were gone when I came back a few days later :-/. Fortunately I am a BIG fan of the aesthetics of mushrooms, so I was able to photograph a lot of the cards against mushroom print clothes I have (mainly for the kids).

The Deck: Look, Feel, and Finish

Anyway, the deck. The Mushroom Hunter’s Tarot is a quirky, beautifully illustrated deck in a smart, no-nonsense box. It comes with a small, brief-but-functional guidebook, and the card stock is “no frills” (no glit etc.), but very high quality. Thick, but not sticky, so shuffles well. The artwork is just sublime! Such a beautiful style and fantastic use of colour. The guidebook explains how each of the fungi chosen embodies the theme of the card (something I’ll go into in more depth when I discuss my favourite cards below).

Greatest Hits: My Favourite Cards from the Mushroom Hunter’s Tarot

I think the Majors are particularly strong in this deck (mainly because I imagine it’s easier to match the archetypes to specific fungi characteristics).  I really love the creator’s decision to represent the Magician himself with a Fly Agaric, the OG ‘magic mushroom’. Buckley draws on the use of the mushroom as a powerful (and spiritual) hallucinogenic amongst the indigenous peoples of Siberia, as well as its use in literature and pop culture as a symbol of fairies and gnomes etc.: “coming across a fly agaric in the wild brings you into a world of magic. It is a bridge between this world and that of our dreams”. It reminds me of Meg Jones Wall‘s writing on the Magician, “with the Magician we don’t just believe that magic is possible – we know it in our bones. Magic is ours to wield. The Magician invites excitement and possibility to bubble up within us”.

The Fool is perfectly cast as a cute lil Puffball, joyfully releasing its spores into the world, ready to begin its journey wherever the wind might take it. There’s something so delightfully chaotic about that cloud of possibility.

Meanwhile, The Empress is beautifully embodied by the Pink Oyster mushroom: lush, abundant, and absolutely bursting with nutrients.

The Queen of Cups is shown here as an earth mother type out gathering ‘shrooms with her giant cup-shaped basket slung across her back. The Knight of Pents, meanwhile, is a hardworking forager-turned-hipster-chef, all patience and purpose.

And who doesn’t want to sit down for an intimate first date for two in the vista depicted on the Two of Cups card? I love the little easter eggs tucked in – especially the lion’s head from the RWS Two of Cups, now reimagined as the insignia on the wine bottle. That winged lion also echoes the one from the Strength card – a reminder that, sometimes, we find strength on the wings of love.

The High Priestess is portrayed as Dyer’s Polpore, a fungi that hollows out conifers from the inside, unseen but transformative. As Buckley writes, it’s a fungus that reminds us “to peer beyond into a deeper space.” Just like the High Priestess herself, it calls us inward, urging us to trust what lies beneath the surface and to honour the slow, secret work of inner knowing.

The Star here is a Ringed Earthstar. These fungi have long carried spiritual significance: called “fallen stars” by the Blackfoot of North America, and placed in the navels of babies by the Cherokee as blessings of protection and hope. It’s a beautiful symbol of cosmic guidance grounded in the earth, reminding us that even celestial magic can take root in the soil beneath our feet.

The World is aptly represented by the Honey Fungus, Earth’s largest living organism. The largest known Honey Fungus covers more than 3.4 square miles, and is estimated to be 2,500 years old. The Honey Fungus reminds us that what appears as many may, beneath the surface, be one vast and ancient network.

And so it is with us. The wisdom you carry at the point of The World isn’t yours alone, instead it’s shaped by every person, every experience, every influence that’s touched your life along the way. As Walt Whitman said, I am large, I contain multitudes. The self that emerges here is formed through deep-rooted connections that stretch further than we often realise.

I love the King of Swords with all his sharp knives as some sort of artisan mushroom butcher (😂); and the Ace of Wands as a carved mushroom staff is very pleasing.

The Hanged Man is (obviously!) another psychedelic mushroom, the Mexican Liberty Cap. A sacred part of rituals for the Aztecs, they were referred to as “god fungus”. They contain psilocybin, which can be used in the treatment of depression and trauma, and as Buckley writes, when taken “one may become suspended in time, surrendering their ego and finding a sense of interconnectedness between all things”. Whilst trying to isolate the psilocybin compound, the chemist Albert Hofmann ingested 32(!) Liberty Caps, and described his experience thusly:

At the peak of the intoxication, about 1¹⁄₂ hours after ingestion of the mushrooms, the rush of interior pictures, mostly changing in shape and colour, reached such an alarming degree that I feared I would be torn into this whirlpool of form and colour and would dissolve. After about six hours, the dream came to an end. Subjectively, I had no idea how long this condition had lasted. I felt my return to everyday reality to be a happy return from a strange, fantastic but not quite really experienced world into an old and familiar home.

Albert Hofmann, The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens

It’s a perfect depiction of the Hanged Man’s surrender: disorientation, ego dissolution, and the strange beauty of seeing the world (and oneself) from an utterly transformed perspective. In addittion, the little details on this card are amazing. The upside down “hanging” placement, the broken blade of grass looking like the traditional RWS bent leg – just perfection.

The Ten of Swords as a deadly Death Cap mushroom (surrounded by the requisite stabbing knives) is 👌🏼; and Temperance is beautiful here as a West Coast Reishi, growing between water and land.

Deck Interview with The Mushroom Hunter’s Tarot

1. Tell me about yourself? What is your most important characteristic as a deck?

Three of Swords: This deck can offer guidance when dealing with heartbreak, pain, sorrow and difficult head vs heart decisions.

2. What are your strengths as a deck?

Nine of Swords: The deck reiterates that it’s really good for helping guide me out of a state of extreme anxiety or overwhelming negativity.

3. What are your limits as a deck?

King of Pentacles: This deck is less good at giving advice to build on existing stability to create longterm prosperity. It’s kinda a crisis deck.

4. What do you require from me in return? How can I best collaborate with you?

Three of Cups: Even when I’m at rock bottom I have to be prepared to remember joy! And let the healing powers of friendship and unity back in.

5. What is the potential quality of our relationship?

Knight of Wands: The deck will help lift me out of the doldrums and reignite my passion and forward drive

6. In what space / with what type of query will you best communicate?

The Hierophant: When I’m ready to accept the deck as a wise teacher. The wisdom of the tarot is built on a wealth of human experience: mythology, religion, psychology. I need to remember to value the insight this gives to the practice.

I have loved working with this deck and highly recommend it!

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